Abstract
Even a cursory examination of the Treatise and the Enquiry concerning Human Understanding suffices to uncover a large number of passages that indicate that Hume is committed to an extremely wide-ranging and radical form of epistemological scepticism. Unlike some alleged sceptics, Hume is not merely calling into question our ability to know things for certain: his target is rather our supposed capacity to have beliefs that possess any positive degree of epistemic justification. Classical Pyrrhonean sceptics of the kind exemplified by Sextus Empiricus denied that any belief, no matter how seemingly straightforward and initially plausible, possessed more epistemic justification than any other belief (see Bailey 2002, 135–7). And in the case of the overwhelming majority of beliefs, Hume seems content to embrace this Pyrrhonean attitude.
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Notes
- 1.
The only beliefs that might possibly be viewed by Hume as wholly immune to Pyrrhonean doubt are a person’s beliefs about the content of his or her present perceptions. In the Treatise (1739, 1.4.2.7/190), Hume declares, ‘for since all actions and sensations of the mind are known to us by consciousness, they must necessarily appear in every particular what they are, and be what they appear. Every thing that enters the mind, being in reality a perception, ’tis impossible any thing shou’d to feeling appear different. This were to suppose, that even where we are most intimately conscious, we might be mistaken’.
- 2.
As Philo is specifically engaging with Cleanthes at the level of what beliefs are acceptable by everyday, non-philosophical standards when these are applied with the care and precision found in the most compelling scientific reasoning, Tweyman (1986, 9–10) is mistaken in interpreting Philo’s arguments in Parts 2–11 as Pyrrhonean arguments intended to persuade an initially dogmatic Cleanthes to embrace mitigated scepticism. Philo’s arguments are intended rather to answer the charge that even a mitigated sceptic should, if he is to act in good faith, embrace various religious beliefs.
- 3.
Hume is not objecting here to the imagination playing a crucial role in our philosophical and everyday deliberations. By Hume’s own admission, we would have no beliefs about any matter of fact beyond the content of our present perceptions without the assistance of the imagination (see 1739, 1.4.4.1/225; 1.4.7.3/265). Hume’s strictures are directed solely towards the human tendency to form beliefs in an indiscriminate and promiscuous fashion even when prompted by weak rather than strong associative links.
- 4.
This analysis of the conception of veritic epistemic luck is taken from Duncan Pritchard’s highly illuminating discussion of the relationship between the epistemic standing of beliefs and different varieties of epistemic luck. See Pritchard 2005, 145–52, 173–8.
References
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Bailey, A., O’Brien, D. (2014). Epistemological Scepticism and Religious Belief. In: Hume's Critique of Religion: 'Sick Men's Dreams'. The New Synthese Historical Library, vol 72. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6615-0_5
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