Hume notoriously pursues a constructive science of human nature in the Treatise while raising serious skeptical doubts about that project and leaving them apparently unanswered. On the perspectivalist reading, Hume endorses multiple incommensurable epistemic perspectives in the Treatise. This reading faces two significant objections: that it renders Hume’s epistemology inconsistent (or at least highly incoherent) and that it is ad hoc. In this paper, I propose a perspectivalist account of epistemic justification in the Treatise that addresses, to a significant degree, (...) these concerns. Hume has available to him an account – what I will call epistemic dispositionalism – that is internally consistent, allows for epistemic continuity between perspectives, and is thoroughly grounded in his naturalism. (shrink)

Much of what Hume calls probable reasoning is deliberate and reflective. Since there are aspects to Hume’s psychology that tempt some commentators to think, on the contrary, that for Hume all such reasoning is simple and immediate, I will be concerned to emphasize Hume’s recognition of the sophisticated sort of probable reasoning (section I). Though some of the details of my case may be new, the overall point of this section should not be news to recent scholarship. But once we (...) recognize that this reflective and deliberate reasoning constitutes a significant portion of all probable reasoning, it becomes legitimate to ask how Hume accommodates this reasoning in his psychology, his ‘science of man.’ I believe that .. (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.

Much has been written about Kemp Smith's 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 the 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. Moreover, it is one that is of substantive philosophical interest, having intriguing parallels to contemporary epistemological accounts. (shrink)

Discussion on whether Hume's treatment of induction is descriptive or normative has usually centred on Hume's negative argument, somewhat neglecting the positive argument. In this paper, I will buck this trend, focusing on the positive argument. First, I argue that Hume's positive and negative arguments should be read as addressing the same issues . I then argue that Hume's positive argument in the Enquiry is normative in nature; drawing on his discussion of scepticism in Section 12 of the Enquiry, I (...) explain a framework by which he provides what I call consequent justification for our inductive practices in his positive argument. Based on this, I argue that his negative argument in the Enquiry should similarly be read as normative in nature. (shrink)

Disputants in the debate regarding whether Hume's argument on induction is descriptive or normative have by and large ignored Hume’s positive argument (that custom is what determines inferences to the unobserved), largely confining themselves to intricate debates within the negative argument (that inferences to the unobserved are not founded on reason). I believe that this is a mistake, for I think Hume’s positive argument to have significant implications for the interpretation of his negative argument. In this paper, I will argue (...) that Hume’s positive and negative arguments should be read as addressing the same issues, whether normative or causal. I will then focus on the Enquiry version of Hume’s positive argument, arguing that it carries a significant normative conclusion: there, Hume argues that custom plays a normative role in justifying our inductive inferences. Given that Hume’s positive argument should be read as addressing the same issues as his negative argument, we should correspondingly read Hume’s negative argument in the Enquiry as having a normative conclusion. (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)

The word ‘naturalism’ has a bewildering array of uses in philosophy. Roughly speaking, it connotes pro-scientific attitudes and approaches. This article introduces the subject of naturalism by sketching a history of pro-scientific attitudes and approaches in philosophy, from their origins in the early modern period through to the present day. It then distinguishes a number of distinct families of naturalism: metaphysical, logico-linguistic, epistemological, and methodological. The resulting taxonomy encompasses a plurality of loosely related views rather than a number of variations (...) on a single clear and unified theme. (shrink)

This paper explores the common ground in the views on natural law, justice and sociopolitical development in Hume and Spinoza. Spinoza develops a radically revisionary position in the natural law debate, building upon the bold equation of right and power. Hume is best interpreted as offering a skeptical–empirical reworking of traditional natural law theories, which maintains much of the practical purport of these theories, while providing it with a new, metaphysically less firm, but also less problematic, foundation. What the two (...) philosophers have in common is that they formulate realist revisions of the natural law tradition in the light of their more general naturalistic, secular philosophical commitments. Both philosophers, moreover, point to the slow development of man’s insight in the laws of nature, arising through a gradual accumulation of experiential insights. These insights are never wholly ‘liberated’ from the historical and imaginative perspective in which they arise. Accordingly, although rational progress brings the systems of justice and politics of different groups of people closer to each other, they necessarily retain, sometimes fundamentally incompatible, divergences. In the tradition of Machiavellian political realism, therefore, both Spinoza and Hume plead for judging political orders according to their own merits: do they, in their own specific ways, bring about a sufficient degree of order and liberty? (shrink)

A well known skeptical paradox rests on the claim that we lack warrant to believe that we are not brains in a vat. The argument for that claim is the apparent impossibility of any evidence or argument that we are not BIVs. Many contemporary philosophers resist this argument by insisting that we have a sort of warrant for believing that we are not BIVs that does not require having any evidence or argument. I call this view ‘New Rationalism’. I argue (...) that New Rationalists are committed to there being some evidence or argument for believing that we are not BIVs anyway. Therefore, New Rationalism, since its appeal is that it purportedly avoids the problematic commitment to such evidence or argument, undermines its own appeal. We cannot avoid the difficult work of coming up with evidence or argument by positing some permissive sort of warrant. (shrink)

The scandal to philosophy and human reason, wrote Kant, is that we must take the existence of material objects on mere faith . In contrast, the skeptical paradox that has scandalized recent philosophy is not formulated in terms of faith, but rather in terms of justification, warrant, and entitlement. I argue that most contemporary approaches to the paradox (both dogmatist/liberal and default/conservative) do not address the traditional problem that scandalized Kant, and that the status of having a warrant (or justification) (...) that is derived from entitlement is irrelevant to whether we take our beliefs on mere faith. For, one can have the sort of warrant that most contemporary anti-skeptics posit while still taking one’s belief on mere faith. An alternative approach to the traditional problem is sketched, one that still makes use of contemporary insights about “entitlement.”. (shrink)

In this paper, we argue that revisionary theories about the nature and extent of Hume's scepticism are mistaken. We claim that the source of Hume's pervasive scepticism is his empiricism. As earlier readings of Hume's Treatise claim, Hume was a sceptic – and a radical one. Our position faces one enormous problem. How is it possible to square Hume's claims about normative reasoning with his radical scepticism? Despite the fact that Hume thinks that causal reasoning is irrational, he explicitly claims (...) that one can and should make normative claims about beliefs being ‘reasonable’. We show that even though Hume thinks that our causal beliefs are rationally unjustified, there is nonetheless a ‘relative’ sense of justification available to Hume and that he relies on this ‘relative’ sense in those places where he makes normative claims about what we ought to believe. (shrink)