Hume's Dualism.

"It may be said, that we are every moment conscious of internal power; while we feel that, by the simple command of our will, we can move the organs of our body, or direct the faculties of our mind."

Hume admits that we are indeed conscious of the fact that the motion of our body follows from the command of our will (65); however, we do not know the means or energy which makes this possible. What is apparent to experience is the temporal succession of our will to our body's motion. The connection of the soul to the body is not apparent.

The boundaries of this will are also learned by experience. Telekinesis, for example, is imaginable, but we learn from experience that it is not possible. We also learn from experience that the 'automatic' organ functions (such as our heart beating, our breathing, our digestive system) are not under the command of our will but are contained within our body. People with lost limbs, as well, will attempt to move their 'ghost limb.' On top of this, we learn from anatomy that we are not conscious of the mechanical construction of our body.

It does remain evident; however, that there is a will. We have experience of this. It is also evident that our will manifests itself in the motion of our bodies.

I do not think, however, that we immediately begin with will and then discover its boundaries. Rather, we immediately begin with bodily motion and then begin to discover our ability to make acts of volition. My breathing works automatically before I learn to regulate it. I starting eating before I could will to eat. I already had the ability to move before I had anywhere to go.

In this, we do not try to make acts of volition in ways that is impossible for us unless something necessitates us in a pseudo-delusional way (the light saber is too far away to reach), which is a kind of rare wishful thinking.

In a more primordial sense, we do not deliberate about making acts of volition unless we are already aware of our ability to make such an act.


'Ghost limbs' emerge from repetition of such events. One once had the ability to move one's arm which one has now lost. The particular will which emerged from this ability is now gone.

Our will over other things, as well, emerges with our notion of will in general. For example, when I begin to realize that I can will to eat, food then becomes something affected by my will. Food still exists in the causal relationship it existed in when I started eating.

In order to conceive of causality, I have to break the action down into subject and object. I will to eat food. Here, there is a causal relationship being established in my expression of the relationship between subject and object. Without the dualism, there is just the immediate instance of the task of eating. With the dualism, we have a single instance of a causal connection. This causal connection now becomes a part of our experience every time we eat in that we can now divide the task of eating into parts. 'Causality' emerges when we take up the idea of causal connection itself, which dispersed throughout our expressions of various subject/object relations.

I do not think causality is apparent without the subject/object dualism, nor do I think the dualism is apparent without grammar. Hume preserves the Cartesian subject/object division from which he experiences objective causality to break down.