Transcendental Inquiry and the Belief in Body: Comments on Rocknak's Imagined Causes

Abstract:The title of Stefanie Rocknak's book—Imagined Causes: Hume's Conception of Objects—neatly and concisely captures the book's central claim: Hume holds that thinking about objects is a matter of imagining the causes of our perceptions. Rocknak argues that in giving an account of how we think about objects, Hume is engaged in a transcendental project. My comments focus fairly narrowly on this central thesis, which unfortunately means that I have set aside a great deal of interesting material in the book, including Rocknak's provocative and challenging interpretations of Hume's views about the nature of mental representation, time, and justification. I propose to focus on three related issues: First, I consider the sense in which, on Rocknak's view, Hume is engaged in a kind of transcendental project, and raise some questions about how to understand Rocknak's view about this project. Second, I want to raise some questions about how to understand the claim that conceiving of objects, for Hume, is a matter of imagining causes. Finally, I will look more closely at some of the evidence that Rocknak appeals to in support of this interpretation, and suggest that the interpretation faces two challenges. I invite Rocknak to say more about these challenges in her reply.