An Analysis Of Hume’s "Belief" And Whether It Is Occurrent Or Dispositional

The issue of "belief" is one of the core issues in contemporary epistemology and philosophy of mind,and its importance is self-evident.Hume can be called the first philosopher who carefully studies "belief",and his belief theory is also intertwined with his perceptual theory and causal theory which together constitute Hume’s philosophy.Despite such an important role,at least Hume himself did not elaborate clearly on the concept of "belief",and he himself also acknowledged this problem.Later scholars also failed to come to any agreement at this one.This paper firstly,based on the analysis of Hume’s text,concludes that he has three viewpoints about that what is "belief",that is,the belief is the feeling of vivacity and force itself,vivid and forceful ideas,and the conception which makes ideas vivid and forceful.So in order to thoroughly clarify Hume’s “belief”,it is necessary to clarify the vivacity and force at first.The traditional theory of occurrence regards vivacity and force only as phenomenal quality,which is inconsistent with Hume’s discourse on the distinction between impressions and ideas,ideas of memory and ideas of imagination,and ideas of beliefs and ideas of conception.Although their phenomenal intensity can be indistinguishable,Hume still believes they are different.This suggests to introduce the theory of Disposition to Hume’s belief,that is,the belief has dispositional causal efficacy in addition to the phenomenal quality.This not only gets rid of the above-mentioned predicaments faced by the traditional viewpoint,but also more in line with Hume’s words and texts literally.After clarifying Hume’s vivacity and force,this paper argued that Hume’s three viewpoints about belief can be reduced to vivacity and force themselves.This leads to the definition of Hume’s beliefs—the vivacity and force which has both phenomenal intensity and causal efficacy.This paper then elaborates on the additional advantages after introducing the theory of Disposition.This paper suggests that Hume’s belief can better explain the attribution of beliefs,the enduring beliefs,and habitual beliefs.Later,the paper responds to the objections that this twodimensional interpretation of Hume’s beliefs may face,and answers the relationship between the two dimensions.And finally it tries to illustrate that the conception way based on naturalistic realism may result in the vivacity and force.