David Hume: Scepticism, Science, and Superstition

1. David Hume:Scepticism, Science,and Superstition 3. The Treatise andthe first Enquiry Dr Peter Millican Hertford College, Oxford

2. ATreatise of Human Nature • Book I “Of the Understanding” and Book II “Of the Passions” published January 1739. • Book III “Of Morals” published November 1740, together with an “Appendix” in which Hume gives corrections to Book I (and confesses failure over personal identity). • Hume’s first and most ambitious work, presenting a synthesis of epistemology, metaphysics, psychology and morals.

3. Passions and Morality • A Passionate Animal • We are driven not by reason, but by passions, based largely on discoverable psychological mechanisms that we share with the animals. • Morality based on Sympathy • Morality cannot be founded on rational insight (or on any religious principles). • The true foundation of morality is a natural instinct, sympathy, which leads us to care about others (something that pure reason cannot do).

4. “The Great Infidel” • Secularism • Hume’s outstanding characteristic, in context, is that he is an “infidel”, a non-believer. This informs almost all of his work … • Naturalism • Man is an animal rather than a semi-divine creature halfway between beasts and angels. • Scepticism • Hence our “reason” is a natural operation, not a faculty of divine insight into things.

5. Treatise Book I • Follows Locke’s Essay by starting with the origin of ideas – a pervasive theme. • Part I ends with a somewhat Berkeleian account of general ideas (denying what they take to be Lockean “abstraction”). • Part II, “Of the ideas of space and time” denies infinite divisibility, inferring from the nature of our ideas to the nature of space and time themselves. This part in particular seems uncharacteristically metaphysical.

6. Part III, by far the longest part, is mainly devoted to causation and causal inference. • Part III Section i presents an important distinction between types of relations (cf. Part I Section v). Some of these can yield “knowledge” (i.e. certainty, susceptible of demonstration), whereas others cannot. • The main discussion of Part III (from Section ii to xiv) investigates the nature of the idea of cause and effect. • On the way it discusses induction (or “probable reasoning”) and rational judgement.

7. Part IV discusses various sceptical topics: • Section i: “Scepticism with regard to reason” • Section ii: “Scepticism with regard to the senses” (i.e. the nature of our ideas and beliefs about the external world) • Section iii: “Of the antient philosophy” • Section iv: “Of the modern philosophy” (i.e. the modern distinction between primary and secondary qualities etc., which Hume rejects) • Section v: “Of the immateriality of the soul” (argues that matter could cause thought) • Section vi: “Of personal identity”

8. Understanding Treatise Book I • Parts of the Treatise are very confusing: • I iv 2 and I iv 6 seem to mix discussion of the origin and nature of our ideas, bringing in associationist psychological explanations of how our minds are misled, which seem to have deeply sceptical metaphysical implications. • In I iv 2 and I iv 7, Hume’s thought seems highly dynamic, from assured to sceptically confused (and, at least in I iv 7, back again). • The despairing “Appendix” leaves us unsure what to make of I iv 6: what is left?

9. The Appendix to the Treatise • Published with Book III of the Treatise. • Only 18 months after publication of Book I, admits to bad expression and a “mistake”. • Dissatisfied with his description of the nature of belief, and various other minor faults. • “Upon a more strict review of the section concerning personal identity … I neither know how to correct my former opinions, nor how to render them consistent.” (Hume never again discusses personal identity in any work.)

10. The Hume of the Treatise? • Associationist and Destructive Sceptic? • The well-known Hume of many textbooks is obsessive about ideas, impressions, and associationist psychology. • Major “topics” are origin of ideas, causation, the external world, and personal identity. • Induction is reduced to association of ideas and thus shown to be irrational. • Account of the ideas of external objects and personal identity seems to indicate that both are completely incoherent.

11. Hume’s Core Concerns • Pro-Science, Anti-Superstition • Hume’s mature works, and even much of the Treatise, paint a very different picture. • Keen to “introduce the experimental Method of Reasoning into Moral Subjects” (the subtitle of the Treatise). • Gives advice on the appropriate basis and methods of such empirical science. • Attacks “superstition”, especially religion. • Avoids self-destructive scepticism.

12. Disillusion with the Treatise (1) • January 1739: Treatise published • June 1st 1739, letter to Kames: ‘My fondness for what I imagined new discoveries, made me overlook all common rules of prudence’ • October/November 1739: Abstract written • Completed by March 1740, the Abstract suggests a major rethink and restructuring, anticipating the Enquiry in many ways.

13. The Abstract of the Treatise • Sets out the “Chief Argument” of the Treatise: almost entirely based around Book I Part iii and closely related issues: induction, belief, Copy Principle and causation, free will. • Aside from these topics, no part of the Treatise gets more than a single paragraph! • Approach to some topics, selection of topics, and their ordering, is much closer to the Enquiry than to the Treatise. • Suggests Hume was already rethinking in late 1739, when the Abstract was probably written!

14. Disillusion with the Treatise (2) • March 16th 1740, letter to Hutcheson: ‘I wait with some Impatience for a second Edition principally on Account of Alterations I intend to make in my Performance. … I am apt, in a cool hour, to suspect, in general, that most of my Reasonings will be more useful by furnishing Hints & exciting People’s Curiosity than as containing any Principles that will augment the Stock of Knowledge that must pass to future Ages.’

15. Disillusion with the Treatise (3) • November 1740: Book III is published … … together with Appendix, confessing errors. • May 21st 1745, Letter from a Gentleman: ‘I am indeed of Opinion, that the Author had better delayed the publishing of that Book; not on account of any dangerous Principles contained in it, but because on more mature Consideration he might have rendered it much less imperfect by further Corrections and Revisals. (L 33)’

16. Disillusion with the Treatise (4) • Spring 1751, letter to Gilbert Elliot: ‘I give you my Advice against reading [the Treatise]. … I was carry’d away by the Heat of Youth & Invention to publish too precipitately. So vast an Undertaking, plan’d before I was one and twenty, & compos’d before twenty five, must necessarily be very defective. I have repented my Haste a hundred, & a hundred times.’

17. Disillusion with the Treatise (5) • February 1754, letter to John Stewart: I shall acknowledge … a very great Mistake … viz my publishing at all the Treatise of human Nature, a Book, which pretended to innovate in all the sublimest Parts of Philosophy, & which I compos’d before I was five & twenty. Above all, the positive Air, which prevails in that Book, & which may be imputed to the Ardor of Youth, so much displeases me, that I have not Patience to review it.

18. Hume’s ‘Advertisement’ ‘… several writers [Reid, Beattie], who have honoured the Author’s Philosophy with answers, have taken care to direct all their batteries against that juvenile work [the Treatise]. … Henceforth, the Author desires, that the following Pieces [EHU, DOP, EPM, NHR] may alone be regarded as containing his philosophical sentiments and principles.’ Enquiry, ‘Advertisement’, 1775

19. A Timeline of Hume’s Life ‘A new scene’ 1729 Treatise Book I 1739 Reid’s Inquiry 1764 Born 1711 Beattie 1770 France 1734-7 Abstract 1740 50 56 60 67 70 53 58 64 68 72 72 Enquiry 1748 Adv’t 1775

20. The Basis of Hume’s Preference • Putting the Evidence Together • Hume consistently expresses support for empirical science, and attacks superstition. • But the Treatise gives a very dubious basis for making this distinction, since it portrays all our mental life as so incorrigibly irrational. • The philosophy of the Enquiry, foreshadowed by the Abstract, is far more suitable. • This gives a plausible explanation for Hume’s preference for the Enquiry.

21. The Aims of the Enquiry • A manifesto for inductive moral science and how to pursue it, distinguishing: • ‘mental geography, or delineation of the distinct parts and powers of the mind’ (1.13); • discovery of ‘the secret springs and principles, by which the human mind is actuated in its operations’ (1.15). • Examine the limits of possible enquiry, to: • undermine bogus metaphysics and the superstition that it supports (1.11-12).

22. Sections IV and VII: • Causes are discoverable by experience alone rather than by rational understanding. • Factual inference is founded on assumption of uniformity, irresistible due to custom. • The only appropriate scientific ambition is to resolve observable phenomena into simple, quantifiable laws that describe them, rather than aspiring to intelligibility or rational insight. • Section V Part ii: • A sketch of an example of such resolution of phenomena: the operation of custom on the mind is somewhat analogous to association.

23. Section VI: • Probabilistic inference is a natural development of induction, based on custom. • Section VIII: • Inductive reasoning is equally applicable to the moral sciences as to the physical. • It is to be pursued in the same way, through a probing search for uniform hidden causes. • Section IX: • Analogical inference is another development of induction, where similarity is imperfect. • Man is part of nature, alongside the animals.

24. Section X: • We should ‘proportion our belief’ to the evidence, and carefully scrutinising testimony with an inductively-informed critical eye. • Section XI: • Inductive inference is subject to a constraint of proportionality, and arguably a prohibition on speculation about unique phenomena. • Section XII: • Metaphysical insight into matter is a dead end. • Restrict areas of enquiry, with induction based on ‘methodizing and correcting’.