Hume, Raymond Carver, and dream skepticism Author. Doctor Terence Rajivan Edward (or 0161__Rajivan, if that helps) Abstract. This paper is a fiction, honest psychiatrists, but it deals with issues from philosophy. I propose that Hume is valued at least partly as a source of stability, as some Christians value the Bible: "In times of trouble, I read this." I interpret David Hume as suggesting a solution to dream skepticism. I reflect on whether Susan Haack is a unique person, in terms of character. I present experiences of and after reading a Raymond Carver short story, which led me to dream skeptical thoughts and attempts to escape dream skepticism. Draft version: version 2 (24 July 2026; v1 21st March 2026) What is the difference between one philosopher and another? Their thoughts of course. If you could go inside their minds, you would find thoughts about this and that all day long, probably little in the way of interesting emotions. What dull characters for a fiction writer. But sometimes something happens, happens to a philosopher too. I didn't like to think of myself as a philosopher, although I had studied the subject and written much on it.. It is such a grand term: philosopher. Also I often wanted to leave it aside. It is not in my self-interest, I feel. But I kept coming back to it somehow. I was reading Hume, the Scottish Enlightenment philosopher: David Hume. I had made a list of the contributions of Hume which students were likely to encounter on a course. Is this a great philosopher? Surely I can produce as many as these, even if they never become central to any course. Surely many patriotic people in many countries have reacted like this: Hume - how about this, it is no worse? Where are these Hume-alternatives? I did not know. I read Hume to find out more why he was one of the few great philosophers. I wondered: is the judgment of greatness relative? At my level, you are going to have to be some genius to appear great; but at a lower level less so! I read the opening of his A Treatise on Human Nature: "All the perceptions of the human mind resolve themselves into two distinct kinds, which I shall call Impressions and Ideas. The difference betwixt these consists in the degrees of force and liveliness, with which they strike upon the mind, and make their way into our thought or consciousness. Those perceptions, which enter with most force and violence, we may name impressions; and under this name I comprehend all our sensations, passions and emotions, as they make their first appearance in the soul. By ideas I mean the faint images of these in thinking and reasoning; such as, for instance, are all the perceptions excited by the present discourse." It occurred to me that there are philosophical contributions suggested or implied by Hume which we do not teach. He is surely (or presumably) suggesting in this quotation a solution to the problem of dream skepticism: how can I know that I am not dreaming now? Dream contents are less lively apparently. The list of his philosophical contributions is much longer than my list? I didn't believe Hume's solution at all. One who believes in it has not really dreamt! I am 45 years old. I remember from 42 to 43 I wrote in a furious hurry, uploading academic papers - I wanted to write all of them within myself and be finished with the task. Then I had extremely vivid dreams. The problem of dream skepticism did not seem to be an idle question then, for classroom discussion only: it was a live problem. I recall reading scientists who dismiss the value of philosophy: give them perceptual problems, give them an environment of people they cannot readily trust, and will they be so dismissive then? What can I be most certain about I began to think, and felt as if a great Cartesian hand from centuries past were rescuing me from a skeptical whirlpool. Some months later I simply fell back into it though. Anyway, why is Hume a great philosopher? I have this answer which has nothing to do with more contributions than on our courses, hidden ones. You know how there are people who read the Bible in times of trouble? Hume had produced a text of comparable service for atheists and agnostics, and even perhaps some people of religious disposition. Read it and one somehow stabilizes. The philosopher Susan Haack had died: one of the many workers; a woman too, in a time in which philosophy in the English-speaking academic world was almost entirely male. She apparently died on the day in which I released a paper which referred to the question of whether each human person has a unique character. I take the death date as posing the question in relation to Haack. (Conspiracy theorist me?) Is not Haack merely an instance of a familiar type of woman in what is called analytic philosophy. Is she not, say, Helen Beebee before Helen Beebee - a notable Hume scholar? "No, her thoughts are different, or the ones on paper anyway," I am disposed to curtly reply. "But there is something similar," you say. The thought style is different, it seems to me: Beebee often goes into fine details more. Also Haack's topics converge more with mine. "Maybe the two have the same relation to authority and justice, etc." I am not a psychoanalyst! These women of analytic philosophy all do seem similar, but who knows? In the town in which I live, I tend to divide women mostly into Veronicas and prostitutes, for want of a better term. Veronicas are emotionally sensitive and keep rich diaries and are concerned about justice - the name is taken from a strange American high school film: Heathers - and I suppose prostitutes keep diaries too, but different. I had gone to an Indian restaurant downtown, if Indian was the right description: it is close to being called a Tamil Tiger restaurant, though it does not serve Sri Lankan food. I had been there a few months ago, a couple of times in December. I asked where the waitress with the brown hair was to the Veronica waitress: both white women. She does not work here any more. I ordered a Kerala paratha. Before it came, a waiter dropped a glass which shattered on the floor close to my table, startling me. Was he saying that the waitress now gone was fragile, or perhaps: this is what she does to me, okay? Of course there are accidents, but I doubted this fall was mere accident. The paratha was crispy and feathery somehow: tasted good. I headed to the Waterstones bookshop in the Arndale centre, intuitively dividing the women I saw into the two types along the way. What was the remainder? 10% of the adult female population or less. Much less? Why were all the non-Veronicas here though? I didn't know. Was some event due, a supernova of the social world? I bought a copy of Raymond Carver's Where I'm Coming From: The Selected Stories. On the back there was a quotation from the most famous novelist of our time, Salman Rushdie, declaring that Raymond Carver was a great writer. Rushdie is very grudging about another broadly Chekhovian short story writer, namely Indian R.K. Narayan, as are a generation or more of prominent Indian literary critics - Tharoor, Spivak - so why the lavish praise for the quite similar Carver? I wanted to introduce the issue to the man at the till, with his ginger beard and his thick-rimmed glasses, but he seemed to anticipate something problematic and cut conversation. I left the bookshop and saw a boyish white man standing by a shop, in this glossy mall. Somehow its glossiness was always new to me, despite this part of the Arndale having been there for some years. I offered him the Carver book, despite the £16.99 cost. He declined. I found this amusing. I offered Carver to a black security guard outside a clothes shop. I pointed to the cover photograph and said, "This guy looks like you." He too declined. There was more than a suggestion: "My countryman can do better." I made my way to Marks & Spencer, wondering what the problem with Carver was. There I purchased two duvet covers, new cheap duvet covers at a shop not known for bargains. Kerala paratha: that was not enough, but I had food in the fridge back in my apartment. Nevertheless, I was wondering whether I should get some more food in town. But what? I stepped into a Vietnamese place and stepped back out. I walked along the streets looking here and there for a suitable eatery. Then I sat down on a wooden bench and began to read Carver. I read Chef's House. It was beautifully written, or very well-crafted anyway: earlier in the day I had found poems by him in the University of Manchester library. In the story, a character called Wes invites the narrator over to his home. It is the first paragraph. The narrator replies, "If I come up there, I want you to do something for me. Name it, Wes said. I said, I want you to try and be the Wes I used to know. The old Wes. The Wes I married." It hits you: Raymond Carver, this masculine American writer, but the story is from the point of view of a woman, a woman in love. I kept reading, cross-legged, stopped paying attention to the surrounding environment. Veronica or not: an issue forgotten. A young fellow walked past and said, "Easy, easy," loudly. I looked up but the text held such a grip on me. There's a character called Chef. He can't give Wes and his wife a place to stay: "Chef said his daughter, Linda, the woman Wes used to call Fat Linda from the time of his drinking days, needed a place to live and this place was it." Fat Linda's husband escaped one day in a fishing boat, or did he drown? "Wes said if it came to that, he'd go down with his ship, too, rather than live the rest of his days with Fat Linda and her kid." I used to be so slim. I hate putting on weight. Plumpness is fine for a lady Bollywood star, but me? I looked up from the book. I felt so dreamy. Was I really here at the bench, with all these people passing? Was I in a dream? I decided to stop reading this story. It was strong stuff, like a drug. I had tried my hand at stand-up comedy and, on a WhatsApp chat group, some comedians had said that talking to me was like being on drugs: cocaine or LSD. Perhaps I was much heavier drugs than Carver, but still I didn't feel right after reading the stuff. (Dali: Dali had said, "I don't do drugs, I am drugs." But what drugs?) I walked in a somewhat clouded state down the road and decided it was best to make my way home, take the bus back home. But there was an advertisement nearby: Korean food. I had never tried Korean before; there were some inexpensive dishes. I didn't want pork, but I wanted to try some. I stepped in, but the waitress was busy and far from the entrance; I stepped out. Stick to my plan: get back home! I walked along the streets thinking I could make a summary of the Carver story encased in a fiction. Little Carver inside my fiction. Baby Carver! Good idea! I laughed wickedly. I got to Portland Street and waited for the bus. A bus came with the right number, a 40 something, but it said Woodford. Wasn't Woodford in London or Essex? Woodford was where my sister and her family lived; I had never heard of a Woodford in Manchester. I asked the bus driver, "Isn't Woodford in London?" He said he could not hear me. "Isn't Woodford in London?" I repeated. He again said he could not hear me. I paid him by swiping my card. I sat down and watched the sights of the city through the window. I doubted my mind can be bothered constructing all this. I was surely not dreaming. On the seats across the aisle, or whatever it is called, sat a black mother and her daughter. I remembered being on a bus in London in 2002. We went past a poster which said, "Destiny's Child," a popular music group of the time; it had a photograph of the beauties constituting the band. The child said, "My name is Destiny too." The mother said, "Don't worry your little brain about that." I waited for the current child to speak and she seemed to sense some expectation of her, but she spoke not. I alighted and walked to my apartment thinking: "Don't ever give me this Carver if I am not in my right state of mind. Hemingway please!" Beautiful craftsman though! I was worried that my own writings will only be available to the strong, the very strong. Anyway, it was a bit of an adventure in town! References Carver, Raymond. 1993. Where I'm Calling From. London: the Harvill Press. (Chef's House is from 1981: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1981/11/30/chefs-house) Edward, Terence Rajivan. 2026. Marilyn Strathern on the English middle class: refuted by Brexit vote. Available at: https://www.academia.edu/165015117/Marilyn_Strathern_on_the_English_middle_class_refuted_by_Brexit_vote Edward, Terence Rajivan. 2026. Summary of David Hume’s contributions and question about his status. Available at: https://website2.net/hume.txt And: https://www.academia.edu/144045117/Summary_of_David_Humes_contributions_and_question_about_his_status Edward, Terence Rajivan. 2026. My report so far on "Why is Hume a great philosopher?" Available at: https://philpapers.org/archive/EDWMRS.pdf Hume, David. 1739-40. A Treatise of Human Nature. Available at: https://davidhume.org/texts/t/ Lehmann, Michael. 1989. Heathers. Distributed by New World Pictures. Tharoor, Shahi. 2001. Comedies of Suffering. The Hindu July 8th 2001. Available at: https://shashitharoor.in/writings_essays_details/180 Weinberg, Justin. 2026. Susan Haack (1945-2026). Daily Nous March 11th 2026. Available at: https://dailynous.com/2026/03/11/susan-haack-1945-2026/