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Philosophy and the Good Life: Hume's Defence of Probable Reasoning
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 April 2010
Extract
At the beginning of his section “Of Miracles,” Hume mentions an argument of Dr. Tillotson. The doctrine of “the real presence” seems contradicted by our senses. We see a piece of bread, but are asked to believe it consists in the substance of the body of Christ.
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- Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 35 , Issue 3 , Summer 1996 , pp. 485 - 504
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- Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1996
References
Notes
1 Hume, David, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, edited by Selby-Bigge, L. A., 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), pp. 109–31.Google Scholar
2 Ibid. p. 109.
3 This claim about Hume's argument concerning miracles is not meant to be controversial. The controversy, I take it, is about just how Hume evaluates the contrasting beliefs. For a Bayesian reconstruction, see my “Hume vs Price on Miracles and Prior Probabilities: Testimony and the Bayesian Calculation,” The Philosophical Quarterly, 37, 147 (April 1987): 187–202.Google Scholar For an interpretation based on Bernoullian principles of probability, see Gower, Barry, “David Hume and the Probability of Miracles,” Hume Studies, 16, 1 (April 1990): 17–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For an illuminating account based on Hume's claims about analogy and probability, see Dorothy Coleman, “Analogical Probabilities and Hume's Principle for Balancing Probabilities” (unpublished paper read at the American Philosophical Association, Pacific Division, 1993). The present paper is not concerned with the details of Hume's argument about miracles. That argument is relevant to current purposes mainly because it contains the clearest statement of Hume's view that we ought to proportion our beliefs according to the evidence.
4 Hume, , Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, p. 109.Google Scholar
5 Ibid. p. 110.
6 See especially Broad, C. D., “Hume's Theory of the Credibility of Miracles,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 17 (1916–17): 77–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The topic was discussed at a Symposium of the Canadian Philosophical Association in June, 1988. A remote ancestor of part of this paper was read there. Wilson's, Fred discussion on that occasion, to which I am much indebted, has been revised and published as “The Logic of Probabilities in Hume's Argument against Miracles,” Hume Studies, 15, 2 (November 1989): 255–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
7 See the Appendix to Hume's Treatise of Human Nature, especially pp. 630–32.Google Scholar, for doubts about this characterization (Hume, David, A Treatise of Human Nature, edited by Selby-Bigge, L. A., 2nd ed., edited by Nidditch, P. H. [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987]).Google Scholar Note the importance Hume attaches here, as elsewhere, to reflection and general rules.
8 This problem has been raised and discussed with great insight and thoroughness by Passmore, J. A. in “Hume and the Ethics of Belief,” in David Hume: Bicentenary Papers, edited by Morice, G. P. (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1977), pp. 77–92.Google Scholar1 am much indebted to this paper, and to David Norton for reminding me of its relevance to this topic.
9 Hume, , Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, p. 110Google Scholar
10 Hume, , Treatise of Human Nature, p. 271.Google Scholar
12 Hume, , Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, p.Google Scholar
13 Ibid., p. 9. Unlike the first Enquiry, Book 1 of the Treatise has little discussion of the good philosophy can do for society. This is not true of the Treatise taken as a whole, however. See, for instance, the opening paragraph of Book 3, where he says, “Morality is a subject that interests us above all others: We fancy the peace of society to be at stake in every decision concerning it” (p. 455).
14 Hume, , Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, p. 10.Google Scholar
15 See my “Hume and the Lockean Background: Induction and the Uniformity Principle,” Hume Studies, 18, 2 (November 1992): 179–207.Google Scholar
16 But see my “Inference, Reason and Reasoning in Book One of Hume's Treatise,” Southwest Philosophy Review, 10, 1 (January 1994): 17–27Google Scholar, and section 2 of this paper, for further details.
17 See Yves Michaud, 'Hume's Naturalized Philosophy,” Hume Studies, 12, 2 (November 1987): 360–80Google Scholar, for an intriguing defence of this view.
18 Baier, Annette, A Progress of Sentiments (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991), p. 55.Google Scholar
19 Hume, , Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, p. 165.Google Scholar
20 I have been helped in this by several sources, but especially: Norton, David Fate, David Hume: Common-Sense Moralist, Sceptical Metaphysician (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982), esp. pp. 96–98Google Scholar; Peter Millican's criticism of Norton's sevenfold classification, “Hume's Inductive Scepticism and His Alleged Deductivism,” read at the Lancaster Hume Society Conference, 1989; Winters, Barbara, “Hume on Reason,” Hume Studies, 5, 1 (April 1979): 20–35Google Scholar; Don Garrett's criticism of Winters in “'Determination by Reason' and Hume's Inductive Scepticism,” read at the Edinburgh Hume Society Conference, 1986; and Baier, A Progress of Sentiments. See also my “Hume and the Lockean Background” and “Inference, Reason and Reasoning in Book One of Hume's Treatise.”
21 Hume, , Treatise of Human Nature, p. 458.Google Scholar
22 Ibid., footnotes pp. 117-18 and 371.
23 But for a discussion of Hume on demonstrative reasoning, see my “Hume on Demonstration,” in Logic and the Workings of the Mind, edited by P. Easton, in preparation.
24 I deal with these issues more thoroughly in “Hume and the Lockean Background” and in “Inference, Reason and Reasoning in Book One of Hume's Treatise.”
25 I consider this issue in some detail in “Reason, Reflection and Reductios,” Hume Studies, 20, 2 (November 1994): 195–210.Google Scholar
26 Hume, , Treatise of Human Nature, p. 174.Google Scholar
27 Ibid., pp. 103–104.
28 See also the long footnote at Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, p. 107, where he mentions this sort of case as well as giving an account of how men can differ from each other in powers of reasoning.
29 Hume, , Treatise of Human Nature, pp. 104–105.Google Scholar
30 See also Hume, Treatise of Human Nature, pp. 133ff, for further discussion of the distinction between reasonings arising directly from habit and those more reflective ones that are related to habit more obliquely.
31 Ibid., p. 149.
32 Ibid..
33 Ibid..
34 Ibid., p. 146.
35 Ibid., pp. 146–50.
36 Ibid., p. 150.
37 Ibid..
38 Passmore, “Hume and the Ethics of Belief,” p. 82.
39 Hume, , Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, p.Google Scholar
40 In the Treatise of Human Nature, the discussion of the probability of chances comes in 1.3.11, while the claim about the importance of his theory of belief to his views on probable reasoning comes at pp. 154–55. See also the Abstract, in Ibid.., especially pp. 646–47 and pp. 652–55. In the subsequent discussion, I leave out mention of the probability of causes. But the same point about proportioning our belief according to the evidence can be made in both cases.
41 Hume, , Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, p. 57.Google Scholar
42 Dealing with the involuntariness of belief by varying the context in which beliefs arise is a strategy I learned from David Norton, who puts it to another purpose in “How a Sceptic May Live Scepticism,” read at the Ottawa Hume Society Conference, 1993. It is published in Faith, Scepticism, and Rationality: Essays in Honour of Terence Penelhum, edited by Macintosh, J. J. and Meynell, Hugo (Calgary, AB: University of Calgary Press, 1994), pp. 119–39.Google Scholar
43 Hume, , Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, p. 10.Google Scholar
44 Ibid..
45 See Hume, , “Scepticism with Regard to Reason,” Treatise of Human Nature, 1. 4.1, and pp. 263–69Google Scholar of “Conclusion to This Book.” For further discussion of this argument, see my “Reason, Reflection and Reduction”.
46 Ibid., p. 271.
47 Ibid., p. 265.
48 Schneewind, J., Introduction to his edition of Hume, , An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1983), p. 6.Google Scholar
49 Hume, , Treatise of Human Nature, p. 149.Google Scholar
50 Ibid., p. 150.
51 See Wilson, Fred, “Hume's Defence of Science,” Dialogue, 25 (Winter 1986), p. 620.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
52 Hume, , Treatise of Human Nature, p. 225.Google Scholar This passage is immediately followed by one where Hume rejects the weak principles as not “useful in the conduct of life.” Such a consideration is fundamental, on my view.
53 Ibid., pp. 267–68.
54 For a rich, illuminating account of this dialectic, see Baier, , A Progress of Sentiments, chap. 1. Baier argues that a new, more reflective account of reason starts to emerge around p. 270.Google Scholar of “Conclusion to This Book,” an account which is developed in Books 2 and 3 of the Treatise of Human Nature. And see Morris, W. E., “Hume's Scepticism about Reason,” Hume Studies, 15, 1 (April 1989): 39–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for a defence of the view that Hume's attack in “Scepticism with Regard to Reason” is limited to an attack on an older version of reason that Hume himself rejects. For arguments against these views, see my “Reason, Reflection and Reductios.”.
55 Hume, , Treatise of Human Nature, p. 267.Google Scholar
56 Ibid., p. 268.
57 Christine Korsgaard, “Normativity as Reflexivity: Hume's Practical Justification of Morality,” read to the Lancaster Hume Society Conference, August 1989. Her paper first brought home to me the depth of the problem I am addressing in this part of the paper. See also Baier, A Progress of Sentiments, esp. chap. 12, “Reason and Reflection,” for the most thorough development of this view.
58 Hume, , Treatise of Human Nature, p. 149.Google Scholar
59 Suggested again by Wilson, , “Hume's Defence of Science.” See Hume, Treatise of Human Nature, 2.3.10.Google Scholar
60 Ibid., p. 448.
61 Ibid., p. 449.
62 Ibid., p. 450.
63 Suggested again by Hume, , Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, p. 11.Google Scholar
64 Suggested again by Hume, , Treatise of Human Nature, p. 271.Google Scholar
65 Ibid., pp. 271–72.
66 Ibid., p. 272.
67 Ibid., p. 270. It seems clear that this point is limited to the stage of the Treatise Hume has now reached (the end of Book 1), and is not meant to apply to the later books, especially Book 3. See note 13.
68 Ibid., p. 270.
69 Hume, , Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, p. 10.Google Scholar
70 Ibid., p. 10.
71 Ibid., p. 159.
72 Ibid., p. 162.
73 Ibid., p. 161.
74 Hume, , Treatise of Human Nature, p. 268.Google Scholar
75 Ibid., p. 269.
76 Ibid..
77 Ibid., p. 270.
78 Ibid., p. 273.
79 I am indebted to Stroud's, Barry “Hume's Scepticism: Natural Instincts and Philosophical Reflection,” Philosophical Topics, 19, 1 (Spring 1991): 271–91Google Scholar, here as elsewhere, for emphasizing the fact that Hume's defence of philosophy is a sceptical defence. We differ, I think, on the role that reason plays in this.
80 Hume, , Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding,-p. 161.Google Scholar
81 Ibid., pp. 161–62.
82 Hume, , Treatise of Human Nature, p. 225.Google Scholar
83 I come, then, by a different route, to much the same conclusion as P. Ardal, who argues that the fundamental notion of reason in Hume is reasonableness (Ardal, P. S., “Some Implications of the Virtue of Reasonableness in Hume's Treatise,” in Hume: A Re-Evaluation, edited by Livingstone, D. W. and King, J. T. (New York: Fordham University Press, 1977), pp. 91–106.Google Scholar Thanks are wed to Charlotte Brown, who has discussed this topic with me over the last few years and who has kept emphasizing how important the first section of the Enquiry was to my study. Barry Stroud also provided helpful comments. An earlier version of part of this paper was read at the Columbia Philosophy colloquium in March 1992, where I benefited from the comments of Isaac Levi, Sidney Morgenbesser and Stephen Grover, and it was also read at the Hume Society Conference in Nantes, July 1992. Comments made there by Roger Gallie, Ted Morris and John Biro were most helpful. Comments by a referee for this journal enabled me to change the shape of the paper and, I hope, to improve it substantially.