Hume on Temporal Experience and the Fiction of Time Without Change

Abstract

Hume identifies the idea of time with the idea of succession and denies that we have or even can have an idea of time without change.  He argues that our idea of time is not applicable to unchanging objects and that unchanging objects cannot be said to endure.  At the center of Hume’s treatment of time is a fiction that is supposed to explain how we falsely believe that we can form an idea of time without change and how we consider unchanging objects to endure. The literature has struggled to make sense of Hume’s riddled arguments and obscure claims.  Against the background of Hume’s intention to establish a new foundation for the sciences, we consider the most important and controversial texts from the perspective of Hume’s likely target: the idea of absolute time.  From this perspective, we offer important insights into the questions that have dominated the literature.