Hume on the Distinction between Primary and Secondary Qualities

Upon the whole, we may conclude, that the Christian Religion not only was at first attended with miracles, but even at this day cannot be believed by any reasonable person without one.' (Hume, 'Of Miracles', Enquiries ). Critically outline and discuss Hume's essay 'Of Miracles' as an attack on the foundations of religion. In discussing this topic also provide an argument to show whether Hume uses irony as part of his strategy.

Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 2020

I offer a novel two-stage reconstruction of Hume's general-point-of-view account, modeled in part on his qualified-judges account in 'Of the Standard of Taste.' In particular, I argue that the general point of view needs to be jointly constructed by spectators who have sympathized with (at least some of) the agents in (at least some of) the actor's circles of influence. The upshot of the account is twofold. First, Hume's later thought developed in such a way that it can rectify the problems inherent in his Treatise account of the general point of view. Second, the proposed account provides the grounds for an adequate and well-motivated modest ideal observer theory of the standard of virtue.

Hume Studies

Hume’s discussion of the role of reason in the practical sphere is often read to imply two broad, negative claims: first, that passions and actions can (at most) only be regarded as responsive to reasons in so far as they are either in agreement with or contrary to the instrumental implications of other passions or desires. And second, that there is no properly practical form of inference or reasoning. I argue that Hume’s general understanding of practical reason does not support either of these claims. Rather, Hume’s explicit discussion of these issues—like his discussion of the nature of probable inference—is intended to lay the foundation for a naturalist account of practical thought that we would today regard as embodying a substantive, non-instrumentalist theory of practical rationality. This account will, indeed, make reason the “slave of the passions,” but in a very different sense than the one familiar from most contemporary discussions of Hume.

Pigden, Charles ed. Hume on Is and Ought, Basingstoke, Palgrave-Macmillan, ch. 3.4, 128-142, 2010

This is a commentary on Adrian Heathcote’s interesting paper ‘Hume’s Master Argument’. Heathcote contends that No-Ought-From-Is is primarily a logical thesis, a ban on Is/Ought inferences which Hume derives from the logic of Ockham. NOFI is thus a variation on what Heathcote calls ‘Hume’s Master Argument’, which he also deploys to prove that conclusions about the future (and therefore a-temporal generalizations) cannot be derived by reason from premises about the past, and that conclusions about external objects or other minds cannot be derived by reason from premises about impressions. Heathcote raises an important question. Having (apparently) argued that our inductive inferences are not justified by reason, Hume puts them down to Custom, and seems to suggest that we OUGHT to indulge this propensity but NOt the superstitious propensities that lead to religious belief. (Query: Why is it right to indulge one non-rational propensity but not the others?) Finally Heathcote argues that just as there are valid, but not formally valid, arguments taking us from claims about inferential relations to claims about what we ought to believe, so there may be valid, but not formally valid, arguments taking us from factual claims about some situation to claims about what we ought to do. I reply that Hume does indeed have a Master Argument and that it does rely on logical principles but not on the logic of Ockham which had been largely forgotten by Hume’s day. Instead Hume relies on the idea widely believed in the 18th Century and taught to Hume at Edinburgh by his logic Professor Colin Drummond, that in a logically valid argument the conclusion is contained in the premises. I reconstruct Hume’s Master Argument using this principle. I draw a careful distinction between two theses: 1) that we cannot get from non-moral premises to moral conclusions with the aid of logic alone and 2) that we cannot get from non-moral premises to moral conclusions with aid of analytic bridge principles. Hume believed the first but not the second. What then is the role of NOFI in the larger argument of the Treatise? To show that the truths of ethics cannot be derived via logic from self-evident truths of some other kind and thus that they are not demonstrable. How can we make sense of Hume’s apparent belief that it is sometimes right to transcend reason and sometimes not? In the case of Custom, we live in a world governed by causal regularities, and, in such a world, induction is in fact a fairly reliable belief-forming mechanism. Thus a suitably qualified spectator (one aware of the kind of world we live in) would tend to approve of indulging it, even if it cannot be justified by reason. However, our superstitious propensities are (and can be known to be) unreliable, since they produce different and inconsistent results in different people. Thus it is it is wrong (something a suitably qualified spectator would disapprove of) to indulge the faculty of Superstition. I also take issue with Heathcote’s penchant for valid, but not formally valid, inferences. I supply the missing premises for Heathcote’s Is/Ought inferences and argue that they are either not true or not necessary.

Synthese, 1998

This paper presents a new account of Hume's "probability of causes". There are two main results attained in this investigation. The first, and perhaps the most significant, is that Hume developed -albeit informally -an essentially sound system of probabilistic inductive logic that turns out to be a powerful forerunner of Carnap's systems. The Humean set of principles include, along with rules that turn out to be new for us, well known Carnapian principles, such as the axioms of semiregularity, symmetry with respect to individuals (exchangeability), predictive irrelevance and positive instantial relevance. The second result is that Hume developed an original conception of probability, which is subjective in character, although it differs from contemporary personalistic views because it includes constraints that are additional to simple consistency and do not vary between different persons. The final section is a response to Gower's thesis, by which Hume's probability of causes is essentially non-Bayesian in character. It is argued that, on closer examination, Gower's reading of the relevant passages is untenable and that, on the contrary, they are in accordance with the Bayesian reconstruction presented in this paper.

my system, all reasonings are nothing but the effects of custom; and custom has no influence, but by enlivening the imagination, and giving us a strong conception of any object." (TI.3.13: 149) David Hume's conclusion that "all reasonings are nothing but the effects of custom" has a considerable impact on how one interprets Hume's views on the role and ability of human reason. If reason is reducible to habit or custom we have to ask if Hume's own use of reason is similarly reducible. Likewise, how can Hume put forward his positive "science of man" when this "science" is actually a version of "custom"? Or better put, how does Hume's view of custom affect how one interprets the apparent tensions that exist between his skeptical philosophy and his positive naturalism?

Hume Studies, 1977

This PDF file is part of a 10 Volume series titled "Early Responses to Hume." The printed version of the 10-volume set is under copyright by the original publisher. The electronic version is under copyright by the author, James Fieser, and is available under Creative Commons license Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs (CC BY-NC-ND). The individual volumes are these: Vol. 1: Early Responses to Hume’s Moral Theory Vol. 2: Early Responses to Hume's Essays Vols. 3 and 4: Early Responses to Hume's Metaphysical and Epistemological Writings Vols. 5 and 6: Early Responses to Hume’s Writings on Religion Vols. 7 and 8: Early Responses to Hume’s History of England Vols. 9 and 10: Early Hume’s Life and Reputation, with Bibliography of Early Responses to Hume and Indexes to all 10 volumes.

This paper examines Hume’s formulations and uses of the conceivability principle (abbreviated as CP: Whatever is conceivable is possible) and the inconceivability principle (abbreviated as ICP: Whatever is inconceivable is impossible). From Hume’s works, we identify different versions of CP and ICP, including proper CP, proper ICP, the weak versions of CP and ICP, the epistemic versions of CP and ICP, and show that Hume not only expresses ICP, but also really maintains it. Assuming an axiomatic characterization of modalities, we argue that if there is a sharp distinction between levels of modalities, then Hume’s conceivability arguments do not hold. But, in a rather different way, we also argue that if Hume’s conceivability arguments hold, then there should be no distinction between levels of modality. Finally, we argue that after Hume, there are lots of endeavor in logic and philosophy to distinguish different levels of modality, and to accept new concepts of necessity other than logical necessity.

Hume Studies, 2005

Hume's Copy Principle, which accords precedence to impressions over ideas, is restricted to simple perceptions. Yet in all the conceptual analyses Hume conducts by attempting to fit an impression to a (putative) idea, he never checks for simplicity. And this seems to vitiate the analyses: we cannot conclude from the lack of a preceding impression that a putative idea is bogus, unless it is simple. In this paper I criticise several attempts to account for Hume's seemingly cavalier attitude, and offer one of my own.