Hume: Epistemology

Skepticism and naturalism bear important connections with one another. Do they conflict or are they different sides of the same coin? In this paper, by considering the ways in which Sextus and Hume have examined these issues, I offer a Pyrrhonian response to Penelope Maddy's attempt to reject skepticism within the form of naturalism that she calls “second philosophy” (Maddy, 2007, 2017) and to Timothy Williamson's attempt to avoid skepticism from emerging within his knowledge-first approach (Williamson, 2000). Some lessons about (...) Pyrrhonism result. (shrink)

I offer reasons against reading Hume as a Pyrrhonian sceptic. I argue that Hume's scepticism is motivated differently, that his sceptical strategies are not analogous to Pyrrhonism's, and that it is profitable to read Hume as a critic of Pyrrhonism. I hold that the most informative point of comparison between Hume and Sextus Empiricus is a point of difference, namely, their stands on the connection between suspension of judgement and tranquillity. For Sextus, tranquillity flows naturally from suspending judgement on all (...) opinions. Hume, by contrast, consistently treats radical suspension of judgement as resulting in despair and social detachment. I take a firmer stance than past commentators on this issue by affirming that Hume and Sextus do not merely disagree on this issue, but that Hume's view is more plausible. Reading Hume's sceptical crisis, I propose, reveals an insightful criticism of Pyrrhonism, one that sheds light on human nature's response to radical doubt. (shrink)

Hume's account of belief is understood to be inspired by allegedly incompatible motivations, one descriptive and expressing Hume's naturalism, the other normative and expressing Hume's epistemological aims. This understanding assumes a particular way in which these elements are distinct: an assumption that I dispute. I suggest that the explanatory-naturalistic aspects of Hume's account of belief are not incompatible with the normative-epistemological aspects. Rather, at least for some central cases of belief formation that Hume discusses at length, S's coming to believe (...) that p can be explained in a way that vindicates S's belief that p. (shrink)

Brian Ribeiro’s slim volume presents a comparative study of three of the most important figures in the history of skepticism: Sextus Empiricus, Michel de Montaigne, and David Hume. Ribeiro’s rich text, like most of his work, is written in a colloquial, easy style that nearly masks the considerable erudition informing his thought. This text, in fact, gathers, synthesizes, and expands on the substantial work with which Ribeiro has been engaged for decades. Drawing from that precedent research, Ribeiro’s focus here is (...) the possible scope of skepticism, the implications of that scope for rationality, and the value skeptical philosophy promises. (Ribeiro makes clear that his objective is not to establish his reading as... (shrink)

Abstract:Hume described himself as an Academic skeptic and aligned himself with the skepticism of Socrates and Cicero. I argue, though, that Hume transformed the meaning of Academic skepticism by associating it with an experimental rather than dialectical method. In this essay, I distinguish between those aspects of Cicero’s Academic skepticism that Hume adopted and those he discarded in his presentation of mitigated skepticism in the first Enquiry. I then consider the implications of Hume’s transformation of Academic skepticism for Hume’s polite (...) eloquence in the Essays, particularly the essays on happiness, which are often described as possessing “Ciceronian” and “dialectical” elements. Hume’s transformation of Academic skepticism is essential to helping readers understand not only Hume’s alleged neo-Hellenism, but also the aims of his philosophical project. (shrink)

Was David Hume radically sceptical about our attempts to understand the world or was he merely approaching philosophical problems from a scientific perspective? Most philosophers today believe that Hume's outlook was more scientific than radically sceptical and that his scepticism was more limited than previously supposed. If these philosophers are correct, then Hume's approach to philosophy mirrors the approach of many contemporary philosophers. This similarity between Hume and many aspects of contemporary philosophy suggests that we should try to understand Hume (...) not as an historical relic but as a partner in a continuing philosophical dialogue. When we look closely at Hume's thoughts about human understanding, we find that Hume's scepticism emerges very insistently in the context of Hume's scientific approach. This book tries to come to terms with Hume's scepticism in a way that sheds light on contemporary philosophy and its relationship to science. (shrink)

A plea for natural philosophy --On the question of realism --Hume and Reid --Moore's hands --Wittgenstein on hinges --A note on truth and reference --The philosophy of logic --A Second Philosophy of logic --Psychology and the a priori sciences --Do numbers exist? --Enhanced if-thenism.

This book aims to discuss probability and David Hume's inductive scepticism. For the sceptical view which he took of inductive inference, Hume only ever gave one argument. That argument is the sole subject-matter of this book. The book is divided into three parts. Part one presents some remarks on probability. Part two identifies Hume's argument for inductive scepticism. Finally, the third part evaluates Hume's argument for inductive scepticism.

Introduction. The article is devoted to the epistemology of communicative knowledge. It is argued that the central problem in the analysis of such knowledge is the question of the status of testimony. The author discusses reductionism and non-reductionism as two traditional approaches to the problem of trust to testimony. The aim of the article is to describe the arguments of both approaches and to carry out their critique. Methodology and sources. The author uses the method of conceptual analysis to address (...) the task at hand. The primary sources of the paper include the works of the classics of the theory of knowledge – D. Hume and T. Reid. The secondary sources include works of modern authors, belonging to the Anglo-American philosophical tradition. Results and discussion. Reductionism argues that although testimonial beliefs can be accepted on the basis of the reliability of the informant, the testimony itself does not provide justification. Ultimately, reductionism reduces testimony to another source of justification, such as perception or memory. The article explains that reductionism's weakness is to account for normal social interactions when the reliability of the speaker is unknown. Non-reductionism argues that testimony does not provide justification by reduction to other sources. Testimony itself is a valid form of social proof. The informant does not need additional positive reasons to accept the speaker's claims as valid. Testimony is justified by default unless it is proven false or unreliable. However, the weakness of non-reductionism is the relativistic implication in cases of cognitive asymmetry between the informant and the informant. Conclusion. The article concludes that reductionism and non-reductionism are equally unsatisfactory theories. The author believes that the formation of communicative knowledge does not depend on trust in the informant's testimony. It is proposed to consider the issue of trust in the informant himself as an epistemic agent. It is suggested that such an analysis should start from an virtue epistemology. (shrink)

Hume often praises and appeals to the theoretical virtue of simplicity in his philosophy. Yet there has been relatively little scholarship done on Hume’s conception of theoretical simplicity. This paper will look to rectify this lacuna in the literature. In particular, it will look to answer three questions as they relate to Hume’s philosophy. First, what is theoretical simplicity? Second, why should we favour simpler theories over more complex ones? Third, can a theory be too simple, and if so, how?The (...) paper will argue that for Hume, theoretical simplicity concerns the causal explanation of phenomena in terms of the fewest possible causes. Second, simplicity has both epistemic and aesthetic value for Hume. While he does not follow his contemporaries in appealing to God to justify the truth-conduciveness of theoretical simplicity, some of his discussions of this virtue include elements suggestive of a meta-inductive justification of it. In addition, Hume also sees theoretical simplicity as having an intrinsic aesthetic value over and above its epistemic merit. Third, Hume recognises that there are both epistemic and aesthetic tradeoffs involved with theoretica lsimplicity, which might rule against an overly simple theory. (shrink)

In the appendix to the Treatise, Hume retracts his claim that perceptions with the same object only vary with respect to vivacity. In material in the appendix that he tells his reader to insert in Book 1, he explains his reasons: the vivacity connected to belief is different in kind from that from the vivacity connected to poetry. Poetry can be more vivid, in its way, than belief. Since Hume’s main arguments for the thesis that beliefs are vivid ideas in (...) the main body of the Treatise depend on the assumption that ideas with the same object only vary in vivacity, he owes us new arguments from his claim. He provides various arguments for a slightly revised thesis that belief is a sort of vivid idea at the beginning of the appendix. Three of these arguments, an argument from introspection, an argument from the involuntariness of belief, and an appeal to the explanatory power of his account are preserved in the first Enquiry. (shrink)

ABSTRACT David Hume’s attacks on causality and induction along with his celebrated is-ought dichotomy dealt a blow to the human mind from which Western civilization has never fully recovered. Centuries after his death, Hume remains immensely popular among academic philosophers, which only bolsters the myth that his skeptical arguments are unanswerable. In fact, his arguments are seriously flawed. The first part of this paper clarifies the basics of Hume’s philosophy, focusing on the epistemology in the Treatise and Enquiry. The second (...) part exposes the mistaken premises and assumptions in Hume’s arguments, demonstrating how Objectivism redeems the validity of human knowledge. (shrink)

This work, first published in 1985, offers a general interpretation of Hume's Treatise of Human Nature. Most Hume scholarship has either neglected or downplayed an important aspect of Hume's position - his scepticism. This book puts that right, examining in close detail the sceptical arguments in Hume's philosophy.

A natural reading of Hume’s distinction between impressions and ideas is that impressions are forceful perceptions whereas ideas are faint. A problem emerges, however, when Hume countenances the possibility of faint impressions and forceful ideas. In this paper, I attempt a resolution to the problem. I argue that Hume characterizes impressions and ideas intensionally and extensionally, and sometimes uses the term in only one of the two senses. I argue that Hume intensionally defines impressions and ideas as forceful perceptions and (...) weak perceptions, respectively, but takes these to be extensionally equivalent to original and copied perceptions, respectively. Hume recognizes that his two characterizations—the intensional and extensional—don’t perfectly match up, and that there are exceptions to the purported equivalences (the exceptions being disease, sleep, madness, and enthusiasm). Nonetheless, I argue that Hume’s willing to proceed with his definitions. (shrink)

Hume's epistemological legacy is often perceived as a predominantly negative sceptical one. His infamous problem of induction continues to perplex philosophers to this day, and many of his sceptical worries maintain their interest in contemporary eyes (e.g. with regard to reason, the senses, substance, causation). Yet Hume's positive epistemological contributions also hold significance for philosophy in this day and age. In this paper, I aim to situate Hume's epistemology in a more contemporary context, particularly with regard to the theme of (...) reliabilism that runs throughout this epistemology. This will take the shape of examining correspondences and contrasts between Hume's epistemologies in the Treatise and Enquiry and reliabilism, as well as an examination of how Hume's framework might handle some major challenges for reliabilist epistemologies. In particular, I argue that that while Hume is tempted to an epistemology that is intimately tied to truth in the Treatise, he backs away when confronted with the excesses of scepticism in the conclusion of Book 1, and winds up with an epistemology most similar to the contemporary epistemological frameworks of dogmatism and phenomenal conservatism. Yet, largely because of his reliance on the passions (a respect in which he diverges from these two contemporary frameworks), the epistemology of the Treatise remains crucially dissociated from truth. Meanwhile, in the first Enquiry, he proceeds to develop a two-tiered epistemological framework that first accords all our justification with default authority, and then founds all-things-considered epistemic justification on our evidence for the reliability of our faculties. The first tier most resembles the contemporary epistemological framework of conservatism, while the second tier most closely resembles approved-list reliabilism. In this, a clear reliabilist thread runs through the epistemology of the Enquiry. I will also argue that although Hume did not appear to fully appreciate one of the most significant challenges for reliabilism-that is, the generality problem-his philosophical framework nevertheless contains the beginnings of a response to it. (shrink)

Peter S. Fosl offers a radical interpretation of Hume as a thoroughgoing sceptic on epistemological, metaphysical and doxastic grounds. He first contextualises Hume's thought in the sceptical tradition and goes on to interpret the conceptual apparatus of his work - including the Treatise, Enquiries, Essays, History, Dialogues and letters.

Recent work on Mary Shepherd has largely focused on her metaphysics, especially as a response to Berkeley and Hume. However, relatively little attention has thus far been paid to the epistemological aspects of Shepherd’s program. What little attention Shepherd’s epistemology has received has tended to cast her as providing an unsatisfactory response to the skeptical challenge issued by Hume. For example, Walter Ott and Jeremy Fantl have each suggested that Shepherd cannot avoid Hume’s inductive skepticism even if she is granted (...) her metaphysics. In this paper, I examine Shepherd’s epistemology and argue that her response to Hume is more successful than the current literature suggests. In particular, I argue that, if Shepherd is granted her metaphysics, she can answer Hume’s demand for a rational justification of ordinary inductive inferences via a deductively justified uniformity principle and an appeal to parsimony. (shrink)

En este capítulo se ofrece una posible crítica de Hume a Descartes en torno a la imaginación y el entendimiento. Primero se analiza el concepto de imaginación en Descartes y se sostiene que el concepto es equívoco, ya que en un sentido carece de valor epistémico pero en otro sentido sí lo tiene. A continuación se explora el concepto de imaginación como una facultad subordinada al entendimiento y se observan sus repercusiones en Spinoza y Leibniz. Finalmente se exponen las críticas (...) de Kant y Hume con respecto a los límites del entendimiento y se ofrece una posible crítica de Hume a Descartes en torno a la imaginación y el entendimiento. (shrink)

What is knowledge? Why is it valuable? How much of it do we have, and what ways of thinking are good ways to use to get more of it? These are just a few questions that are asked in epistemology, roughly, the philosophical theory of knowledge. This is Epistemology is a comprehensive introduction to the philosophical study of the nature, origin, and scope of human knowledge. Exploring both classic debates and contemporary issues in epistemology, this rigorous yet accessible textbook provides (...) readers with the foundation necessary to start doing epistemology. Organized around 11 key subtopics, and assuming no prior knowledge of the subject, this volume exposes readers to diverse, often contentious perspectives—guiding readers through crucial debates including Hume’s problem of induction, Descartes’ engagement with radical skepticism, rationalist and empiricist evaluations of a priori justification, and many more. The authors avoid complex technical terms and jargon in favor of an easy-to-follow, informal writing style with engaging chapters designed to stimulate student interest and encourage class discussion. Throughout the text, a wealth of up-to-date references and links to online resources are provided to enable further investigation of an array of epistemological topics. A balanced and authoritative addition to the acclaimed This is Philosophy series, This is Epistemology is a perfect primary textbook for philosophy undergraduates, and a valuable resource for general readers with interest in this important branch of philosophy. (shrink)

Much has been written about Kemp Smith’s (1941) famous problem regarding the tension between Hume’s naturalism and his scepticism. However, most commentators have focused their attention on the Treatise; those who address Enquiry often take it to express essentially the same message as the Treatise. When Hume’s scepticism in the Enquiry has been investigated in its own right, commentators have tended to focus on Hume’s inductive scepticism in Sections 4 and 5. All in all, it seems that Section 12 has (...) been unduly neglected. This paper seeks to address Kemp Smith’s problem from the standpoint of Hume’s treatment of scepticism in EHU 12, and finds an interesting internalist account that makes sense both of Hume’s discussion in EHU 12 and his aims in the Enquiry as a whole, as well as one that is of philosophical interest, having intriguing parallels to contemporary epistemological accounts. (shrink)

A contemporary debate concerning the epistemology of testimony is portrayed by its protagonists as having its origins in the eighteenth century and the respective views of David Hume and Thomas Reid. Hume is characterized as a reductionist and Reid as an anti-reductionist. This terminology has been widely adopted and the reductive approach has become synonymous with Hume. In Sect. 1 I spell out the reductionist interpretation of Hume in which the justification possessed by testimonially-acquired beliefs is reducible to the epistemic (...) properties of perception, memory and inductive inference. This account of testimony is taken to be found in the section ‘On Miracles’ of Hume’s Enquiry concerning Human Understanding. In Sect. 2 I introduce the distinction between global and local reductionism, and Coady’s interpretation of Hume as a global reductionist. He takes Hume’s position to be untenable. The rest of the paper explores alternative interpretations of Hume. Section 3 develops a local reductionist interpretation of Hume on testimony. It is argued, though, that such an approach is unstable and, in response, Sect. 4 turns to anti-reductionism in its contemporary forms and in Reid’s teleological account. In Sect. 5 I argue for an anti-reductionist account of Hume, one drawn from his discussion of the testimony of history in the Treatise of Human Nature, thus moving away from the usually exclusive focus upon the discussion of miracles in the first Enquiry, upon which the reductionist interpretation is based. Given the standard meaning of ‘Humeanism’ in the current debate, my interpretation amounts to the claim that Hume is not a Humean with respect to testimony. (shrink)

My aim in this chapter is twofold. I attempt to provide an example of how (1) careful analysis in the history of philosophy can (2) elucidate contemporary debates about philosophical issues. My analysis of Hume’s account of the contagion of belief unfolds in three parts. In section one, I offer a summary of Hume’s account of the nature of beliefs concerning matters of fact. In section two, I elucidate his account of the “contagion of opinion” itself, explaining how beliefs are (...) contagious, why the contagious nature of beliefs is so powerful, and how people can resist the contagion. In section three, I elucidate the significance of Hume’s account of contagious beliefs for his account of doxastic virtues and explain the conditions under which it is virtuous to resist contagious beliefs. (shrink)

In this paper, I offer a novel interpretation of THN 1.4.7, which sees his sceptical problem and solution in THN 1.4.7 as taking a broadly deontological structure. Briefly, I read the ‘Dangerous Dilemma’ (THN 1.4.7.6-7) as embodying a false dichotomy between two deontological extremes concerning reflection, that is, thinking carefully about our mental states and faculties. The two horns of the Dangerous Dilemma are as follows: either embracing an absolute duty to constantly and incessantly reflect (leading to excessive scepticism); or (...) maintaining that it is not the case that we have any duty to reflect to any degree (leading to credulity). Hume thus seeks to straddle these two horns and find a deontological middle path. The resolution to this dilemma turns on Hume’s realising that we have a duty to reflect only up to a point. Beyond this threshold, there is a level of reflection that is not required of us, but which is nevertheless good; in other words, such reflection is supererogatory. However, this seems to render excessive scepticism supererogatory. This unintuitive outcome can be avoided by appealing to a suitable account of value beyond the deontological threshold that is founded on usefulness and agreeableness. In the end, Hume manages to tread a path between scepticism and credulity, while nevertheless rejecting superstition and endorsing science and philosophy. (shrink)

The paper is about some epistemological ideas of David Hume. At first, I give a review of his most influential epistemological conceptions: his exposition of the problem of induction in the context of his investigation of the nature of empirical reasonings, his analysis of epistemic status of the principle of causation, and his skeptical arguments concerning existence of external world and demonstrative knowledge. Then I discuss those Hume’s epistemological ideas which, as I believe, are usually not rightly understood in literature (...) about Hume’s philosophy. They are connected to his theory of probabilistic reasonings. It is quite common to contrast his theory with approach of Thomas Bayes, but I try to show that in reality Hume’s theory is in perfect agreement with the Bayes’ theorem. In order to do this I interpret a topic of probability of our belief in testimonies of miracles, which Hume discusses, in terms of Bayes’ theorem: P = P x P // P. According to this interpretation a probability of veracity of testimony of a miracle diminishes with diminishing of probability of miracles and diminishes when probability of testimonies increases. That’s very Hume’s position. At the end of the paper I discuss Hume’s insights on non-rational aspects of human cognition, which had anticipated some recent developments in cognitive psychology. In this context I also consider a possibility of justification of our principles of empirical cognition in Hume’s epistemology. I argue that Hume gave a kind of justification of them after all in terms of final causes, and quite legitimate. (shrink)

The history of scepticism is assumed by many to be the history of failed responses to a problem first raised by Descartes. While the thought of the ancient sceptics is acknowledged, their principle concern with how to live a good life is regarded as bearing little, if any, relation to the work of contemporary epistemologists. In "Scepticism" Neil Gascoigne engages with the work of canonical philosophers from Descartes, Hume and Kant through to Moore, Austin, and Wittgenstein to show how themes (...) that first emerged in the Hellenistic period are inextricably bound up with the historical development of scepticism. Foremost amongst these is the view that scepticism relates not to the possibility of empirical knowledge but to the possibility of epistemological theory. This challenge to epistemology itself is explored and two contemporary trends are considered: the turn against foundationalist epistemology and towards more naturalistic conceptions of inquiry, and the resistance to this on the part of non-naturalistically inclined philosophers. In contextualizing the debate in this way Gascoigne equips students with a better appreciation of the methodological importance of sceptical reasoning, an analytic understanding of the structure of sceptical arguments, and an awareness of the significance of scepticism to the nature of philosophical inquiry. (shrink)

I argue that the Hume of the Treatise maintains an account of knowledge according to which (i) every instance of knowledge must be an immediately present perception (i.e., an impression or an idea); (ii) an object of this perception must be a token of a knowable relation; (iii) this token knowable relation must have parts of the instance of knowledge as relata (i.e., the same perception that has it as an object); and any perception that satisfies (i)-(iii) is an instance (...) of knowledge. I then apply this account to the case of sense perception. I argue that Hume holds that relations of impressions can be intuited, are knowable, and are necessary. For Hume, these relations constitute sensory knowledge. While Hume is rightly labeled an empiricist for many reasons, a close inspection of his account of knowledge reveals yet another way in which he deserves the label. (shrink)

This article surveys the state of the literature on Hume’s epistemology, focusing on treatments of what has come to be known as the ‘Kemp Smith problem’, that is, the problem of reconciling Hume’s scepticism with his naturalism. It first surveys the literature on this issue with regard to the Treatise, moving on to briefly compare the Treatise and the Enquiry in virtue of their epistemological frameworks, before finally examining the literature with regard to the first Enquiry.

This essay argues that Hume's political and historical thought is well read as skeptical and skeptical in a way that roots it deeply in the Hellenistic traditions of both Pyrrhonian and Academical thought. It deploys skeptical instruments to undermine political rationalism as well as theologically and metaphysically political ideologies. Hume's is politics of opinion and appearance. It labors to oppose faction and enthusiasm and generate suspension, balance, tranquility, and moderation. Because Hume advocate the use of reflectively generated but epistemically and (...) metaphysically suspensive general rules, his political thought is not intrinsically conservative. While it valorizes stability and peace, Humean politics accepts a contested and open-ended political order, one that requires continuous maintenance and revision but does not pretend to any ultimate or final progress or end. (shrink)

Self-consciousness can be understood as the ability to think I-thou-ghts which can be described as thoughts about oneself ‘as oneself’. Self-consciousness possesses two specific correlated features: the first regards the fact that it is grounded on a first-person perspective, whereas the second concerns the fact that it should be considered a consciousness of the self as subject rather than a consciousness of the self as object. The aim of this paper is to analyse a few considerations about Descartes and Hume’s (...) approaches to self-consciousness, as both philosophers introduce a first-personal method of accessing the subjective dimension through an introspective account. Descartes’s view on self-consciousness seems incapable of conceiving and recognizing herself as herself, while Hume’s seems to lack those features assigned to the consciousness of self-as-subject. (shrink)

Hume says we never have grounds to believe in miracles. He’s right, but many commentators misunderstand his theory of probability and therefore his argument. This book shows that Humean probability descends from Roman law, and once properly contextualized historically and philosophically, Hume’s argument survives the criticisms leveled against it.

Belief is a species of mere conception, and is modifiable, rather than bivalent (believing or disbelieving). The attendant-impression theory of transformation of conception into belief expresses the moral dimension of one and the same thing, of which the manner-of-conception (without attendant impression) theory of the transformation refers to the epistemic dimension of that same thing. These two aspects of the transformation of conception into belief point to an ambiguity in Hume's use of the term IDEA: as act and as content. (...) The act of conception, its content, and the pedigree of that content are all mutually indeterminate. The imagination conceives, constructs contents, and transforms conception into belief. The foundation of the role of mere conception in belief is the mind's "native situation of indifference", which makes it possible for Hume to account not only for warranted but also unwarranted belief. Hume is interested not only in what should actuate the soul but what does so in fact. Hume's real innovation lies in a theory of belief unburdened by traditional representation and in the effects rather than the external foundations of certitude. (shrink)

Righting Epistemology defends an unrecognized Humean conception of epistemic justification, showing that he is no skeptic, and an argument of his that refutes all extant alternative conceptions. It goes on to trace the development of his thought in Sir Karl Popper, Nelson Goodman, W. V. Quine and Ludwig Wittgenstein.

In this rigorous and thorough discussion of David Hume’s A Treatise of Human Nature 1.4, entitled “Of the sceptical and other systems of philosophy,” Donald Ainslie aims both to provide detailed textual exegeses of all seven sections, and to offer a way of understanding them as unified by the recurring theme of the dangers of “false” philosophy and a defense of “true” philosophy or “true scepticism.” To understand the compatibility of Hume’s skeptical conclusions and his philosophical ambitions, and so to (...) be in a position to properly interpret 1.4.7, we must “fully contextualize” it in “what has preceded it, especially elsewhere in Part 4”. Ainslie tells us he will argue “that true scepticism... (shrink)