Topics Philosophers

Question Since Hume clearly says that even children know truths about the unexamined, why do so many intelligent people take Hume to be skeptical of, as opposed to curious about the logic of (justified), inductive practice? I mean, he says, "as a philosopher who has some share of curiosity, I will not say skepticism. I want to learn the foundation of this [inductive] inference." So what's the deal?

Accepted:
October 15, 2005

Comments

As I read Hume, he is saying that children form beliefs about the unexamined, and they do this because of their 'natural instinct' of supposing that the future will be like the past. And Hume thinks that adults are just the same. We might think that we have good reasons for our beliefs about the unexamined, but what Hume's brilliant skeptical argument seems to show is that there can be no such reasons. The deal is that this is, for many of us, a deeply disturbing conclusion.

Peter Lipton's reading of Hume is an instance of the skeptical reading of Hume that has prevailed since the eighteenth century. There is, however, another way to read Hume, that has become especially widespread in the last ten years or so, but which also has a long pedigree. On this reading, the naturalist reading of Hume, Hume's question about causal reasoning, the inference from the observed to the unobserved, from impressions to ideas, is a question about which cognitive faculty (reason, the senses, or the imagination) enables agents to draw this inference. Hume's conclusion is that this inference is based on the imagination. (In this way, Hume can be seen as seeking to satisfy his "curiousity...to learn the foundation of this inference.") But this conclusion need not be taken to imply that Hume does not believe that causal inferences cannot be justified or unjustified; indeed, Hume articulates 'rules for judging of causes and effects', and in certain places, seems to suggest that there are norms governing the imagination. Even granting this, however, one might well wonder whether Hume is justified in articulating rules and seeking norms that govern causal reasoning. This is where the skeptical reading can seem to regain purchase against the naturalist reading of Hume. Whether Hume is a skeptic, or a naturalist, or both, and to what extent, is a question that becomes especially pressing in the light of the Conclusion to Book I of the Treatise of Human Nature (in the Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Hume's skepticism seems much more muted). This issue remains a much-disputed topic among Hume scholars.

For a sophisticated defense of a naturalist reading of Hume, see David Owen Hume's Reason (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). For a recent defense of a skeptical reading of Hume, see Janet Broughton, "Hume's Naturalism about Cognitive Norms" (Philosophical Topics 31 [2003]: 1-19). For a somewhat older, book-length 'skeptical' interpretation of Hume, see Robert Fogelin, Hume's Skepticism in the Treatise of Human Nature (London: Routledge, 1985).