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Humes Academic Scepticism: A Reappraisal of His Philosophy of Human Understanding

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

John P. Wright
John P. Wright*
Affiliation:
University of Windsor, Windsor, Ont., CanadaN9B 3P4
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Extract

A philosopher once wrote the following words:

If I examine the PTOLOMAIC and COPERNICAN systems, I endeavour only, by my enquiries, to know the real situation of the planets; that is, in other words, I endeavour to give them, in my conception, the same relations, that they bear towards each other in the heavens. To this operation of the mind, therefore, there seems to be always a real, though often an unknown standard, in the nature of things; nor is truth or falsehood variable by the various apprehensions of mankind. Though all human race should for ever conclude, that the sun moves, and the earth remains at rest, the sun stirs not an inch from his place for all these reasonings; and such conclusions are eternally false and erroneous.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 16 , Issue 3 , September 1986 , pp. 407 - 435
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1986

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References

1 David Hume, ‘The Sceptic,’ in The Philosophical Works of David Hume, 4 vols. ed. Green, T.H. and Grose, T.H. (London: 1892-96; reprinted by Aalen: Scientia Verlag 1964) Vol. 3, 217–18Google Scholar

2 Hume, David A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. Selby-Bigge, L.A. 2nd edition revised by Nidditch, P.H. (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1978);Google Scholar hereafter referred to as Treatise, followed by the page number.

3 ‘The Epicurean,’ in Philosophical Works, Vol. 3, 197, n.1

4 The account of human happiness described in the essay is closely connected with some of the conclusions reached in Hume's letter to an unknown physician (The Letters of David Hume, 2 vols. ed. Greig, J.Y.T. [Oxford: Clarendon Press 1932] Vol. 1, 12–18Google Scholar). In this remarkable document Hume records his own personal failure to live by the maxims of the Stoic philosophy. In The Sceptic' Hume argues, in the first place, that our ‘affections’ are of such ‘a very delicate nature, and cannot be forced or constrained by the utmost art or industry.’ Secondly, he argues that in curbing our ‘vicious passions’ such maxims would also extinguish ‘such as are virtuous’ and leave ‘the mind totally indifferent and unactive’ (224-5).

5 In a recent book, David Norton argues that Hume rejects ‘ethical or moral scepticism’: the latter is defined as a view ‘wherein the objectivity of moral distinctions is denied as a consequence of investigation into human motivation, belief, and action’ (David Hume: Common-Sense Moralist, Sceptical Metaphysician [Princeton: Princeton University Press 1982], 244). It is difficult to know who, in Hume's time, held the view which Norton describes. Hume himself, at the beginning of his Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, claims that those who deny the ‘reality of moral distinctions’ are entirely ‘disingenuous’ (Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding and Concerning the Principles of Morals, ed. L.A. Selby-Bigge, 3rd edition revised by P.H. Nidditch [Oxford: Clarendon Press 1975], 169). He himself opposes moral sceptics who have inferred that all moral distinctions arise from education - but he goes on to argue that such a view (while not correct) is based on some genuine philosophical insights. Hume argues in opposition to the moral sceptic that ‘any judicious enquirer’ must admit that moral distinctions are ‘founded on the original constitution of the mind.’ Such an admission is made by those who think that virtue pleases ‘either from considerations of self-interest, or from more generous motives and regards’ (214-15; italics are mine). Norton's prime candidate for a moral sceptic is Hobbes. But Hume appears to recognize that Hobbes believed that moral distinctions are based in self-interest and are thus rooted in the original constitution of the human mind. For Hume criticizes Hobbes for holding an incorrect account of the original constitution of the mind. This is the upshot of his criticism of the Hobbist state of nature in the Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (189). Moreover he argues that no man could ever behave in the manner of Hobbes’ natural man (Treatise, 402). Hume's account of the Hobbist theory of benevolence is a bit peculiar (Enquiry Concerning … Morals, 297), but at least it shows that Hume recognized that morality for Hobbes was based on an inference from the passions - not on education. I can find no evidence that Hume thought of Hobbes as a moral sceptic. Hume himself is a moral sceptic in a traditional sense. The ethical views of the Academics grew out of their criticisms of the principles of the Stoics; the appeal to what is in some sense natural was important both for Sextus Empiricus and Carnaedes (see Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism, in Sextus Empiricus, 4 vols., trans. R.G. Bury [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1961] Vol. 1, 17; Cicero, Academica, in Cicero, 28 vols. trans. H. Rackham [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1933] Vol. xix, 639). Hume adopted the view of the Academics, rather than the Pyrrhonists. Sextus notes that the former argue that ‘it is more probable that what they call good is really good rather than the opposite, and so too in the case of evil, whereas when we [the Pyrrhonists] describe a thing as good or evil we do not add it as our opinion that what we assert is probable, but simply conform to life undogmatically that we may not be precluded from activity’ (Sextus Empiricus, 139).

6 Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, 294

7 Price, H.H. Hume's Theory of the External World (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1940), 223Google Scholar

8 Price, H.H. ‘The Permanent Significance of Hume's Philosophy,’ Philosophy 15 (1940). 7–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9 Popkin, R.H. ‘Berkeley and Pyrrhonism,’ The Review of Metaphysics 5 (1951);Google Scholar reprinted in Burnyeat, M. ed., The Skeptical Tradition (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press 1983), 377–96,Google Scholar esp. 392.

10 Popkin, R.H. ‘David Hume: His Pyrrhonism and his Critique of Pyrrhonism,’ The Philosophical Quarterly 1 (1951);CrossRefGoogle Scholar reprinted in Chappell, V.C. ed., Hume: a Collection of Critical Essays (New York: Doubleday 1966) 53–98, 95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11 Robert Fogelin, ‘The Tendency of Hume's Skepticism,’ The Skeptical Tradition 397-412, esp. 399 & 410.

12 Sextus Empiricus, 7

13 Burnyeat, Myles ‘Can the Sceptic Live his Scepticism?’ in Schofield, M. Burnyeat, M. Barnes, J. eds., Doubt and Dogmatism: Studies in Hellenistic Epistemology (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1980) 20–53, esp. 34.Google Scholar

14 In Hume's own day the term was used mainly in the context of natural philosophy for whatever requires explanation. Indeed this seems to be the sense in which Hume uses the term - though his interest is mainly in moral rather than natural phenomena. I am indebted for these remarks to an unpublished paper by Mr. Tony Couture entitled ‘A Study of Hume's Phaenomena in the Treatise.’

15 Hume, David Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding in Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding and Concerning the Principles of Morals, 3rd ed., ed. by Selby-Bigge, L.A. revised by Nidditch, P.H. (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1975), 162;Google Scholar hereafter this work will be referred to as Enquiry followed by the page number.

16 Treatise, 79-80; cf. Enquiry 30, 63.

17 See Yolton, John W. Perceptual Acquaintance from Descartes to Reid (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 1984).Google Scholar

18 Antoine Arnauld et Nicole, Pierre La Logique ou L'Art de Penser (Paris: Flammarion 1970), 388:Google Scholar ‘Tout ce qui est contenu dans I'idée claire & distincte d'une chose, se peut affirmer avec verité de cette chose.’ This sentence is mistranslated in Arnauld, A. The Art of Thinking, trans. Dickoff, James and James, Patricia (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill 1964), 320.Google Scholar

19 Hume thought that an examination of these contents would reveal that they do not give us any idea of ‘independency’ (Treatise, 191; cf. 194). But this is clearly not the view of Descartes or Locke. See Wright, John P. The Sceptical Realism of David Hume (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 1983) 79–80, n.11.Google Scholar

20 For. strictly speaking, ‘the idea of an object is an essential part of the belief of it ...’(Treatise, 94) and we have in fact no proper idea of those objects we naturally suppose. However, Hume extends his account of belief to ‘fictions’ - that is, to confused ideas; these fictions form the basis of our natural suppositions. Thus, for Hume, one can believe in external existence without having a clear idea of external existence; one of the clear ideas which enters into our natural supposition of external existence is enlivened and thus the fiction is believed (Treatise, 208-9; cf. Williams, Michael ‘Hume's Criterion of Significance,’ Canadian Journal of Philosophy 15 (1985). 273-304,CrossRefGoogle Scholar esp. 283-4.

21 Penelhum, Terence God and Skepticism (Dordrecht: Reidel 1983), 124ff.Google Scholar

22 Sextus Empiricus, 11

23 Enquiry, 160; cf. Hume's description of the results of Berkeley's philosophy at Enquiry, 155.

24 In the final analysis this seems to be David Norton's interpretation of Hume's scepticism. According to Norton, Hume is said to be ‘diffident about those beliefs’ to which our natural propensities lead us (David Hume: Common-Sense Moralist, Sceptical Metaphysician, 202; cf. his ‘Review of Wright, John P. The Sceptical Realism of David Hume.’ Philosophical Books 25 (1984). 144–8Google Scholar). Norton argues that according to Hume one can actively challenge a belief to which one cannot be hesitantly disposed and thus doubt and not doubt at the same time (David Hume: Common-Sense Moralist, Sceptical Metaphysician, 288-9). The same view is espoused by Popkin in the article referred to in note 10 (95-6). But while Hume's academic sceptic is ‘diffident’ toward certain beliefs he is not diffident to those fundamental beliefs to which our natural propensities lead us. It would be a mistake to interpret Hume as recommending in the last section of the Enquiry (161ff.) that we be hesitant in accepting beliefs such as the basic beliefs in causal connection or external existence. In his A Letter from a Gentleman to his Friend in Edinburgh (Edinburgh, 1745; reprinted with an introduction by E.C. Mossner and J.V. Price [Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press 1967]), Hume wrote that ‘a Philosopher who affects to doubt of the Maxims of common Reason, and even of his Senses, declares sufficiently that he is not in earnest …’ (19). I believe that the doubting activity, which Norton in fact reduces to a mental disposition, should be identified with the activity of reason: for reason is capable of discovering the falsity of certain aspects of those beliefs which we hold on the basis of a natural propensity. Reason shows us that we lack evidence for our natural suppositions. It is true that Hume sometimes suggests that such reflection briefly leads us to a complete suspension of judgment. Thus, as Penelhum points out, in characterizing the results of his inquiries Hume describes himself as being ‘hesitant and dogmatic by turns’ (God and Skepticism, 124). But the point I wish to make is that this does not represent the final position on scepticism either in the Treatise or the Enquiry. For, unlike Malebranche and Berkeley, Hume rejects reason as the basis for our fundamental ontology; its positive function is to correct the ontology rooted in our natural suppositions.

25 Treatise, 213 (lines 15-17), 223 (lines 22-5)

26 See, for example, Gisela Stricker, ‘Sceptical Strategies,’ Doubt and Dogmatism, 54-83.

27 Cicero, Academica, 475Google Scholar

28 Outlines of Pyrrhonism, 139; Academica, 507-9; see Stough, Charlotte Greek Scepticism (Berkeley: University of California Press 1969), Chapter 3, esp. 40.Google Scholar

29 David Hume, An Abstract of a … Treatise of Human Nature, in David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, 2nd ed., ed. L.A. Selby-Bigge, rev. P.H. Nidditch, 647.

30 Locke, John An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. Nidditch, P.H. (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1979),Google Scholar Book 4, Chapter 15, Section 1; Hume adopts Locke's distinction between constant and inconstant connections in Book I, Part III, Sect. I of the Treatise.

31 For a discussion of the relation of Hume's and Locke's views on of probability see John P. Wright, ‘Association, Madness, and the Measures of Probability,’ in Fox, Christopher ed., Psychology and Literature in the Eighteenth Century (New York: A.M.S. Press, forthcoming).Google Scholar

32 See Shapiro, Barbara J. Probability and Certainty in Seventeenth-Century England (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1983).Google Scholar Chapter 2; also Patey, Douglas L. Probability and Literary Form (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1984),Google Scholar Part I, esp. 13-34. On the use of Cicero in the development of earlier modern ideas of probability see Lisa Jardine, ‘Lorenzo Valla: Academic Skepticism and the New Humanist Dialectic,’ in M. Burnyeat, ed., The Skeptical Tradition, 253-86.

33 The second form of mitigated scepticism identified in the Enquiry is one in which the mitigated sceptic ‘confines’ his judgment to “common life’ (162). This scepticism is in fact more extreme than that of the Treatise where, as we have seen (417 above) Hume is willing to go beyond common life in order to combat superstition. In The Sceptical Realism of David Hume (174-5) I have argued that Hume returns to the less extreme form of scepticism in his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion; it is only because he does so that he is able to carry off his radical critique of natural theology in that work.

34 Sextus Empiricus, 139-41; in using this last phrase I am employing the translation suggested at the bottom of page 140.

35 Treatise, 210 (lines 10-15); Treatise, 217 (lines 30-5); Enquiry, 152 (lines 28-32)

36 Compare my The Sceptical Realism of David Hume, 55-6. I have given an extended analysis of Hume's account of our belief in external existence in Chapter 2. For reasons which emerge in the present paper I am now less inclined to call Hume's theory of perception a representative one than I was when I wrote this chapter. Hume certainly holds an indirect theory of perception: but it is important to note that, according to him, one cannot simply read off the features of reality from our ideas and impressions.

37 The centrality of ‘suppositions’ in Hume's account of external existence was suggested to me in reading through Chapter IX of John Yolton's Perception Acquaintance from Descartes to Reid (see especially the section entitled ‘Suppositions and False Beliefs’ [173-6]). But I think that suppositions play a wider role in Hume's ontology than Yolton may originally have realized and that it is important to recognize that, according to Hume, suppositions of the imagination rather than genuine sense-derived ideas provide the basis for our ontology.

38 Treatise, 67 (lines 20-4), 239 (line 23-6); Enquiry, 152 (lines 18-22). On page 202 of the Selby-Bigge edition of the Treatise Hume tells his reader that he will temporarily withhold this distinction in order to accomodate himself to the thinking of the vulgar; the distinction is reintroduced on page 211. Compare Passmore, John Hume's Intentions, revised edition (London: Duckworth 1968), 90–1;Google Scholar Flew, Anthony Hume's Philosophy of Belief, (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul 1961), 47;Google Scholar Smith, N. Kemp ‘The Naturalism of David Hume,’ Mind 14 (1905) 149–73,CrossRefGoogle Scholar 335-47, esp. 169-70.

39 Monteiro, J.P. ‘Hume's Conception of Science,’ Journal of the History of Philosophy 19 (1981), 327–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar

40 Kant, Immanuel Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics, translation revised by Beck, L.W. (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill 1950), 6Google Scholar

41 In this paragraph I have outlined one of Hume's accounts of our belief in objective necessity. This coincides with one of two accounts which Hume presents in his Treatise. For a more complete description of Hume's theories and an account of the historical roots of the theory presented here see Wright, The Sceptical Realism of David Hume, 151-4.

42 There is really a two stage process by which the academic philosopher's view is obtained. In the first place Hume claims that his view, unlike the view of ancient philosophers, is based on principles of imagination which have the natural characteristics cited here. But this is also true of vulgar belief. In order to reach what is distinctive in the academic philosopher's view a further refinement is necessary – namely an examination of the nature of our ideas through reason.

43 Treatise, 223; it is important to note that the grammatical reference of the pronoun ‘it’ in the second last line on this page is ‘a natural and perceivable connexion.’ Similarly at Treatise, 168 that which Hume says ‘is incompatible with those objects, to which we apply it' is ‘something, of which we have a clear idea.’

44 Treatise, 168; my italics. In this passage Hume is clearly using the term ‘meaning’ differently than he does in the statements of his empiricist principle (see especially Enquiry, 22). He seems to have an alternative ‘intentional’ conception of meaning. Michael Williams remarks that we need to consider ‘that “meaning” is by now a technical notion in a way that it never was for Hume. Accordingly … although Hume regards various terms as “insignificant,” it is far from clear that such terms are thought of as entirely devoid of “meaning” ’ (Williams, ‘Hume's Criterion of Meaning,’ 276). The interesting thing about the passage under discussion is that Hume regards words like ‘power’ as having a meaning, even though they are meaningless according to the empiricist principle.

45 Compare here EnÇ, Berent ‘Hume on Causal Necessity: A Study from the Perspective of Hume's Theory of the Passions,’ History of Philosophy Quarterly 2 (1985), 235–56,Google Scholar who discusses the non-representative character of the idea of causality in Hume's account.

46 For an elaboration of these points see my The Sceptical Realism of David Hume 15-16, 204-21, 145-7, 162-3.

47 See Wright, The Sceptical Realism of David Hume, 163Google Scholarff.

48 Malebranche, Nicolas The Search After Truth, trans. Lennon, Thomas M. and Olscamp, Paul L. (Columbus: Ohio State University Press 1980), 572–4Google Scholar

49 On the connections between Malebranche's and Hume's theories see Wright, The Sceptical Realism of David Hume 64-71, 74-6, 85-6, 224ff., and Doxsee, C.W. ‘Hume's Relation to Malebranche,’ Philosophical Review 25 (1916), 692–710.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

50 This is Locke's reading of the term ‘probability’ in Book 4, Chapter 15, Section 3 of his Essay Concerning Human Understanding.

51 Monteiro, J.P. ‘Hume, Induction, and Natural Selection,’ in Norton, David Capaldi, Nicholas Robison, Wade eds., McGill Hume Studies (San Diego: Austin Hill Press 1979), 291–308Google Scholar

52 On page 191 of his Treatise, Hume makes a clear contrast between what we can say about our sense impressions and what we determine on the basis of ‘experience and observation.’

53 Hegel, G.W.F. Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. Miller, A.V. (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1977). 55Google Scholar

• Earlier versions of this paper were read to symposia of the Canadian Philosophical Association and the Hume Society at which my book The Sceptical Realism of David Hume was discussed. I am indebted to Bruce Hunter and Terence Penelhum whose comments for the C.P.A. symposium in 1984 stimulated the original draft of the paper and to the readers for the Canadian Journal of Philosophy who made helpful suggestions for revision.