The Hume Society

The editors of Hume Studies invite submissions of up to 3,000 words addressing the following “disputed question” in Hume scholarship. Deadline for submissions is 28 February, 2027 (midnight, Edinburgh time). Top entries to be selected for publication in a single, co-authored article to appear in the June 2027 issue of Hume Studies.

Question (with a tip of the hat to Jonny Cottrell): What is the Appendix’s “counterbalancing” argument?

Background: At T App.10 Hume proposed to “examine the arguments on both sides, beginning with those that induc’d me to deny the strict and proper identity of a self or thinking being.” He then went on at some length reviewing arguments. But he did not make clear when (if ever) he switched to offering arguments for the other side. What was the argument (or what were the arguments) on the other side (or why should we think he did not offer any arguments on the other side)?(And, implicitly, what was the other side, exactly?)

Answers are to be focused on the analysis of Hume’s text. In the best medieval Quaestiones Disputatae tradition, references to the secondary literature should be confined to pithy comments on the few works most directly pertinent to the answer being given. This is not a literature review! Answers may take the form of new arguments in favour of a previously published position, new counterarguments against previously published objections to a previously published position, new arguments against a previously published position, or new positions. Attempts at mediation between or reconciliation of opposed positions are neither required nor recommended. But to each their own.