Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

We believe that there exists an external world where there are flowers in their first bloom, high green trees and steep mountains, beautiful women too, political societies and the working class, bad and good actions and even ugliness. We can pick up flowers, climb trees and mountains, meet the woman of our life, improve the condition of our nation and become better in our behavior and conduct. This belief is so universal, steady, and essential to our practice that there is no way to discuss it or even to put it in a hyperbolic suspense. In this respect, Cartesian doubt is a metaphysical vagary or an epistemological joke, since there are certainties which are merely indisputable. Therefore, we do not have to prove the existence of the external world: it does exist. And the Skeptic does not have to prove that the existence of the external world cannot be proved: it would be useless.This is why Hume directly asks the question: how do we come to believe in the existence of bodies? Whereas, when he was dealing with causality, he had first skeptically argued that there could be no rational or experimental foundation for causal relation, and then had proceeded to the study of how we make inferences from causes to effects or from effects to causes.So plain as this question might appear, yet we must consider it with some care. And first of all, is this question relevant? Thomas Reid and ... log in or subscribe to read full text