Hume's "General Rules"

Abstract

In this paper, I examine Hume’s account of an important class of causal belief which he calls “general rules”. I argue that he understands general rules, like all causal beliefs, as lively ideas which are habitually associated with our impressions or memories. However, I argue, he believes that they are unlike any reflectively produced causal beliefs in that they are produced quickly and automatically, such that they occur independently of any other processes of reasoning. Given this, I argue, Hume appears to understand general rules as relatively simple beliefs, expressible only via generic sentences, like “birds lay eggs”.

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Item Type:	Article
Authors/Creators:	Chamberlain, J.
Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information:	© 2025 The Authors. Except as otherwise noted, this author-accepted version of a journal article published in Philosiphers' Imprint is made available via the University of Sheffield Research Publications and Copyright Policy under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ © 2025, James Chamberlain This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Keywords:	Hume; general rules; causal reasoning; implicit bias; generic generalizations
Dates:	Accepted: 1 April 2024 Published (online): July 2025 Published: July 2025
Institution:	The University of Sheffield
Academic Units:	The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Arts and Humanities (Sheffield) > School of History, Philosophy and Digital Humanities
Depositing User:	Symplectic Sheffield
Date Deposited:	23 May 2025 11:47
Last Modified:	18 Aug 2025 10:51
Status:	Published
Publisher:	University of Michigan Library
Refereed:	Yes
Identification Number:	10.3998/phimp.5439
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID):	oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:227051

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Hume's "General Rules"

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