Hume: Skepticism

Section III of part IV of Book I of Hume's Treatise entitled “Of the ancient philosophy” has been virtually ignored by most Hume scholars. Although philosophers seem to concentrate on sections II and VI of part IV and pay little or no attention to section III, the latter section is paramount in showing how serious Hume's skepticism is, and how Hume's philosophy, contrary to his intention, is far removed from "the sentiments of the vulgar". In this paper I shall first (...) explore Hume's view on ancient philosophy as it is presented in section III, and I shall particularly focus on his discussion of identity and simplicity of bodies. Second, I shall argue that Hume's account of identity and simplicity in terms of qualities is at best unsatisfactory. Finally, I shall try to show that Hume's advice to hold a "moderate" skepticism cannot be taken seriously. On the contrary, Hume seems to hold an "extravagant" skepticism, since he claims that there is a contradiction between our most fundamental natural beliefs, as well as between our natural beliefs and philosophical reasoning. (shrink)

David Hume is famous as a sceptical philosopher but the nature of his scepticism is difficult to pin down. Hume's True Scepticism provides the first sustained interpretation of Part 4 of Book 1 of Hume's Treatise: his deepest engagement with sceptical arguments, in which he notes that, while reason shows that we ought not to believe the verdicts of reason or the senses, we do so nonetheless. Donald C. Ainslie addresses Hume's theory of representation; his criticisms of Locke, Descartes, and (...) other predecessors; his account of the imagination; his understanding of perceptions and sensory belief; and his bundle theory of the mind and his later rejection of it. (shrink)

In the Treatise of Human Nature , Hume argues that, because we have adequate ideas of the smallest parts of space, we can infer that space itself must conform to our representations of it. The paper examines two challenges to this argument based on Descartes's and Locke's treatments of adequate ideas, ideas that fully capture the objects they represent. The first challenge, posed by Arnauld in his Objections to the Meditations , asks how we can know that an idea is (...) adequate. The second challenge, implicit in Locke's Essay , asks how an empiricist can characterize an idea as inadequate, as both picking out an object and yet failing to capture it fully. In showing how Hume responds to these challenges, his theory of perceptual representation is explained and his treatment of space is related to his scepticism. His conclusion is shown not to be a characterization of space as it exists wholly apart from our powers of conception. Instead, in an adumbration of Kant, his claim is restricted to space as it appears to us. (shrink)

This paper argues that Hume’s central concern in T 1.4.7 is to find a way to rely upon his cognitive faculties in spite of what he has learned about them in the preceding sections of part 4. The trouble is that having identified the understanding with "the general and more establish'd properties of the imagination" (T 1.4.7.6; SBN 267), Hume finds that these properties cannot function apart from other "seemingly trivial" ones, which calls into question the trustworthiness of his cognitive (...) faculties. I claim that Hume justifies this reliance by appealing to what Don Garrett has termed the "title principle," which enables him to practice "true scepticism" by being diffident of his philosophical doubts as well as of his philosophical conviction" (T 1.4.7.14; SBN 273). (shrink)

There is a tradition perhaps as old as philosophy itself which sees the rationality of man – and in particular, the rationality of the philosopher - as both his essential and his redeeming characteristic; it can not unfairly be said that the discipline of philosophy at least is characterised by its dependence on reason. In this context, the philosophy of David Hume presents something of a stark challenge: Although interpretations vary as to the extent and nature of his scepticism, one (...) of the themes of his work is the limits and imperfections of human reason and the sceptical concerns this engenders. On Hume's system, reason is not the overlord of the imagination but at least in part subordinate to it, and can discover little or nothing without recourse to experience. -/- My aim here is to pinpoint the true nature of Hume's scepticism regarding reason, drawing chiefly on the Treatise but also to a lesser extent the Enquiry. After a brief overview of his project in the Treatise in section 1, I go on to give an account of Hume's conception of reason or the understanding, and the epistemological distinction between demonstrative and probable reasoning, in section 2. In section 3 I examine Hume's famous argument concerning induction, arguing that to read Hume as a sceptic regarding inference is a mistake and that to say induction is grounded in principles of the imagination is not to say that it is therefore irrational. In section 4 I examine the argument of Treatise 1.4.1, 'Of scepticism with regard to reason', and in section 5 the 'dangerous dilemma' to which it leads Hume in 1.4.7, arguing that whilst his treatment of the issues it raises is somewhat unsatisfactory in this section of the Treatise a better solution can be fashioned by appealing to a distinction between the general and the trivial properties of the imagination drawn elsewhere in both the Treatise and the Enquiry. Then in section 6 I conclude by offering my own attempt at characterising the extent of Hume's scepticism regarding reason, arguing that his “mitigated” scepticism is a scepticism about knowledge but not about belief, and that its chief aim is to ensure that we philosophise only on those subjects which are suitable for enquiry given the limits and frailties of our faculties; the “reflections of common life, methodized and corrected” (Enquiry 12.25, p.208) rather than “divinity” or “school metaphysics” (Enquiry 12.34, p.211). (shrink)

Review of Bredo Johnsen's "Righting Epistemology: Hume's Revolution" (OUP, 2017).

Hume's Treatise arguments concerning space, time, and geometry, especially ones involving his denial of infinite divisibility; have suffered harsh criticism. I show that in the section "Of the ideas of space and time," Hume gives important characterizations of his skeptical approach, in some respects Pyrrhonian, that will be developed in the rest of the Treatise. When that approach is better understood, the force of Hume's arguments can be appreciated, and the influential criticisms of them can be seen to miss the (...) mark. (shrink)

In this paper we argue that a dominant view of Humean naturalism involves a fundamental misconception of Hume's naturalist project. We shall show that the naturalist project as Hume conceives it is philosophically much more interesting than the form of naturalism commonly attributed to him. We shall also argue, however, that Hume's commitment to principles of empiricist epistemology prevented him from bringing his naturalist project to a satisfactory conclusion. Finally, we shall suggest that Wittgenstein shares Hume's conception of a philosophically (...) satisfactory form of naturalism, and that, unencumbered by empiricist doctrines, Wittgenstein was able to provide the sort of undogmatic unravelling of the sceptical problem that eluded Hume. (shrink)

S'attachant au Traité de la nature humaine de Hume, l'auteur essaie de montrer comment le concept moderne de naturalisme est un concept ambigu. D'un côté, Hume a ouvert la possibilité d'une science de la nature humaine, qui traite le sujet connaissant comme lui-même objet possible de connaissance. De l'autre côté, prenant en compte cette constitution du sujet connaissant comme pur fait et la réincorporant dans le flux de la vie (comme réalité et comme expérience), il a mis cette science aux (...) prises avec le risque du scepticisme, comme son envers. Dès lors, le naturalisme ne peut jamais être du seul ordre de la science. Focusing on Hume's Treatise of the Human Nature, the author tries to show how the modern concept of naturalism, according to its origin, is a very ambiguous one. On the one side, Hume has opened the possibility of a science of the human nature that deals with the knowing subject as itself a possible object of knowledge. On the other side, taking into account this constitution of the knowing subject as a mere fact and embodying it in the stream of life (as reality and as experience), he has confronted this science with the risk of skepticism, as its own back side. Thus naturalism can never be just science. (shrink)

The relation between scepticism and health is not considered in the same light by the sceptics and by their enemies. According to its enemies, scepticism is a disease of the soul that has no access to truth ; whereas for the sceptics, it is the only means to mental health. But in fact, things are more complex. Modern sceptics like Montaigne or Hume, see doubt as something that has to be overcome. They view scepticism as a critical moment leading to (...) health.RésuméEn ce qui concerne la santé et la maladie, le scepticisme est diversement apprécié par ses détracteurs ou ses adeptes. Pour les premiers, il est la figure même de la maladie de l’âme privée de vérité, pour les seconds il est le seul moyen d’atteindre la santé mentale. Mais les choses sont plus compliquées, car certains sceptiques modernes, comme Hume ou Montaigne, voient dans le doute un moment critique qu’il faut traverser. (shrink)

THE QUESTION TO BE CONSIDERED is the relation of Hume's celebrated scepticism to his own constructive philosophical projects and analyses. Since Thomas Reid there have been those who detect an unresolved tension between, on the one hand, Hume's Enlightenment devotion to science with its attendent opposition to dogmatism and superstition and, on the other, his explicitly sceptical manner and principles. Some (e.g., Green and Kolakowski) find this tension unresolvable in principle and utterly subversive of Hume's positive ambitions; others (e.g., Flew (...) and Passmore) propose revisionary interpretations of Hume that will mitigate the tension. Still others adopt the view made popular by Kemp Smith and Hendel, according to which the special virtue of Hume's philosophy is precisely his employment of the principle of "natural interpretation" to overcome the apparent conflict between science and scepticism. The reading of Hume proposed here fits comfortably into none of the traditions, largely because of the emphasis placed upon the changes, both in the character of Hume's scepticism and, more fundamentally, in his own conception of his philosophical project. I shall argue: that Hume began his study of human nature with reformist aspirations toward an accurate and serf-evident "science of man"; that the critical method adopted in pursuit of this goal occasioned corrosive doubts concerning the very possibility of science; that reflection upon the failure of his initial effort led Hume to replace his earlier scientific ideal with a less rigorous program of "natural, unforced interpretation"; that this new "academical philosophy" succeeded neither in providing workable criteria for distinguishing justifiable belief from superstition nor in avoiding the excesses of unmitigated scepticism; and, finally, that there is evidence that Hume was aware of and tacitly conceded these difficulties. (shrink)

Teaching Kant’s metaphysics to undergraduates in a survey course can be quite challenging. Specifically, it can be daunting to motivate interest in Kant’s project and present his system in an accessible way in a short amount of time. Furthermore, comprehending some of the important features of his requires some understanding of Hume’s skepticism. Unfortunately, students often misunderstand the extent and relevance of Hume’s skepticism. Here, I offer three strategies for presenting Kant’s metaphysics as a response to Hume. First, I describe (...) an exercise for presenting the problem of induction in a way that resonates with many students. Next, I provide a way of generating interest in Kant’s project so students are motivated to understand his position. Finally, I explain a game I use to bolster interest in Kant’s project and explain some of the more challenging aspects of the First Analogy. (shrink)

A Treatise of Human Nature opens with ambitious hopes for the science of man, but Hume eventually launches into a series of skeptical arguments that culminates in a report of radical skeptical despair. This essay is a preliminary exploration of how to interpret this surprising development. I first distinguish two kinds of surprise twist: those that are incompatible with some preceding portion of the work, and those that are not. This suggests two corresponding pictures of Hume. On one picture, he (...) believed the skeptical development to be at odds with something in early Treatise; on the other, he took these two portions of Book 1 to be perfectly compatible. After defending the claim that Hume endorsed both of these portions, I sketch two promising interpretations—a “perspectivist,” incompatibilist interpretation and a “post-skeptical,” compatibilist interpretation—and offer some reasons to favor the latter view. (shrink)

Hume's position in the history of philosophical scepticism can hardly be questioned. But the nature of his own philosophical scepticism is a matter of contention in both the historical and philosophical literatures. In this essay, I argue that a philosophical reconstruction of Hume's scepticism needs to pay attention to the way in which Hume and his contemporaries understood the place of sceptical thinking in the history of modern philosophy. When looked at in this context, Hume's philosophy of knowledge and the (...) understanding is self-evidently sceptical. It is so, because it develops both a critical and a positive view of what a sceptical attitude implies. From a critical perspective, Hume aims to show that human reason is incapable of being its own foundation. From a more positive perspective, Hume sketches a phenomenology of the understanding by developing a probabilistic and self-referential view of philosophical knowledge, one which is not different from common knowledge and which relies on the workings of human nature and the imagination to make sense of the world and of our actions. (shrink)

Kant's response to scepticism in the Critique of Pure Reason is complex and remarkably nuanced, although it is rarely recognized as such. In this paper, I argue that recent attempts to flesh out the details of this response by Paul Guyer and Michael Forster do not go far enough. Although they are right to draw a distinction between Humean and Pyrrhonian scepticism and locate Kant's response to the latter in the Transcendental Dialectic, their accounts fail to capture two important aspects (...) of this response. The first is that Kant's response to Pyrrhonian scepticism is also a response to Hume. The second is that aspects of this response are decidedly positive. In particular, I argue (1) that Kant believed Hume's scepticism manifested important elements of Pyrrhonian scepticism and (2) that both Pyrrhonian scepticism and Hume had a significant positive influence on the development of the Transcendental Dialectic. (shrink)

There are two major puzzles in Hume’s epistemology. The first involves Hume’s fall into despair in the conclusion of Book One of the Treatise. When Hume reflects back upon the results of his research, he becomes so alarmed that he nearly throws his books and papers into the fire. Why did his investigations push him towards such intense skeptical sentiments? What dark discoveries did he make? The second puzzle concerns the way in which Hume emerges from this skeptical crisis and (...) proceeds with his investigations. Why the sudden change of heart? What accounts for the return of hope? Each of these puzzles represents a serious challenge to traditional approaches to Hume’s epistemology. A proper solution to them requires a careful examination of Hume’s claims about the untrustworthiness of our cognitive faculties as well as his strategy for improving their performance. (shrink)

Most philosophers hold that the use of our deductive powers confers an especially strong warrant on some of our mathematical and logical beliefs. By contrast, many of the same philosophers hold that it is a matter of serious debate whether any inductive inferences are cogent. That is, they hold that we might well have no warrant for inductively licensed beliefs, such as generalizations. I argue that we cannot know that we know logical and mathemati- cal truths unless we use induction. (...) Our confidence in our logical and mathematical powers is not justified if we are inductive scep- tics. This means that inductive scepticism leads to a deductive scep- ticism. I conclude that we should either be philosophical sceptics about our knowledge of deduction and induction, or accept that some of our inductive inferences are cogent. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to make clear in what sense Hume's actually very radical scepticism can nevertheless be called moderate, and not only leaves intact the praxis in daily life but is even compatible with a — modest and experimental — form of science. The first part stresses the theoretical profoundness of Hume's scepticism, and more specifically the arguments concerning the validity of reason and those concerning some typically 'metaphysical' objects . The former culminate in the impossibility of (...) determining a criterion of correctness and consequently in the degenerating of all knowledge into probability. The latter exceed the information of the senses, are therefore 'groundless' and yet in a way ineradicable, not as explanatory principles of reason but as factual constituents of human nature. The result is an overwhelming amount of contradictions and fictions within human imagination, mainly due to the inevitable presence of two contradictory beliefs , none of which are justifiable. In the second part it is shown how Hume succeeds in conquering scepticism without actually rebutting or revoking it. He is able to do so because his scepticism had, in fact, from the very beginning been elaborated as a form of naturalism, gradually minimizing the strength as well as the importance of reason as a theory, while at the same time stressing the deeply rooted and ultimately reliable character of reason as a praxis. The achievement of this naturalistic doctrine of 'belief is threefold : first, it is a critical weapon against metaphysical fictions, second, it gives man, and even the rational philosopher, an ineradicable peace of mind, and finally, it is the foundation of a special sort of science — the critical, experimentally rooted, modest and fundamentally doubtful science of human nature. (shrink)

Commentaries on Hume's Treatise 1.4.1, "Of scepticism with regard to reason," have focused on the argument that an initial lack of certainty concerning the conclusion of an inference gradually diminishes to zero. In my view, Hume offers this famous argument only after, and as corollary to, a far more interesting skeptical argument concerning demonstrative reasoning, which occurs at the very beginning of Treatise 1.4.1. I focus on this neglected argument, point to its Cartesian roots, and draw a distinction between ordinary (...) doubts and a radical skeptical doubt about the inevitable interference of fallible faculties in our demonstrative inferences. Hume suggests that, in common life and science, solutions to ordinary doubts concerning human fallibility themselves rely on causal reasoning-that we have applied inferential rules correctly in any given instance is a "matters of fact" conclusion, thus it is supported by the only kind of evidence that such a conclusion can have. Hume's argument brilliantly reverses the force of the increased confidence normally acquired on the basis of such causal reasoning. Once we have realized, in the radically skeptical frame of mind, that in our attempts to improve and evaluate demonstrative reasoning we use merely causal reasoning, there is no longer the hope of a progressive adjustment of the exercise of our faculties to an assumed objective validity of our demonstrative rules. The increase in assurance by causal methods only amounts to "the addition of new probabilities," and there is no gradual transition from probability to demonstratively certain knowledge. Hume thereby reaches a radical skeptical doubt regarding the possibility of our ever attaining genuinely certain demonstrative knowledge - and, unlike Descartes, he reaches this doubt without the external device of an all-powerful deceiver. Los comentarios sobre la sección "Of scepticism with regard to reason" en A Treatise on Human Nature de David Hume se han concentrado en el argumento según el cual, la falta inicial de convicción certera acerca de la conclusión de una inferencia cualquiera disminuye gradualmente a cero. Sostengo que Hume ofrece este famoso argumento solamente después y como corolario de un argumento escéptico mucho más interesante acerca del razonamiento deductivo, el cual aparece al principio de esta sección. Me concentro en este primer argumento, señalo sus raíces cartesianas, y establezco una distinción entre dudas comunes y una duda escéptica radical acerca de la interferencia inevitable, en nuestros razonamientos deductivos, de facultades mentales falibles. Hume sugiere que, en la vida cotidiana y en la ciencia, las soluciones a las dudas acerca de la falibilidad humana, en sí mismas se apoyan en razonamientos de carácter causal: si hemos aplicado correctamente una regla inferencial o no, en una instancia específica, es en sí misma una conclusión acerca de lo que Hume llama "matters of fact". Por lo tanto, está basada en el único tipo de evidencia que tal conclusión puede poseer. El argumento brillante de Hume invierte negativamente la confianza creciente que normalmente adquirimos sobre la base de tal razonamiento causal. Una vez que tomamos en cuenta, desde el punto de vista escéptico radical, que en nuestros intentos de mejorar y evaluar razonamientos deductivos usamos meramente razonamientos causales, se cierra la posibilidad de ajustar progresivamente el ejercicio de nuestras facultades mentales a una supuesta validez objetiva de las reglas de deducción. El aumento de la confianza en nuestras inferencias está basado en métodos causales, por lo tanto resulta en "la adición de nuevas probabilidades", y no existe una transición gradual desde la probabilidad más alta hasta el conocimiento certero demostrativo. De esta manera, Hume llega a una duda escéptica radical acerca de la posibilidad de lograr conocimiento demostrativo genuinamente certero. A diferencia de Descartes, Hume obtiene esta duda radical sin apelar a un elemento externo a nuestras facultades mentales, tal como el todopoderoso que engaña en la Primera Meditación de Descartes. (shrink)