In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:149. RELATIVE IDEAS REJECTED Hume's claim that ideas copy impressions seems to provide prima facie evidence for the interpretation that he also believed that all thought is restricted to images. Clearly such a view would be fatal to Hume's epistemological framework for at least two reasons. The first reason is quite simply that images are not a necessary element for thought, since we rarely think in images or pictures. (...) The second reason is that the imagistic interpretation prevents the possibility of universal a priori knowledge; since images only represent particulars they can never permit the inference from knowledge of particular instances to knowledge of universal cases. Yolton's paper, "Hume's Ideas", is a valiant effort to save Hume from the crippling imagistic interpretation. Although Yolton presents a reading of the Treatise that might avoid this interpretation, he fails to provide a sufficiently detailed account of any one counter-example to the imagistic view of Hume. However, such a counter-example has been worked out in Flage's 2 recent paper "Hume's Relative Ideas". Although the search for non-picturable ideas in Hume's system, and subsequent destruction of the imagistic interpretation is an admirable path for investigation, I intend to show that Flage's attempt to produce a Humean theory of non3 picturable "relative" ideas is entirely misguided. I shall argue that Flage has produced a theory without application in Hume's framework, a theory actually based on a distinction between relative ideas and relations of ideas, that Hume never intends. Flage argues that Hume has a theory of relative ideas, and that the application of this theory can produce intelligible concepts of essentially imperceptible 150. objects. A relative idea is obtained by an inference, of sorts, from the relations of ideas obtained from impressions; or in Flage' s words, a relative idea "singles out an unperceived entity on the basis of its relations to a perceived entity, i.e. a positive [picturable] idea" (HS 56). Flage admits that "Hume often regarded epistemic claims based upon relative ideas with at least a modicum of scepticism" (HS 55). He also realizes that no such theory of relative ideas can be used to justify ontological claims of the unperceivable objects (HS 63), but that "the doctrine of relative ideas at least accounts for the intelligibility of various concepts" (HS 59). Flage applies the theory of relative ideas to three concepts that Hume discusses in an effort to demonstrate how this theory can make these concepts intelligible. The three concepts are substratum, the missing shade of blue, and the idea of a thousandth part of a grain of sand; however, Flage fails to realize that Hume successfully argues against the intelligibility of these concepts. I shall present the arguments that Hume gives to show that Flage' s theory of relative ideas does not apply in the cases he argues for. Hopefully this will show that Flage has created a theory that lacks application; however, this is not Flage' s only failing. "Relative" ideas are obtained from relations of ideas (HS 56), and by this description Flage has implicitly distinguished between Hume's use of "relative" and the philosophical "relations of ideas!', a distinction that Hume never intends. In the latter part of this paper I shall show that Hume uses "relative" to refer to the relations of ideas, and that Flage has simply located and produced a theory on the basis of a distinction that has no real difference. In the discussion of substance, Flage correctly points out that Hume distinguishes three definitions of substance in the fourth part of book I of the Treatise (HS 63-4). 151. Flage also correctly points out that at least two of these definitions are unintelligible (HS 64). The definition of substance, as an autonomous object that is distinct from dependent qualities, fails to properly 4 distinguish substance from qualities (T 233), and substance defined as the "subject of inhesion" fails because there is no empirical evidence to justify the claim that qualities inhere in a substance J(T 234). However, Flage incorrectly argues that Hume asserts that the idea of substance as "the entity that is simple and identical through time... (shrink)

Si l’usage contemporain du concept de sujet s’est introduit en philosophie à la faveur d’une substantivation des mots « je » et « moi », cet usage peut-il résister à une compréhension moins fantastique du sens du mot « je »? Nous montrons en quoi le penseur d’une pensée en première personne peut être littéralement considéré comme un sujet absolu, la subjectivité étant alors moins synonyme d’intériorité que d’inhésion ou de prédication réelle.Ce que « Je » dit du sujetIs the (...) contemporary use of the old concept of subject a by-product of the Ego’s philosophies? We show in which sense the thinker of an I.Thought can be seen as an absolute subject in regard of the predicates of his I.Thoughts, because of his cognitive inarticulateness. Subjectivity can then be viewed much more as predicates’ inhesion than as interiority. (shrink)

The John of Saint Thomas' critique of the suarecian concept of the prime matter The figure of Juan Poinsot is inserted in the movement of return to a Thomism free of nominalist adherences promoted in the Hispanic Thomism by relevant figures of the order of preachers. In this sense must be understood the Poinsot’s critique of some ideas of Scotistic and Ockhamistic origin, present in the metaphysics of Suarez, referred to the ontological status of the material substance, such as: the (...) actuality of matter, the substantial mode of union, the immediate inhesion of the quantity in matter and the idea of entitative extension. (shrink)