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Humes Criterion of Significance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Michael Williams
Michael Williams*
Affiliation:
Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, 60201
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Extract

I

There are various ways of being a sceptic. Most obviously, perhaps, versions of scepticism can differ with respect to scope. Scepticism can be universal; it can be directed against beliefs belonging to certain broad kinds, say beliefs having to do with the external world; or it can be quite focussed, as in the case of religious scepticism. But there is also the question of force. Some philosophers treat scepticism as a purely theoretical affair, defining it as the thesis that knowledge is impossible. This kind of scepticism, theoretical scepticism, has no essential connection with any particular sceptical practice. A theoretical sceptic does not necessarily entertain doubts or suspend judgment about any particular matter of fact or theory. He may think that the problem of induction is insoluble yet not be seriously concerned that the sun will not rise tomorrow. But in other versions, the force of scepticism is taken to be practical, in which case to be a sceptic is to entertain doubts or suspend judgment, and not just to take a certain theoretical position in epistemology.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 15 , Issue 2 , June 1985 , pp. 273 - 304
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1985

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References

1 For various forms of this view, see Ayer, A.J. Hume (New York: Hill and Wang 1980);Google Scholar Basson, A.H. David Hume (Harmondsworth: Penguin 1958)Google Scholar, also published as Cavendish, A.P. David Hume (New York: Dover 1968);Google Scholar Bennett, Jonathan Locke, Berkeley, Hume (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1971);Google Scholar Flew, Anthony Hume's Philosophy of Belief (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul 1961);Google Scholar MacNabb, D.G.C. David Hume (2nd edition, Hamden, CT: Archon 1966);Google Scholar Pears, David Bertrand Russell and the British Tradition in Philosophy (London: Fontana 1967), ch. 2;Google Scholar Zabeeh, Farhang Hume: Precursor of Modern Empiricism (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff 1961).Google Scholar The title of Zabeeh's book captures perfectly the guiding idea behind this approach to Hume.

2 Ayer, 32. ‘Meaning-empiricism’ is a phrase of Bennett's.

3 This terminology is Bennett's.

4 Hume, An Abstract of a Treatise of Human Nature, in Hume, Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding, ed. Hendel, Charles W. (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill 1955), 186.Google Scholar

5 I should note that the standard view has not been universally received. Dissenting opinions can be found in Capaldi, Nicholas David Hume: The Newtonian Philosopher (Boston: Tawayne 1975)Google Scholar and in Noxon, James Hume's Philosophical Development (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1973).Google Scholar However, Capaldi's rejection of the standard view is equivocal. Although prepared to allow that the copy principle is ‘an empirical generalisation,’ thus to dismiss the charge of psychologism, he holds that ‘it is clear that Hume wants to use this empirical generalisation as a rule or maxim, in much the same way that the logical positivists were to use the principle of verifiability.’ (Capaldi, 87). As I show in section 3, this is anything but clear. Of all the commentators mentioned so far, Noxon is much the most acute. He recognizes that ‘The critical picture of Hume dismissing philosophical terms as meaningless (or ideas as fictions) by an automatic application of the copy principle is so gross an over-simplification that it bears almost no relation to his practice as an analyst.’ Hume's aim is rather ‘to explain how terms which are, in the sense intended, empirically vacuous found their way into the philosophical vocabulary.’ (Noxon, 145) However, though a perceptive reader, sensitive to the constructive and naturalistic side of Hume's philosophy, Noxon remains at one whith the standard view in holding that the copy principle is ‘the basis of Hume's empiricist criterion of meaning, and it is relentlessly applied in the destructive analysis of a succession of concepts, principles and doctrines’ (19). I want to make a much more radical break with the recent tradition and to argue, not just that Hume does more than level brute charges of insignificance, but that such charges as he does level are not and could not be based on a simple application of the copy principle. The ‘precursor of modem empiricism’ view of Hume is rejected unequivocally in Stroud, Barry Hume (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul 1977).Google Scholar Stroud, however, falls into a different error, that of playing down the critical side of Hume's philosophy that the standard view, albeit unsuccessfully, tries to account for.

6 Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, edited by Smith, Norman Kemp (London: Nelson 1947), 135.Google Scholar

7 Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, edited by Selby-Bigge, L.A. (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1888), 183.Google Scholar Future references to this work given by THN’ and page number.

8 THN, 183

9 Hume, Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, edited by Selby-Bigge, L.A. 3rd edition revised by Nidditch, P.H. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975), 160.Google Scholar Future references to this work given by ‘EHU’ and page number.

10 THN, XX

11 THN, 225

12 THN, 225

13 THN, 96

14 THN, 96n

15 THN, 188

16 THN, 33

17 Smith, Norman Kemp The Philosophy of David Hume (London: Macmillan 1941), 276CrossRefGoogle Scholar

18 THN, 34

19 THN, 35

20 THN, 36

21 THN, 162

22 THN, 167

23 THN, 161-2

24 Passmore, John Philosophical Reasoning (2nd edition, London: Duckworth 1970), 84Google Scholar

25 THN, 166

26 THN, 160

27 THN, 161

28 THN, 188

29 THN, 222

30 THN, 229

31 THN, 17

32 THN, 19-20

33 THN, 34

34 THN, 34

35 THN, 53

36 THN, 37

37 THN, 37

38 THN, 161

39 THN, 160

40 THN, 161

41 THN, 168

42 THN, 161

43 THN, 220

44 THN, 228-9

45 EHU, 154-5

46 EHU, 155

47 THN, 251

48 THN, 233

49 THN, 233

50 THN, 254

51 This breakdown is not unique. Hume's discussion of ‘the antient philosophy’ at Treatise 1.4.3. incorporates a more general discussion of the attribution of numerical identity to (specifically) changing objects.

52 THN, 18-19

53 THN, 19

54 THN, 19-20

55 THN, 19

56 Bennett, 229

57 Pall S. Ardal, ‘Convention and Value,’ in Morice, G.P. ed., David Hume: Bicentenary Papers (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press 1977).Google Scholar Quoted phrases from p. 54 and p. 57. Ardal goes on to locate Hume's positive views about linguistic meaning in the discussion of implicit conventions in Treatise Book III. This is suggestive but does not help much with the main problem of this paper which is to give an explanatory account of the scope and basis of Hume's meaning-scepticism. On this topic, Ardal's brief remarks do not go much beyond the standard view, for he holds that when Hume suspects an expression of being insignificant his procedure amounts to a challenge to philosophers to ‘point out the circumstances in which the use of the expression can be learned’ (67). Although Ardal relies heavily on Hume's discussion of abstract ideas to support his contention that Hume did not hold an imagist theory of meaning, he does not see the importance of Hume's views on this topic for his meaning-scepticism.