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Hume's ‘Manifest Contradictions’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 July 2016

P. J. E. Kail
P. J. E. Kail*
Affiliation:
St. Peter's College, Oxford
*
[email protected]
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Abstract

This paper examines Hume’s ‘Title Principle’ (TP) and its role in a response to one of the ‘manifest contradictions’ he identifies in the conclusion to Book I of A Treatise on Human Nature. This ‘contradiction’ is a tension between two ‘equally natural and necessary’ principles of the imagination, our causal inferences and our propensity to believe in the continued and distinct existence of objects. The problem is that the consistent application of causal reason undercuts any grounds with have for the belief in continued and distinct existence, and yet that belief is as ‘natural and necessary’ as our propensity to infer effects from causes. The TP appears to offer a way to resolve this ‘contradiction’. It states

Where reason is lively, and mixes itself with some propensity, it ought to be assented to. Where it does not, it never can have any title to operate upon us.’ (T 1.4.7.11; SBN 270)

In brief, if it can be shown that the causal inferences that undermine the belief in external world are not ‘lively’ nor mixed with some propensity’ then we have grounds for think that they have no normative authority (they have no ‘title to operate on us). This is in part a response to another ‘manifest contradiction’, namely the apparently self-undermining nature of reason. In this paper I examine the nature and grounds of the TP and its relation to these ‘manifest contradictions’.

Type
Papers
Information
Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements , Volume 78: The History of Philosophy , July 2016 , pp. 147 - 160
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 2016 

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References

1 Norton and Norton (eds) A Treatise of Human Nature (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), following the convention of book, part, section and paragraph numbers. Page references to A Treatise of Human Nature ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge, revised by P. H. Nidditch (2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon, 1978) (SBN).

2 See e.g. Broughton, J. ‘Hume’s Naturalism and His Skepticism’ in Radcliffe (ed.) A Companion to Hume (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 2008).

3 Not all relations are discovered by reason. Degree in quality, for example, is discovered by intuition, relations of space by perception.

4 See, for example, L. Loeb ‘Inductive Inference in Hume’s Philosophy’ in Radcliffe (ed.) A Companion to Hume (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 2008). and H. Beebee Hume on Causation (London: Routledge, 2006). The most sophisticated and articulated statement of the view is Schmitt Hume’s Epistemology in the Treatise: A Veritistic Interpretation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). I hereby reject the view I offered in Kail, P. J. E. Projection and Realism in Hume’s Philosophy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2007).

5 For a very extensive discussion, see Schmitt Hume's Epistemology in the Treatise: A Veritistic Interpretation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014).

6 For this kind of reading see D. Owen Hume's Reason (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999) and what I take to be well-placed criticism see K. Meeker Hume's Radical Scepticism and the Fate of Naturalized Epistemology (London: Palgrave, 2013).

7 Nicolas Malebranche, Treatise on Ethics, trans. C Walton (Dordrecht, Kluwer, 1993), 48.

8 See my ‘Hume's Ethical Conclusion’ in Frasca-Spada & Kail (eds) Impressions of Hume (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005).

9 Hume is often mistakenly accused of misunderstanding Locke on this issue. This, however, is itself a mistake. See my Projection and Realism in Hume's Philosophy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2007), chapter 7, section 2.1.

10 J. Hakkarainen misleads somewhat when he labels this argument ‘profound’ (in ‘Hume's Scepticism and Realism’, British Journal for the History of Philosophy 20(2): 286Google Scholar. Hume doesn't call the argument profound, he instead calls Berkeley's philosophy profound.

11 Letter to Hugh Blair, July 1762, reprinted in Wood, P.B. ‘David Hume on Thomas Reid's An Inquiry into the Human Mind, on the Principles of Common Sense: A New Letter to Hugh Blair from July 1762’, Mind 95 (1986) 411–16CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 J. Broughton ‘Hume’s Naturalism and His Skepticism’ in Radcliffe (ed.) A Companion to Hume (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 2008): 431.