Abstract
In this article, our aim is to evaluate the relevance of Reid’s critique of scepticism and the defence of Hume’s arguments. As it was often noted, arguing that natural beliefs are not suppressed by philosophical distrust is not sufficient to refute scepticism. Conversely it is not enough to denounce that this distrust stems from the attack of the reason against itself, because this is a contradiction of the reason, not a contradiction of the scepticism. Therefore we might suspect that we cannot know if scepticism is right or wrong. This is the core of Cavell’s attack against scepticism and refutation of scepticism. Notwithstanding, we shall show that Reid’s strategy is not to demonstrate that scepticism is wrong, but only to suggest to the sceptic that he himself acknowledges the evidence that he claims to reject. Reid’s argumentation is altogether an exhortation and admonition. As for Hume, he develops a sceptical theory of understanding which is neither idealist neither realistic, and consequently accounts for our feeling of the presence of reality. We shall point out how it can resists to Reid’s consistent argument. In the conclusion we shall address Cavell’s problem in arguing that Hume and Reid offers helpful means to understand how we can acknowledge the presence of things, although we cannot know their existence, from an epistemological point of view.
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Notes
- 1.
INQ, I, 6, 20. The following abbreviations have been used for Hume and Reid’s works: EHU = David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, L. A. Selby-Bigge and P. H. Nidditch (eds.), in Enquiries concerning Human Understanding and concerning the Principles of Morals, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 3rd ed., 1975. References are to section, part, paragraph and page. T = David Hume, A Treatise on Human Nature, L.-A. Selby-Bigge and P. H. Nidditch (eds.), Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1978, and also David F. Norton and Mary J. Norton (eds.), Oxford, Clarendon Press, 2000. References are to book, part, section, paragraph and page. INQ = Thomas Reid, An Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense, (1765), Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 1997. References are to chapter, section and page. IP = Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2002. References are to essay, chapter and page.
- 2.
Pyrrho conformed to customs, and the arts since Diogene tells that he was a priest and a great traveller. Reid overlooks this central point of Pyrrhonism. Hume, too, commits such a simplification in the Enquiry. Cf. N. Wolterstorff, “Hume and Reid”, The Monist, 70, 1987, pp. 398–417, esp. pp. 400–405.
- 3.
IP, VI, 4, 461–462.
- 4.
INQ, II, 4, 29. Reid rejects the classical order of traditional logic: bare conception does not precede original judgment; on the contrary, bare conception results from the analysis of original judgment.
- 5.
IP, II, 12, 162; IP, II, 14, 173, l. 9–10; IP, VI, 5, 473.
- 6.
INQ, Dedication, p. 4.
- 7.
IP, VI, 5, 482, l. 14–19; VII, 4, 563, l. 10–11.
- 8.
As a complement to Perelman’s analysis of the rhetoric of proof, Laurent Jaffro argues that the accusation of self-refutation has to be distinguished from the accusation of an incoherence between theoretical claims and practical acts. The former is a direct one, namely a performance contradiction between the propositional content of the utterance and the mere fact of uttering. The latter is an indirect one which is a case of contradiction between the propositional content of the utterance in theoretical context and the behaviour of the speaker in everyday life. Further, by using Mackie’s analysis of the logic of refutation he shows that the sceptical claim that “nothing can be proven” is not absolutely self-refuting, and that consequently to accuse scepticism of direct self-contradiction is often irrelevant. Jaffro concludes that Hume’s scepticism in particular has not committed such a performance contradiction (L. Jaffro, “La rétorsion du sens commun et la possibilité du scepticisme. Contre Reid”, in M. Cohen-Halimi et H. L’Heuillet (ed.), Comment peut-on être sceptique ? Hommage à Didier Deleule, Paris, Honoré Champion, 2010). Cf. John. L. Mackie, “Self-Refutation. A Formal Analysis”, The Philosophical Quarterly, 14, 56, 1964, reprint in J. Mackie and P. Mackie (eds.), Logic and Knowledge, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1985, pp. 54–67; C. Perelman, L’Empire rhétorique, Paris, Vrin, 1977.
- 9.
Cf. N. Wolterstorff, Thomas Reid and the Story of Epistemology, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2001, pp. 186–214.
- 10.
Cf. INQ, V, 7, 71.
- 11.
Cf. L. Jaffro, op. cit.
- 12.
IP, I, 2, 41, l. 10. Cf. IP, VI, 4, 453, l.25-p. 454, l. 6. Cf. IP, VI, 5, 480, l. 31–35.
- 13.
Cf. L. Jaffro, op. cit.; P. De Bary, Thomas Reid and Scepticism. His Reliabilist Response, New York, Routledge, 2002, p. 134.
- 14.
IP, I, 2, 39.
- 15.
IP, VI, 4, 459–467.
- 16.
William Alston, “Thomas Reid on Epistemic Principles”, History of Philosophy Quarterly, 2, 4, October 1985, pp. 435–449, esp. pp. 442–449.
- 17.
IP, VI, 7, 516–517. Cf. IP, VI, 5, 481.
- 18.
Daniel Schulthess has enlightened the cited texts by insisting on the dialectical role of the “ways of reasoning” (as distinct from the reasonings of the common sense and from those of the science) in the third chapter of his book Philosophie et sens commun chez Thomas Reid (1710–1796), Berne, Peter Lang, 1983. Note that, in order to present Reid’s argumentation in a topic, he changed the order of the three steps of the arguments and suggested dividing the arguments into two classes: those which depend on the evidence of the first principles, and those which do not (p.75–76). In contrast, I take this order to be meaningful as such.
- 19.
Cf. L. Jaffro, op. cit.
- 20.
IP, VI, 4, 463, l. 22–25.
- 21.
IP, VI, 5, 474, l. 6–15. “Whether chimera ruminating in a vacuum devoureth second intentions”.
- 22.
IP, III, 7, 290.
- 23.
P. De Bary, op. cit., chapter 10, esp. p. 187.
- 24.
Louise Marcile-Lacoste had already pointed out the circularity of an undertaking which warrants our natural beliefs by appeal to the veracity of a deity, and which settles the veracity of God from our inductive natural beliefs (Claude Buffier and Thomas Reid. Two Common-sense Philosophers, Kingston/Montreal, McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1982, pp. 145–151). Paul Helm partly resolved the problem by showing that “the knowledge of this metaphysical truth is not necessary for it to be reasonable to rely upon induction” (“Reid and ‘Reformed’ Epistemology”, in J. Houston (ed.), Thomas Reid. Context, Influence, Significance, Edinburgh, Dunedin Academic Press, 2004, p. 113). But since Reid did not take pains to develop in details the relationship between his theism and his realistic epistemology, it remains to be understood how self-evidence can be afforded by the providential origin of our constitution.
- 25.
Indeed, the following text is famous, IP, II, 20, 231–232: “He who is persuaded that he is the workmanship of God, and that it is a part of his constitution to believe his senses, may think that a good reason to confirm his belief. But he had the belief before he could give this or any other reason for it”.
- 26.
Cf. P. Rysiew, “Reid and Epistemic Naturalism”, in John Haldane and Stephen Read (eds.), The Philosophy of Thomas Reid. A Collection of Essays, Malden/Oxford/Melbourne/Berlin, Blackwell, 2003, p. 37.
- 27.
An epistemological fact is not a self-contradictory concept. A value can be regarded as a fact not only because it is taken as a psychological effect, but also insofar as it is regarded as something that we have to admit as value. Reid holds self-evidence as a fact in the second sense.
- 28.
Letter from David Hume to Thomas Reid, dated February 25, 1763, published in INQ, 262–263.
- 29.
For Reid, “impression” means “sensation” and the mental act that it denotes is merely subjective. By itself, sensation cannot provide any idea grasping the existent object. Thus Reid is led to the discovery of the process called “suggestion”, which explains the perception: the subjective sensation is accompanied by another mental act which conceives and judges the object as existent. Hume objected in a letter to Hugh Blair dated 4 July 1762 that Reid had come back to innate ideas. Indeed, according to the Aberdonian, the sensation suggests a realistic belief by the virtue of laws of nature, although the idea is not pre-existent in the mind before the perception. Cf. Paul Wood, “David Hume on Thomas Reid’s Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense: A New Letter to Hugh Blair from July 1762” in Mind, 95, 380, October 1986, p. 412.
- 30.
The Letter from Hume to Strahan dated October 1775 in J.Y.T. Greig (ed.), The Letters of David Hume, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1932, 2 volumes, ii, p. 301.
- 31.
Galen Strawson and Peter Millican have drawn attention to the Enquiry as an important Hume’s work as such, maybe the most important one regarding epistemological matters (Cf. G. Strawson, “David Hume: Object and Power” and P. Millican, “The Context, Aim, and Structure of Hume’s First Enquiry” in P. Millican (ed.), Reading Hume on Human Understanding, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 2002).
- 32.
In the Advertisement, Hume says that “most of the principles, and reasonings, contained in [the Enquiry] were published in […] the Treatise […]”, and that the “negligences” of his former reasoning were “more in the expression”. In my opinion, the first book of the Treatise was written as a book of alternative logic. Its main targets were the classical books held for logical handbook, such as the Port-Royal Logic, etc. Thus, the composition echoes those of traditional compendia in logic. In the Enquiry, no longer is the audience restricted to the learned and philosophers, but includes more broadly the gentlemen, and the men of sense and experience. On the story of the Advertisement, cf. James Somerville, The Enigmatic Parting Shot, Aldershot, Avebury, 1995. On the philosophical significance of the Advertisement, and consequently that of the Enquiry, cf. Peter Millican, “Hume’s Compleat Answer to Dr. Reid”, online http://www.davidhume.org/documents/2006%20Hume%27s%20Answer%20to%20Reid.pdf. Millican shows that the Enquiry must be read as promoting inductive investigations.
- 33.
The Appendix highlights the differ ence between the aesthetic feeling in fictions and the realistic feeling in belief. The Treatise had claimed that “loose fiction or idea” could acquire vivacity in such a way that it could influence passions as belief. (T, I, 3, 10, 3, 123) But, although poetry and eloquence can enliven ideas and make feel fantastic stories, the vivacity that they give to ideas are not of the same kind of that which is in belief. The feeling somehow remains “weak and imperfect” (T, I, 3, 10, 10, 630).
- 34.
T, Abstr. § 22, 654.
- 35.
F. Watanabe Dauer has shown that the feeling is the awareness that we are believing in the existence of something. It consists in a realistically feeling. Cf. F. Watanabe Dauer, “Force and Vivacity in the Treatise and the Enquiry”, Hume Studies, 25, 1999, pp. 83–99, esp. pp. 90–91.
- 36.
For instance, in the first Enquiry, considerations about space and time are directly subservient to sceptical objections. For a detailed comparison between the Treatise and the Enquiry, see P. Millican, “Hume’s Compleat Answer to Dr. Reid”, op. cit., pp. 4–6.
- 37.
EHU, 12, 2, 23, 159.
- 38.
EHU, 12, 2, 22, 159.
- 39.
T, 1, 4, 1, 7, 183.
- 40.
T, 1, 4, 1, 8, 183–184.
- 41.
T, 1, 4, 2, 45, 210–211.
- 42.
T, 1, 4, 2, 1, 187.
- 43.
T, App. § 21, 636.
- 44.
T, 1, 4, 7, 9, 269.
- 45.
In the Section V, far from taking pyrrhonism as his philosophical model, he circumvents Reid’s attack by implicitly admitting that suspension of judgment is impossible in practice. Just as Hume explicitly admits that epicurism and stoicism may “flatter our natural indolence”, he suggests that such an accusation may be relevant in the case of pyrrhonism too. Academical philosophy is the only way of scepticism that is safe from this accusation. Hume describes it as “harmless and innocent”. He alludes to Cicero’s thesis in the Academica that practical beliefs (peithanon as Carneades said, probabile or verisimile as Cicero translates it) are not prevented by the theoretical suspension of assentiment to apparent enargeia (evidentia). Yet, in the section XII Hume assumes that the mitigated scepticism is a kind of academical scepticism which could stem from pyrrhonism: the former is said to be “the result” of the latter. On this point, see L. Jaffro, “Le sceptique humien est-il modéré ? Le rôle du pyrrhonisme dans la genèse causale du scepticisme mitigé”, Daimon. Rivista Internacional de Filosofia, n°52, 2011, pp. 53–69.
- 46.
In this respect, belief is well named “instinct” because, as B. Winters pointed, this propensity is useful, effective (in practical life), and pleasant (B. Winters, “Hume’s Argument for the Superiority of Natural Instinct”, in Stanley Tweyman (ed.), David Hume. Critical Assessments, vol. 3, 1994, pp. 262–70). We should also note an epistemological usefulness of this “instinct”: we are prompted to believe and look after evidences throughout our life. Each belief is an experience from which we can reflect in order to infer some logic (as in T, I, 3, 15) or some correction (by the use of analogy, as in the Enquiry).
- 47.
Cf. D. F. Norton, “How a Sceptic May Live Scepticism”, in J.J. Macintosh and H.A. Meynell (eds.), Faith, Scepticism and Personal Identity, Calgary, University of Calgary Press, 1994, pp. 119–139. According to Norton, despite the irresistibility of natural belief, philosophical doubt can prompt modesty because it is voluntary. Thus metaphysical scepticism may develop some dispositional ethics of belief. Yet I take philosophical doubt to be no less natural than ordinary belief (because it results from factual reasoning on the fallibility of our faculties). For Hume, the responsibility does not suppose free-will, but a calm disposition of passions. We can make ourselves responsible for our beliefs because the emotive effects of sceptical reflections may develop a disposition to modesty and to look after satisfying evidence.
- 48.
T, I, 4, 7, 14, 273. Cf. D. Garrett, Cognition and Commitment in Hume’s Philosophy, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1995, pp. 235–241.
- 49.
L. Wittgenstein, Notebooks 1914–1916, G.E.M. Anscombe and G.H. von Wright (eds.), Oxford, Blackwell, 1961, 2nd ed. 1979, 01.5.1915.
- 50.
Cf. S. Cavell, Must We Mean What We Say?, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1969; The Claim of Reason, New York, Oxford University Press, 1979; S. Laugier “Ce que le scepticisme veut dire”, Revue de métaphysique et de morale, 1, January 2010, pp. 5–23.
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Etchegaray, C. (2013). Can We Know Whether Scepticism Is Right or Wrong? Reid’s Criticism and Hume’s Answer. In: Charles, S., J. Smith, P. (eds) Scepticism in the Eighteenth Century: Enlightenment, Lumières, Aufklärung. International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives internationales d'histoire des idées, vol 210. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4810-1_10
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