Hume and Absolute Necessity Mind

Humes Absolute Necessity
Thomas Holden
Hume regards the absolute necessity attending demonstrable propositions as an

expression of the limitations of human imagination. When we register our modal
commitments in ordinary descriptive language, affirming that there are suchand-such absolute necessities, possibilities, and impossibilities, we are projecting
our sense of what the human mind can and cannot conceive. In some ways the
account parallels Humes famous treatment of the necessity of causes, and in some
respects it anticipates recent expressivist theories of absolute modality. I marshal
the evidence for this interpretation, show how it can explain a number of otherwise
puzzling features of Humes modal epistemology and metaphysics, and situate this
account of our modal discourse in Humes wider programme for a science of
human nature.
1. Introduction
Unsupported objects must fall; the sum of any two odd numbers must
be even. Hume draws a sharp distinction between these two species of
necessity in his modal metaphysics, firmly dissociating the necessity of
causes from the absolute necessity that governs arithmetic, algebra,
and the other demonstrative sciences. In the Treatise and again in the
Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding it is the necessity of causes
that receives the most sustained and explicit attention, while Humes
remarks on the nature of absolute necessity remain scattered, piecemeal, and oblique. Still, these remarks are consistent with one another,
and once gathered together they provide a tantalizing outline sketch of
an anti-realist approach to absolute necessity. Hume seems to regard
our talk and thought about absolute necessity not as a response to a
mind-independent modal order, but rather as an expression of the
limitations of human imagination; we project these imaginative limitations when we register our modal commitments in ordinary descriptive language, affirming that there are such-and-such absolute modal
facts such-and-such possibilities, impossibilities, and necessities. In
some ways the account parallels Humes famous treatment of the
necessity of causes, and in crucial respects it anticipates recent
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Thomas Holden
1
Strouds discussion focuses exclusively on T 1.3.14.23, which is the first text I examine
below.
2
There has been little in the way of sustained discussion of Humes account of the metaphysics of absolute necessity since Stroud 1977. The following commentators have all taken
Hume to be endorsing some sort of mind-dependent account of the nature of absolute
necessity but these are all very brief treatments, and touch on the question of the nature
of absolute necessity only in passing: Garrett (2008, p. 204), Imlay (1975, p. 42), Millgram
(1997, pp. 2601, n. 45), and Waxman (2005, pp. 5003, 1994, pp. 798). Other commentators
have rejected the mind-dependent interpretation, suggesting instead that Hume is some sort of
realist about absolute necessity. See, for instance, Passmore (1952, p. 19) and Kail (2007, p. 39).
Again, these are only brief and rather indirect treatments. The paucity of secondary literature
in this area is perhaps partly a consequence of the fact that Hume provides so little in the way
of explicit discussion of the interrelated topics of demonstration and absolute necessity a
fact that is stressed by Stroud (1977, p. 240), Kemp Smith (1941, p. 349), and Loeb (2002
pp. 2489).
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expressivist theories of absolute modality. Such at least I hope to show

in this paper, in which my main quarry is a consistent and plausibly
Humean reading of the absolute necessity texts. I focus on the Treatise,
since that is where the absolute necessity texts are concentrated. But I
will also touch on some supporting evidence from the later works, all
of which are at least consistent with the mind-dependent, anti-realist
approach suggested in the Treatise.
Stroud (1977, p. 241) first broke ground for the mind-dependent
interpretation, proposing that Hume might be treating absolute necessity as a fiction [that] we inevitably project onto what we think
about only because something happens in our minds on certain
occasions. Subsequent commentators have failed to develop this
insight, however, and Stroud himself merely raised it as a speculative
proposal in the context of one isolated passage. Indeed he positively
denies that any other passage in Humes writings supports the minddependent interpretation.1 That may be true if we are looking for
direct and explicit avowals of a mind-dependent account of absolute
necessity. But if we expand our search to take in wider textual and
systematic considerations, there is evidence that, while circumstantial,
is cumulatively quite powerful. My aim in this paper is then to marshal the full evidence for the mind-dependent interpretation, taking
account of all the various absolute necessity texts along with the
wider systematic and contextual evidence. The interpretation is at
least consistent with what Hume says, and I will argue that it
also helps to motivate and explain a number of otherwise puzzling
passages.2
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2. The interpretative proposal: an expressivist

account of absolute necessity
Upon the whole, [causal] necessity is something that exists in the mind,
not in objects; nor is it possible for us ever to form the most distant idea of
it, considered as a quality in bodies. Either we have no idea of necessity, or
necessity is nothing but that determination of the thought to pass from
causes to effects, and from effects to causes, according to their experienced
union.
Thus as the necessity, which makes two times two equal to four, or three
angles of a triangle equal to two right ones, lies only in the act of the
understanding, by which we consider and compare these ideas; in like manner
the necessity or power, which unites causes and effects, lies in the
determination of the mind to pass from the one to the other. (T 1.3.14.223,
my emphasis)
Here Hume asserts that the necessity of causes and the absolute
necessity attending demonstrable propositions each depend upon
the workings of the mind. Facts about causal necessities and facts
about absolute necessities both implicate psychological facts, and
each sort of modality can be explained (at least in part) in terms
of our own mental activity. Thus, on the one hand, causal necessity
involves a certain determination of the mind to connect particular
event-types together in our thought, thereby rendering us unable to
avoid believing that the one sort of event will always accompany the
other. On the other hand, absolute necessity equally lies in [an]
act of the understanding in this case some sort of mental operation by which, Hume offers rather cryptically, we consider and
compare [the relevant] ideas. Of course, if we focus on the case of
causal necessity at least, it is important to remember that the mindindependent world also plays an essential role alongside the operations of the understanding. Causation is not simply a matter of the
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Humes most striking pronouncement on the metaphysics of absolute

necessity occurs in Of the idea of necessary connexion (T 1.3.14), the
well-known section of the Treatise in which he advances his account of
causal necessity. Here, in the course of noting an analogy between his
treatment of the necessity of causes on the one hand and his understanding of absolute necessity on the other, Hume shows us something
of his hand, providing us with his most direct and explicit remark on
the nature of absolute necessity and a remark, moreover, that has
caused a good deal of consternation among his various commentators.
The passage, with enough surrounding context to make it intelligible,
runs as follows:
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The two sides of this account are captured in Humes famous two definitions of cause,
the first of which (an object, followed by another, and where all the objects, similar to the first,
are followed by objects similar to the second) lays emphasis on objective regularities, and the
second of which (an object followed by another, and whose appearance always conveys the
thought to that other) stresses an association of ideas in our minds (EHU 7.29; see also
T 1.3.14.35). These so-called definitions are notoriously non-coextensive, and best understood
not as definitions proper, but as summaries of the two essential factors that explain our
practice of making causal judgements: (i) the existence of objective regularities in the world,
and (ii) the consequent functional shift in our minds. Thus [i] when one particular species of
event has always, in all instances, been conjoined with another, [ii] we make no longer any
scruple of foretelling the one upon the appearance of the other We then call the one object
Cause, the other, Effect (EHU 7.27).
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minds disposition to associate event-types together in a certain way.

It is also a matter of objective regularities obtaining in the world.
Thus in Humes familiar account, a suitably regular experienced
union of two event-types is required to instil the relevant habits
of association in the mind: the world must first contribute a constant conjunction of event-types in order for a causal relationship to
obtain, even if the mind must equally contribute its own responsive,
habit-induced expectation.3 Given that Hume is drawing an analogy
between causal necessity on the one hand and absolute necessity on
the other, we should then bear in mind the possibility that the mindindependent world also makes some corresponding contribution in
the latter case. Perhaps mind-independent facts play some role in the
production of absolute necessity, or in controlling our talk and
thought about absolute necessity, even if that necessity itself lies
only in the act of the understanding.
Humes driving aim in T 1.3.14.23 is to clarify his novel account of
the nature of causal necessity, while the theory of absolute necessity
appears merely as an expository device. Indeed, one peculiarity of this
passage is that Hume seems to expect that his readers will find his view
of absolute necessity less controversial and counterintuitive than his
view of the necessity of causes. He invokes the former to help shed
light on the latter, and presents this sort of mind-dependent theory of
absolute necessity as if it were a relatively familiar and unexceptionable commonplace that might help his readers comprehend the basic
strategy of his extraordinary and paradox[ical] new theory of causal
necessity (T 1.3.14.24). But here Hume seems to have misjudged his
audience. Commentators on this passage, at least, have generally
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What! is it my understanding that makes two and two equal to four! Was it
not so before I was born, and would it not be so though all intelligence
were to cease throughout the universe! But it is idle to spend time in
confuting what every child who had learned the very first elements of
science, knows to be absurd. (Beattie 1770, p. 315)
Similar charges have also been levelled against T 1.3.14.23 in the more
recent literature (Imlay 1975, p. 42). Moreover, apparently moved by
the desire to avoid charging Hume with such psychologistic absurdities, some of his more sympathetic interpreters have tried to save him
from himself, either by denying that he meant what he said in
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found the account of absolute necessity sketched here at least as hard

to swallow as the corresponding account of causal necessity, if not
significantly harder and most of them have reacted with some combination of dismay, annoyance, and embarrassment on Humes
behalf. So here is one puzzle about this passage (a puzzle to which I
will return): Why did Hume treat the mind-dependent theory of absolute necessity as if it were familiar and reassuring, rather than alien
and unsettling?
But what is the core objection to the mind-dependent account of
absolute necessity sketched in T 1.3.14.23, the concern that drives
the commentators negative reactions? The charge is that Humes
proposal seems absurdly psychologistic that is, this sort of minddependent account appears to reduce mathematical relationships
(and any other relationships characterized by absolute necessity) to
psychological relationships, making mathematics (and the subjectmatter of any other sciences characterized by absolute necessity) absurdly dependent on human mental activity. And this looks like a
serious mistake. After all, mathematical relationships are eternal, immutable, and a priori, whereas psychological relationships are perishing, mutable, and knowable only through experience. Most
importantly, mathematical relationships are necessary, while psychological facts about the workings of the human mind are plainly contingent, and so there is no prospect of grounding the former on the
latter. This case against psychologism in the theory of absolute modality is very well entrenched in our own post-Fregean age (Frege 1884/
1953, pp. vx). But the point itself is plain enough, and was certainly
available in Humes own day. Consider, for instance, James Beatties
near-apoplectic reaction to T 1.3.14.23 in An Essay on the Nature and
Immutability of Truth (1770), his point-by-point reply to Humes
Treatise:
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For instance, Hausman accepts that this passage is very disconcerting and, if taken
literally, so much nonsense. However, [t]he point, if there is one, of Humes comparison
of intuition with the determination of the mind to move from cause to effect is, on my view,
merely to show that in each case the mind relates ideas, that relation being the ground of the
certainty we feel about each. To say the least, then, I do not take Humes own words literally
(Hausman 1975, pp. 58, 62).
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T 1.3.14.23,4 or at least by asserting that this is an anomalous text that

he does not really stand by. Thus Kemp Smith declares that it is difficult to account for this passage under any hypothesis, but hazards
the view that it may indicate that Hume hoped for a time to account
for literally all aspects of human thought through associative psychological mechanisms, before eventually abandoning such a quixotic
endeavour (Kemp Smith 1941, pp. 253n, 252). Meanwhile Passmore
asserts that T 1.3.14.23 is simply deviant, and that, by contrast, the
general tenor of Humes argument is the more serious view that
demonstrated propositions have an objective necessity, which can be
contrasted with the merely subjective, or internal, necessity of causal
relations (Passmore 1952, p. 19). But this is wishful thinking. Kemp
Smith provides no evidence that Hume subsequently retracted the
mind-dependent theory of T 1.3.14.23, explicitly or implicitly. And
while Hume does of course contrast the necessity of demonstrable
truths with the necessity of causes, he never does so in Passmores
terms: the comparison is never made out in the language of subjective
versus objective relationships, or internal versus external relationships or, for that matter, in terms of mind-dependent versus
mind-independent relationships. Passmore provides no textual evidence for his claim about the general tenor of Humes modal metaphysics, nor is any to be had.
But can Hume really have embraced the mind-dependent theory
apparently hazarded in T 1.3.14.23? And if so, how might he handle the
charge of psychologistic absurdity? (Would he not have anticipated
this challenge and Beatties rather obvious line of objection?) In sections 3, 4, and 5 below, I present the textual case for thinking that
Hume did sincerely intend a mind-dependent account of absolute
necessity, and that he conforms to it throughout his work. I then
consider the charge of psychologism in more detail, and advance an
interpretation of the act of the understanding in which Hume most
likely takes absolute necessity to rest. My proposal is that absolute
necessity lies in an act of the understanding in that our talk and
thought about absolute necessity is a systematic manifestation of
our sense of what, as a causal-psychological matter, the human
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3. Evidence from Humes theory of belief

To begin, consider two passages from Humes discussion of the nature
of belief. Humes driving interest in this area is to determine the
specific nature of our beliefs concerning matters of fact and
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mind can and cannot conceive. When we assert that a given proposition is absolutely necessary, we are expressing an attitude that is
prompted and controlled by our sense that we could never successfully
formulate the contrary combination of ideas, and that we are in this
way forced to regard the original proposition as psychologically inexorable. (This inexorability makes itself felt when we consider and
compare the relevant ideas, and find, for instance, that, as a causalpsychological matter, we just cannot form an idea of two pairs of
objects that is not also an idea of four objects.) Similarly, when we
assert that a proposition is absolutely possible we are expressing an
attitude that is prompted by our sense that that proposition is in fact
conceivable by the human mind. Notice that none of this means that
we need to saddle Hume with the intolerably implausible view that
our claims about absolute necessity and possibility just are attempts to
report or describe the limits of human imagination, any more than we
need to saddle Hume with the implausible view that our claims about
causal necessity just are attempts to report or describe our habitinduced expectations regarding what sort of events will follow one
another. Instead, I will argue that we can more plausibly interpret
Hume as advancing an expressivist account of absolute necessity
an account, that is, that regards our talk about absolute necessity as
giving voice to certain non-representational attitudes that we take
toward certain propositions, its superficially representational appearance notwithstanding. When we call a given proposition absolutely
necessary it is not that we are describing it; nor are we are describing
the limits of our own imaginations. Rather, we are expressing a certain
non-representational attitude most likely, the attitude of prescribing
that that proposition be treated as a non-negotiable element in our
systems of belief, not up for revision in the light of empirical evidence,
and in this sense obligatory or required. We might take this sort of
prescriptive attitude toward a proposition as a result of the fact that
we regard the contrary combination of ideas as inconceivable, but we
need not be thereby reporting or describing any such psychological
facts.
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[W]herein consists the difference betwixt believing and disbelieving any

proposition? The answer is easy with regard to propositions, that are
provd by intuition or demonstration. In that case, the person who assents
not only conceives the ideas according to the proposition, but is necessarily
determind to conceive them in that particular manner, either immediately, or by the interposition of other ideas. Whatever is absurd is
unintelligible; nor is it possible for the imagination to conceive any thing
contrary to a demonstration. [By contrast] in reasonings from causation,
and concerning matters of fact, this absolute necessity cannot take place,
5
There is one substantive change between the Treatise and the first Enquiry here, in that
the latter includes geometry alongside algebra and arithmetic as among the sciences based on
relations of ideas. This marks a change from the official taxonomy of the Treatise, where the
equivalent class of philosophical relations which depending solely upon ideas, can be the
objects of knowledge and certainty (T 1.3.1.2) comprehends the subject-matters of algebra and
arithmetic (T 1.3.1.5), but not geometry, which is treated instead as an inexact science drawn
from the general appearance of the objects (T 1.3.1.2, see also T 1.3.1.67).
6
For a useful treatment of Hume on intuition and demonstration, see Owen 1999,
pp. 83112.
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existence a new question, he says, unthought of by philosophers

(A 17). However, on the way to his main topic Hume does register a
useful contrast between this factual sort of belief and the type of belief
that results from reflection on the relations among our ideas that is,
the aprioristic conceptual inquiry that takes philosophical relations which [depend] solely on the ideas or the proportions of
ideas, considered as such as its subject matter (T 1.3.1.5, 2.3.10.2).
This latter domain of inquiry covers propositions that are discoverable by the mere operation of thought, without dependence on what is
any where existent in the universe. It comprehends the sciences of
Geometry, Algebra, and Arithmetic; and in short, every affirmation,
which is either intuitively or demonstratively certain (EHU 4.1;
compare also T 1.3.1.25).5 And it is also, of course, the sphere of
absolutely necessary propositions, of conceptual truths and entailments that are independent of empirical fact and immune to empirical
disconfirmation.
Just before advancing his new theory of the nature of belief in
matters of fact and existence, Hume offers the following aside on
the class of beliefs that are generated by reflection on the relations
among ideas, a cognitive operation that might proceed by way of
either intuition (the immediate apprehension of self-evident conceptual relations) or demonstration (the working through of a proof
that is constituted by a series of individually intuitive steps)
(T 1.3.1.23, EHU 4.1, 12.27).6
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and the imagination is free to conceive both sides of the question.

(T 1.3.7.3)
The same basic account reappears (in much the same context) in the
Abstract:
These two passages do not present us with a metaphysical account of

the nature of absolute necessity itself, at least not directly. Rather, they
sketch a doxastic account addressing the nature of a certain sort of
belief. However, if we shift our immediate focus from the metaphysical question of the nature of absolute necessity to the more tractable
anthropological-psychological question of what human thought about
absolute necessity actually amounts to, these texts prove quite illuminating. My suggestion is that we can read these passages for what Huw
Price (2008) has called a genealogy of modals: an account of what it
is that humans are actually doing when they adopt modal idioms and
think modal thoughts, of why we employ such vocabularies, and of
what factors control our modal pronouncements. Approaching the
topic of absolute modality through the science of human nature,
such a genealogical account would provide an explanation of our
talk and thought about absolute necessity in terms of the practical
role such talk and thought plays in our lives. It might even help to
demystify absolute necessity itself, at least if it managed to explain the
function of our modal vocabulary in a way that undercut any reason
to believe that we are somehow detecting and tracking a mindindependent system of absolute necessities.
Such a genealogical approach to absolute necessity would at least be
in keeping with a familiar Humean strategy in metaphysics. Consider
Humes treatment of causal necessity. When attempting to get a
handle on the nature of the mysterious necessary connexion relating
cause and effect, Hume finds himself at an early impasse (T 1.3.2.1213,
EHU 7.26). Unable to make headway in a frontal assault on this metaphysical question, he recommends that we leave the direct survey of
the problem (T 1.3.2.13; see also T 1.3.6.3), and shifts instead to a
second-order naturalistic investigation of the conditions under
which creatures like us make causal judgements and inferences
(T 1.3.2.1415; see also EHU 7.27). His hope is that this second-order
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When a demonstration convinces me of any proposition, it not only makes

me conceive the proposition, but also makes me sensible, that tis
impossible to conceive any thing contrary. What is demonstratively false
implies a contradiction; and what implies a contradiction cannot be
conceived. (A 18)
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7
There is also a second reason why first-person demonstration is of particular interest for
an understanding of our thought about absolutely necessity. For Hume, any proposition that is
absolutely necessary is ipso facto demonstrable, at least in principle. All absolutely necessary
truths concern relations of ideas (T 2.3.10.2, 3.1.1.9), and any relation among ideas can be
demonstrated through conceptual reflection by a sufficiently accurate thinker possessed of the
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investigation will demystify our first-order causal intuitions. Indeed,

[p]erhaps twill appear in the end, that the necessary connexion depends on the inference [from cause to effect], instead of the inferences depending on the necessary connexion (T 1.3.6.3) and this is
of course the conclusion that Hume eventually reaches with his
account of causal necessity as an expression, at least in part, of our
habit-induced inferential dispositions. A similar genealogical method
underlies Humes approach to the metaphysics of morals, in which the
traditional programme of attempting to locate moral facts in the
mind-independent world is replaced by an anthropological account
of the sentimental attitudes that give rise to our actual moral pronouncements. So the parallel suggestion here is that Humes theory of
belief might point to a similarly naturalistic, second-order account
of what humans are actually doing when they think and talk in
terms of absolute necessity and absolute possibility.
But how exactly do our two doxastic passages relate to the topic of
absolute modality? The key point is that the account sketched in these
passages covers the nature of those beliefs that are prompted by firstperson demonstration (or intuition, which I will henceforth take to be
included under demonstration), and this is a particularly important
way in which we can come to believe that a particular proposition is
absolutely necessary. Of course, it is not the only way. There is also the
case where we accept that a proposition is absolutely necessary without having worked through the demonstration for ourselves as, for
instance, when we accept an expert mathematicians claim that a certain theorem can indeed be proved (T 2.3.10.6). However, beliefs generated by first-person demonstration are at least typically the only sort
of case in which our assent to what we take to be an absolutely necessary proposition is accompanied by the sense that we have actually
grasped its inexorable character. We do not merely believe that the
proposition is absolutely necessary, but also believe that we have seen
this for ourselves. In following out the conceptual entailments among
our ideas and working through the proof in this first-person fashion,
we take ourselves to have understood the propositions inescapability:
to have seen for ourselves that it could not have been otherwise. We
have, or so we believe, an understanding of its absolute necessity.7
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4. Evidence from Humes modal epistemology

Another group of texts concern Humes modal epistemology. How do
we know which propositions are absolutely necessary, which are absolutely impossible, and which are absolutely possible? Humes answer
here is well known: we can appeal to facts about what we can and
cannot conceive for evidence regarding the absolute modal status of
states of affairs, and hence of the propositions characterizing those
states of affairs. We can use our faculty of conceiving or, which
relevant ideas. Thus when we put our faith in testimonial reports that a certain theorem is
absolutely necessary, we thereby trust that that proposition is demonstrable: the testimonial
case is parasitic on the possibility of someone working through a first-person demonstration.
For Hume, to believe that a given proposition is absolutely necessary is to believe that it can
(in principle) be demonstrated and that is to believe that its inexorable character can (in
principle) be grasped first-hand.
8
Notice that a strictly literal reading of our first doxastic passage actually mandates some
version of the mind-dependent interpretation of absolute necessity. At the end of our extract
from T 1.3.7.3, quoted above, Hume speaks of this absolute necessity which noun phrase,
looking over the passage, can only be a reference back to the property possessed by propositions, provd by intuition or demonstration of being such that we are determind to conceive
[the ideas] in that particular manner and cannot conceive anything contrary. Of course, it
may be said that Hume is speaking more loosely, and that his allusion to this absolute
necessity merely suggests that there is a correlation between such psychological facts and
absolute necessity: that our inability to conceive the contrary of a proposition is, perhaps, a
dependable sign of that propositions absolute necessity, but not that this psychological fact
actually constitutes or otherwise explains the propositions absolute necessity. But all things
being equal, there is at least some presumption in favour of taking Hume at his literal word.
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So I take it that these two doxastic texts intimate an account of what

it is that humans are thinking when they take themselves to have
apprehended a propositions absolute necessity, and that this account
helps to show us what our notion of absolute necessity actually
amounts to. To believe that one has grasped the absolute necessity
of a certain proposition is (these passages suggest) simply to find
oneself determind to conceive the ideas in that particular manner:
it is to become sensible, that tis impossible to conceive any thing
contrary , and to take oneself to have seen that the contrary of the
proposition would not merely be false but unintelligible. The difference between having such a belief and lacking it is (Hume tells us)
some sort of manifestation of ones sense of the limitations on what
can be conceived. If that is what our talk about absolute necessity is
talk about, then absolute necessity is a function of our imaginative
limitations.8
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For Hume all mental representation is a matter of producing mental imagery. Being
ultimately derived from experience, all of our ideas are imagistic in character imagistic,
that is, in a broad sense, covering the various ideas furnished by outer sense (including
auditory, gustatory, olfactory, tactile, and visual images) and inner reflection (including
images of the passions and other internal sentiments), plus the ideas that we can construct
by separating or combining the ideas from this original empirically given stock. So Humes
empiricist model of mind handles all cognitive representation in terms of mental imagery
traceable ultimately to experience, and he rejects the sort of refind and spiritual nonimagistic ideas posited by Descartes and other rationalist philosophers (T 1.3.1.7). It follows
that the understanding is just a part of the imagination or faculty of producing mental images
(T 1.4.7.7, T 1.3.9.19 note). Likewise, to form an idea, to conceive, and to imagine are all one
and the same thing (see, for instance, T 1.2.2.8). For a useful discussion of Hume on ideas,
imagery, and mental representation, see Garrett 1997, pp. 1140.
10
Hume never defines clarity and distinctness himself, but he is obviously drawing on the
familiar Cartesian terminology, in which to be clear is to be present and open to the attentive
mind, and to be distinct is to be free from any hidden detail or confusion (Descartes 1644/
1991, pp. 2078).
11
Whatever can be conceivd by a clear and distinct idea necessarily implies the possibility
of existence (T 1.2.4.11, my emphasis). We can at least conceive a change in the course of
nature; which sufficiently proves, that such a change is not absolutely impossible. To form a
clear idea of any thing, is an undeniable argument for its possibility (T 1.3.6.5, my emphasis).
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comes the same thing for Hume, the imagination, the faculty of forming image-like ideas as a guide.9
First, Hume holds that if some state of affairs can be clearly and
distinctly conceived, then it is absolutely possible. [N]othing of which
we can form a clear and distinct idea is absurd and impossible, he
declares; and whatever we conceive is possible, at least in a metaphysical sense (T 1.1.7.6, A 11; see also T 1.2.2.8, 1.2.4.11, EHU 4.25).10 This
conceivability principle is set to work in many of Humes most familiar
arguments including, for instance, his argument that we can have
no a priori assurance that the future will resemble the past (T 1.3.6.5),
his argument against the claim that anything that begins to exist must
have a cause (T 1.3.3.1), and his argument that we have no idea of
causal power as a mind-independent feature of objects (T 1.3.14.13).
Hume employs this principle with great conviction, telling us both
that it is a necessary truth and that it is impossible seriously to deny
it.11 Second, Hume also holds that if a certain state of affairs cannot be
clearly and distinctly conceived by the human mind, then that state of
affairs is absolutely impossible and hence, presumably, the contrary
state of affairs is absolutely necessary. Although he employs this inconceivability principle less often in actual argumentation, his express
commitment to it seems clear, and he apparently regards the two
principles as on the same robust epistemic footing. (The key text
here is T 1.2.2.8, which I will examine in a moment.) As I will argue
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12
Of course, one might have doubts about whether a certain state of affairs is in fact clearly
and distinctly conceivable: there is still room for error at this initial stage of the appeal to
conceivability as a guide to possibility. But the fact remains that, if Hume were indeed a modal
realist, he would be making very ambitious claims about the connection between conceivability
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in section 7 below, the kind of conceivability and inconceivability at

work in these principles is not a matter of the imaginative powers of
this or that actual human mind, since the imagination of any given
actual mind may be limited by its narrow experience and hence incomplete stock of simple ideas. Our concern is not with such local and
eradicable imaginative limitations, but rather with the imaginative
limitations that are part of the permanent structure and constitution
of our shared human nature: the limitations that even a mind possessed of the relevant simple ideas would encounter.
Given the traditional realist understanding of absolute modality as a
mind-independent matter, Humes faith in these two principles would
be quite puzzling. He offers no account of how this imaginationdriven detection of modal facts is supposed to work, nor is it easy
to see how premisses about what we can and cannot conceive could
justify conclusions about a supersensible and mind-independent
domain of absolute necessities and possibilities. Of course, the challenge of explaining our ability to detect the absolute modal status of
propositions would not just be Humes problem. There is a familiar
puzzle here for any realist account of absolute necessity and possibility, for once such a realist picture is in place the human capacity to
detect modal facts can seem quite baffling. (There seems little prospect
of a causal explanation of our ability to detect a mind-independent
order of necessity and possibility along the lines of the causal explanation of perception, and it is difficult to see what alternative sort of
account might serve.) However, while modal realism raises a quite
general puzzle for modal epistemology, the difficulty here would be
particularly pressing for Hume.
First, consider the strength of his conceivability and inconceivability
principles. According to these principles, clear and distinct conceivability and inconceivability are not merely reliably correlated with possibility and impossibility. These principles do not support merely a
fallibilistic and defeasible evidential link between our clear and distinct
conceivings on the one hand and conclusions about absolute modality
on the other. Rather, clear and distinct conceivability entails possibility, while inconceivability entails impossibility. These are strong metaphysical claims: strong enough to underwrite the infallibility of clear
and distinct conceivability as an indicator of absolute modality.12
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Thomas Holden
on the one hand and the mind-independent order of absolute necessity and possibility on the
other.
13
In particular, notice that the sceptical challenge to demonstrative reason in T 1.4.1 (Of
Scepticism with Regard to Reason) calls neither the conceivability principle nor the inconceivability principle into question. Although Hume argues in T 1.4.1 that all demonstrative
knowledge degenerates into probability since we must take our track-record of errors with
this sort of reasoning into account, and need to iteratively check and re-check our proofs for
possible mistakes, none of this means that Hume has any doubts about the conceivability
principle and the inconceivability principle themselves. In fact, in all demonstrative sciences,
the rules are certain and infallible; it is just that when we apply [those rules], our fallible and
uncertain faculties are very apt to depart from them, and fall into error (T 1.4.1.1).
14
It is also worth stressing that sceptical doubts about the reliability of conceivability as a
guide to possibility were quite familiar in Humes day. Descartess First Meditation culminates
with the threat of such scepticism, and doubts about the reliability of our clear and distinct
conceptions had been revivified (and explicitly tied to the traditional problem of the criterion)
in Bayles scandalous article on Pyrrho. (Descartes 1641/1991a, pp. 1415; compare also his 1641/
1991b, p. 107. Bayle 16957/1991, pp. 199203.) For Humes familiarity with Descartess
Meditations and Bayles Dictionary, see his letter to Michael Ramsey of 31 August 1737,
which is reproduced in Popkin 1980, pp. 2902.
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Second, there is the degree of confidence that Hume places in these

principles. He appears to have an implicit and total faith in them,
notwithstanding his various sceptical doubts about the other operations of the understanding.13 It is worth pausing to emphasize just
how surprising this confidence is, for Hume is not usually so sanguine
about the capacity of the human understanding to discern the fundamental metaphysical structure of the mind-independent world. The
philosophy of the Treatise tends rather to give us a notion of the
imperfections and narrow limits of human understanding (A 27)
and most of the time, at least, Hume is intent on checking rather than
promoting our pretensions to metaphysical insight through pure rational reflection.14 So what has happened to Humes usual sceptical
diffidence when he declares that conceivability provides us with an
infallible guide to the facts about absolute modality?
The puzzle evaporates in the light of the mind-dependent reading. If
absolute possibility and necessity are just a reflection of what humans
can and cannot conceive, then epistemological concerns about the gap
between psychological premisses and modal conclusions are misplaced. There is no gap. Other features of Humes modal epistemology
also fall into place. Clear and distinct conceivability entails possibility;
inconceivability entails impossibility: this is because the modal properties are constituted by the limits of human imagination. Again, if
our modal notions are just the shadow of our imaginative blocks, then
we can understand both why Hume would assert that clear and
391
Tis an establishd maxim in metaphysics, that whatever the mind clearly

conceives includes the idea of possible existence, or in other words, that
nothing we imagine is absolutely impossible. We can form the idea of a
golden mountain, and from thence conclude that such a mountain may
actually exist. We can form no idea of a mountain without a valley, and
therefore regard it as impossible. (T 1.2.2.8)
The first striking feature of this passage is the fact that the opening
sentence provides not one but two formulations of the establishd
maxim. Since Hume connects the two (italicized) formulations of
this maxim with the expression in other words, it seems that he
holds that they are at bottom statements of one and the same principle. However, there is at the very least a shift in emphasis between
the two. The first formulation, after all, announces a thesis about the
idea of possible existence, whereas the second speaks not of the idea of
possible existence, but rather of absolute impossibility and, by implication, absolute possibility itself. To many readers, the first formulation has seemed to affirm a relationship between our clear conceptions
or imaginings and a species of apparent or seeming possibility, whereas
the second plainly affirms a relationship between our clear conceptions or imaginings and genuine possibility. In fact, since the equivocation here can seem so obvious, this text has often served as Exhibit A
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distinct conceivability provides an undeniable argument for possibility (T 1.3.6.5), and why he would regard the conceivability principle
as a necessary truth (T 1.2.4.11). At the same time, none of this commits Hume to the absurd view that we cannot go wrong in our judgements of absolute necessity and possibility. Given the mind-dependent
approach sketched so far, a judgement about the modal status of a
proposition is some sort of expression of ones sense of the conceivability or inconceivability of that proposition by the human understanding, and so beneath our pronouncements about absolute
necessity and possibility will ultimately lie convictions about the
imaginative limitations that are part and parcel of human nature.
But clearly we can err in our judgements about these imaginative
limitations.
For a specific example of the mind-dependent interpretations ability to explain otherwise puzzling features of Humes modal epistemology, we might consider T 1.2.2.8, a somewhat notorious piece of text.
This is Humes most expansive passage on the conceivability principle,
and it seems to include (in the third sentence) an endorsement of the
inconceivability principle as well.
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Thomas Holden
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for those who would charge Hume with sliding recklessly from premisses about apparent possibility on the one hand to conclusions
about genuine possibility on the other (Yablo 1993, pp. 45). On
this reading, the shift between the two formulations would be
simply an oversight on Humes part. It is as if he simply fails to
notice the difference between the two, perhaps thereby demonstrating
a nave and uncritical faith in the power of the human imagination to
disclose facts about absolute modality. But the mind-dependent interpretation avoids charging Hume with such an apparently obvious
blunder. On this interpretation, to be absolutely possible is, at
bottom, to be clearly and distinctly conceivable or, more cautiously
and precisely, when one says that a certain proposition is absolutely
possible, one is expressing an attitude (perhaps a non-representational
attitude) that is prompted by ones sense that that proposition is
clearly and distinctly conceivable. So with the mind-dependent interpretation we can see why Hume regards the two formulations of the
establishd maxim as interchangeable, and we can take T 1.2.2.8 at its
literal word when it announces their effective equivalence.
There is also a second puzzle about this passage, which has not to
my knowledge been taken up in the literature. In the opening sentence
Hume announces the conceivability principle or establishd maxim
in its general form (providing his two formulations), and then goes on
in the following sentences to cite, first, the example of the (conceivable
and therefore possible) golden mountain and, second, the example of
the (inconceivable and therefore impossible) mountain without a
valley. These examples are clearly intended to illustrate and confirm
the establishd maxim announced at the start of the paragraph.
However, the second example the case of the mountain without a
valley seems in fact to be an instance of the inconceivability principle at work, not an instance of the conceivability principle. Hume is
apparently conflating the two principles, and on any traditional view
this is an egregious logical blunder. Given the traditional realist understanding of absolute modality as a mind-independent matter, the
claim that conceivability entails possibility is one thing, and the
claim that inconceivability entails impossibility is quite another.
After all, even if every state of affairs that we can conceive of is possible, it would not follow that we can conceive of every possible state
of affairs: there is no reason to think that the conceivability principle
entails the inconceivability principle (or vice versa). Humes fallacy,
on this interpretation, would be quite an embarrassment. But
of course, if possibility were at bottom the same thing as
393
15
Lightner (1997) argues Hume does not in fact endorse the inconceivability principle, and
suggests that T 1.2.2.8 only commits him to the principle that if any idea of a thing would be
contradictory, then that thing is absolutely impossible which contradiction principle
Lightner regards as weaker than the inconceivability principle (Lightner 1997, p. 116). But
this is unpersuasive. The text of T 1.2.2.8 speaks of our inability to form an idea of a mountain
without a valley, and says nothing about the contradictory nature of such an idea. Lightner
adds that If Hume did accept the Inconceivability Principle, one would think that in the
twenty-four or more instances of his stating or using the Conceivability Principle, he would
have made it clear that the inference goes both ways (p. 115). But, first, Hume did make this
clear in T 1.2.2.8, his most expansive discussion of the conceivability principle. Second, there
are good reasons why Hume would only use the inconceivability principle in a case (such as
T 1.2.2.8) where there is a manifest contradiction in the idea we are trying to form, since only
then is the premiss that the idea is inconceivable likely to be uncontroversial. Third, if Hume
holds that the conceivability principle and the inconceivability principle are equivalent (as the
mind-dependent interpretation would have it, and as T 1.2.2.8 suggests), then there would be
no need to repeatedly state both principles, since they are really one and the same.
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conceivability as per the mind-dependent theory then the two

principles would be interchangeable after all. Once again, the minddependent interpretation clears up the difficulty, and Humes apparent misstep is no misstep at all.15
There is even a third feature of T 1.2.2.8 that gives additional succour to the mind-dependent interpretation. This paragraph provides
an excellent example of the way in which Hume slips so readily into
the genealogical or anthropological mode (which I discussed in Sect. 3
above), giving us a second-order description of the sorts of occasions
in which creatures like us make modal pronouncements where another philosopher might rather simply have affirmed first-order modal
intuitions in his own voice. Thus in order to illustrate and confirm the
establishd maxim set out in the opening sentence, Hume directs us
to anthropological, second-order claims about the sort of factors that
prompt human talk and thought about possibility and impossibility.
We can form the idea of a golden mountain, and from thence conclude that such a mountain may actually exist. We can form no idea of
a mountain without a valley, and therefore regard it as impossible.
Depending on whether or not we can form a certain sort of idea, we
declare the state of affairs represented by that idea to be either possible
or impossible. That is what humans are doing when they make modal
claims, and that helps to show us what modal talk is in fact talk about.
Thus we can admit the general move from conceivability to possibility
set out in the opening sentence.
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5. Evidence from Humes interweaving of logic and

psychology
It is pretended that the Deity is a necessarily existent being; and this

necessity of his existence is attempted to be explained by asserting, that if
we knew his whole essence or nature, we should perceive it to be as
impossible for him not to exist, as for twice two not to be four. But it is
evident that this can never happen, while our faculties remain the same as at
present. It will still be possible for us, at any time, to conceive the nonexistence of what we formerly conceived to exist; nor can the mind ever lie
under a necessity of supposing any object to remain always in being; in the
same manner as we lie under a necessity of always conceiving twice two to
be four. The words, therefore, necessary existence, have no meaning; or,
which is the same thing, none that is consistent. (DNR 9.6, first emphasis
mine)
Humes conclusion in this passage is that necessary existence is an

inconsistent and hence meaningless expression. We can therefore rule
out any proposal that the existence of the Deity (or any other being)
is absolutely necessary, and so the traditional argument a priori
(DNR 9.1) for the necessary existence of a first cause of all is derailed
from the start. To get to this conclusion, Hume manifestly appeals to
psychological claims about the operation of the human understanding. He draws a modal conclusion (rejecting the claim that the
16
For other examples of Hume moving insouciantly back and forth between modal claims
and psychological claims, see EHU 4.2 and EHU 12.28.
17
Cleanthes prefaces his attack on Demeas case for a necessary being with the comment
that I shall not leave it to Philo, (though I know that the starting objections is his chief
delight), to point out the weakness of this metaphysical reasoning (DNR 9.4). And Philo
apparently approves of Cleanthess objections, for once Cleanthes has completed his critique,
Philo announces that the reasonings, which you have urged, Cleanthes, may well excuse
me from starting any further difficulties (DNR 9.10).
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There are other texts that slip back and forth between claims about
what is absolutely possible and claims about what we can conceive in a
way that suggests that the one notion may simply be the reflection of
the other. Consider part 9.6 of the Dialogues Concerning Natural
Religion in which the movement between modal claims and psychological claims is particularly striking.16 Here in DNR part 9, Hume is
mobilizing his thesis that the contrary of any matter of fact is conceivable in order to press the following objection against the traditional view that the Deity exists necessarily. (This is Cleanthes
speaking, but Philo is apparently content to stand by and let
Cleanthes press these points for the both of them.17)
395
18
Kail has argued, contrary to my own reading, that Cleanthes is leaving open the possibility that an enhanced mind might in fact be able to grasp that God exists necessarily.
According to Kail, the reasoning provided by Cleanthes merely tells us that we can have
no knowledge of [this] necessity as we are presently constituted; not that there is, or can
be, no such feature. Cleanthess opponent would have to envisage a change in human
cognitive faculties before [an a priori proof of Gods existence] is forthcoming; as we actually
are, there can be no such proof. This reading is quite enough to undermine the a priori
argument for the existence of God and give Hume what he wants (Kail 2007, pp. 1001; for a
similar interpretation, see Wright 1983, pp. 1478). This would indeed be enough to undermine
the a priori argument for the existence of God, but it is not the argument that Cleanthes
actually gives in DNR 9.6. Cleanthess argument aims at the stronger conclusion that [t]he
words necessary existence have no meaning; or, which is the same thing, none that is consistent. It is not that we can have no knowledge of this necessary existence (while other minds yet
might); it is that talk of necessary existence is empty nonsense. Cleanthes is, moreover, quite
disparaging about the theological apologists attempted gloss of necessary existence by way of
the appeal to an enhanced mind, characterizing it as simply a pretended explication of necessity (DNR 9.6, 9.7). He shows no sign of taking it seriously, and his and Philos subsequent
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existence of any being is absolutely necessary) from what are apparently contingent psychological premisses (this can never happen,
while our faculties remain the same as at present).
Here it is instructive to follow the details of Humes dialectic.
Apologists for the argument a priori pretend that the Deity is a
necessarily existent being, though apparently they are also prepared
to admit that we might not be able to perceive this recondite form of
necessity for ourselves. Their attempted but ultimately unsuccessful
explanation of the Deity s necessary existence turns on the claim that
if our minds were improved in a certain sort of way, then we would
come to perceive it to be as impossible for [the Deity] not to exist, as
for twice two not to be four. In effect, such apologists are making
inconceivability by this sort of enhanced mind the standard of absolute
impossibility (and hence of absolute necessity). But Hume himself
resists this. The standard of absolute impossibility (and hence of
absolute necessity) is rather inconceivability by minds like ours.
Moreover, the fact is that while our faculties remain the same as at
present that is, given the fundamental operations of the understanding that are a part of human nature we can never lie under
a necessity of supposing any object to remain always in being; in the
same manner as we lie under a necessity of always conceiving twice
two to be four. That is just how our minds are wired, and that for
Hume is enough to secure his strong modal conclusion. The functioning of other sorts of minds, by contrast, is dismissed as irrelevant to
the point. Since our human faculties are structured in a certain sort of
way, then certain sorts of states of affairs are absolutely possible, and
theres an end ont.18 Once again, the mind-dependent interpretation
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Thomas Holden
If the sciences of mathematics, natural philosophy, and natural religion,

have such a dependence on the knowledge of man [since they lie under the
cognizance of men, and are judged of by their powers and faculties
(T Introduction 4)], what may be expected in the other sciences, whose
connexion with human nature is more close and intimate? The sole end of
logic is to explain the principles and operations of our reasoning faculty, and
the nature of our ideas: Morals and criticism regard our tastes and
sentiments: And politics consider men as united in society, and dependent
on each other. (T Introduction 5, emphasis mine)
In the sentence that I have italicized (and which is repeated in the

Abstract (A 3)), Hume states that the exclusive purpose of logic is to
explain the workings of a certain part of human psychology, namely
references to necessary existence when raising further objections to the argument a priori
are pace Kail (2007, p. 100) entirely ad hominem: he and Philo are showing that, even
if we suspend the point that necessary existence is unintelligible jargon, there are other fatal
problems for the theologians argument a priori. For an interpretation of DNR 9.6 more in
tune with my own, see Winkler, 1991, pp. 812.
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explains why Hume frames his riposte to the argument a priori in this
way, and why he so plainly privileges minds like ours as the arbiters of
modal facts. Our imaginative abilities are what they are, and that is
why no proposition affirming the existence of an object is absolutely
necessary.
Finally, consider a passage from the introduction to the Treatise in
which Hume explicitly declares his intention to annex the traditional
topics of logic which would presumably include the nature of absolute necessity and possibility, and the structure and interrelationships of modal truths to a form of anthropology. The context here
is Humes opening manifesto for a science of man and his insistence
on the authority of this science over all other fields of human inquiry.
There is no question of importance, whose decision is not comprizd
in the science of man, he writes, and there is none, which can be
decided with any certainty, before we become acquainted with that
science (T Introduction 6). Hume gives two reasons. The first is that
all the various sciences are pursued by means of our own human
faculties, and so the conduct of all sciences even those whose own
peculiar subject matter lies wide of human nature is subject to correction and control by a proper view of the operation and limits of
human understanding. The second is that the subject matter of many
particular sciences among which Hume prominently includes
logic is inextricably bound up with the nature of the human
understanding:
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6. The charge of psychologism

With the evidence now in hand, we have a strong case for taking
Hume at his word when he locates absolute necessity in an act of
the understanding at T 1.3.14.23. Humes doxastic texts addressing the
peculiar nature of belief in demonstrated propositions; the broad
structure and detailed expression of his modal epistemology; the interweaving of psychology and logic in the Dialogues and the introduction
to the Treatise: these various factors all point toward a mind-dependent theory of absolute necessity one that would interpret our talk
and thought about absolute necessity as some sort of systematic manifestation of our sense of what can and cannot be clearly and distinctly
conceived. No one passage is decisive, but the evidence has significant
cumulative power. And since the rival realist interpretation both lacks
any explicit or implicit textual support (at least that I am aware of ),
19
For a useful survey of the convergence of logic and cognitive psychology in various early
modern philosophers including Arnauld, Locke, Hume, and the pre-critical Kant, see George
1997.
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the nature of our ideas and the workings of our reasoning faculty that is, the faculty (which Hume also calls the understanding) that is responsible for both our probable and our demonstrative
inferences. Logic, on such a view, is a subfield of the science of human
nature: the subfield focusing on our representational and inferential
faculties. It is a self-reflexive form of inquiry in which the human
mind utilizes its own cognitive principles and operations in order to
examine its own cognitive principles and operations. We might now
call it cognitive psychology, and in so far as it focuses on the workings
of the understanding (or reasoning faculty ) we might perhaps class it
as a species of naturalized epistemology. So if Hume is thinking of the
theory of absolute necessity and possibility as a part of logic, then he is
announcing a psychological treatment of such matters from the start.
At least, this would help to explain why Hume seems (in T 1.3.14.23) to
expect that his readers will be relatively unperturbed by a mind-dependent account of absolute necessity in comparison with his paradoxical new proposal for a mind-dependent treatment of the necessity
of causes (T 1.3.14.24), since both in the Introduction and in many of
the intervening parts of Book 1, Hume has been steadily advocating for
just this sort of reorientation of the traditional topics of logic toward
the science of human nature.19
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Thomas Holden
(NM) Two times two equals four

and the modal proposition
(M) It is absolute necessary that two times two equals four
When Hume writes that the necessity, which makes two times two
equal to four lies only in [an] act of the understanding (T 1.3.14.23),
he is clearly treating the truth of (M) as some sort of consequence of
the operations of the human mind. But it is not so clear that he is also
committed to treating the truth of (NM) as a consequence of such
operations. Although (NM) is one of those truths that depend only on
relations among ideas (T 2.3.10.2, 3.1.1.9, EHU 4.1), and ideas are psychological items, this need not make (NM) itself a consequence of
human psychology: the relations here might be non-psychological
even if the relata are psychological. Perhaps the relations obtain
simply in virtue of the intrinsic representational or semantic content
of those ideas what Descartes would call their objective reality
regardless of the role those ideas play in the mechanisms of the human
mind. So there might be non-psychological reasons why, for example,
any idea that we can form of two pairs of objects is also an idea of four
objects, whether or not we are aware of this commonality, and
whether or not the mind does anything with it, consciously or otherwise. One wishes that Hume had expressed himself more clearly on
this point, but I see nothing in T 1.3.14.23 (or any other text) that
forces us to read him as offering a mind-dependent, anti-realist approach to non-modal demonstrable truths. So perhaps he would have
said that (NM) obtains in virtue of mind-independent relations alone,
while (M) brings in the notion of absolute necessity and so requires
his mind-dependent treatment if it is to be fully explained. Humes
handling of absolute necessity would then be quite parallel to his
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and generates several infelicities in Humes reasoning and expression,

we can be fairly confident in attributing to him some sort of minddependent account of absolute necessity.
What then of the charge of psychologism? Does Humes treatment
of absolute necessity invite disaster, making arithmetic, algebra, and
the other demonstrative sciences absurdly dependent on human ways
of thought? To deal with this concern, we must first distinguish the
question of whether non-modalized demonstrable truths depend on
facts about human psychology from the question of whether modalized demonstrable truths depend on facts about human psychology.
Consider the non-modal proposition
399
20
As to what may be said, that the operations of nature are independent of our thought
and reasoning, I allow it; and accordingly have observd, that objects bear to each other the
relations of contiguity and succession; that like objects may be observd in several instances to
have like relations; and that all this is independent of, and antecedent to the operations of the
understanding. But if we go any farther, and ascribe a power or necessary connexion to these
objects; that is what we can never observe in them, but must draw the idea of it from what we
feel internally in contemplating them (T 1.3.14.28).
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handling of the necessity of causes, in which he grants that the mindindependent world contributes objective relations that condition our
judgements of causal necessity, even if the notion of necessity at work
in those causal judgements can itself only be understood with reference to the human mind.20
The charge of psychologism still stands against Humes treatment of
demonstrable propositions in their modalized form. As I have been
arguing, Hume does embrace a mind-dependent account of the nature
of absolute necessity, and hence must regard the truth of a modalized
proposition such as (M) as some sort of consequence of psychological
facts. So, to renew the objection, is this result not itself an unpalatable
absurdity? Is (M) not an eternal and immutable truth beyond the
vagaries of anthropology and psychology? (Was it not so before
I was born, and would it not be so though all intelligence were to
cease throughout the universe!)
It will help to distinguish three possible complaints here, each of
which might fall under the general charge of an untenable psychologism. First, it can just seem intuitively evident that modal facts are
mind-independent realities, not some sort of consequence of human
attitudes or habits of mind. Second, a semantic point: in making a
claim about the modal status of a proposition, we neither say anything
about human psychology, nor do we imply anything about it; it follows that modal facts cannot be reduced to facts about the workings of
the human mind. Third, if the modal status of propositions were some
sort of systematic reflection of facts about human psychology then the
modal status of propositions would be mutable, subject to change
whenever there are changes in the relevant aspects of human psychology. Since this result is absurd, it follows that the modal status
of propositions cannot be a systematic reflection of psychological
facts.
The first objection emphasizes the apparent intuitive obviousness of
modal realism. But we have excellent grounds to think that Hume, at
least, would have been quite unmoved by an appeal to realist intuitions in the current context. That is because he explicitly addresses an
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Thomas Holden
What! the efficacy of causes lie in the determination of the mind! As if

causes did not operate entirely independently of the mind, and woud not
continue their operation, even tho there was no mind existent to
contemplate them, or reason concerning them. (T 1.3.14.26)21
So in the causal case Hume freely admits that we have realist intuitions
that press against his own insistence on the mind-dependent character
of the necessity of causes. His own view is (he says) paradox[ical]
and runs contrary to the natural biass of the mind (T 1.3.14.24).
Nevertheless, his assessment is that these intuitions do not ultimately
sustain a serious objection to his mind-dependent treatment of causal
necessity.
Humes main counter to these inveterate prejudices of mankind in
favour of causal realism is simply a forceful reiteration of his own
genealogical account of the factors that actually control our judgements of causal necessity an account, he says, that provides a solid
proof and the shortest and most decisive imaginable case against
taking such realist intuitions at face value. We just do not encounter
causal necessity as part of the observable world, and only start to make
judgements about causal necessitation when the mind responds to an
observed constant conjunction of event-types by undergoing a functional change, such that it comes to anticipate the one sort of event
21
Humes way of presenting this challenge to his own treatment of causal necessity is
strikingly similar to Beatties subsequent outburst (quoted in Sect. 2 above) directed against
Humes theory of absolute necessity. Indeed, since Beattie must have had T 1.3.14 in front of
him when writing up his own riposte (since that riposte is explicitly targeted at T 1.3.14.23), it
is difficult to believe that his wording was not inspired, consciously or unconsciously, by
Humes own way of presenting this sort of challenge in T 1.3.14.26. However, while Beattie
may have borrowed from the Great Infidel when formulating his own attack on the minddependent account of absolute necessity, he ignores the fact that in the causal case Hume goes
on to respond to his imagined critic in terms that could be readily carried over to the
analogous case of absolute necessity.
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analogous challenge to his mind-dependent account of the necessity of

causes, and his response to that objection would readily carry over,
point-by-point, to a parallel defence of his mind-dependent account
of absolute necessity. In T 1.3.14, following his initial statement of his
mind-dependent account of causal necessitation, Hume predicts that
my sentiments [regarding the necessity of causes] will be treated as
extravagant and ridiculous, since they jar with well-entrenched realist
intuitions affirming the mind-independence of causal power. He conjures up an imaginary objector who gives voice to this complaint in
the following terms:
401
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upon the appearance of the other (T 1.3.14.24, 1.3.14.27). These are the
conditions under which humans actually make judgements about
what causes what, and this genealogical account should inform our
understanding of what our talk and thought about causal necessity
actually does for us of the practical role it plays in our lives as we
make no longer any scruple of foretelling [the one sort of event] upon
the appearance of the other, and come to express these anticipatory
attitudes in causal terms, call[ing] the one object, Cause; the other,
Effect (EHU 7.27). Humes point is that this sort of second-order,
genealogical reflection on what humans are actually doing when
they make causal judgements simply trumps the unreflective realism
that takes the surface appearances of our realist-sounding causal language at face value. Carrying this over to the case of absolute necessity,
Hume would presumably make the same basic move, asserting that
the corresponding genealogical understanding of our judgements
about absolute necessity which shows that those judgements are
controlled simply by our sense of our own imaginative limitations again gives the lie to a superficially realist modal vocabulary,
with its apparent commitment to a mind-independent subject matter
of objective necessities, possibilities, and impossibilities. We might
perhaps seem committed to realism when we say that there are
such-and-such absolute necessities, or that it is a fact that there
are. But a wider view of our modal discourse shows that such language
is best understood simply as a systematic expression of our human
inability to conceive of certain states of affairs, rather than as an attempt to represent or describe a network of mind-independent modal
facts.
What of the second objection, the point that modal facts cannot be
reduced to psychological facts? Here we can again look to Humes
handling of causal necessity for the model of a response that we can
carry over to the case of absolute necessity. Recall that in the causal
case Hume lays great emphasis on the claim that we do not encounter
this particular species of necessity as a feature of the observable
world neither the outer world of external objects, nor the inner
world of mental processes (T 1.3.14.12, EHU 7.26). So the necessity
of causes is not a feature of the experienced world, inner or outer,
but rather some sort of result of our psychological attitudes or responses to that world. Here Humes theory has been interpreted as
expressivist in character, and I will adopt this reading of his account of
the necessity of causes (which reading I regard as plausible, though
it is of course controversial) in order to motivate and explain my
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Thomas Holden
22
For versions of the expressivist interpretation of Hume on causal necessity, see Blackburn
1990, Bennett 2001 (Vol. 2, pp. 26883), Coventry 2006, Beebee 2006 (pp. 14272), and Millican
2007. Other commentators resist the expressivist interpretation, arguing that Hume is some
sort of realist about the necessity of causes. See for example Wright 1983, Strawson 1989, and
Kail 2007 (pp. 77124), and for a systematic critique of the realist interpretation, Millican 2009.
23
It is true that, in his hunt for an impression of causal necessity from which our idea of
necessity originates, Hume does eventually fix on an internal impression of the mind, namely
the sentiment of felt determination when the appearance of one event prompts us to anticipate
another (T 1.3.14.20; compare also EHU 7.28, 7.30). But our talk and thought about necessity is
not to be explained as a representation of this internal feeling, which is simply another discrete
impression in the life of the mind whose regular conjunction with other sorts of impressions
can only be learned from experience (T 1.3.14.12). That is why Hume cannot simply explain
what drives causal talk by pointing to this internal impression of felt determination, and why
(for instance) this internal impression does not appear in Humes famous definitions of cause
(T 1.3.14.35, EHU 7.29; I discuss the status of these definitions in n. 3 above). What really
matters is the habit-induced movement of the mind from one event-type to its usual attendant, not any feeling or sentiment that happens to accompany that habituated movement.
(Similar points are made in Millican 2007 (p. 249, n. 26), and Jacobson 2000 (p. 160). For
the rival reading, see Stroud 1977 (pp. 857).)
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analogous expressivist interpretation of Hume on the nature of absolute necessity.22 According to the expressivist interpretation of Hume
on the necessity of causes, then, Humes essential insight is that, given
the difficulty of locating causal necessity in the world disclosed by
outer sense and inner reflection, we might abandon the realist assumption that our talk and thought about causal necessitation is representational in character. Despite the surface grammar of our
language, we are not actually describing or representing reality when
we say that there is a causal necessity connecting such-and-such an
event to another. Rather, we are expressing a non-representational
mental attitude toward those two events and, more generally,
toward the background patterns of regularities that are there to be
found in the world: in particular, we are expressing certain of our
inferential dispositions or habits of mind in the face of such phenomena, including, for instance, our custom-induced readiness to infer the
imminent occurrence of the one sort of event from the occurrence of
the other. So when we say that the one sort of event causes the other,
we are not describing a mind-independent metaphysical connection
that obtains between the two events, nor are we describing the workings of our own minds.23 Given this expressivist interpretation, a claim
about a causal relationship is not even covertly a claim about the
operations of the human understanding: the shock of the first billiard
ball set the second in motion does not include in its meaning anything about the mind. The point is that in tracing causal necessity to a
determination of the mind, Hume is not best understood as proposing
403
24
So interpreted, Hume would be in agreement with Blackburn (1987) on the prescriptive

function of modal language. We allow possibilities, rule out impossibilities, and insist upon
necessities. This is not describing anything. [A]ttributing necessity to a proposition is not
making a true or false claim about it or at least is not to be understood that way. It is more
like adopting a norm, or a policy or a rule that a thesis be put in the archives, above the
hurly-burly of empirical determination. The decision dictates how we shall treat recalcitrant
evidence (Blackburn 1987 (p. 60) a seminal paper examining the prospects for such an
expressivist approach to absolute modality; see also Blackburn 1984 (pp. 21516)).
Mind, Vol. 123 . 490 . April 2014
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a reductive conceptual analysis of what causal necessity means, but

rather as providing an explanation of the (non-representational)
mental habits that we are expressing when we employ causal terms.
And again, one might make the analogous move in the theory of
absolute necessity. Although Hume holds that our talk and thought
about absolute necessity is prompted and controlled by our sense of
the imaginative limitations that are a part of human nature, we do not
have to read him as saying (absurdly) that claims about absolute necessity just are covert claims about those imaginative blocks, such that
in asserting (M) we are in fact saying something about the human
minds inability to conceive the contrary of (NM) (which patently we
are not). Instead, we can more charitably and plausibly take Hume to
be intimating an expressivist approach to absolute necessity. On such
an account, when we pronounce that a certain proposition is absolutely necessary we are giving voice to a non-representational attitude most likely, the prescriptive attitude of insisting that the
proposition in question (whose contrary we regard as unthinkable)
be treated as a non-negotiable element in our systems of belief, as a
mandatory commitment that we must stick with no matter what empirical data comes in. In labelling a proposition absolutely necessary
we are insisting upon it, legislating that we are obliged to accept it come
what may.24 This prescriptive attitude might be prompted by a sense
of the ineradicable imaginative blocks that are a part of human nature,
but it does not constitute a report or description of those blocks.
Finally, we project this sort of non-representational attitude when
we express it in superficially representational language, speaking as if
there were a feature of propositions here that we might describe or
investigate as we often do, asserting that such-and-such a proposition is absolutely necessary, or that such-and-such an absolute necessity obtains or exists. But here the descriptive appearances of our
language belie the fact that we are actually expressing a non-representational attitude toward what is an intrinsically non-modal proposition that in affirming a modal proposition (such as M) we are
404
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simply staining or gilding an intrinsically non-modal proposition

(such as NM) with colours borrowed from internal sentiment.
Now consider the third objection, the complaint that Humes
mind-dependent account would make the modal status of propositions mutable. The concern here is that if the modal status of propositions were simply an expression of human imaginative limitations,
then changes in those imaginative limitations would result in changes
in modal facts. Suppose, for instance, that we woke up one morning to
find all humans suddenly incapable of conceiving the failure of any
well-established constant conjunction of event-types: whenever any
human tried to imagine the break-down of a well-confirmed regularity, they simply drew a blank. It might seem that the mind-dependent
account of absolute necessity would license the conclusion that in such
a scenario the uniformity of nature would become an absolutely necessary truth. But clearly the modal status of propositions cannot
change like this: if a proposition is absolutely possible, it cannot subsequently become impossible; if a proposition is absolutely necessary,
it cannot subsequently become possibly false. The mind-dependent
account would make the modal status of propositions hostage to
the mutable operations of human psychology, but this is absurd, for
the modal status of propositions is not open to change.
But we can see the shape of a Humean response to this objection in
the dialectic of DNR 9.6 (i.e. his discussion of the preten[ce] that the
Deity is a necessarily existent being, quoted in Sect. 5 above). That
passage makes it plain that authoritative judgements about modal
facts will reflect the imaginative limitations of minds like ours. Our
talk and thought about absolute necessity is an expression of these
limitations, and so the meaning of such talk and thought is controlled
by the facts about what we can and cannot clearly and distinctly conceive the facts about what is conceivable while our faculties remain
the same as at present (DNR 9.6). And just as Hume dismissed the
theological apologists appeal to the imaginative abilities of an
enhanced mind as irrelevant to the facts about absolute modality, so
he would presumably dismiss the current objections appeal to the
imaginative abilities of a radically changed mind as equally irrelevant.
The point is that, while the facts about the modal status of propositions do indeed rest on a contingent foundation, they rest on a particular contingent foundation namely, our actual imaginative
abilities. The basic strategy underlying this response, at least, is quite
familiar, since Hume also employs it when defending his minddependent account of moral standards. For Hume, the standards of
405
25
Of course, Hume must allow (as must the modal realist) that we can speculate about
beings with imaginative limitations very different to ours, and who might be prompted by
those imaginative limitations to insist that certain propositions that we regard as negotiable in
the light of experience (i.e. as contingent) be treated as non-negotiable. These beings might
even call those propositions absolutely necessary . But on the Humean view those propositions would not be absolutely necessary, any more than cruel and malevolent aliens would
qualify as virtuous if it turned out that cruelty and malevolence met with the aliens own
sentimental approval and were labelled, by them, as virtues.
26
Bennett (2001, Vol. 1, pp. 6970) makes a similar point in the context of his anti-realist
reading of Descartess modal metaphysics.
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virtue and vice are ultimately an expression of the sentimental dispositions hard-wired in the human mind, as we naturally tend to feel
approval or disapproval toward certain sorts of character trait. Those
standards thus ultimately depend on deeply rooted but contingent
facts about the workings of the human mind. Nevertheless, they do
enjoy a form of fixed authority since they are indexed to our actual
human nature: To suppose measures of approbation and blame, different from the human, confounds every thing. Whence do we learn,
that there is such a thing as moral distinctions but from our own
sentiments? (E 595).
Humes defensive position here is stronger than is sometimes
appreciated. His mind-dependent account of absolute necessity
offers an explanation, in the anthropological or genealogical mode,
of our practice of talking and thinking in terms of absolute necessity,
possibility, and impossibility and it does so, in part, with reference
to facts about our actual human imaginative limitations. But
contrary to the current objection nothing in this genealogical
account commits Hume to saying that an absolutely necessary proposition might cease being absolutely necessary, or that a possible proposition might one day become impossible. It is not that if human
nature were to change radically enough, today s impossible propositions could become tomorrows possibilities. Rather, if human nature
were to change radically enough, we would stop talking about absolute
necessity and possibility altogether.25 In fact the current objection
cannot even be coherently stated. It undercuts itself by employing
our modal notions in contexts where, ex hypothesi, they cannot be
employed as when it claims that, on the Humean view, if our faculties were to change in certain ways, current impossibilities would
become possible.26 Finally, notice that if Humes mind-dependent account of absolute necessity is given the expressivist interpretation outlined above, then, although our practice of making modal claims
depends on our imaginative limitations in the sense that those
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Thomas Holden
7. Conceivability and the limits of human imagination

I have been arguing that, for Hume, our modal notions are a manifestation of our sense of what is and is not clearly and distinctly conceivable by the human mind. This explains the necessar[y] and
undeniable correlation between clear and distinct conceivability on
the one hand and possibility on the other (T 1.2.4.11, 1.3.6.5), but it also
allows for the fact that we are fallible in our judgements about the
modal status of propositions, as we can and do go wrong in our
judgements about what is clearly and distinctly conceivable.
How would the science of human nature handle the question of what
is really clearly and distinctly conceivable by the human mind? What
matters here is not what any particular individual can clearly and distinctly conceive at any particular moment, much less what any particular individual believes that he can clearly and distinctly conceive. Rather
our concern here is with what the human mind is capable of conceiving
given its permanent structure and constitution. Inevitably, we must
start with the evidence we have of individual humans actual imaginative abilities in concrete cases, but in the usual fashion of the science of
human nature we must then judiciously [collect] and compar[e] such
experimental data in order to correct for irrelevant variables
(T Introduction 10) and move toward a general account of the imaginative limitations hard-wired in the human mind. Debate and disagreement over what is clearly and distinctly conceivable should therefore
reflect debate and disagreement over the imaginative abilities of an
idealized human mind, as we must aspire in our judgements to
Mind, Vol. 123 . 490 . April 2014
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limitations help to explain, in a genealogical fashion, what prompts us

to adopt the various prescriptive attitudes that we take toward propositions (insisting on some, allowing others, ruling others out), still
this is not a matter of logical or metaphysical dependence of the modal
on the psychological. The modal status of a proposition does not
depend on facts about our imaginative limitations in the sense that
the latter are truth-makers for the former, precisely because the modal
status of a proposition is not, at bottom, a matter of truth and representation, but of non-representational attitudes or habits of mind.
So again, the kind of dependency at work here cannot sustain the
charge that, on the Humean view, if our imaginative limitations
were to change, the modal status of propositions would change with
them (Blackburn 2009).
407
27
Developed in this way, Humes norms for judging which propositions are genuinely
clearly and distinctly conceivable or inconceivable would be rather like his norms for judging
which character traits are genuinely praiseworthy or blameworthy. In the latter case, we must
begin with the immediate reactive sentiments of approbation and disapprobation that particular human beings experience in specific concrete circumstances: actual sentiments of praise and
blame felt in response to actual individuals character traits as inferred from actual behaviour.
However, to move to a more stable standard reflecting the sentimental dispositions ingrained
in our common human nature, we must organize and interpret these various actual human
responses to correct for personal idiosyncracies, partialities, and other distorting influences.
The result is that our immediate reactions of praise and blame must be corrected with reference to idealized conditions providing a perfectly observant, practiced, calm, and disinterested
audience (E 232, 231; T 3.3.1.1521, 3.3.3.2) and indeed without this sort of correction of the
sentiments, men could never think or talk steadily on any subject; while their fluctuating
situations produce a continual variation on objects, and throw them into such different and
contrary lights and positions (EPM 5.41).
Mind, Vol. 123 . 490 . April 2014
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converge on a perspective free from all limitations on thought save

those that are part and parcel of human nature itself. 27
There are two sorts of practical constraint on actual human thought
that seem irrelevant to the more idealized form of conceivability at issue
here. First, any actual thinker will be unlikely to be able to exercise
perfect precision and control when separating and combining the ideas
furnished by experience in order to create new ideas, particularly when
those new-forged ideas become more involved or abstract (T 1.2.1.2,
1.2.3.1, 1.4.1.11; EHU 1.3, 2.9, 7.19). Such shortcomings seem irrelevant
to the idealized type of conceivability that would control our judgements of absolute possibility and necessity, and in fact Hume typically
abstracts from this first sort of practical constraint when he speaks of
the imaginative abilities of the human mind. Thus while he is clear that
[t]he command of the mind over itself is limited (EHU 7.18; see also
T 1.3.14.12), he can also insist that the imagination of man has an
unlimited power of mixing, compounding, separating, and dividing
the ideas that are furnished by the internal and external senses (EHU
5.10, my emphasis; see also 2.4). He is not of course denying that our
ability to separate and combine ideas will in practice be compromised
by distractions, fatigue, and the rest; his point is merely that there is no
limit to our combinatorial abilities in principle.
While the first sort of irrelevant real-world constraint on human
thought hampers our ability to create new ideas from the original
stock furnished by outer sense and inner reflection, the second limits
that initial supply of empirically derived ideas. Any actual human mind
is unlikely to have been exposed to all possible simple impressions, and
thus unlikely to have the full range of simple ideas to draw on as raw
material when constructing more complex ideas. Again, this sort of
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Thomas Holden
It is readily allowed, that other beings may possess other senses, of which
we can have no conception; because the ideas of them have not been
introduced to us, in the only manner, by which an idea can have access to
the mind, to wit, by the actual feeling or sensation. (EHU 2.7)
On the one hand, we can have no conception of these other senses,

since we cannot present to ourselves imagistic ideas that simulate,
Mind, Vol. 123 . 490 . April 2014
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practical limitation seems irrelevant to the idealized type of conceivability

that would control our judgements of absolute possibility and necessity.
There seems a clear difference between the case of our current inability to
imagine the truth of the proposition that there is some as-yet unknown
simple taste or smell, and our current inability to imagine a case where
two times two equals five. We are not inclined to inflate a recognition of
the first inability into a judgement of absolute impossibility; but we have
less compunction in taking the latter inability as good evidence that two
times two simply could not be five. The relevant disanalogy seems to be
as follows: even though we cannot imagine the truth of either proposition in the narrow, Humean sense of forming for ourselves a mental
image (broadly construed, including gustatory and olfactory images) of
what it would be like to experience it as true, there is a more generous
sense in which the first scenario is conceivable or imaginable while the
second is not. We can make something of the thought that there are
simple tastes and smells that we have not yet encountered: we can (for
instance) draw consequences from such a hypothesis, speculate about its
implications, and tell a coherent story about how it is that we might be
insensitive to the existence of certain sorts of simple tastes and smells
while others are not. On the other hand, we can simply make nothing of
the thought that two plus two equals five: we cannot begin to elaborate
what would follow from this, or to explain how it could be that the
proposition is indeed true while we remain unable to picture its truth for
ourselves (compare Blackburn 1987, pp. 6871).
Given Humes radically empiricist commitment to explaining all
human thought in terms of image-like ideas traceable ultimately to
experience, and the resultant fact that he equates conceiving exclusively with the production of mental imagery, he is not well placed to
articulate and defend the distinction between these two sorts of case,
or to explain why the absence of simple ideas is irrelevant to the
idealized sense of conceivability at work in our judgements about
absolute modality. However, he does make some gestures in the
right direction. Consider the following passage in which Hume speculates about simple ideas beyond our human ken:
409
A blind man can form no notion of colours; a deaf man of sounds. Restore
either of them that sense, in which he is deficient; by opening this new inlet
for his sensations, you also open an inlet for the ideas; and he finds no
difficulty in conceiving these objects. (EHU 2.7, my emphasis; compare also
T 1.1.1.10)
So my suggestion is that Hume is at least somewhat responsive to the

point that there is a more idealized sense of conceivability or imaginability available, the standards of which would be determined by the
imaginative powers of a human mind that has both an unlimited ability
to separate and combine its various ideas and a complete supply of all
simple ideas. The facts about what propositions are clearly and distinctly conceivable (in the sense of conceivability at work in his
mind-dependent account of absolute necessity) would then be set
from this idealized standpoint, and our judgements about what propositions are and are not clearly and distinctly conceivable which
judgements underwrite the attitudes that find expression in the language of absolute possibility, impossibility, and necessity ought to
approximate toward this perspective as far as they can.
8. Conclusion
A cumulatively powerful body of textual evidence suggests that Hume is
quite sincere when he traces absolute necessity to the workings of the
human understanding. He appears to regard this and other absolute
modal notions as a systematic expression of our sense of the causalpsychological limitations on conceivability built into the human mind.
Hume may not be unique among early modern philosophers in
offering an anti-realist account of the nature of absolute necessity.
Descartes seems to employ a conceptualist account of necessity and
possibility in the Second Replies (1641).28 Hobbes argues that modal
28
If by possible you mean what everyone commonly means, namely whatever does not
conflict with human thought, then it is manifest that the nature of God, as I have described
it, is possible in this sense Alternatively, you may well be imagining some other kind of
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from the inside, what it would be like to have them. On the other
hand, while alien sensory modalities are inconceivable in this narrow
sense, Hume is implicitly granting that we can have some sort of
thought about them as when [i]t is readily allowed, by Hume as
much as anyone else, that other beings may possess [such] senses.
Our predicament here is in fact rather similar to the case of the blind
man discussed earlier in the same paragraph:
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Thomas Holden
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Humes Absolute Necessity

Hume regards the absolute necessity attending demonstrable propositions as an

Mind, Vol. 123 . 490 . April 2014

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University of California, Santa Barbara

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expressivist theories of absolute modality. Such at least I hope to show

Humes Absolute Necessity

2. The interpretative proposal: an expressivist

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Humes most striking pronouncement on the metaphysics of absolute

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minds disposition to associate event-types together in a certain way.

Humes Absolute Necessity

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found the account of absolute necessity sketched here at least as hard

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T 1.3.14.23,4 or at least by asserting that this is an anomalous text that

Humes Absolute Necessity

3. Evidence from Humes theory of belief

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[W]herein consists the difference betwixt believing and disbelieving any

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existence a new question, he says, unthought of by philosophers

Humes Absolute Necessity

and the imagination is free to conceive both sides of the question.

These two passages do not present us with a metaphysical account of

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When a demonstration convinces me of any proposition, it not only makes

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investigation will demystify our first-order causal intuitions. Indeed,

Humes Absolute Necessity

4. Evidence from Humes modal epistemology

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So I take it that these two doxastic texts intimate an account of what

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Humes Absolute Necessity

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in section 7 below, the kind of conceivability and inconceivability at

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Second, there is the degree of confidence that Hume places in these

Humes Absolute Necessity

Tis an establishd maxim in metaphysics, that whatever the mind clearly

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Humes Absolute Necessity

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conceivability as per the mind-dependent theory then the two

5. Evidence from Humes interweaving of logic and

It is pretended that the Deity is a necessarily existent being; and this

Humes conclusion in this passage is that necessary existence is an

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