1 00:00:05,790 --> 00:00:15,300 Welcome to the third lecture on David Hume. We're going to be dealing with some fundamental and sometimes quite tricky stuff today, 2 00:00:15,300 --> 00:00:24,000 which is setting the scene for the very well known material that will be coming to mainly next time. 3 00:00:24,000 --> 00:00:31,890 Just a reminder of where we've been. Hume starts from a broadly lock and theory of ideas. 4 00:00:31,890 --> 00:00:37,710 He's got his own version of concept empiricism, but it's very much modelled on Locke. 5 00:00:37,710 --> 00:00:46,500 He modifies Barkley's theory of general ideas, and he's quite distinctive in that respect. 6 00:00:46,500 --> 00:00:52,500 Another way in which he's very distinctive is that he takes a positive view of the Association of Ideas. 7 00:00:52,500 --> 00:01:06,140 Unlike his predecessors and we saw a sketch of his theory of relations that hasn't yet played a big role, but it will in this lecture. 8 00:01:06,140 --> 00:01:15,650 Now treaties one point to space and time, I'm almost going to ignore here that you have an appendix to the handout, 9 00:01:15,650 --> 00:01:23,540 which takes you through 24 slides on space and time more or less, as I delivered them in a series of lectures back in 2010. 10 00:01:23,540 --> 00:01:28,250 Those are actually on the web. So if you want to cover space and time, 11 00:01:28,250 --> 00:01:38,180 you can go to those that for the sake of having more scope within this lecture series to focus on difficult, well known controversial issues. 12 00:01:38,180 --> 00:01:47,180 I'm putting that to one side. Here are some of the highlights of the theory. 13 00:01:47,180 --> 00:01:52,670 And again, essentially what he's doing is applying his copy, empiricism, 14 00:01:52,670 --> 00:01:58,520 the copy principle to ideas of space and time, he's explaining how we get those ideas. 15 00:01:58,520 --> 00:02:06,200 And he's drawing some quite controversial conclusions from how we do that. 16 00:02:06,200 --> 00:02:11,700 OK, so what I'm going to move on to now is Hume's faculty psychology. 17 00:02:11,700 --> 00:02:18,690 Partly because this is one of the most potentially confusing aspects of Hume's philosophy. 18 00:02:18,690 --> 00:02:23,700 We'll see that a lot of his arguments are couched in terms of faculties. 19 00:02:23,700 --> 00:02:33,050 And if you don't know where he's coming from or indeed where he's going to, this can be very disorientating. 20 00:02:33,050 --> 00:02:45,530 So first of all, we're talking here about three of Hume's most famous arguments, the most influential arguments in his treatise. 21 00:02:45,530 --> 00:02:55,490 One of them concerned with induction. One can descend with the external world and one of them concerned with motivation and morals. 22 00:02:55,490 --> 00:03:06,950 So first of all, we're told that inductive inference results from processes of the imagination and is not determined by reason or the understanding. 23 00:03:06,950 --> 00:03:18,300 So humans attributing inductive inference to one faculty imagination rather than another reason or the understanding. 24 00:03:18,300 --> 00:03:23,190 In one four two treaties, one for two, where he comes to deal with the external world. 25 00:03:23,190 --> 00:03:33,070 Our belief in external objects is again attributed to the imagination rather than to reason or indeed since. 26 00:03:33,070 --> 00:03:36,880 And then in book two and book three of the treaties, 27 00:03:36,880 --> 00:03:43,120 we get a famous argument about motivation that reason cannot motivate us alone 28 00:03:43,120 --> 00:03:48,490 and hence morals because morals do motivators cannot be derived from reason. 29 00:03:48,490 --> 00:04:00,310 So three of the absolutely best known arguments of Hume all phrased in terms of what faculty is responsible for some operation. 30 00:04:00,310 --> 00:04:08,500 So here are just some quotations illustrating this at the beginning of the argument concerning induction, 31 00:04:08,500 --> 00:04:15,460 is it by means of the understanding or imagination that we make such inferences? 32 00:04:15,460 --> 00:04:22,710 Are we determined by reason or by association? And then lower down. 33 00:04:22,710 --> 00:04:29,910 We're going to ask the subject of our present enquiry about this is about belief in body external objects, 34 00:04:29,910 --> 00:04:36,960 whether it be the senses, reason or the imagination that produces this opinion. 35 00:04:36,960 --> 00:04:47,730 And in the case of morality, I've got a couple of quotes there from the treaties and one from the moral enquiry that 1751. 36 00:04:47,730 --> 00:04:58,620 OK, so what I'm going to do now is start with a quick summary of the main human faculties in a way that I think is pretty uncontroversial. 37 00:04:58,620 --> 00:05:06,610 Some of it, when we get into the complications about the imagination and reason, is more controversial. 38 00:05:06,610 --> 00:05:16,720 So. We start with the senses, and when Hume talks about the senses, he normally means the external senses sight, 39 00:05:16,720 --> 00:05:21,910 touch, sound, smell, gustatory, taste, and this doesn't mean artistic taste. 40 00:05:21,910 --> 00:05:25,130 All right, we're talking about taste as in your mouth. 41 00:05:25,130 --> 00:05:35,540 And what these faculties do is they provide the mind with impressions, sensory impressions, and of course, 42 00:05:35,540 --> 00:05:45,410 given his coffee principle, those sensory impressions thus provide us with ideas that are copies of those impressions. 43 00:05:45,410 --> 00:05:50,810 Along with the external sensors, we have reflection and reflection. 44 00:05:50,810 --> 00:05:59,840 Hume talked about, as did Locke as a sort of internal sense, and we've seen already that he interprets it somewhat differently from Locke. 45 00:05:59,840 --> 00:06:04,010 But this again presents to the minds impressions in this case. 46 00:06:04,010 --> 00:06:13,970 Impressions of reflection. So we have sources of impressions of sensation and sources of impressions of reflection. 47 00:06:13,970 --> 00:06:21,780 Those are the senses. Next, we come to the imagination. 48 00:06:21,780 --> 00:06:32,880 Now, Hume often calls this the fantasy. So if you see the word fancy, it is typically absolutely a synonym for the imagination. 49 00:06:32,880 --> 00:06:39,900 And Hume, somewhat frustratingly to his readers, goes in a lot for elegant variation. 50 00:06:39,900 --> 00:06:49,470 So you can read a passage of Hume, where in every alternate sentence, he's using the word imagination and in the others he's using the word fancy. 51 00:06:49,470 --> 00:06:54,270 He's simply doing it for the sake of variety. He wants to be an elegant writer. 52 00:06:54,270 --> 00:06:57,510 It's a little bit frustrating to us these days. 53 00:06:57,510 --> 00:07:04,440 When you are writing philosophical essays, your tutors will no doubt tell you use the same word if you mean the same thing. 54 00:07:04,440 --> 00:07:10,610 It may not be as elegant, but it's much easier to understand. So be aware of that. 55 00:07:10,610 --> 00:07:22,670 Now, very importantly, the imagination is interpreted in the early modern period as a faculty of representing quasar sensory ideas, 56 00:07:22,670 --> 00:07:25,730 and Hume very much takes vision as the model. 57 00:07:25,730 --> 00:07:31,610 I mean, vision is in many ways our most important sense when humans thinking about impressions and ideas. 58 00:07:31,610 --> 00:07:36,590 Most of the time, I think he's thinking in terms of visual impressions and ideas. 59 00:07:36,590 --> 00:07:40,460 So I likewise, when discussing these things, will focus on that. 60 00:07:40,460 --> 00:07:51,170 But do bear in mind that you can have quasar sensory images of sound, taste, smell and so on as well? 61 00:07:51,170 --> 00:08:00,950 OK, now, if our ideas are copied from our impressions and here we're talking, mainly let's let's focus on sensory impressions, 62 00:08:00,950 --> 00:08:07,730 external senses, and it follows that all of our thinking is actually imagistic. 63 00:08:07,730 --> 00:08:15,890 We do not have a faculty of pure intellect that the rationalist thought we did. 64 00:08:15,890 --> 00:08:22,040 All of our thinking is being done in terms of queasy imagistic ideas, 65 00:08:22,040 --> 00:08:31,400 in which case it follows that for whom all of our thinking actually is within the imagination as conceived in those days, 66 00:08:31,400 --> 00:08:35,840 because the imagination is the faculty of having and manipulating quasars. 67 00:08:35,840 --> 00:08:45,120 Sensory images. So the imagination not only is our main vehicle of thinking. 68 00:08:45,120 --> 00:08:50,820 It also has certain powers, and the way Hume describes these differs actually in his different works. 69 00:08:50,820 --> 00:08:57,300 But one of the crucial points is one of the crucial things we can do with the imagination is to take our ideas, 70 00:08:57,300 --> 00:09:06,030 divide complexes into symbols, mix them up, form new complex ideas by putting the simplest together in new ways and so forth. 71 00:09:06,030 --> 00:09:11,690 So the imagination plays a very big role in Hume's philosophy. 72 00:09:11,690 --> 00:09:20,090 The memory that's another faculty that represents ideas to us, but it replays ideas to us in the same order. 73 00:09:20,090 --> 00:09:23,420 It doesn't have the freedom of the imagination. Where is in the imagination? 74 00:09:23,420 --> 00:09:28,040 We can cut and paste our ideas and put to get them together in all sorts of novel ways. 75 00:09:28,040 --> 00:09:33,540 The memory replays ideas to us in the same order broadly that they appeared to us. 76 00:09:33,540 --> 00:09:38,240 Of course, sometimes it can make mistakes. But it's not a matter of our choice. 77 00:09:38,240 --> 00:09:44,370 Moreover, the memory presents ideas with more veracity than the imagination. 78 00:09:44,370 --> 00:09:48,300 So we'll come back to that a little bit later. 79 00:09:48,300 --> 00:09:58,230 OK, now the more controversial stuff, so I'm going to start here with the traditional division between reason and will. 80 00:09:58,230 --> 00:10:06,030 So lots and lots of philosophers in in this period, both for quite a long time before and a long time after, 81 00:10:06,030 --> 00:10:09,780 basically divide the human mind into two big domains. 82 00:10:09,780 --> 00:10:18,270 The reason and the will and reason is the faculty by which we learn about the world the way things are. 83 00:10:18,270 --> 00:10:23,970 That's our cognitive faculty and the will is our cognitive faculty. 84 00:10:23,970 --> 00:10:31,540 The will is the faculty which governs our purposes, what we plan to do. 85 00:10:31,540 --> 00:10:37,240 Now, Hume actually very rarely talks about the will of the faculty and what he says is actually a bit misleading, 86 00:10:37,240 --> 00:10:41,650 so let's put that to one side, it's not a very much interest here. 87 00:10:41,650 --> 00:10:48,160 That's much more significant when he comes to talk about the passions in Book two and morality in Book three. 88 00:10:48,160 --> 00:10:56,790 So that isn't the main focus here, but we will have a lot to say about reason or the understanding. 89 00:10:56,790 --> 00:11:01,560 So here is Frances Hutchinson, who had a big influence on Hume. 90 00:11:01,560 --> 00:11:09,420 Hume wrote to Hutchison he sent him copies of the treatise to ask for his view on it. 91 00:11:09,420 --> 00:11:13,410 Their relationship was not a straightforward one because Hume ended up with views that 92 00:11:13,410 --> 00:11:21,090 were very much at odds with Hutchison in various respects and to some extent fell out. 93 00:11:21,090 --> 00:11:28,800 But Hutchison here is writing in 1742. OK, so that he's actually writing. 94 00:11:28,800 --> 00:11:35,190 Less than two years after book, three of the treaties disappeared, which is at the end of 1740. 95 00:11:35,190 --> 00:11:40,350 Writers on these subjects should remember the common divisions of the faculties of the soul. 96 00:11:40,350 --> 00:11:49,000 But there is reason presenting the natures and relations of things antecedent to any act of will or desire. 97 00:11:49,000 --> 00:11:54,070 And the will or the disposition of soul to pursue what is presented is good. 98 00:11:54,070 --> 00:12:04,430 And to shun evil. And then he's clear that we have the senses which report to the understanding or reason. 99 00:12:04,430 --> 00:12:14,390 And we have the passions which report to the will. So you've got two general domains, this finding out about the world, those acting on the world. 100 00:12:14,390 --> 00:12:23,840 OK, so now we're going to see that we've houM the picture with regard to reason and the understanding is a little bit more complicated, 101 00:12:23,840 --> 00:12:29,510 but it's important to see this as the background to which he's reacting. 102 00:12:29,510 --> 00:12:40,820 OK, so I want to lead up to this by raising an issue about the faculties, which is potentially quite puzzling. 103 00:12:40,820 --> 00:12:48,440 Because empiricist, like Locke and Hume tend to be rather sceptical about self, about faculties. 104 00:12:48,440 --> 00:12:51,050 I mean, Locke in his essay, 105 00:12:51,050 --> 00:12:59,300 which is probably the single most influential book on this a lot logical background of Hume's thinking he ridicules faculties, 106 00:12:59,300 --> 00:13:01,760 he says they're a source of error. 107 00:13:01,760 --> 00:13:12,020 He says he wouldn't talk about faculties, except that it would seem like too much affectation not to, because talk about faculties is so fashionable. 108 00:13:12,020 --> 00:13:20,370 One problem with talking about faculties is that it makes it look as though our mind is divided into so many distinct agents. 109 00:13:20,370 --> 00:13:23,930 You know, our reason is doing one thing our imaginations doing something other, 110 00:13:23,930 --> 00:13:29,550 as though we've got little agents in our mind, all acting semi independently. 111 00:13:29,550 --> 00:13:35,730 And in fact, when we talk about the understanding, we should be very clear, we're not talking about a separate agent in the mind. 112 00:13:35,730 --> 00:13:47,000 We are simply talking about the person's capacity to understand. So a faculty is just a name that we give to a power. 113 00:13:47,000 --> 00:13:50,870 Now, Kim basically agrees on this. 114 00:13:50,870 --> 00:13:59,360 And he criticises Scholastica Aristotelian us for using the word faculty as though it gave some insight into things. 115 00:13:59,360 --> 00:14:06,200 So I suppose there's something the Aristotelian doesn't understand. 116 00:14:06,200 --> 00:14:10,400 Well, they can just invent a faculty or occult quality. 117 00:14:10,400 --> 00:14:11,180 They don't. 118 00:14:11,180 --> 00:14:20,400 They need only say that any phenomenon which puzzles them arises from a faculty, and there is an end of all dispute and enquiry upon the matter. 119 00:14:20,400 --> 00:14:23,670 And I've made clear in his play, La Mallard, 120 00:14:23,670 --> 00:14:30,450 Imagineer Sixteen seventy three made a famous parody of this kind of thing, which I think is very vivid here. 121 00:14:30,450 --> 00:14:36,480 He he has a doctor who is asked, Why does opium make one sleep? 122 00:14:36,480 --> 00:14:43,250 And the doctor comes back very knowledgeably? Oh, it's because opium has a soporific faculty. 123 00:14:43,250 --> 00:14:51,380 That's not an explanation. That's just saying opium has the power to make you sleep, so you've got a completely empty explanation. 124 00:14:51,380 --> 00:14:56,540 You're giving a name to this supposed faculty. But that's all you're doing. 125 00:14:56,540 --> 00:15:08,990 It doesn't give any insight. OK, so we would expect him both because of his empiricism and because of his the the lock in background, 126 00:15:08,990 --> 00:15:13,280 we would expect him to be pretty dismissive about faculties. 127 00:15:13,280 --> 00:15:20,010 And yet here he is, presenting three of his biggest arguments, absolutely in terms of faculties. 128 00:15:20,010 --> 00:15:27,740 And the mystery deepens. To say that. 129 00:15:27,740 --> 00:15:34,070 It is opium soporific faculty, which gives it the power to make a sleep that just is trivial. 130 00:15:34,070 --> 00:15:40,860 It's empty. It's just saying opium has this power to make a sleep, and that's why it makes us sleep. 131 00:15:40,860 --> 00:15:46,510 But the conclusions that Hume draws from his famous arguments aren't trivial. 132 00:15:46,510 --> 00:15:53,770 For example, he says that causal inference is due to the imagination rather than reason. 133 00:15:53,770 --> 00:16:02,860 And in one for two, he argues, at least apparently that our belief in objects does not arise from the senses. 134 00:16:02,860 --> 00:16:05,460 It arises from the imagination. 135 00:16:05,460 --> 00:16:13,890 Well, this is very peculiar, because surely our senses are precisely by definition the faculty by which we become aware of things outside. 136 00:16:13,890 --> 00:16:20,460 So how can our knowledge of external bodies not be due to the senses? 137 00:16:20,460 --> 00:16:28,950 Reason is, by definition, is it not a faculty which involves the production of arguments? 138 00:16:28,950 --> 00:16:38,350 And here is Hume saying that some of our most important arguments and inferences, namely inductive ones, don't arise from reason. 139 00:16:38,350 --> 00:16:50,350 So we have a sort of dilemma here, if we say that mental Operation X is due to our faculty of Xingu, that just looks trivial, vacuous, like Molly. 140 00:16:50,350 --> 00:16:57,170 And if we say that X is due to some other faculty, why, it seems to be almost self-contradictory. 141 00:16:57,170 --> 00:17:04,700 So I think it's important to realise that we've got a real puzzle in what's going on in Hume's arguments here. 142 00:17:04,700 --> 00:17:10,010 And when you read these arguments, you can get easily get the wrong end of the stick. 143 00:17:10,010 --> 00:17:19,160 What's going on? Where is Hume going? So I'm I'm addressing this difficulty right now at the beginning because I think having an understanding 144 00:17:19,160 --> 00:17:26,080 of what the options are here will help us a great deal when we come to look at the arguments later. 145 00:17:26,080 --> 00:17:31,660 So I'm going to focus mainly on induction here, so I've mentioned the external world. 146 00:17:31,660 --> 00:17:41,530 We'll put that on one side for the moment. Focus on induction, which is much more immediate to us in one part three. 147 00:17:41,530 --> 00:17:45,100 So an important point to note is one, three, six. 148 00:17:45,100 --> 00:17:50,300 That's the famous argument concerning induction. We'll be looking at it in detail next time. 149 00:17:50,300 --> 00:17:58,290 This argument seems to say induction is not due to reason, it's due to the imagination. 150 00:17:58,290 --> 00:18:03,900 And many people have interpreted that as saying induction then is not an operation of reason. 151 00:18:03,900 --> 00:18:09,030 It's an operation of the imagination. That's a natural way of reading it. 152 00:18:09,030 --> 00:18:16,860 But actually, after one three six, Hume goes on, referring to induction, causal inference, you know, 153 00:18:16,860 --> 00:18:23,610 reasoning from past to future, from observe to unobserved on the assumption that they resemble that kind of reasoning. 154 00:18:23,610 --> 00:18:28,660 He carries on, referring to it as an operation of reason. 155 00:18:28,660 --> 00:18:38,080 So I've given some passages here a human reason includes proofs and probabilities, proofs are just very, very solid. 156 00:18:38,080 --> 00:18:40,210 Inductive arguments where all the evidence is, 157 00:18:40,210 --> 00:18:48,730 is is on one side and very strong when humans discussing the belief in the external world in one for two and one for four. 158 00:18:48,730 --> 00:18:54,160 He talks as though inductive inference is derived from reason. 159 00:18:54,160 --> 00:19:00,750 He says the belief in body isn't derived from reason because it can't be reached by inductive inference. 160 00:19:00,750 --> 00:19:07,760 And that clearly indicates that if it could be reached by inductive inference, it would be due to reason. 161 00:19:07,760 --> 00:19:13,400 When he's coming up to discuss motivation and morality in Book two and book three, 162 00:19:13,400 --> 00:19:18,980 he even says that reason is nothing but the discovery of cause and effect relations, 163 00:19:18,980 --> 00:19:27,110 which is what we do with induction reason in a strict and philosophical sense, discovers the connexion of causes and effects. 164 00:19:27,110 --> 00:19:32,420 And the operations of human understanding include the inferring a matter of fact. 165 00:19:32,420 --> 00:19:40,310 So what's going on here? We've got an argument that seems to say that induction is not an operation of reason. 166 00:19:40,310 --> 00:19:47,300 And then we've got Hume going on and referring to induction as though it is an operation of reason. 167 00:19:47,300 --> 00:19:50,600 Well, there are two popular ways of resolving the paradox. 168 00:19:50,600 --> 00:20:00,050 And the first way is to claim that when humans discussing induction in one three six, when he's saying induction isn't founded on reason there, 169 00:20:00,050 --> 00:20:09,800 he's using some restricted notion of reason, a notion which isn't his own, some kind of rationalist notion of reason or something like that. 170 00:20:09,800 --> 00:20:14,910 And he's saying induction isn't an operation of reason in that sense. 171 00:20:14,910 --> 00:20:28,000 But it is an operation of reason in my David Hume sense. And you can see that various people, myself included, have favoured this interpretation. 172 00:20:28,000 --> 00:20:34,000 Or this kind of interpretation. Very influential in the discussion of human doctrine. 173 00:20:34,000 --> 00:20:40,070 Don Garrett has consistently stood out against this, he says in Hume's text. 174 00:20:40,070 --> 00:20:44,590 You don't find any clear indication of such an ambiguity. 175 00:20:44,590 --> 00:20:49,420 You don't find him saying, Oh, that's that notion of reason. 176 00:20:49,420 --> 00:20:56,440 Now let me bring in my own notion of reason. You can argue that he does it implicitly, and I don't think it's completely implausible. 177 00:20:56,440 --> 00:21:07,480 And evidently I used to believe it. But I have become persuaded over time that on this matter, Garrett was right and I was wrong. 178 00:21:07,480 --> 00:21:18,670 The second possible method of resolution is to find a reading which without postulating any ambiguity and reason or at least any crude ambiguity, 179 00:21:18,670 --> 00:21:29,370 can consider inductive inference to be both a bona fide operation of reason and at the same time, not determined by reason. 180 00:21:29,370 --> 00:21:38,370 Now that you look at that and it seems to start with rather paradoxical, how can inductive inference be an operation of reason? 181 00:21:38,370 --> 00:21:45,000 And yet not be determined by all calls, by all due to, in some sense reason? 182 00:21:45,000 --> 00:21:51,690 It may look just look like a contradiction in terms, but we'll see that there are two ways at least in which you can go. 183 00:21:51,690 --> 00:22:03,790 Garrett goes, one, I go the other. So Don Garrett reckons that when he talks about reason, he just means the faculty of argument or inference. 184 00:22:03,790 --> 00:22:14,760 And when he said when we he says induction is not founded on reason, what he means is induction is a form of inference. 185 00:22:14,760 --> 00:22:23,160 Which we do. But we don't do it because we've seen an argument for it. 186 00:22:23,160 --> 00:22:32,380 So it's a sort of at the first level, it's an operation of reason, but there isn't a second level argument which causes us to do it. 187 00:22:32,380 --> 00:22:39,600 So it's an operation of reason, which is not caused by reason in that sense, that's that's his claim. 188 00:22:39,600 --> 00:22:48,190 And. I take a different view. This is my 2012 paper, and I take reason to be the cognitive faculty, 189 00:22:48,190 --> 00:22:55,750 I've already explained that that is the standard interpretation at the time of people like Hutchison and lots of other philosophers. 190 00:22:55,750 --> 00:23:07,960 And I think there is a way of seeing sense in what Hume says by saying, Here we have a cognitive operation which has a non-cognitive base. 191 00:23:07,960 --> 00:23:14,010 So let's see a little bit about how that might work. 192 00:23:14,010 --> 00:23:19,500 OK, first of all, to clear some ground, it is absolutely and completely clear, 193 00:23:19,500 --> 00:23:29,670 I believe that for human reason and understanding reason and the understanding of one and the same, just like the imagination and the fancy. 194 00:23:29,670 --> 00:23:36,810 There's no controversy about that. It's absolutely clear that Hume uses the imagination and the fantasy equivalently. 195 00:23:36,810 --> 00:23:42,180 I think it's also equally clear that he uses reason and the understanding equivalently. 196 00:23:42,180 --> 00:23:43,980 There are literally dozens of passages. 197 00:23:43,980 --> 00:23:53,550 I've listed ones from the treatise down there, but we can see that in one three six where the argument concerning induction comes up. 198 00:23:53,550 --> 00:23:57,750 When the mind makes an inductive inference, it is not determined by reason, 199 00:23:57,750 --> 00:24:04,860 but by certain principles which associate together the ideas of these objects and unite them in the imagination. 200 00:24:04,860 --> 00:24:11,870 Had ideas, no more union in the fancy than object seem to have in the understanding. 201 00:24:11,870 --> 00:24:18,530 There you see clear, elegant variation. Right? In one sentence, he talks about reason and the imagination. 202 00:24:18,530 --> 00:24:25,190 In the next sentence, he talks about the understanding in the fancy. It is simply a variation of terms. 203 00:24:25,190 --> 00:24:28,730 And as I say, there are lots of cases where human does the same thing. 204 00:24:28,730 --> 00:24:35,480 You see him alternating between reason and the understanding. 205 00:24:35,480 --> 00:24:46,200 Moreover, there are passages which clearly put Hume in the tradition of seeing reason as the cognitive faculty. 206 00:24:46,200 --> 00:24:49,530 So and in all of Hume's main writings, OK, 207 00:24:49,530 --> 00:24:55,020 so in the treatise we've got reason is the discovery of truth and falsehood just the kind of thing that Hutchison would say. 208 00:24:55,020 --> 00:25:00,440 It's the faculty by which we find out what's true. 209 00:25:00,440 --> 00:25:10,290 In a footnote to the enquiry in the first editions, we've got that faculty by which we discern truth and falsehood, the understanding. 210 00:25:10,290 --> 00:25:16,220 In the moral enquiry appendix, we've got reason conveys the knowledge of truth and falsehood. 211 00:25:16,220 --> 00:25:22,340 In the dissertation on the passions, we've got reason in a strict sense as meaning the judgement of truth and falsehood. 212 00:25:22,340 --> 00:25:34,310 So we've got plenty of text which line Hume up with this tradition of seeing reason as our cognitive faculty and equivalent to the understanding. 213 00:25:34,310 --> 00:25:42,200 I did a thorough analysis. It's on the David Hume dot org, if you want to look at it, it's not being published, but you can go. 214 00:25:42,200 --> 00:25:51,210 You can see all the results of the analysis. I went through all the passages in Hume where he distinguishes between different faculties. 215 00:25:51,210 --> 00:26:00,840 And there I've listed some of the main results. 216 00:26:00,840 --> 00:26:06,270 Oh, sorry, I want to draw attention to that last one. Hugh never distinguishes between reason and the understanding. 217 00:26:06,270 --> 00:26:11,380 He never distinguishes between either of those in the judgement. I think these are just synonyms. 218 00:26:11,380 --> 00:26:21,180 OK. But what's confusing is that at various points in the treaties, Hume seems to blur the boundaries. 219 00:26:21,180 --> 00:26:33,660 So here are a number of passages where Hume is blurring the boundary between reason or the understanding of the imagination. 220 00:26:33,660 --> 00:26:39,330 The understanding or imagination can draw inferences from past experience will which you. 221 00:26:39,330 --> 00:26:46,140 Look at the quote at the bottom, the understanding that is the general, the more established properties of the imagination. 222 00:26:46,140 --> 00:26:51,110 What? You've been giving all these arguments, Hume, in which you've said, 223 00:26:51,110 --> 00:26:59,070 is this mental operation due to the understanding or reason or the imagination as though these are complete opposites? 224 00:26:59,070 --> 00:27:03,920 Right? Reason or the imagination apparently can't be both. 225 00:27:03,920 --> 00:27:12,740 And now you're saying the understanding or reason just is the general, the more established properties of the imagination. 226 00:27:12,740 --> 00:27:18,770 What's going on here? So you can see how confusing it can be to read these passages and I'm well, 227 00:27:18,770 --> 00:27:25,880 I'm trying to do now is give you the wherewithal when you read these things to to understand what's going on. 228 00:27:25,880 --> 00:27:30,470 OK, so let's go back to what I was saying about the imagination for Hume, 229 00:27:30,470 --> 00:27:36,260 because all of our ideas are impression copy content, they're all images stick. 230 00:27:36,260 --> 00:27:41,330 It follows that all of our thinking must actually take place in the imagination as 231 00:27:41,330 --> 00:27:49,380 traditionally conceived because the imagination is what holds imagistic ideas. 232 00:27:49,380 --> 00:27:59,220 And in that case, when we talk about reason as the cognitive faculty, the faculty by which we find out things about the world and. 233 00:27:59,220 --> 00:28:06,770 That can't be some separate part of the mind, it's got to actually, in some sense, reside within the imagination. 234 00:28:06,770 --> 00:28:15,470 And so when we start drawing distinctions between reason and the imagination, it's not to be drawn in terms of parts of the mind. 235 00:28:15,470 --> 00:28:22,910 The sort of distinct agents that Locke thought of all or rather Locke was criticising humans on board with Locke on that. 236 00:28:22,910 --> 00:28:31,520 It's not distinct agents. Rather, it is different types of principles acting on the ideas in our imagination. 237 00:28:31,520 --> 00:28:36,800 So we need ultimately to draw the distinction between reason and the imagination, 238 00:28:36,800 --> 00:28:44,600 not on the basis of parts of the mind, but on the basis of the kinds of principles that are operative. 239 00:28:44,600 --> 00:28:49,170 And we'll see that plays an important role later on. 240 00:28:49,170 --> 00:28:57,510 When we come to particularly looking at human scepticism and some of the ways in which he expresses the problems that he gets into there, 241 00:28:57,510 --> 00:29:02,160 it's much easier to understand if you've got this clearly in mind. 242 00:29:02,160 --> 00:29:05,190 So associative principles, the kind of principles, you know, 243 00:29:05,190 --> 00:29:14,040 which lead our ideas by causation and resemblance and contiguity, those are paradigmatic, early, imaginative principles. 244 00:29:14,040 --> 00:29:20,850 Our imagination is running on its own power as it were leading us to various thoughts. 245 00:29:20,850 --> 00:29:32,370 Whereas reasoning in the sense of discovering things by putting our ideas together in logical order to to reach new conclusions, 246 00:29:32,370 --> 00:29:43,490 that's going to be paradigmatic cognitive. But it's because the principles on which our ideas are operating are a different kind of principle. 247 00:29:43,490 --> 00:29:52,340 And just to sum this up, the way I interpret human induction is that induction is a cognitive operation. 248 00:29:52,340 --> 00:30:00,140 It's our only cognitive operation for discovering covering matters of fact that we are not perceiving or remembering. 249 00:30:00,140 --> 00:30:04,700 But it is founded on an associative process. 250 00:30:04,700 --> 00:30:11,540 And that's why you can make sense of it as being a cognitive process that has a non-cognitive basis. 251 00:30:11,540 --> 00:30:18,590 And hence I think one can make reasonable sense of what a human is saying about the faculties here. 252 00:30:18,590 --> 00:30:27,140 OK, I spent quite a lot of time on that because it's difficult, I pointed to a lot of passages which illustrate these things, 253 00:30:27,140 --> 00:30:31,730 and it wouldn't be a good idea before the next lecture to go and look through some of those. 254 00:30:31,730 --> 00:30:40,170 Make sure you're you're you're clear on this because I say it's one of the most confusing aspects potentially of Hume's philosophy. 255 00:30:40,170 --> 00:30:48,030 OK, I'm going to be rather briefer about the rest of the content. 256 00:30:48,030 --> 00:30:53,150 So we're moving on now to humans dichotomy and the conceive ability principle. 257 00:30:53,150 --> 00:31:00,200 So we're going back to Hume's theory of relations, you may remember that Hume has a theory of relations. 258 00:31:00,200 --> 00:31:09,680 I illustrated in the last lecture how it is derived from the theory of a of John Locke. 259 00:31:09,680 --> 00:31:16,280 But I said that Hume has his own particular purposes, will now this is this is where we're going. 260 00:31:16,280 --> 00:31:26,010 So Hume claims that all the different kinds of relation that Locke identified can be divided into seven categories. 261 00:31:26,010 --> 00:31:29,400 And he divides the seven categories into two groups. 262 00:31:29,400 --> 00:31:36,270 You've got four relations that I'm going to call constant relations constant is a term that Hugh uses here. 263 00:31:36,270 --> 00:31:44,270 It's not absolutely clear that he means it is a badge for this distinction, but it's a convenient one. 264 00:31:44,270 --> 00:31:52,060 So you've got four constant relations, which are relations that depend entirely on the ideas which we compare together resemblance control, 265 00:31:52,060 --> 00:31:59,440 ryuichi degrees in quality, proportions in quantity or no? And you've got three inconstant relations. 266 00:31:59,440 --> 00:32:04,930 And these are relations that may be changed without any change in the ideas and the 267 00:32:04,930 --> 00:32:12,390 these are supposedly identity relations of time and place and cause and effect. 268 00:32:12,390 --> 00:32:22,040 OK. And Hugh sketches a taxonomy of mental operations, I referred to the appropriate paragraphs. 269 00:32:22,040 --> 00:32:28,010 Go and take a look at those paragraphs and you will see him doing this. 270 00:32:28,010 --> 00:32:35,630 So resemblance control and degrees in quality, these are relations that are discoverable at first sight. 271 00:32:35,630 --> 00:32:39,890 OK. You see one idea. Another idea you see at first sight. 272 00:32:39,890 --> 00:32:47,300 Immediately, they resemble or they don't resemble. So you can be intuitively certain of those. 273 00:32:47,300 --> 00:32:55,860 Proportions of quantity or number. Mathematical operations, mathematical relations are susceptible of demonstration. 274 00:32:55,860 --> 00:33:04,310 OK. Hume has this view that demonstration demonstrative, deductive argument is pretty much confined to mathematics. 275 00:33:04,310 --> 00:33:15,490 At least useful deductive argument is. Identity and relations of time and place are matters of perception rather than reasoning. 276 00:33:15,490 --> 00:33:20,530 Now here you might think that's a little bit odd. Is that is that really true? 277 00:33:20,530 --> 00:33:25,440 I mean, suppose I. I see you today and then I see you tomorrow. 278 00:33:25,440 --> 00:33:32,250 Do I immediately see that you're the same person? Or maybe is that perception it could involve inference, right? 279 00:33:32,250 --> 00:33:38,220 I might not see you so clearly I might. You're not quite sure whether it's you. 280 00:33:38,220 --> 00:33:43,430 I might bring in my knowledge about where you would be, when you might. 281 00:33:43,430 --> 00:33:50,590 Not so obvious that it's really just to do with perception, but anyway, that's what Hume says. 282 00:33:50,590 --> 00:33:57,310 And one of the perhaps the most important upshot of all this is that causation turns out to be the only 283 00:33:57,310 --> 00:34:04,450 relation that can be traced beyond our senses to existence is an object which we do not see or feel. 284 00:34:04,450 --> 00:34:15,760 So Hume's arguing that causation is special. The relation of causation is the only one that can provide a basis for probable argument, 285 00:34:15,760 --> 00:34:21,490 for inductive argument, for argument from observed to unobserved. 286 00:34:21,490 --> 00:34:30,250 And I pointed out at the bottom there that that it helps to have that in mind when you come to one part three. 287 00:34:30,250 --> 00:34:36,820 And it's called of knowledge and probability. And you look at section one and you say, Oh, yeah, well, all right, that's covering knowledge. 288 00:34:36,820 --> 00:34:42,180 I can see that. And then you're expecting to have loads of discussion of probability, 289 00:34:42,180 --> 00:34:47,900 and it goes straight into causation, and probability is hardly mentioned for quite a long time. 290 00:34:47,900 --> 00:34:57,100 Well, in this argument, Hume has claimed to identify probable reasoning and causal reasoning. 291 00:34:57,100 --> 00:35:01,720 OK, so he's got this rather simplistic categorisation of mental operations. 292 00:35:01,720 --> 00:35:08,890 You can see nice, simple theory you might well think suspiciously crude, 293 00:35:08,890 --> 00:35:13,510 but may be the kind of thing that can appeal to a young man who wants to make his 294 00:35:13,510 --> 00:35:17,800 name as a philosopher and hasn't yet had long enough to reflect critically on. 295 00:35:17,800 --> 00:35:24,620 It seems to me to be a pretty hopeless theory, but one that has some superficial attraction. 296 00:35:24,620 --> 00:35:31,460 But you can analyse mental operations in terms of the relations that are involved. 297 00:35:31,460 --> 00:35:36,440 But Hume's main motive for his dichotomy for dividing the relations into the constant 298 00:35:36,440 --> 00:35:42,630 feeling constant is actually to give himself a criterion of demonstra ability. 299 00:35:42,630 --> 00:35:48,960 And he uses it both in respect of the causal maxim and in terms of relations of virtue and vice. 300 00:35:48,960 --> 00:35:54,380 He only uses it twice in the treaties and I've given you the references there. 301 00:35:54,380 --> 00:36:02,570 And in these passages, he seems to be arguing it's not very explicit, but he seems to be arguing from the principle. 302 00:36:02,570 --> 00:36:10,280 Any proposition that is intuitively or demonstratively certain can contain only constant relation. 303 00:36:10,280 --> 00:36:11,690 That's what he seems to be saying. 304 00:36:11,690 --> 00:36:19,130 So if we go back here, you've got the constant relations on the left resemblance, contrary 80 degrees in quality, proportions in quantity. 305 00:36:19,130 --> 00:36:28,180 And no, you've got incompetent relations on the right. You want to know whether some proposition is demonstrable. 306 00:36:28,180 --> 00:36:34,060 Well, one test you can apply is does it contain only constant relations? 307 00:36:34,060 --> 00:36:39,420 If it does, then it may be demonstrable. Otherwise, no. 308 00:36:39,420 --> 00:36:48,630 That seems to be how he's arguing on the causal maxim because it includes the relation of causation, therefore cannot be demonstrated, 309 00:36:48,630 --> 00:36:57,230 remember the causal maxim which is used as a basis for the cosmological argument and is of great interest to you. 310 00:36:57,230 --> 00:37:06,090 But sadly, this is nonsense. And there I have listed four propositions. 311 00:37:06,090 --> 00:37:13,270 If A equals B and B will C, then A equals C. Now that includes the relation of identity. 312 00:37:13,270 --> 00:37:24,020 It's intuitively true. Anything that lies inside a small building lies inside a building that includes relations of space and time. 313 00:37:24,020 --> 00:37:29,020 It's intuitively true every mother is a parent. 314 00:37:29,020 --> 00:37:37,400 That includes causal relations. He was quite explicit that family relations are causal, but it's intuitively true. 315 00:37:37,400 --> 00:37:42,950 Anyone who's paternal grandparents have two sons has an uncle that's demonstratively. 316 00:37:42,950 --> 00:37:44,450 Again, using causal relations. 317 00:37:44,450 --> 00:37:51,500 So it's simply not true that you can assess whether something is demonstrable by looking at the nature of the relations involved. 318 00:37:51,500 --> 00:37:55,950 And by the way, you will know that because you've all studied logic. 319 00:37:55,950 --> 00:38:07,110 And you will be very familiar with the fact that moving around quantifies can change something that is demonstrable to something that isn't. 320 00:38:07,110 --> 00:38:19,620 So take the first formula there. Getting there is some event X, which is such that for all events, y x x is before. 321 00:38:19,620 --> 00:38:30,810 Why? You may think wait a minute, that's probably contradictory because it can't be before itself, but all right. 322 00:38:30,810 --> 00:38:37,890 There is something that precedes every event, let's say therefore for all events, why there is something that precedes it. 323 00:38:37,890 --> 00:38:43,560 OK. That that's that's going to be valid. 324 00:38:43,560 --> 00:38:50,720 But for all why there is something that precedes it does not mean that there is something that precedes everything. 325 00:38:50,720 --> 00:38:58,270 OK. Thomas Aquinas is often accused of making this quantifier a fallacy in one of his cosmological arguments. 326 00:38:58,270 --> 00:39:06,560 Right. So the distinction between if everything had had a prior calls, it doesn't follow that there is something that is a prior calls to everything. 327 00:39:06,560 --> 00:39:11,870 You could have an infinite sequence going all the way back and everything has something prior to it. 328 00:39:11,870 --> 00:39:20,390 But it just goes on and on and on. So I'm just illustrating here that you can have two formulae with exactly the same relations. 329 00:39:20,390 --> 00:39:21,980 One of them is demonstrable in one of them. 330 00:39:21,980 --> 00:39:31,460 Isn't the idea of having a theory of demonstrable ability based on the relations involved is completely and utterly hopeless. 331 00:39:31,460 --> 00:39:39,140 And Hume scholars who try to defend Hume here, as indeed Don Garrett does, I think, are just backing a loser. 332 00:39:39,140 --> 00:39:47,610 We all know that if it was possible, then some great logician in the meantime would have would have done it and may have it. 333 00:39:47,610 --> 00:39:53,700 So I don't think there's any doubt here that Hume is mistaken. Where's the mistake? 334 00:39:53,700 --> 00:40:00,150 Well, actually, it's quite a subtle one. And Jonathan Bennett identified this back in 1971. 335 00:40:00,150 --> 00:40:07,040 He wrote again in its on on it in 2001. I'd more recently added a twist to this. 336 00:40:07,040 --> 00:40:14,480 I think, Ben, it's essentially right. Hume is confusing super vignettes, and analysts in City are not going to say much about this. 337 00:40:14,480 --> 00:40:23,000 I'm just hinting at it there. I'd advise you if you want to delve deeper, go and read any or all of these. 338 00:40:23,000 --> 00:40:27,650 I'm going to leave that on one side. So humans dichotomy. 339 00:40:27,650 --> 00:40:32,240 His theory of relations from the treaties is junk. 340 00:40:32,240 --> 00:40:41,180 It's a nice idea, really imaginative, looked wonderfully elegant way of bringing human operations, 341 00:40:41,180 --> 00:40:47,430 you know, within the scope of a clear theory, but it doesn't work. 342 00:40:47,430 --> 00:40:55,110 Far more significant philosophically is humans conceive ability principle, and that plays a very big role in his philosophy. 343 00:40:55,110 --> 00:40:59,850 And unlike the theory of relations, it survives. 344 00:40:59,850 --> 00:41:07,200 The theory of relations absolutely disappears after the treaties in the enquiry concerning human understanding of 1748, 345 00:41:07,200 --> 00:41:16,620 the theory of relations goes, I just want to point out, by the way, that I am here disagreeing with other scholars. 346 00:41:16,620 --> 00:41:20,130 For example, David Owen and Helen B-BBEE, 347 00:41:20,130 --> 00:41:29,580 who think the theory of relations is the canonical human theory and that the theory you get in the enquiry is a sort of crude simplification. 348 00:41:29,580 --> 00:41:34,180 On the contrary, the theory of relations in the treaties is rubbish. 349 00:41:34,180 --> 00:41:41,410 The theory of logic that you get in the enquiry is actually strong and resilient. 350 00:41:41,410 --> 00:41:49,200 And so I see clearer advance rather than simplification in Hume here. 351 00:41:49,200 --> 00:41:56,820 So the conceivably see principle is pretty well known. Whatever the mind clearly conceives, includes the idea of possible existence. 352 00:41:56,820 --> 00:42:06,230 Nothing we can clearly imagine is absolutely impossible. And if something is conceivable, if something is clearly conceivable, 353 00:42:06,230 --> 00:42:14,260 not only is it possible, but that means you could not possibly demonstrate its falsehood. 354 00:42:14,260 --> 00:42:20,630 So conceive ability becomes a proof of non demonstra stability. 355 00:42:20,630 --> 00:42:26,720 So forget about the relations involved. Focus on conceive ability. 356 00:42:26,720 --> 00:42:27,530 So very quickly, 357 00:42:27,530 --> 00:42:36,260 I'm just going to refer to the ease in passing Hume's fork is the distinction between relations of ideas on the one hand and matters of fact. 358 00:42:36,260 --> 00:42:41,600 I think you'll all be familiar with this from first your general philosophy. 359 00:42:41,600 --> 00:42:50,070 And I sketched at some points the interesting question is Hume's thought defensible? 360 00:42:50,070 --> 00:42:55,290 It's come under challenge since the middle of the 20th century, Quine, Kritsky, 361 00:42:55,290 --> 00:43:02,250 Putnam and others have challenged it, and I wrote a paper last year, Hume's fork in his theory of relations, 362 00:43:02,250 --> 00:43:08,130 which I go through the logic of Hume's thought in considerable detail all the relevant passages showing 363 00:43:08,130 --> 00:43:14,340 they all fit together and actually discussing how far the recent challenges and there are others as well, 364 00:43:14,340 --> 00:43:19,740 for example, from Girdle and Turing, how far they impact on humans fork. 365 00:43:19,740 --> 00:43:25,260 The overall verdict Hume's four definitely faces challenges. 366 00:43:25,260 --> 00:43:33,790 But it stands up pretty well. And for a theory that was derived in the middle of the 18th century. 367 00:43:33,790 --> 00:43:38,980 It deserves the tremendous influence it had until about the middle of the 20th century 368 00:43:38,980 --> 00:43:44,740 and a lot of the attacks that have come since damage in some ways around the edges. 369 00:43:44,740 --> 00:43:50,970 But the essential message actually retain remains pretty strong. 370 00:43:50,970 --> 00:43:53,520 OK, so I'm going to just going to put that on one side for now. 371 00:43:53,520 --> 00:43:59,670 We will be coming back to the conceive ability principle and its use in humans arguments later. 372 00:43:59,670 --> 00:44:04,080 The sort of take home message of this last bit is in the treaties. 373 00:44:04,080 --> 00:44:09,120 There is a fair amount of logic. This is mistaken. 374 00:44:09,120 --> 00:44:15,720 But fortunately, Hume's most important arguments do not depend on that dubious logic, 375 00:44:15,720 --> 00:44:29,090 they depend on a much more robust logical theory which Hume honed in the enquiry and actually is extremely resilient. 376 00:44:29,090 --> 00:44:36,140 OK, so now what are we going to do is just quickly review the path from here, 377 00:44:36,140 --> 00:44:46,740 from where we've got to up until the discussion of induction, and that is what we're going to focus on next time. 378 00:44:46,740 --> 00:44:51,960 So look, one, part three. Uh, as I said of knowledge and probability. 379 00:44:51,960 --> 00:45:02,740 But actually, most of it, the bulk of it is focussed on trying to trace the origin and nature of our idea of cause and causal necessity. 380 00:45:02,740 --> 00:45:10,450 And this starts in one three two. And it goes all the way to one, three, 14. 381 00:45:10,450 --> 00:45:18,300 And this is just summarising some of the main points. There's no particular quality that characterises causes and effects. 382 00:45:18,300 --> 00:45:24,000 You can't just look at something and say, Oh, it's got such and such a quality. Therefore, it will be a cause. 383 00:45:24,000 --> 00:45:29,320 Cause and effect depends on a relation between the two. OK. 384 00:45:29,320 --> 00:45:39,010 What sort of relation? Well, we normally find that causes are contiguous with their effects and causes are prior to their effects. 385 00:45:39,010 --> 00:45:45,210 This is well known, but notice there are some caveats. I've put the caveats there. 386 00:45:45,210 --> 00:45:51,330 Contiguity and priority turn out not to be quite so straightforward as they might seem. 387 00:45:51,330 --> 00:45:58,710 But crucially, even with contiguity and priority, there's something missing. 388 00:45:58,710 --> 00:46:06,090 Shall we then rest contented with these two relations of contiguity and succession, so succession is just priority, right? 389 00:46:06,090 --> 00:46:16,890 The cause is prior to the effect. The effect succeeds the the cause, shall we rest contented with these as affording a complete idea of causation? 390 00:46:16,890 --> 00:46:24,210 By no means an object may be contiguous and prior to another without being considered as its cause. 391 00:46:24,210 --> 00:46:27,690 There is a necessary connexion to be taken into consideration, 392 00:46:27,690 --> 00:46:34,070 and that relation is of much greater importance than any of the other two above mentioned. 393 00:46:34,070 --> 00:46:44,340 OK, that's obvious, right? The fact that one event occurs prior and contiguous to another doesn't mean that the one is a cause of the other. 394 00:46:44,340 --> 00:46:50,190 What's the extra element that makes that? That, of course, will human saying it's it's the necessary connexion. 395 00:46:50,190 --> 00:46:57,870 It's the fact that that brought about that it was a necessary connexion between them and what? 396 00:46:57,870 --> 00:47:04,170 What's that idea, this idea of necessary connexion? That's the crucial one that we need to hunt down. 397 00:47:04,170 --> 00:47:11,160 We need to find out what impression that idea is derived from in order to understand it better. 398 00:47:11,160 --> 00:47:13,530 And as I suggested in the first lecture, 399 00:47:13,530 --> 00:47:29,880 Hume sees a lot of philosophical value coming out of that and achieving that result of pursuing that search successfully. 400 00:47:29,880 --> 00:47:38,010 So where are we going to look and now Kim's text becomes somewhat odd. 401 00:47:38,010 --> 00:47:43,080 I want to find this crucial element of necessary connexion. 402 00:47:43,080 --> 00:47:50,770 Where shall I look? Oh, I don't know. Maybe I'll just hunt around some neighbouring fields and see if I find something. 403 00:47:50,770 --> 00:48:01,200 Well, OK. That's a way, I suspect, of Hume giving some structure the semi-structured discussion. 404 00:48:01,200 --> 00:48:04,950 He wants to talk about the goals of the maxim. He wants to talk about causal inference. 405 00:48:04,950 --> 00:48:11,880 He can't quite think how to work these into the picture. So he says, Oh, well, let's just look around some neighbouring fields. 406 00:48:11,880 --> 00:48:16,260 The first neighbouring field is the causal maxim we've talked about this before. 407 00:48:16,260 --> 00:48:21,270 A general maxim in philosophy that whatever begins to exist must have a course of existence. 408 00:48:21,270 --> 00:48:35,670 And in this section, Hume argues that it is not intuitively or demonstratively certain the causal maxim cannot be known with demonstrative certainty. 409 00:48:35,670 --> 00:48:42,370 I'm not going to go through that in detail here. 410 00:48:42,370 --> 00:48:52,390 What's confusing here is that the end of this discussion, having shown that the causal maxim can't be proved intuitively or demonstratively, 411 00:48:52,390 --> 00:48:57,700 the next question then should naturally be how experience gives rise to such a principle. 412 00:48:57,700 --> 00:49:05,970 How is it that we come to believe the causal maxim? But as I find it will be more convenient to sink this question in the following. 413 00:49:05,970 --> 00:49:15,180 Why we conclude that such particular causes must necessarily have such particular effects and why we form an inference from one to another. 414 00:49:15,180 --> 00:49:24,880 We shall make that the subject of our future enquiry will perhaps be found in the end that the same answer will serve for both questions. 415 00:49:24,880 --> 00:49:28,180 OK. When Hume says things like that at the end, by the way, 416 00:49:28,180 --> 00:49:35,230 you can take it as a definite indication that he thinks the same answer will indeed serve for both questions. 417 00:49:35,230 --> 00:49:38,980 What's confusing is that he never comes back to this. 418 00:49:38,980 --> 00:49:46,500 He never returns to the causal maxim. He never comes back and says, There you are the same answer server both. 419 00:49:46,500 --> 00:49:52,950 So one, three, three of the treaties where Hume discusses the causal maxim has been misunderstood by some people. 420 00:49:52,950 --> 00:49:57,210 People have been interpreting humans, denying the causal maxim. 421 00:49:57,210 --> 00:50:01,980 He doesn't, he says, you can't prove it intuitively or demonstratively. 422 00:50:01,980 --> 00:50:07,200 He hints that he thinks it arises from experience. 423 00:50:07,200 --> 00:50:14,190 He hints that that's going to explain it, but he never comes back to it. 424 00:50:14,190 --> 00:50:16,780 He forgets it. 425 00:50:16,780 --> 00:50:29,050 His proofreader wasn't up to finding the missing link there, so there's been some discussion about whether actually human accepts the causal maxim. 426 00:50:29,050 --> 00:50:36,790 I've written at length on this most the vast majority of human scholars down the years of thought that Hume is a determinist. 427 00:50:36,790 --> 00:50:45,850 He does accept the goals maxim. I think that's absolutely right, but it has been contested briefly. 428 00:50:45,850 --> 00:50:50,410 Here are a couple of quotations from letters that Hume wrote, 429 00:50:50,410 --> 00:50:57,640 making clear that he has been misinterpreted by people who think that he denies the causal maxim. 430 00:50:57,640 --> 00:51:08,930 OK, I'm not going to say more about that than. But we saw that he sinks the question of the causal maxim into another question. 431 00:51:08,930 --> 00:51:19,000 And the other question, this is the second neighbouring field. How do we make inductive inferences, how do we make causal inferences? 432 00:51:19,000 --> 00:51:26,160 The agenda is set out, as you see in that paragraph, at the beginning of treaties one three five. 433 00:51:26,160 --> 00:51:34,950 Here, therefore, we have three things to explain. First, the original impression from which a causal inference is made. 434 00:51:34,950 --> 00:51:42,300 Secondly, the transition to the idea of the connected cause or effect that is the causal inference. 435 00:51:42,300 --> 00:51:46,500 And thirdly, the nature and qualities of that idea. 436 00:51:46,500 --> 00:51:54,890 That is the believed idea. So what Hume is doing is saying, I've been looking for this elusive element of necessary connexion. 437 00:51:54,890 --> 00:52:02,740 I've gone through the causal maxim. I didn't get any decisive result there, I'm going to sink that question in another one, 438 00:52:02,740 --> 00:52:07,870 and the question I'm going to ask is what is it that leads us to make causal inferences? 439 00:52:07,870 --> 00:52:13,550 And a typical causal inference starts from something we perceive an impression. 440 00:52:13,550 --> 00:52:21,740 And our mind infers to an idea of an effect, we infer from the impression of the calls to an idea of the effect. 441 00:52:21,740 --> 00:52:31,430 And we come to believe that the effect will happen. So we've got three things to discuss the impression the transition and the living enlivening 442 00:52:31,430 --> 00:52:37,380 of the idea by which it becomes a belief and Hume will indeed follow that agenda. 443 00:52:37,380 --> 00:52:45,060 Treat one, three, five. He talks about the original impression from which we make causal inferences. 444 00:52:45,060 --> 00:52:50,250 It's a little bit confusing because he calls it of the impressions of the senses or memory. 445 00:52:50,250 --> 00:52:57,810 So he's now saying actually that the memory, which we thought was a faculty of ideas actually is a faculty of impressions. 446 00:52:57,810 --> 00:53:02,550 Well, what he means is they're very vivid ideas, the ideas of memory. 447 00:53:02,550 --> 00:53:10,500 We can make causal inferences from memory, and our memory ideas are so vivid that they enable us to do that. 448 00:53:10,500 --> 00:53:22,210 So we might as well call them impressions. And then in one, three six, we come to the famous section of the inference from the impression to the idea. 449 00:53:22,210 --> 00:53:25,520 In other words, of causal inferences. 450 00:53:25,520 --> 00:53:36,130 And this is where we get the issue of induction, which raises for the first time the notorious problem of induction. 451 00:53:36,130 --> 00:53:43,253 And that's where we'll be going next. Thank you.