Hume's Science of Human Nature is an investigation of the philosophical commitments underlying Hume's methodology in pursuing what he calls 'the science of human nature'. It argues that Hume understands scientific explanation as aiming at explaining the inductively-established universal regularities discovered in experience via an appeal to the nature of the substance underlying manifest phenomena. For years, scholars have taken Hume to employ a deliberately shallow and demonstrably untenable notion of scientific explanation. By contrast, Hume's Science of Human Nature sets out to update our understanding of Hume's methodology by using a more sophisticated picture of science as a model.

About the Author

David Landy is Associate Professor of Philosophy at San Francisco State University. He is the author of Kant's Inferentialism: The Case Against Hume (Routledge, 2015).

Reviews

"Hume's Science of Human Nature offers, and capably defends, a deeply original way of understanding Hume's theoretical framework. The interpretation renders Hume's naturalistic project a much more sophisticated endeavour than typically thought. It is an excellent and welcome addition to the literature."-Hsueh Qu, National University of Singapore

"Landy does an outstanding job of highlighting the significance of some long-standing debates regarding Hume's theory of representation by showing how they affect important questions about Hume's account of scientific explanation and science in general." -Miren Boehm, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee

Book Information
ISBN 9781138503137
Author David Landy
Format Hardback
Page Count 266
Imprint Routledge
Publisher Taylor & Francis Ltd
Weight(grams) 498g