The end of nature problem can be framed as a dilemma: either all human intentional actions are natural or they are all unnatural and destroy nature as an effect. Given the scope of human influence, the latter entails that there is no nature left on Earth. Therefore, the environmentalist project of protecting nature is either unnecessary or futile. Prevailing attempts to forge a middle path – by, for example, distinguishing natural from unnatural human activities – struggle to find metaphysical grounding. (...) I argue that the biological concept of human proper functioning can ground the relevant distinction between natural and unnatural human activities. Only unnatural activities can destroy nature; specifically, those activities that trace back to beliefs about value that diverge from the human lifeform. (shrink)

Hume notoriously pursues a constructive science of human nature in the Treatise while raising serious skeptical doubts about that project and leaving them apparently unanswered. On the perspectivalist reading, Hume endorses multiple incommensurable epistemic perspectives in the Treatise. This reading faces two significant objections: that it renders Hume’s epistemology inconsistent (or at least highly incoherent) and that it is ad hoc. In this paper, I propose a perspectivalist account of epistemic justification in the Treatise that addresses, to a significant degree, (...) these concerns. Hume has available to him an account—what I will call epistemic dispositionalism—that is internally consistent, allows for epistemic continuity between perspectives, and is thoroughly grounded in his naturalism. (shrink)

Recent commentators have contended that Hume’s skeptical arguments in the Treatise lead him to eschew a traditional epistemic account of justification in favor of a pragmatic account. While this view resolves some textual puzzles, others arise. Instead, Hume should be read as endorsing two completely distinct standards of doxastic normativity: the epistemic and the pragmatic. The epistemic grants beliefs philosophical approval, while the pragmatic circumscribes the domain of investigation to prevent reasoning that leads to extreme skepticism. I argue that the (...) mixed account of justification makes better sense of key passages in the Treatise than either constituent can on its own. One notable virtue of this account is that it explains how Hume can hold that the vulgar can have all things considered warrant. (shrink)