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Hume on Belief and Vindicatory Explanations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 April 2019

Benedict Smith
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Abstract

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.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy , Volume 94 , Issue 2 , April 2019 , pp. 313 - 337
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 2019 

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References

1 References to the Treatise are to Hume, David, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. Norton, David Fate and Norton, Mary J. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011)Google Scholar, hereafter cited as “T” followed by Book, part, section, and paragraph numbers, and to A Treatise of Human Nature, L. A. Selby-Bigge (ed.), revised by P. H. Nidditch, 2nd edn. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), hereafter cited as “SBN” followed by page number. Similarly for the ‘Abstract’ to the Treatise in “T” cited as “A”, and Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding and Concerning the Principles of Moral L. A. Selby-Bigge (ed.), revised by P. H. Nidditch, 3rd edn. (Oxford University Press, 1975) cited as “EHU” followed by section and part.

2 Strawson, Peter, Skepticism and Naturalism: Some Varieties (London: Methuen & Co., 1987), 12Google Scholar.

3 Williams, Michael, Unnatural Doubts: Epistemological Realism and the Basis of Scepticism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 8Google Scholar.

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5 For further discussion see Smith, Benedict “Naturalism, Experience, and Hume's ‘Science of Human Nature’” International Journal of Philosophical Studies 24(3) (2016): 310–323Google Scholar.

6 See, for some examples, Owen, David Hume's Reason (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999)Google Scholar; Schliesser, Eric, “Two definitions of ‘Cause’, Newton, and the Significance of the Humean Distinction Between Natural and Philosophical Relations”, The Journal of Scottish Philosophy, 5(1) (2007): 83–101CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rocknak, Stefanie “Constancy and Coherence in 1.4.2 of Hume's Treatise: The Root of “Indirect” Causation and Hume's Position on Objects”, The European Legacy, 18:4 (2013): 444–456Google Scholar.

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8 See Falkenstein, Lorne, “Naturalism, Normativity, and Scepticism in Hume's Account of Belief”, Hume Studies Vol. 23(1) (1997): 29–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Op. cit. note 8, 34.

10 Op. cit. note 8, 40.

11 The differing ways that ‘reason’ is used by Hume is discussed by Falkenstein, “Naturalism”, Nuyen, A.T. “The Role of Reason in Hume's Theory of Belief”, Hume Studies, Volume 14, Number 2, 1988: 372–389CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Winters, Barbara, “Hume on Reason”, Hume Studies, Volume 5, Number 1, 1979: 20–35Google Scholar.

12 See, for example, Pierris, Graciela de, “Causation as a Philosophical Relation in Hume”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 64 (3) (2002): 499–545CrossRefGoogle Scholar; 503; Allison, Henry Custom and Reason in Hume: A Kantian Reading of the First Book of the Treatise, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2008), 72CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 Op. cit. note 12. See Sellars, Wilfrid, Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind, (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997), 33Google Scholar; 76.

14 Op. cit. note 12, 119.

15 Op. cit. note 12, 4.

16 Op. cit. note 12, 113.

17 Op. cit. note 12, 124–126.

18 Kemp-Smith, Norman, “The Naturalism of Hume (I),” Mind, 14/54 (1905): 149–173CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 See also Gaskin, J.C.A., “God, Hume and Natural Belief,” Philosophy 49/189 (1974): 281–294CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Some have argued, as Gaskin points out, that Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion characterize belief in God as ‘natural’ in the present sense, for example Butler, R.J., “Natural Belief and the Enigma of Hume,” Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 42(1) (1960): 73-I00Google Scholar.

20 Op. cit. note 18, 162 and 152.

21 Loeb, Louis, Stability and Justification in Hume's Treatise (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002)Google Scholar.

22 Op. cit. note 21, 22. See also Loeb, Louis, “Hume on Stability, Justification, and Unphilosophical Probability,” Journal of the History of Philosophy, 33(1) (1995): 101–132CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 102.

23 Op. cit. note 21, 66.

24 Op. cit. note 21, 22.

25 Op. cit. note 21, 65.

26 For previous discussions of what I am calling vindicatory explanations see, for example, Kail Op. cit. note 7. Vindicatory explanations have been discussed prominently by David Wiggins. See: “Moral Cognitivism, Moral Relativism and Motivating Moral Beliefs,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 91 (1990–1991): 61–85; Needs, Value, Truth: Essays in the Philosophy of Value (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998); “Objective and Subjective in Ethics, With Two Postscripts About Truth,” Ratio 8(3) (1995): 243–258; “Objectivity in Ethics: Two Difficulties, Two Responses,” Ratio 18(1) (2005): 1–26; Ethics: Twelve Lectures in the Philosophy of Morality (London: Penguin Books, 2006). The idea also figures centrally in the work of Bernard Williams. See Truth and Truthfulness: An Essay in Genealogy (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2002). See also Wright, Crispin, Truth and Objectivity (London: Harvard University Press, 1992)Google Scholar and Thomas, Alan, Value and Context: The Nature of Moral and Political Knowledge (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27 Wiggins, “Objective and Subjective”, 243.

28 Op. cit. note 27.

29 Wiggins, Needs, Value, Truth, 153. Wiggins has developed his account of vindicatory explanations principally in the context of resisting scepticism about moral beliefs but there is nevertheless a generality to what explanations of this sort can encompass. See “Moral Cognitivism”, 67.

30 The examples are from Wiggins.

31 “Moral Cognitivism”, 80.

32 Op. cit. note 31, 66.

33 See also Smith, Benedict “Wittgenstein, Hume and Naturalism” in Wittgenstein and Naturalism, Cahill, K. and Raleigh, T. (eds.) (New York: Routledge, 2018), 243–259CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

34 For a wider discussion of the normative status of experience, see Boehm, Miren, “The Normativity of Experience and Causal Belief in Hume's Treatise,” Hume Studies, 39(2) (2013): 203–231CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

35 For wider discussion see, amongst others, See Stroud, Barry, Hume (London: Routledge, 1977), 70CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Booth, Anthony, “On some recent moves in defence of doxastic compatibilism,” Synthese 191 (2014): 1867–1880CrossRefGoogle Scholar; McCormick, Miriam, “Hume on Natural Belief and Original Principles,” Hume Studies, 19(1) (1993): 103–116CrossRefGoogle Scholar; “Taking Control of Belief,” Philosophical Explorations 14(2) (2011): 169–183; Believing Against the Evidence: Agency and the Ethics of Belief (London: Routledge, 2015) and Steup, Mathias, “Doxastic freedom,” Synthese 61 (2008): 375–392CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

36 See, for example, Dancy, Jonathan and Sosa, Ernest (eds.) A Companion to Epistemology (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000) 45Google Scholar.

37 See Baier, Annette, A Progress of Sentiments: Reflections on Hume's Treatise (London: Harvard University Press, 1991) 60–61Google Scholar.

38 Op. cit. note 7, 22.

39 Harman, Gilbert, The Nature of Morality: An Introduction to Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007)Google Scholar. See Kail, Op. cit. note 7, 13.

40 Op. cit. note 7, 17–18.

41 Garrett, Don “Reasons to Act and Believe: Naturalism and Rational Justification in Hume's Philosophical Project,” Philosophical Studies 132(1) (2007): 1–16CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 10–11.

42 Williams, Michael, “The Unity of Hume's Philosophical Project”, Hume Studies, 30(2) (2004): 265–296Google Scholar, 269.

43 For further discussion of internalism/externalism here see Meeker, Kevin, Hume's Radical Skepticism and the Fate of Naturalized Epistemology, (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

44 See Meeker, Kevin, “Hume: Radical Skeptic or Naturalized Epistemologist?,” Hume Studies 24(1) (1998): 31–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

45 The context is McDowell's rejection of the idea that for a person to act rationally is for the person to deliberate about what to do and to act in light of the conclusion. See McDowell, John, “The Myth of the Mind as Detached” in Mind, Reason, and Being in the World: The McDowell-Dreyfus Debate, Schear, J. (ed.) (Oxford: Routledge, 2013): 41–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 47. See also themes in Allison, Op. cit. note 12.