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David Hume

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Philosophers

   Western Philosophy
   18th-century philosophy
   David Hume
   Name: David Hume
   Birth: April 26, 1711 (Edinburgh, Scotland)
   Death: August 25, 1776 (Edinburgh, Scotland)
   School/tradition: Empiricism,
   Scottish Enlightenment
   Main interests: Metaphysics, Epistemology, Philosophy of mind, Ethics,
   Political philosophy, Aesthetics, Philosophy of religion
   Notable ideas: Problem of causation, Induction, Is-ought problem
   Influences: Locke, Berkeley, Hutcheson, Newton
   Influenced: Adam Smith, Adam Ferguson, Kant, Arthur Schopenhauer,
   Bentham, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, Comte, William James,
   Darwin, Russell, T. H. Huxley, J. S. Mill, Einstein, Ayer, J. L. Mackie

   David Hume ( April 26, 1711 – August 25, 1776) was a Scottish
   philosopher, economist, and historian. He is one of the most important
   figures of the history of Western philosophy and of the Scottish
   Enlightenment. Although in recent years interest in Hume's works has
   centred on his philosophical writing, it was as a historian that he
   gained his initial fame and his History of Great Britain was the
   standard work on English history for sixty or seventy years until
   superseded by the History of England by T. B. Macaulay.

   Historians most famously see Humean philosophy as a thoroughgoing form
   of skepticism, but many commentators have argued that the element of
   naturalism has no less importance in Hume's philosophy. Hume
   scholarship has tended to oscillate over time between those who
   emphasize the skeptical side of Hume (such as the logical positivists),
   and those who emphasize the naturalist side (such as Don Garrett,
   Norman Kemp Smith, Mark Powell, Kerri Skinner, Barry Stroud, and Galen
   Strawson).

   Hume was heavily influenced by empiricists John Locke and George
   Berkeley, along with various Francophone writers such as Pierre Bayle,
   and various figures on the Anglophone intellectual landscape such as
   Isaac Newton, Samuel Clarke, Francis Hutcheson, Adam Smith, and Edward
   Butler.

Life

   David Home (later Hume), the son of Joseph Home of Ninewells, advocate,
   and Katherine, Lady Falconer, was born on 26 April 1711 ( Old style) in
   a tenement on the North side of the Lawnmarket in Edinburgh. Throughout
   his life Hume, who never married, was to spend time occasionally at his
   family home at Ninewells by Chirnside, Berwickshire. (He changed his
   name to Hume in 1734 because the English had difficulty in pronouncing
   Home in the Scottish manner.) He was sent by his family to the
   University of Edinburgh at the unusually early age of twelve (fourteen
   would have been more normal). At first he considered a career in law,
   but came to have, in his words, "an insurmountable aversion to
   everything but the pursuits of Philosophy and general Learning; and
   while (my family) fanceyed I was poring over Voet and Vinnius, Cicero
   and Vergil were the Authors which I was secretly devouring." He had
   little respect for professors, telling a friend in 1735 "there is
   nothing to be learned from a Professor, which is not to be met with in
   Books."

   At the age of eighteen, in 1729, Hume made a philosophical discovery
   that opened up to him "a new Scene of Thought" which inspired him "to
   throw up every other Pleasure or Business to apply entirely to it". He
   did not recount what this was, but it seems likely to have been his
   theory of causality - that our beliefs about cause and effect depend on
   sentiment, custom and habit, and not upon reason, nor upon abstract,
   timeless, general Laws of Nature.

   In 1734, after a few months in commerce in Bristol, he retreated into
   self-study and conducted thought experiments in the library of the
   Jesuit seminary at La Fleche in Anjou, France. He lodged at the manor
   house of Yvandeau in Saint-Germain-du-Val two kilometers distant.
   During his four years there, he laid out his life plan, resolving "to
   make a very rigid frugality supply my deficiency of fortune, to
   maintain unimpaired my independency, and to regard every object as
   contemptible except the improvements of my talents in literature. While
   there, he completed A Treatise of Human Nature at the age of
   twenty-six. Although many scholars today consider the Treatise to be
   Hume's most important work and one of the most important books in the
   history of philosophy, the public in Great Britain did not agree at
   first. Hume himself described the (lack of) public reaction to the
   publication of the Treatise in 1739–40 by writing that it "fell
   dead-born from the press, without reaching such distinction as even to
   excite a murmur among the zealots. But being naturally of a cheerful
   and sanguine temper, I soon recovered from the blow and prosecuted with
   great ardour my studies in the country". There he wrote the Abstract
   Without revealing his authorship, he aimed to make his larger work more
   intelligible by shortening it. Even this advertisement failed to
   enliven interest in the Treatise.

   The effort of writing the Treatise drove the youthful Hume to near
   insanity and he recounts how he escaped to the common life to restore
   his perspective. "Most fortunately it happens, that since reason is
   incapable of dispelling these clouds, nature herself suffices to that
   purpose, and cures me of this philosophical melancholy and delirium,
   either by relaxing this bent of mind, or by some avocation, and lively
   impression of my senses, which obliterate all these chimeras. I dine, I
   play a game of backgammon, I converse, and am merry with my friends;
   and when after three or four hours’ amusement, I would return to these
   speculations, they appear so cold, and strained, and ridiculous, that I
   cannot find in my heart to enter into them any farther."

   After the publication of Essays Moral and Political in 1744, he applied
   for the Chair of Ethics and Pneumatics (psychology) at Edinburgh
   University but was rejected. During the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745 he
   tutored the Marquise of Annandale (1720-92) officially described as a
   lunatic. This engagement ended in disarray after about a year. But, it
   was then that he started his great historical work The History of Great
   Britain which would take fifteen years and run to over a million words,
   to be published in six volumes in the period 1754 to 1762. During this
   period he was involved with the Canongate Theatre and in this context
   associated with Lord Monboddo and other Scottish Enlightenment
   luminaries in Edinburgh. In 1748 he served, in uniform, for three years
   as Secretary to General St Clair writing his Philosophical Essays
   concerning Human Understanding later published as An Enquiry Concerning
   Human Understanding. The Enquiry proved little more successful than the
   Treatise.

   Hume was charged with heresy but he was defended by his young clerical
   friends who argued that as an atheist he lay outside the jurisdiction
   of the Church. Despite his acquittal, and, possibly, due to the
   opposition of Thomas Reid of Aberdeen who, that year, launched a
   telling Christian critique of his metaphysics, Hume failed to gain the
   Chair of Philosophy at Glasgow. It was after returning to Edinburgh in
   1752, as he wrote in My Own Life, that "the Faculty of Advocates chose
   me their Librarian, an office from which I received little or no
   emolument, but which gave me the command of a large library." It was
   this resource that enabled him to continue his historical research for
   his History.

   Hume achieved great literary fame as an essayist and historian. His
   enormous History of Great Britain from the Saxon kingdoms to the
   Glorious Revolution was a best-seller in its day. In it, Hume presented
   political man as a creature of habit, with a disposition to submit
   quietly to established government unless confronted by uncertain
   circumstances. In his view, only religious difference could deflect men
   from their everyday lives to think about political matters.
   Tomb of David Hume in Edinburgh
   Enlarge
   Tomb of David Hume in Edinburgh

   Hume's early essay Of Superstition and Religion laid the foundations
   for nearly all subsequent secular thinking about the history of
   religion. Critics of religion during Hume's time were required to
   express themselves cautiously. Less than 15 years before Hume was born,
   18-year-old college student Thomas Aikenhead was put on trial for
   saying openly that he thought Christianity was nonsense; he was later
   convicted and hanged for blasphemy. Hume followed the common practice
   of expressing his views obliquely, through characters in dialogues.
   Hume did not acknowledge authorship of Treatise until the year of his
   death, in 1776. His essays Of Suicide, and Of the Immortality of the
   Soul and his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion were held from
   publication until after his death (published 1778 and 1779,
   respectively), and they still bore neither author's nor publisher's
   name. So masterly was Hume in disguising his own views that debate
   continues to this day over whether Hume was actually a deist or an
   atheist. Regardless, in his own time Hume's alleged atheism caused him
   to be passed over for many positions.

   Hume told his friend Mure of Caldwell of an incident which occasioned
   his conversion to Christianity. Passing across the recently drained
   Nor’ Loch to the New Town of Edinburgh to supervise the masons building
   his new house, soon to become No 1 St David Street, he slipped and fell
   into the mire. Hume, being then of great bulk, could not regain his
   feet. Some passing Newhaven fishwives seeing his plight, but
   recognising him as the well-known atheist, refused to rescue him until
   he became a Christian and had recited The Lord’s Prayer and the Creed.
   This he did and was rewarded by being set again on his feet by these
   brawny women. Hume asserted thereafter that Edinburgh fishwives were
   the ‘most acute theologians he had ever met’.

   From 1763 to 1765 Hume was Secretary to Lord Hertford in Paris, where
   he was admired by Voltaire and lionised by the ladies in society. He
   made friends with and, later, fell out with Rousseau. He wrote of his
   Paris life "I really wish often for the plain roughness of the The
   Poker Club of Edinburgh . . . to correct and qualify so much
   luciousness." For a year from 1767, Hume held the appointment of Under
   Secretary of State for the Northern Department. In 1768 he settled in
   Edinburgh. Attention to Hume's philosophical works grew after the
   German philosopher Immanuel Kant credited Hume with awakening him from
   "dogmatic slumbers" (circa 1770) and from then onwards he gained the
   recognition that he had craved all his life.

   James Boswell visited Hume a few weeks before his death. Hume told him
   that he sincerely believed it a "most unreasonable fancy" that there
   might be life after death. Hume wrote his own epitaph:"Born 1711, Died
   [----]. Leaving it to posterity to add the rest." It is engraved with
   the year of his death 1776 on the "simple Roman tomb" which he
   prescribed, and which stands, as he wished it, on the Eastern slope of
   the Calton Hill overlooking his home in the New Town of Edinburgh at
   No. 1 St David Street.

Legacy

   Statue of David Hume in Edinburgh, Scotland
   Enlarge
   Statue of David Hume in Edinburgh, Scotland

   Though Hume wrote in the 18th century, his work seems still uncommonly
   relevant in the philosophical disputes of today compared to that of his
   contemporaries. A summary of some of Hume's most influential work in
   philosophy might include the following:

   ===Ideas and impressions=== Hume believes that all human knowledge
   comes to us through our senses. Our perceptions, as he called them, can
   be divided into two categories: ideas and impressions. He defines these
   terms thus in his An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding: "By the
   term impression, then, I mean all our more lively perceptions, when we
   hear, or see, or feel, or love, or hate, or desire, or will. And
   impressions are distinguished from ideas, which are the less lively
   perceptions, of which we are conscious, when we reflect on any of those
   sensations or movements above mentioned." He further specifies ideas,
   saying, "It seems a proposition, which will not admit of much dispute,
   that all our ideas are nothing but copies of our impressions, or, in
   other words, that it is impossible for us to think of anything, which
   we have not antecedently felt, either by our external or internal
   senses." This forms an important aspect of Hume's skepticism, for he
   says that we cannot believe that a certain thing, such as God, a soul,
   or a self, exists unless we can point to the impression from which the
   idea of the thing is derived. The Enquiry Concerning Human
   Understanding concludes with a statement of what has become to be known
   as Hume's Fork. "When we run over libraries, persuaded of these
   principles, what havoc must we make? If we take in our hand any volume;
   of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it
   contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does
   it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and
   existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing
   but sophistry and illusion."'

The problem of causation

   When one event continually follows after another, most people think
   that a connection between the two events makes the second event follow
   from the first (post hoc ergo propter hoc - after this, therefore,
   because of this.). Hume challenged this belief in the first book of his
   Treatise on Human Nature and later in his Enquiry Concerning Human
   Understanding. He noted that although we do perceive the one event
   following the other, we do not perceive any necessary connection
   between the two. And according to his skeptical epistemology, we can
   trust only the knowledge that we acquire from our perceptions. Hume
   asserted that our idea of causation consists of little more than
   expectation for certain events to result after other events that
   precede them. "We have no other notion of cause and effect, but that of
   certain objects, which have been always conjoin'd [sic] together, and
   which in all past instances have been found inseparable. We cannot
   penetrate into the reason of the conjunction. We only observe the thing
   itself, and always find that from the constant conjunction the objects
   acquire a union in the imagination." (Hume, 1740: 93). We cannot
   actually say that one event caused another. All we know for sure is
   that one event is correlated to another. For this Hume coined the term
   'constant conjunction'. That is, when we see that one event always
   'causes' another, what we are really seeing is that one event has
   always been 'constantly conjoined' to the other. As a consequence, we
   have no reason to believe that one caused the other, or that they will
   continue to be 'constantly conjoined' in the future (Popkin & Stroll,
   1993: 268). The reason we do believe in cause and effect is not because
   cause and effect are the actual way of nature; we believe because of
   the psychological habits of human nature (Popkin & Stroll, 1993: 272).

   Such a lean conception robs causation of all its force, and some later
   Humeans like Bertrand Russell have dismissed the notion of causation
   altogether as something akin to superstition. But this defies common
   sense, hence, the problem of causation – what justifies our belief in a
   causal connection and what kind of connection can we have knowledge of?
   – is a problem which has no accepted solution. Hume held that we (and
   other animals) have an instinctive belief in causation based on the
   development of habits in our nervous system, a belief that we cannot
   eliminate, but which we cannot prove true through any argument,
   deductive or inductive, just as is the case with regard to our belief
   in the reality of the external world.

The problem of induction

   In Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (EHU), §4.1.20-27,
   §4.2.28-33, Hume articulated his view that all human reasoning is of
   two kinds, Relation of Ideas and Matters of Fact. While the former
   involves abstract concepts like mathematics where deductive certitude
   presides, the latter involves empirical experience about which all
   thought is inductive. Now, since according to Hume, we can know nothing
   about nature prior to its experience, even a rational man with no
   experience "could not have inferred from the fluidity and transparency
   of water that it would suffocate him, or from the light and warmth of
   fire that it would consume him." (EHU, 4.1.6) Thus, all we can say,
   think, or predict about nature must come from prior experience, which
   lays the foundation for the necessity of induction.

   Inductive inference says that the past acts as a reliable guide to the
   future. For example, if in the past the sun has risen in the east and
   set in the west, then, inductive inference suggests that it will
   probably rise in the east and set in the west in the future. But how
   can we justify such an inference, known as the principle of induction?
   Hume suggested two possible justifications, but rejected both:
    1. The first justification states that, as a matter of logical
       necessity, the future must resemble the past. But, Hume pointed
       out, we can conceive of a chaotic, erratic world where the future
       has nothing to do with the past – or, more tamely, a world just
       like ours right up until the present, at which point things change
       completely. So nothing makes the principle of induction logically
       necessary.
    2. The second justification, more modestly, appeals to the past
       success of induction – it has worked most often in the past, so it
       will probably continue to work most often in the future. But, as
       Hume notes, this justification uses circular reasoning in
       attempting to justify induction by merely reiterating it, bringing
       us back where we started.

   The noted 20th century theoretician and philosopher, Bertrand Russell,
   attempted to reinstate induction as a rational procedure and to restore
   the credibility of the scientific method. However, all he could say was
   that induction is an independent logical principle, incapable of being
   inferred either from experience or from other logical principles, and
   that without this principle, science is impossible".

   Despite Hume's criticism of induction, he held that it was superior to
   deduction in its realm of empirical thought. As he states: "this
   operation of the mind, by which we infer like effects from like causes,
   and vice versa, is so essential to the subsistence of all human
   creatures, it is not probable, that it could be trusted to the
   fallacious deductions of our reason, which is slow in its operations;
   appears not, in any degree, during the first years of infancy; and at
   best is, in every age and period of human life, extremely liable to
   error and mistake." (EHU, 5.2.22)

The bundle theory of the self

   Hume pointed out that we tend to think that we are the same person we
   were five years ago. Though we've changed in many respects, the same
   person appears present as was present then. We might start thinking
   about which features can be changed without changing the underlying
   self. Hume, however, denies that there is a distinction between the
   various features of a person and the mysterious self that supposedly
   bears those features. When we start introspecting, "we are never
   intimately conscious of anything but a particular perception; man is a
   bundle or collection of different perceptions which succeed one another
   with an inconceivable rapidity and are in perpetual flux and movement".

   It is plain, that in the course of our thinking, and in the constant
   revolution of our ideas, our imagination runs easily from one idea to
   any other that resembles it, and that this quality alone is to the
   fancy a sufficient bond and association. It is likewise evident that as
   the senses, in changing their objects, are necessitated to change them
   regularly, and take them as they lie contiguous to each other, the
   imagination must by long custom acquire the same method of thinking,
   and run along the parts of space and time in conceiving its objects.

   Note in particular that, on Hume's view, these perceptions do not
   belong to anything. Rather, Hume compares the soul to a commonwealth,
   which retains its identity not by virtue of some enduring core
   substance, but by being composed of many different, related, and yet
   constantly changing elements. The question of personal identity then
   becomes a matter of characterizing the loose cohesion of one's personal
   experience. (Note that in the Appendix to the Treatise, Hume said
   mysteriously that he was dissatisfied with his account of the self, yet
   he never returned to the issue.)

Practical reason: instrumentalism and nihilism

   Most of us find some behaviors more reasonable than others. Eating
   aluminum foil, for example, seems to have something unreasonable about
   it. But Hume denied that reason has any important role in motivating or
   discouraging behavior. After all, reason is just a sort of calculator
   of concepts and experience. What ultimately matters, Hume said, is how
   we feel about the behaviour. His work is now associated with the
   doctrine of instrumentalism, which states that an action is reasonable
   if and only if it serves the agent's goals and desires, whatever they
   be. Reason can enter the picture only as a lackey, informing the agent
   of useful facts concerning which actions will serve his goals and
   desires, but never deigning to tell the agent which goals and desires
   he should have. So, if you want to eat aluminium foil, reason will tell
   you where to find the stuff, and there's nothing unreasonable about
   eating it or even wanting to do so (unless, of course, one has a
   stronger desire for health or the appearance of sensibility). Today,
   however, many commentators argue that Hume actually went a step further
   to nihilism and said there's nothing unreasonable about deliberately
   frustrating your own goals and desires ("I want to eat aluminum foil,
   so let me wire my mouth shut"). Such behaviour would surely be highly
   irregular, granting reason no role at all, but it would not be contrary
   to reason, which is important to make judgments in this domain.

Sentiment based ethical theory

   Hume first discusses ethics in A Treatise of Human Nature. He later
   extracts and expounds upon the ideas he proposed there in a shorter
   essay entitled An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals. Hume's
   approach in the Enquiry is fundamentally an empirical one. Instead of
   telling us how morality ought to operate, he purports to tell us how we
   actually do make moral judgments. After providing us with various
   examples, he comes to the conclusion that most, though not all, of the
   behaviors we approve of increase public utility. Does this then mean
   that we make moral judgments on self-interest alone? Unlike his fellow
   empiricist Thomas Hobbes, Hume argues that this is not in fact the
   case, abandoning Hobbes' attachment to psychological egoism. In
   addition to considerations of self-interest, Hume maintains that we can
   be moved by our sympathy for others, which can provide a person with
   thoroughly non-selfish concerns and motivations, indeed, what
   contemporary theorists would call, altruistic concern. Hume defends his
   sympathy-based, moral sentimentalism by claiming that we could never
   make moral judgments based on reason alone. Our reason deals with facts
   and draws conclusions from them, but, all else being equal, it could
   not lead us to choose one option over the other; only our sentiments
   can do this. And, our sympathy-based sentiments can motivate us towards
   the pursuit of non-selfish ends, like the utility of others. For Hume,
   and for fellow sympathy-theorist Adam Smith, the term 'sympathy' is
   meant to capture much more than concern for the suffering of others.
   Sympathy, for Hume, is a principle for the communication and sharing of
   sentiments, both positive and negative. In this sense, it is akin to
   what contemporary psychologists and philosophers call empathy. In
   developing this sympathy-based moral sentimentalism, Hume surpasses the
   divinely-implanted moral sense theory of his predecessor, Francis
   Hutcheson, by elaborating a naturalistic, moral psychological basis for
   the moral sense, in terms of the operation of sympathy. Hume's
   arguments against founding morality on reason are often now included in
   the stable of moral anti-realist arguments. As Humean-inspired
   philosopher John Mackie suggests, for there to exist moral facts about
   the world, recognizable by reason and intrinsically motivating, they
   would have to be very queer facts. Still, there is considerable debate
   among scholars as to Hume' status as a realist versus anti-realist.

Free will versus determinism

   Just about everyone has noticed the apparent conflict between free will
   and determinism – if your actions were determined to happen billions of
   years ago, then how can they be up to you? But Hume noted another
   conflict, one that turned the problem of free will into a full-fledged
   dilemma: free will is incompatible with indeterminism. Imagine that
   your actions are not determined by what events came before. Then your
   actions are, it seems, completely random. Moreover, and most
   importantly for Hume, they are not determined by your character – your
   desires, your preferences, your values, etc. How can we hold someone
   responsible for an action that did not result from his character? How
   can we hold someone responsible for an action that randomly occurred?
   Free will seems to require determinism, because otherwise, the agent
   and the action wouldn't be connected in the way required of freely
   chosen actions. So now, nearly everyone believes in free will, free
   will seems inconsistent with determinism, and free will seems to
   require determinism. Hume's view is that human behaviour, like
   everything else, is caused, and therefore holding people responsible
   for their actions should focus on rewarding them or punishing them in
   such a way that they will try to do what is morally desirable and will
   try to avoid doing what is morally reprehensible. (See also
   Compatibilism.)

The is-ought problem

   Hume noted that many writers talk about what ought to be on the basis
   of statements about what is ( is-ought problem). But there seems to be
   a big difference between descriptive statements (what is) and
   prescriptive statements (what ought to be). Hume calls for writers to
   be on their guard against changing the subject in this way without
   giving an explanation of how the ought-statements are supposed to
   follow from the is-statements. But how exactly can you derive an
   'ought' from an 'is'? That question, prompted by Hume's small
   paragraph, has become one of the central questions of ethical theory,
   and Hume is usually assigned the position that such a derivation is
   impossible. (Others interpret Hume as saying not that one cannot go
   from a factual statement to an ethical statement, but that one cannot
   do so without going through human nature, that is, without paying
   attention to human sentiments.) Hume is probably one of the first
   writers to make the distinction between normative (what ought to be)
   and positive (what is) statements, which is so prevalent in social
   science and moral philosophy. G. E. Moore defended a similar position
   with his "open question argument", intending to refute any
   identification of moral properties with natural properties—the
   so-called " naturalistic fallacy".

Utilitarianism

   It was probably Hume who, along with his fellow members of the Scottish
   Enlightenment, first advanced the idea that the explanation of moral
   principles is to be sought in the utility they tend to promote. Hume's
   role is not to be overstated, of course; it was his countryman Francis
   Hutcheson who coined the utilitarian slogan "greatest happiness for the
   greatest numbers". But it was from reading Hume's Treatise that Jeremy
   Bentham first felt the force of a utilitarian system: he "felt as if
   scales had fallen from [his] eyes". Nevertheless, Hume's
   proto-utilitarianism is a peculiar one from our perspective. He doesn't
   think that the aggregation of cardinal units of utility provides a
   formula for arriving at moral truth. On the contrary, Hume was a moral
   sentimentalist and, as such, thought that moral principles could not be
   intellectually justified. Some principles simply appeal to us and
   others don't; and the reason why utilitarian moral principles do appeal
   to us is that they promote our interests and those of our fellows, with
   whom we sympathize. Humans are hard-wired to approve of things that
   help society – public utility. Hume used this insight to explain how we
   evaluate a wide array of phenomena, ranging from social institutions
   and government policies to character traits and talents.

The problem of miracles

   For Hume, the only way to support theistic religion beyond strict
   fideism is by an appeal to miracles saying, in Of Miracles "...we may
   conclude, that the Christian religion not only was first attended with
   miracles, but even at this day cannot be believed by any reasonable
   person without one. Mere reason is insufficient to convince us of its
   veracity: and whoever is moved by faith to assent to it, is conscious
   of a continued miracle in his own person, which subverts all the
   principles of his understanding, and gives him a determination to
   believe what is most contrary to custom and experience.’’”

   Hume argued that, at minimum, miracles could never give religion much
   support. There are several arguments suggested by Hume's essay, all of
   which turn on his conception of a miracle: namely, a violation of the
   laws of nature. His very definition of miracles from his Enquiry
   Concerning Human Understanding states that miracles are violations of
   the laws of nature and consequently have a very low probability of
   occurring. In a slogan, extraordinary claims require extraordinary
   evidence. But far from that, Hume observes, "The gazing populace
   receive greedily, without examination, whatever soothes superstition
   and promotes wonder."

   Critics have argued that Hume's position assumes the character of
   miracles and natural laws prior to any specific examination of miracle
   claims, and thus it amounts to a subtle form of begging the question.
   They have also noted that it requires an appeal to inductive inference,
   as none have observed every part of nature or examined every possible
   miracle claim (e.g., those yet future to the observer), which in Hume's
   philosophy was especially problematic (see above). Another claim is his
   argument that human testimony could never be reliable enough to
   countermand the evidence we have for the laws of nature. This point on
   miracles has been most applied to the question of the resurrection of
   Jesus, where Hume would no doubt ask, "Which is more likely – that a
   man rose from the dead or that this testimony is mistaken in some way?"
   This is somewhat akin to a modern application of Occam's Razor. This
   argument is the backbone of the skeptic's movement and a live issue for
   historians of religion.

The design argument

   One of the oldest and most popular arguments for the existence of God
   is the design argument – that all the order and 'purpose' in the world
   bespeaks a divine origin. A modern manifestation of this belief is
   creationism. Hume gave the classic criticism of the design argument in
   Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion and An Enquiry Concerning Human
   Understanding and though the issue is far from dead in modern debate,
   many are convinced that Hume killed the argument for good. Here are
   some of his points:
    1. For the design argument to be feasible, it must be true that order
       and purpose are observed only when they result from design. But
       order is observed regularly, resulting from presumably mindless
       processes like snowflake or crystal generation. Design accounts for
       only a tiny part of our experience with order and 'purpose'.
    2. Furthermore, the design argument is based on an incomplete analogy:
       because of our experience with objects, we can recognise
       human-designed ones, comparing for example a pile of stones and a
       brick wall. But in order to point to a designed Universe, we would
       need to have an experience of a range of different universes. As we
       only experience one, the analogy cannot be applied.
    3. Even if the design argument is completely successful, it could not
       (in and of itself) establish a robust theism; one could easily
       reach the conclusion that the universe's configuration is the
       result of some morally ambiguous, possibly unintelligent agent or
       agents whose method bears only a remote similarity to human design.
    4. If a well-ordered natural world requires a special designer, then
       God's mind (being so well-ordered) also requires a special
       designer. And then this designer would likewise need a designer,
       and so on ad infinitum. We could respond by resting content with an
       inexplicably self-ordered divine mind; but then why not rest
       content with an inexplicably self-ordered natural world?
    5. Often, what appears to be purpose, where it looks like object X has
       feature F in order to secure some outcome O, is better explained by
       a filtering process: that is, object X wouldn't be around did it
       not possess feature F, and outcome O is only interesting to us as a
       human projection of goals onto nature. This mechanical explanation
       of teleology anticipated natural selection. (see also Anthropic
       principle)

Political theory

   Many regard David Hume as a political conservative, sometimes calling
   him the first conservative philosopher. His thought contains elements
   that are, in modern terms, both conservative and liberal, as well as
   ones that are both contractarian and utilitarian, though these claims
   are historically anachronistic. More historically appropriate terms for
   analysing Hume's political thought would be that of Whig and Tory. His
   central concern is to show the importance of the rule of law,
   undergirded by a sceptical politics that stresses throughout his
   political Essays the idea of moderation. He thinks that society is best
   governed by a general and impartial system of laws, based principally
   on the 'artifice' of contract and convention; he is less concerned
   about the form of government that administers these laws, so long as it
   does so fairly (though he thought that republics were more likely to do
   so than monarchies).

   Hume expressed suspicion of attempts to reform society in ways that
   departed from long-established custom, and he counselled people not to
   resist their governments except in cases of the most egregious tyranny.
   However, he resisted aligning himself with either of Britain's two
   political parties, the Whigs and the Tories, and he believed that we
   should try to balance our demands for liberty with the need for strong
   authority, without sacrificing either. He supported liberty of the
   press, and was sympathetic to democracy, when suitably constrained. It
   has been argued that he was a major inspiration for James Madison's
   writings, and the Federalist No. 10 in particular. He was also, in
   general, an optimist about social progress, believing that, thanks to
   the economic development that comes with the expansion of trade,
   societies progress from a state of "barbarism" to one of
   "civilisation". Civilised societies are open, peaceful and sociable,
   and their citizens are as a result much happier. It is therefore not
   fair to characterise him, as Leslie Stephen did, as favouring "that
   stagnation which is the natural ideal of a skeptic". (Leslie Stephen,
   History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, 2 vols. (London:
   Smith, Elder and Co., 1876), vol. 2, 185.)

   Though it has been suggested Hume had no positive vision of the best
   society, he in fact produced an essay titled Idea of a Perfect
   Commonwealth, which lays out what he thought was the best form of
   government. His pragmatism shone through, however, in his caveat that
   we should only seek to implement such a system should an opportunity
   present itself which would not upset established structures. He
   defended a strict separation of powers, decentralisation, extending the
   franchise to anyone who held property of value and limiting the power
   of the clergy. The Swiss militia system was proposed as the best form
   of protection. Elections were to take place on an annual basis and
   representatives were to be unpaid.

Contributions to economic thought

   Through his discussions on politics, Hume developed many ideas that are
   prevalent in the field of economics. This includes ideas on private
   property, inflation, and foreign trade.

   Hume's idea on private property is special— private property was not a
   natural right, but is justified since it is a limited good. If all
   goods were unlimited and available freely, then private property would
   not be justified, but instead becomes an “idle ceremonial”. Hume also
   believed in unequal distribution of property, since perfect equality
   would destroy the ideas of thrift and industry, which leads to
   impoverishment.

   Hume did not believe that foreign trade produced specie, but considered
   trade a stimulus for a country’s economic growth. He did not consider
   the volume of world trade as fixed because countries can feed off their
   neighbour’s wealth, being part of a “prosperous community”. The fall in
   foreign demand is not that fatal, because in the long run, a country
   cannot preserve a leading trading position.

   Hume was among the first to develop automatic price-specie flow, an
   idea that contrasts with the mercantile system. Simply put, when a
   country increases its in-flow of gold, this in-flow of gold will result
   in price inflation, and then price inflation will force out countries
   from trading that would have traded before the inflation. This results
   in a decrease of the in-flow of gold in the long-run.

   Hume also proposed a theory of beneficial inflation. He believed that
   increasing the money supply would raise production in the short run.
   This phenomenon was caused by a gap between the increase in the money
   supply and that of the price level. The result is that prices will not
   rise at first and may not rise at all. This theory was later developed
   by John Maynard Keynes.

Human species

   A footnote appears in the original version of Hume's essay "Of National
   Characters":

          I am apt to suspect the negroes and in general all the other
          species of men (for there are four or five different kinds) to
          be naturally inferior to the whites. There never was a civilized
          nation of any other complexion than white, nor even any
          individual eminent either in action or speculation. No ingenious
          manufactures amongst them, no arts, no sciences. On the other
          hand, the most rude and barbarous of the whites, such as the
          ancient Germans, the present Tartars, have still something
          eminent about them, in their valour, form of government, or some
          other particular. Such a uniform and constant difference could
          not happen, in so many countries and ages, if nature had not
          made an original distinction betwixt these breeds of men. Not to
          mention our colonies, there are Negroe slaves dispersed all over
          Europe, of which none ever discovered any symptoms of ingenuity;
          tho’ low people, without education, will start up amongst us,
          and distinguish themselves in every profession. In Jamaica
          indeed they talk of one negroe as a man of parts and learning;
          but ‘tis likely he is admired for very slender accomplishments,
          like a parrot, who speaks a few words plainly.

   This should be understood in its historical context, of course, such
   views were all but ubiquitous in the intellectual establishment (as
   elsewhere) of the time, and indeed would continue to be for a century
   after his death. Unlike many others of his day and much in advance of
   his time, in 1758, Hume condemned slavery at great length.

Perspectives of Hume

   Because he had real doubts about whether Hume was expressing only his
   ‘surface opinions’ and not making a genuine expression of his whole
   personality, Taylor (1927) doubted whether Hume was really a great
   philosopher but concluded that perhaps he was only a very clever man.

   Ayer (1936) introducing his classic exposition of logical positivism,
   claimed that ‘the views which are put forward in this treatise derive
   from … the logical outcome of the empiricism of Berkeley and Hume”.

   Both Russell (1946) and Kolakowski, (1968) saw Hume as a positivist
   holding the view that true knowledge derives only from the experience
   of events, from ‘impressions on the senses’ or (later) from ‘ sense
   data’ and that knowledge otherwise obtained was ‘meaningless’. Einstein
   (1915) wrote that he was inspired by Hume's positivism when formulating
   his Special Theory of Relativity.

   Anderson (1966), in discussing Hume’s First Principles, which are that
   all governments are founded on, and all authority of the few over the
   many is derived from, the public interest, the right to power, and the
   right to property, concluded that Hume was a materialist.

   Popper (1970) pointed out that although Hume’s idealism appeared to him
   to be a strict refutation of commonsense realism, and although he felt
   rationally obliged to regard commonsense realism as a mistake, he
   admitted that he was, in practice, quite unable to disbelieve in it for
   more than an hour: that, at heart, Hume was a commonsense realist.

   Husserl (1970), saw the phenomenologist in Hume when he showed that
   some perceptions are interrelated or associated to form other
   perceptions which are then projected onto a world putatively outside
   the mind.

   Stroud (1977) claimed for Hume the title of naturalist, saying that he
   saw every aspect of human life as naturalistically explicable. He
   placed man squarely in the scientifically intelligible world of nature,
   in conflict with the traditional conception of man as a detached
   rational subject.

   Flew, (1986) draws attention Hume's moral and logical scepticism about
   the senses, and calls him a Pyrrhonian sceptic.

   Hume was called the prophet of the Wittgensteinian revolution by
   Phillipson (1989), referring to his view that mathematics and logic are
   closed systems, disguised tautologies, and have no relation to the
   world of experience.

   In dubbing Hume neo- Hellenist, Penelhum (1993) saw him as following
   the Stoics, Epicureans and Sceptics in maintaining that we should avoid
   anxiety by following nature. Before embarking on any philosophical
   venture, Hume, as those before him, contended that we must first come
   to understand our own nature.

   Norton (1993) asserted that Hume was the first post-sceptical
   philosopher of the early modern period. Hume challenged the certainty
   of the Cartesians and other rationalists who attempted to refute
   philosophical scepticism, and yet himself undertook the project of
   articulating a new science of human nature that would provide a
   defensible foundation for all other sciences, including the moral and
   political.

   Fogelin (1993) concluded that Hume was a radical perspectivalist,
   perhaps as in Protagoras and certainly in Sextus Empiricus. He referred
   to Hume’s own words that his writings exhibit “a propensity, which
   inclines us to be positive and certain in particular points, according
   to the light in which we survey them at any particular instant” (T
   1.4.7, 273).

   Hume called himself a mitigated sceptic (EHU, 162, his own emphasis).

Works

   Copies of most of Hume's major works are freely available from:
     * The Online Library of Liberty
     * The Economics Department of the New School for Social Research
       (NY): The History of Economic Thought
     * Project Gutenberg
     * Great Books Index

     * A Kind of History of My Life (1734) Mss 23159 National Library of
       Scotland.

          A letter to an unnamed physician, asking for advice about "the
          Disease of the Learned" that then afflicted him. Here he reports
          that at the age of eighteen "there seem'd to be open'd up to me
          a new Scene of Thought... " which made him "throw up every other
          Pleasure or Business" and turned him to scholarship.

     * A Treatise of Human Nature: Being an Attempt to introduce the
       experimental Method of Reasoning into Moral Subjects. (1739–40)

          Hume intended to see whether the Treatise met with success, and
          if so to complete it with books devoted to Politics and
          Criticism. However, it did not meet with success (as Hume
          himself said, "It fell dead-born from the press, without
          reaching such distinction as even to excite a murmur among the
          zealots"), and so was not completed.

     * An Abstract of a Book lately Published: Entitled A Treatise of
       Human Nature etc. (1740)

          until recently attributed to Adam Smith but now generally
          believed to be an attempt by Hume to popularise his Treatise.

     * Essays Moral and Political (first ed. 1741–2)

          A collection of pieces written over many years and published in
          a series of volumes before being gathered together into one near
          the end of Hume's life. The essays are dizzying and even
          bewildering in the breadth of topics they address. They range
          freely over questions of aesthetic judgement, the nature of the
          British government, love, marriage and polygamy, and the
          demographics of ancient Greece and Rome, to name just a few of
          the topics considered. However, certain important topics and
          themes recur, especially the question of what constitutes
          "refinement" in matters of taste, manners, and morals. The
          Essays are written in clear imitation of Addison's Tatler and
          The Spectator, which Hume read avidly in his youth.

     * A Letter from a Gentleman to His Friend in Edinburgh: Containing
       Some Observations on a Specimen of the Principles concerning
       Religion and Morality, said to be maintain'd in a Book lately
       publish'd, intituled A Treatise of Human Nature etc. Edinburgh
       (1745).

     * An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748)

          Contains reworking of the main points of the Treatise, Book 1,
          with the addition of material on free will, miracles, and the
          argument from design.

     * An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (1751)

          Another reworking of material from the Treatise for more popular
          appeal. Hume regarded this as the best of all his philosophical
          works, both in its philosophical ideas and in its literary
          style.

     * Political Discourses Edinburgh (1752).

          Included in Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects (1753-6)
          reprinted 1758 - 77.

     * Four Dissertations London (1757).

          Included in reprints of Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects
          (above).

     * The History of England (Originally titled The History of Great
       Britain) (1754–62) Freely available in six vols. from the On Line
       Library of Libery.

          More a category of books than a single work, Hume's history
          spanned "from the invasion of Julius Caesar to the Revolution of
          1688" and went through over 100 editions. Many considered it the
          standard history of England until Thomas Macaulay's History of
          England.

     * The Natural History of Religion (1757) ISBN 0-8047-0333-7
     * " My Own Life" (1776)

          Penned in April, shortly before his death, this autobiography
          was intended for inclusion in a new edition of "Essays and
          Treatises on Several Subjects".

     * Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779)

          Published posthumously by his nephew, David Hume, the Younger.
          Being a discussion among three fictional characters concerning
          arguments for the existence of God, most importantly the
          argument from design. Despite some controversy, most scholars
          agree that the view of Philo, the most skeptical of the three,
          comes closest to Hume's own.

   L A Selby-Bigge provides, by means of an introduction to Hume's
   Enquiries, a fascinating (and sometimes quite scathing) discussion of
   the various differences in the content and tone of Hume's Treatise and
   Enquiries.

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