Deleuze, Hume, Existence of the External World

Deleuze's study of Hume transforms the 'problem of the existence of the external world' from a Cognitive to a Practical topic. Since, for Hume, following Berkeley, the immediate data of experience are private, the positing of extra-experiential existence is fiction concocted by the Imagination, and, hence, is subject to skepticism. However, insofar as, as Deleuze shows, Experience is fundamentally practical for Hume, so, too, then, is the functioning of the Imagination. Hence, the transcending of the given by the Imagination is, likewise, fundamentally at the service of practical activity. In other words, the traditional cognitive problem of deriving an in-itself from a phenomenon is an abstraction from the practical problem of transforming the given to an imagined modification of it. Thus, the traditional cognitive solutions to the problem, as well as some prominent dismissals of the significance of the problem, are beside the point.