Fall 1995, Vol. XXIV, No. 2

Bulletin of the

1997 Hume Conference: Monterey, California

The Twenty-fourth Hume Society Conference will be held in Monterey, California, July 29 - August 2, 1997. Submitted papers may be on any aspect of Hume's writings, although the conference directors particularly encourage submissions on the following themes: Hume and the Sciences; Hume and Moral Rationalism; Nature and Convention. Plans for the conference include sessions featuring recent work by Hume scholars from Japan, and the conference directors encourage submissions from Hume scholars throughout the Pacific Rim. Papers should be no more than thirty minutes reading length with self-references deleted for blind reviewing; the author's name should appear only on a front cover sheet. Papers may be in English, French or German, but an abstract in English is required for all papers. Submit papers and abstracts in triplicate. Submissions must be postmarked by November 1, 1996. Send papers to: Professor Saul Traiger, Executive Secretary-Treasurer of the Hume Society, Department of Philosophy, Occidental College, Los Angeles, CA 90041.

Hume Sessions at Regional APA Meetings

Sessions sponsored by the Hume Society will be held at the Central and Pacific Division Meetings of the American Philosophical Assocation. The session title for the Central Division session is: "The New Hume." The speakers are Kenneth Winkler (Wellesley) and John P. Wright (University of Windsor). No information is available about the Pacific Division session at this time.

News from Members

Mark Box is spending a sabbatical year in Great Britian. He can be reached at Flat 2, Percy Building, University College Annex, Staverton Road, Oxford OX2 6XL8.

Lorne Faulkenstein's new book, Kant's Intuitionism has been published by the University of Toronto Press. See the Recent Books section of this Bulletin for details.

Michael Gill received his PhD. from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and now occupies a tenure-track position at Purdue University.

Alex Neill has moved to Scotland. His new address is Department of Moral Philosophy, University of St. Andrews, St. Andrews, Fife KY16 94AL, Scotland.

Frederick Rauscher began a tenure-track position at Eastern Illinois University on August 15, 1995. His address is Department of Philosophy, Eastern Illinois University, 600 Lincoln Avenue, Charleston, IL 61920-3099.

Wade L. Robison's new book Decisions in Doubt: The Environment and Public Policy (University of New England Press, 1994) has won the Nelson A. Rockefeller Prize in Social Science and Public Policy for 1994. The award is granted by the Rockefeller Institute at Dartmouth College.

Kathleen Schmidt received her doctorate from the University of Iowa in August; her thesis was entitled "The True Idea of the Human Mind": Hume's Bundle Theory of the Self and was supervised by Phillip Cummins. Beginning this fall, she'll be an assistant professor of philosophy at Ohio State University--and hence no longer so easily confused with Claudia Schmidt, the other Humean at Iowa.

Gerhard Streminger has published an article entitled "David Hume - Rationaler Egoist oder altruistischer Moralist?" in the anthology, edited by Thomas Leon Heck, Der Egoismus Tübingen (Nous-Verlag) 1995. Streminger has also just finished Der natürliche Lauf der Dinge: Essays zu Adam Smith und David Hume, published by Metropolis-Verlag. See the Recent Books section of this Bulletin for details.

Midwest Seminar for the History of Early Modern Philosophy

The Midwest Seminar for the History of Early Modern Philosophy will meet at the Humanities Institute of the University of Chicago, March 23-24, 1996. Submitted papers are welcome. Submit abstracts by January 5, 1995. Contact person: Daniel Garber, Department of Philosophy, University of Chicago, 1050 E. 59th St., Chicago, IL 60637. E-mail: garb@midway.uchicago.edu.

Utilitarianism: Analysis and History

Charles Gide Association for the Study of Economic Thought and Faculte des Sciences Economiques et Sociales Universite des Sciences et Technologies de Lille, January 25-26, 1996. The conference proposes a survey of the three highlights in the history of utilitarianism: utilitarianism at its origin, the various interpretations elaborated during the XIXth and XXth century, and current issues in contemporary economic theory that continue to be inspired by utilitarian doctrine. For further details: Bernard.Delmas@univ-lille1.fr

Southeastern Seminar in Early Modern Philosophy

The second meeting of the Southeastern Seminar in Early Modern Philosophy will be held the weekend of November 11-12 at Rollins College in Winter Park (Orlando), Florida. The Southeastern Seminar is an informal group, designed to foster interaction among scholars of 17th- and 18th-century philosophy. Its meetings are open to all with an interest in this area. Contact: Doug Jesseph, Philosophy Dept. North Carolina State University, Box 8103, Raleigh, NC 27695-8103, e-mail dmjphi@unity.ncsu.edu, OR: Thomas Cook, Philosophy Dept., Rollins College, Box 2659, 1000 Holt Ave., Winter Park, FL 32789, e-mail: thomas.cook@rollins.edu

Call for Papers: Descartes' Natural Philosophy

The Australasian Society for the History of Philosophy announces a conference to mark the Quatercentenary of Descartes' Birth. University of Sydney, 9-12 April 1996. The main themes of the conference will be Descartes' account of physiology, optics, mathematics, harmonic theory, mechanics, cosmology, cognition and the nature of the mind. Conference Organiser: Dr Stephen Gaukroger, TM Philosophy, University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia. E-mail: Stephen.Gaukroger@philosophy.su.edu.au

Colin and Ailsa Turbayne International Berkeley Essay Prize Competition

Professor and the late Mrs. Colin Turbayne have established an International Berkeley Essay Prize competition in conjunction with the Philosophy Department at the University of Rochester. The next deadline for submitting papers is November 1, 1996. Submissions on any aspect of Berkeley's philosophy are welcome. Essays should be new and unpublished and should be written in English and not exceed 5,000 words in length. All references to Berkeley should be to Luce/Jessop, and a MLA or similar standard for notes should be followed. Submissions will be judged by members of a review board selected by the Department of Philosophy at the University of Rochester. The winner will be announced March 1, 1997 and will receive a prize of $2,000. Submissions should be sent to: Chair, Department of Philosophy, University of Rochester, Lattimore 532, Rochester, NY 14627-0078.

Publication Update: The Glasgow Enlightenment

In the last issue of the Bulletin of the Hume Society, the volume, The Glasgow Enlightenment, Andrew Hook and Richard B. Sher, eds. was reported as forthcoming from Canongate Academic. Canongate has since folded, and the volume will be published by Tuckwell Press. Copies may be ordered directly from Tuckwell Press, The Mill House, Phantassie, East Linton, East Lothian EH40 3DG, Scotland, UK.

Blaise Pascal Society Formed

The Blaise Pascal Society, a new member of the North American Conference of Philosophical Societies, will hold conferences at the Eastern A.P.A. meetings. Those interested in any aspects of Pascal's work are invited to become members of the Blaise Pascal Society. For membership information, please contact Keith Arnold (karnold@aix1.uottawa.ca), President, Blaise Pascal Society.

Recent Books

Giancarlo Carabelli, On Hume and Eighteenth Century Aesthetics: The Philosopher on a Swing, NY: Peter Lang, 1995. 240 pp.

This study is an original approach to the notion of "golden mean" in eighteenth-century culture. It bravely combines intellectual history and material history, spanning the fields of philosophy, aesthetics, painting, sociology, optics, music, theater and garden history in an effort to cross the borders of academic writing, in the stylistic treatment of the subject. Giancarlo Carabelli examines the "golden mean" both in one of the highlights of Enlightenment philosophy -- David Hume's essays and his discussion of the middle station of life and of the standard of taste -- and in a modest artifact, "intermediate structure" par excellance: the invisible fence of the ha-ha, that magical "middle," that "simple enchantment," as Walpole called it, that was typical of eighteenth-century "modern garden."

Falkenstein, Lorne, A Commentary on the Transcendental Aesthetic, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995, 464 pp.

Ever since the publication of his Critique of Pure Reason in 1781, Immanuel Kant has occupied a central position in the philosophical world. In Kant's Intuitionism, Lorne Falkenstein focuses on one aspect of Kant's Transcendental Aesthetic, namely, his position on how we manage to intuit the properties and relations of objects as they exist in space and time.

It is a major problem not only in philosophy, but in cognitive science in general, to decide how much structure sensory input has of itself and how much we give it through processing. How much do our faculties do to structure our knowledge of objects and to give them their spatial and temporal existence? Recent interpretations of Kant's doctrine of intuition have emphasized the constructivist answer to this question, stressing that sensations have no structure of their own and that we must impose a structure through synthetic processes of the imagination and understanding, in order for the objects of our experience to have any spatial or temporal structure at all. Rehabilitating an interpretation of Kant outlined in the nineteenth century, Falkenstein argues that our knowledge of objects in space and time is not grounded in concepts but in the quasi-physiological constitution of our senses.

Falkenstein begins with a careful critque of both historical and contemporary approaches to this problem and goes on to develop a cogent and stimulating argument for his position. The dialectic that results advances the discussion into controversial new realms, revitalizing the debate about the implications of Kant's Transcendental Aesthetic.

Streminger, Gerhard, Der natürliche Lauf der Dinge: Essays zu Adam Smith und David Hume, Marburg: Metropolis-Verlag, 1995. 253 pp.

Im Gegenstatz zum traditionellen Christentum gebrauchten David Hume und Adam Smith den Begriff natural in einem weitgehend positiven Sinn; und für beide herausragenden Vertreter der Schottischen Aufklärung erschöpfte sich die Aufgabe der Moralphilosophie darin, Wege zu diesseitigem Glück aufzuzeigen. Aber während Hume seinen positiven Naturbegriff vor allem gegen die Konzeptionen des "Übernatürlichen" wandte, also gegen Religion und Metaphysik, bemühte sich Smith stärker um eine inhaltliche genauere Bestimmung des Naturbegriffs. Anhand der Formel von natural course of things können die Grundideen seiner Moralphilosophie und Politischen Ökonomie rekonstruiert werden. Damit erfährt auch seine berühmte Theorie der Unsichtbaren Hand eine Präzisierung, wobei eines der Ergebnisse lautet, daß deren neoliberale Interpretation sich als zu einseitig erweist.

Houston, R. A., Social Change in the Age of the Enlightenment: Edinburgh 1660-1760, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. 420 pp.; 7 figs.

This comprehensive study of Edinburgh during a century of social transformation offers unparalleled detail on the ways in which urban life was transformed. Chapters on social relationships, the use of space, the place of the poor, religious values, riot and popular protest, and political economy build up to a powerful argument about social change. Houston's broader contribution is to explain how changes in social attitudes and values took root in a century that witnessed dramatic political, economic, and intellectual developments.

Atherton, Margaret, ed., Women Philosophers of the Early Modern Period, Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co., 1994. 176 pp.

An excellent complement to the standard works in early modern philosophy, this new volume introduces an important selection from the largely unknown writings of women philosophers of the early modern period. Included are letters to prominent philosophers, philosophical tracts arguing a particular view, and comments on controversies of the day. Each is prefaced by a headnote giving a biographical account of its author and setting the piece in historical context. Atherton's introduction provides a solid framework for assessing these works and their place in modern philosophy.

Software Review: Past Masters Complete Works and Correspondence of David Hume

Intelex Corporation, the leading publisher of electronic texts in philosophy, has released a new edition of Hume's works, the only electronic edition of Hume's complete works. The Past Masters Complete Works and Correspondence of David Hume includes Hume's History of England (based on the edition of 1778) and the three published 20th century volumes of Hume's correspondence: Letters of David Hume, Volumes 1 and 2 (Oxford: 1932), and New Letters of David Hume (Oxford: 1954), in addition to the Treatise, the Enquiries, Abstract, My Own Life, Essays Moral, Political and Literary, A Letter from a Gentleman, A Dissertation on the Passions, The Natural History of Religion, and Dialogues concerning Natural Religion. The texts are delivered on CD-ROM. The database is 13 megabytes in Windows/Macintosh format, 12 megabytes in DOS format, and 17 megabytes in ASCII format. The package includes the Folio VIEWS search engine.

For this review, the Past Masters package was installed on two machines, a 50MHz 486 computer running Microsoft Windows95 with 8 megabytes of RAM and a double-speed CD-ROM drive, and a 33 MHz 486 running Windows 3.1. Both machines were on a Novell network. The e-texts and searching software are shipped on a single CD-ROM disk and a 38 page manual. The manual covers the use of the software on both Windows and Macintosh computers. There is no Hume-specific information in the manual. A separate manual ships with the DOS version. The software installed easily and ran flawlessly on both machines.

One strength of the Past Masters edition is the user interface. The program presents the user with an uncluttered screen, most of which is devoted to the texts. At the top of the screen is the menu and a customizable tool bar. The user may query the entire Hume corpus, or first choose an individual work from the titles appearing in the text window. A successful query results in the display of the first instance of the string queried. Found strings are displayed in context. This is a vast improvement over the original DOS interface where search results presented only the paragraph in which the string occurred. The search engine provides another method of browsing search results. After a query, a "content" command presents a list of titles and sections in which the found string occurs. For example, a search for the word "apple" takes the user to the first of four occurrences in the corpus. Using the content feature results in a list of Hume's texts with an indication of the number of "apple" hits in each. Clicking titles with a hit number takes the user to part or section titles with hits, and, with further clicks, to the texts themselves. In this manner the user can easily jump to passages of interest. Using what are called "shadow files," users can highlight, annotate, and place bookmarks in the texts, saving such changes without altering the underlying e-texts. In a networked envirornment, many individuals can access the same database, retrieving and modifying their own shadow files. Highlighting, annotating, and bookmarking are easily accomplished.

An edition, electronic or otherwise, stands or falls with the accuracy of its texts. Many of the e-texts offered in Intelex's Past Masters series are widely used scholarly editions. For example, both Aristotle and Spinoza editions are the Princeton Bollingen series translations. The situation is more complex for the texts in the Past Masters Hume edition. The Intelex manual states "Hume texts are based on or have been checked against the Green and Grose edition as well as at least one other edition; original editions were also consulted." There is a Past Masters preface for each work which provides information about the texts' origins. For example, the Treatise is prefaced with the following explanation: "The text of A Treatise of Human Nature was drawn from the 1911 Everyman's Library Edition. The text was carefully checked against the 1886 Green and Grose edition. Page numbers which identify each folio of the Treatise refer to page numbers of the correlative passage in the Second Edition of Nidditch." The e-text of the Essays is based on the Miller edition. Most users will welcome the correlation to the Nidditch editions of the Treatise and Enquiries. One can easily run a search in the Past Masters e-text and then consult the same passage in the Nidditch edition. The text of the Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion is correlated with the page numbers of the Kemp Smith edition. The letters are based on the out-of-print Oxford editions.

No other electronic edition of Hume's works achieves the scope of this Past Masters edition. Hume scholars can now search across all of Hume's published works and letters, and have access to the Hume corpus on their computers. The texts are quite readable with the included viewer, and texts are easily printed.

Unfortunately, due to copyright restrictions on the Oxford edition of Hume's correspondence, this Past Masters electronic edition is only available in the U.S. Intelex hopes to offer this package world-wide in the near future. An e-text package of Locke, Berkeley and Hume, also packaged with the Folio search engine, contains all the Hume texts except the History of England and Hume's correspondence, and is distributed world-wide.

Intelex licenses the Complete Works and Correspondence of David Hume to individuals and institutions. The individual license lists for $150. The institutional price is $355. Intelex currently offers Hume Society members a 20% discount off the individual price. For more information, contact Intelex Corp., P.O. Box 859, Charlottesville, VA 22902-0859; tel: (804) 979-5371; fax: (804) 979-5804; e-mail: 70671.1673@compuserve.com

Membership in the Society is up more than 12% over last year, bringing the number of members to more than 400 for the first time. There are 410 members in good standing. Special thanks to Geoffrey Sayre McCord who suggested that we target nonmembers who have written on Hume. This spring we sent 170 invitations to join the Society, and the response has been encouraging. I would also like to thank the editors of Hume Studies. I am sure that the health of the membership rolls reflects the quality of the Society's journal.

The Treasury stands at $16,317.09 as of June 30, 1995, an increase of more than $5000. from a year ago. $5000. is now in a six month renewable Certificate of Deposit. Business office expenses, including all printing and mailings, as well as secretarial costs, continue to be paid by Occidental College. Hume Studies receives financial support from the University of Utah and the College of William and Mary. The sale of copies of McGill Hume Studies, generously donated by David Fate Norton, have added to the Society's coffers. Copies are still available for purchase.

Terms of office for executive committee members Maria Montes, Peter Millican and David Raynor expire on December 31, 1995. Millican and Montes are eligible for reelection. A call for nominations for the EC will be sent to members in September. The deadline for nominations is October 31. Continuing members of the executive committee are Wade Robison, President, Saul Traiger, Executive Secretary-Treasurer, Charlotte Brown, Stephen Darwall, Mikael Karlsson, Jane McIntyre, and Geoffrey Sayre McCord.

The Bulletin of the Hume Society continues to welcome submissions from members. We are particularly interested in publishing announcements of your accomplishments, works in progress, awards, and even simply your whereabouts, when changed.

Saul Traiger, Executive Secretary and Treasurer

The Executive Committee spent most of this past year finishing up work on the revised Constitution al amendments and is pleased that these were passed by the membership of the Society. It was an object lesson in humility for me to work with eight other philosophers on trying to get a text right. I am glad the membership approved of our efforts.

We also appointed Don Garrett and Ted Morris to a five-year term as editors of Hume Studies, beginning with this November's issue. We have received nothing but praise for their work on the journal along with that of Dorothy Coleman as book review editor. We are pleased they were willing to continue their good work on behalf of the journal and the Society.

The Executive Committee will be surveying the membership regarding the annual conferences of the Society. The present arrangements are the result of sometimes competing interests the Society has - in furthering Hume scholarship throughout the world; in trying to make all conferences available to all members in terms of both location and costs; in giving Conference directors complete responsibility for the program and local arrangements to take an otherwise heavy burden off the Executive Committee; in exercising enough control to try to ensure that the full range of Hume studies is represented, if not in any one year, than over a period of years; and in ensuring that submitted papers are subject to blind review.

Any arrangements driven by competing interests are bound to compromise some of those interests for the sake of others, and we want to see if the general judgments we have made about our conferences are generally correct and if there are any details we could alter that would better further any of the Society's goals.

We would appreciate any suggestions you might have about the kinds of questions we should ask. Anything that particularly irks those of you who have attended conferences, or those of you who have not, would be particularly helpful for us to know in this early stage of working out a questionnaire. It would be nice to have questions regarding what you most like about conferences as well as questions about what you think needs improving.

You may contact any member of the Executive Committee, e-mail the Executive Committee as a whole at the address given on page 8 of this Bulletin, or contact me by e-mail at wlrgsh@rit.edu, by phone at (716) 475-6643, or by mail at the Department of Philosophy, Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY 14623. Please get your suggested questions or areas of concern to us or me as soon as possible, but in any event by no later than November 30th.

We have chosen sites for the next three conferences - Nottingham, Monterey, and Leeds. We always appreciate suggestions and invitations for future conferences.

New Members

The Hume Society is pleased to welcome the following new members.

Aune, Bruce A.; University of Massachusetts

Barnhart, Joe E.; Denton, USA

Burke, B. David; Elgin Community College, Elgin, USA

Dauer, Francis W.; UCSB, Santa Barbara, USA

De Dijn, H.; University of Louvain

Delaney, C.F.; University of Notre Dame

Fu, Shih-Che; Madison, WI, USA

Greco, John; Fordham University

Herdt, Jennifer A.; New College of USF, Sarasota, FL

Hill, Thomas; University of North Carolina

Hurley, Paul E.; Pomona College

Ichinose, Masaki; University of Tokyo

Jost, Lawrence J.; University of Cincinnati

Kaurin, Pauline; Warrington, USA

Kulenkampff, Jens; Gerhard-Mercator-Universitat

Lightner, David; Ohio State University

Lynch, Michael; University of Mississippi

Mostefai, Ourida; Boston College

Mounce, H.O.; University College of Swansea

Root, Michael; University of Minnesota

Rosen, F.; University College London

Sanger, Lawrence W.; Ohio State University

Schraegle, Horst; Osnabrueck, Germany

Seltzer, Robert M.; University at Albany

Spurgin, Earl W.; John Carroll University

Stelts, Richard; Denver, Colorado, USA

Stewart, Calvin G.; Santa Clara University

Strawson, Galen; Oxford University

Swanton, Christine; University of Auckland

Swoyer, Chris; University of Oklahoma

Taylor, John A.; East Alton, Illinois, USA

Wittrup, Eleanor; University of Mass/Lowell

van Roijen, Peter P.; Wilson, Wyoming, USA

Hume Society on the World Wide Web

Hume Society information is now available through the World Wide Web. Using a web client (e.g. Netscape or Mosaic) open the URL http://www.oxy.edu/apa/hume.html. In addition to membership information, users may access e-versions of this and past Bulletins, e-mail addresses, and calls for papers.

E-Mail the EC

To facilitate communication with the Executive Committee, a new e-mail address has been set up by EC member Peter Millican. To send a message to members of the EC, direct your mail to humemail@scs.leeds.ac.uk. The EC asks that you use this address only to communicate matters for the entire executive committee. Business e-mail correspondence, such as membership information, should be addressed to the Executive Secretary-Treasurer. The members of the EC with e-mail access are:

Robison, Wade wlrgsh@rit.edu

Traiger, Saul traiger@oxy.edu

Brown, Charlotte cbrown@titan.iwu.edu

Darwall, Stephen stephen.darwall@um.cc.umich.edu

Karlsson, Mikael mike@rhi.hi.is

McIntyre, Jane r1188@csuohio.bitnet

Millican, Peter peter@scs.leeds.ac.uk

Raynor, David draynor@acadvm1.uottawa.ca

Sayre McCord, G. gsmunc@unc.edu

Call for Submissions

The Bulletin of the Hume Society appears in the fall and spring of each year. Readers are invited to contribute news and other items of interest to members of the Hume Society. Please contact the editor for more information.

The publication of the Bulletin of the Hume Society is made possible with funds from Occidental College. The editor is Saul Traiger.