A Cultivated Reason is an intriguing book. Everyone who thinks she understands Hume or is pretty sure that she doesn't should read it. It is elegantly written, informal and illuminating. It does take patience however, partly because its organization is idiosyncratic and sometimes confusing. Williams combines exegesis of Humean texts—the Treatise, the two Enquiries, and the Essays—with the defense of a view that he calls "nonrationalism." This wide-ranging theory stakes claims in ontology, theory of knowledge, ethics, aesthetics, and in the (...) broader issue of how philosophical reflection is related to the concerns of everyday life. Williams endorses nonrationalism and believes that Hume is its progenitor; for almost every nonrationalist thesis, Williams finds a Humean precedent. Here he goes against the tradition in which the explication des textes requires the explicator to keep his own theoretical commitments in the background. Williams does not do this and thus he aligns himself with philosophically sophisticated commentators—David Pears, Robert Fogelin, and Barry Stroud are examples—who are explicit and candid about where they stand. As a consequence of Williams's procedure, the reader is often at a loss to know whether a particular thesis is being ascribed to Hume or whether the author is trying in a Humean spirit to advance the nonrationalist cause. There do seem to be significant differences, for example, the nonrationalist does not countenance the gap that was important to Hume between the "is" and the "ought." So if you object or disagree, you don't know where to complain. (shrink)

The particular argument which Prior selects is supposed to show that the Arminian hypothesis, viz. volitions are uncaused events, has consequences that are logically unacceptable or at any rate counterintuitive. Prior makes two claims: Edwards' argument depends on false metaphysical premises. When these are revised, uncaused events, e.g., volitions, may be acknowledged without embarrassment. If the scope of Edwards' argument is restricted, then it is, in Prior's phrase, "entirely cogent." I shall try to show that Prior is mistaken on both (...) points: the argument in question is not--at least not on any interpretation that I can think of--cogent at all, but it does serve to raise an interesting question of which Prior takes no account. (shrink)

The deepest beliefs’ about personal identity whose consequences Unger seeks to draw out are the beliefs of those who already share his theoretical convictions; and his pain-avoidance’ experiments show nothing unless one already assumes those convictions. If there is a risk’ that I may not survive a brain operation even though I know exactly which chunks of brain will be removed and replaced, that shows that I am a separate thing from my body and brain, about which the latter provide (...) normally reliable, but still fallible evidence. (shrink)