The privilage of a traveller

Abstract

The process of formation of belief is the central topic of the article, which is based on the fundamental distinction dividing the Humean world of Nature, between natural and artificial imagination. Although belief, as opposed to faith, goes beyond what is given to the mind through sensation, it remains within the boundaries of experience and habit. The purpose of philosophical speculation, defied by scepticism and common life, is to train the imagination in order to support the causal thinking of our beliefs. In Hume the formation of imagination gets the immediate expression in the relationship between philosophy on one hand and literature and historiography on the other as presented in the short essay entitled A Dialogue and the famous appendix to the third chapter in An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. This modus of direct formation of imagination which is defined in the article as overt deception, is supplemented by Hume with the relationship of covert deception enabling the subject of formation to take a distinct stance as well as disabling him from ever taking notice of the deception.