1 00:00:05,300 --> 00:00:16,280 Welcome to this set of lectures on David Hume, eight lectures which are going to be focussing mainly on book, one of the treatise of human nature, 2 00:00:16,280 --> 00:00:23,930 but there will also be a fair bit of reference to other works, as you will see indeed in this first lecture. 3 00:00:23,930 --> 00:00:29,180 Today, I'm going to talk about some of the historical background to Hume, 4 00:00:29,180 --> 00:00:34,100 where he was coming from, where he was going, looking at some of the major themes, 5 00:00:34,100 --> 00:00:38,360 things that can often seem very confusing actually in Hume, 6 00:00:38,360 --> 00:00:46,820 and I'm going to be telling a story about why I think he approached his philosophy in the way that he did. 7 00:00:46,820 --> 00:00:53,240 Some of what I say is very secure. Some is conjecture where it is conjectural. 8 00:00:53,240 --> 00:01:05,780 I shall draw attention to that for you. So first of all, some historical background, and I want to stress this is very selective. 9 00:01:05,780 --> 00:01:12,470 But I hope it puts in context a lot of Hume's main interests. 10 00:01:12,470 --> 00:01:18,650 So first of all, let's just place him in the general time he's born in 1711. 11 00:01:18,650 --> 00:01:23,330 So just not long. More than 300 years ago. 12 00:01:23,330 --> 00:01:32,960 And he's born just about 100 years after Galileo instituted the Scientific Revolution. 13 00:01:32,960 --> 00:01:40,340 OK, so that isn't so very long. 14 00:01:40,340 --> 00:01:50,330 Bacon Francis Bacon advocated empirical science in 16:20 that was very influential, and clearly Hume was influenced by it as well. 15 00:01:50,330 --> 00:02:02,210 We get Descartes coming along in sixteen forty one with his meditations, the Royal Society of London promoting science is formed in sixteen sixty. 16 00:02:02,210 --> 00:02:10,040 Robert Boyle writes the sceptical chemist or publishes it in Sixteen Sixty One and Newton's principio comes in. 17 00:02:10,040 --> 00:02:24,470 Sixteen eighty seven. So part of the background here is the so-called mechanical philosophy. 18 00:02:24,470 --> 00:02:35,090 This was to a significant extent instituted by Galileo, but Descartes was its principal early advocate. 19 00:02:35,090 --> 00:02:42,440 He basically wanted to say that the physical world is composed entirely of matter. 20 00:02:42,440 --> 00:02:51,500 The essence of matter is extension, and physical happenings in the world can be explained in terms of interactions 21 00:02:51,500 --> 00:02:56,690 between bits of matter pushing into each other or bashing into each other. 22 00:02:56,690 --> 00:03:02,780 Essentially, you've got mechanical action as the key to the operation of the universe. 23 00:03:02,780 --> 00:03:07,790 Robert Boyle His science was very much based on a similar idea, 24 00:03:07,790 --> 00:03:14,780 except he differed from Descartes in thinking of matter as being impenetrable extension. 25 00:03:14,780 --> 00:03:22,530 So he doesn't. Unlike Descartes, he doesn't say matter just is extension, but matter is impenetrable extension. 26 00:03:22,530 --> 00:03:27,630 And his view influenced a lot of people, including Newton, 27 00:03:27,630 --> 00:03:35,610 now an attraction of the mechanical philosophy is that it seems to make causation intelligible. 28 00:03:35,610 --> 00:03:44,730 Think of one billiard ball bashing into another. We feel we can understand why the one is making the other move. 29 00:03:44,730 --> 00:03:57,150 In contrast, the Aristotelian style of science that had preceded Galileo fought in terms of objects moving under internal strivings. 30 00:03:57,150 --> 00:04:02,430 The reason stones fall to the Earth, which is the centre of the universe, 31 00:04:02,430 --> 00:04:09,150 is because they are trying to reach their natural place and the mechanistic dislike this kind of 32 00:04:09,150 --> 00:04:14,910 science because it seemed not to be intelligible and explanatory in the same way it was proposing, 33 00:04:14,910 --> 00:04:27,920 as it were occult forces planets knowing where they should be moving in order to go round the Sun in order to attract each other and so on. 34 00:04:27,920 --> 00:04:33,050 But the new science opens a sceptical gap as well. 35 00:04:33,050 --> 00:04:43,910 Where is the Aristotelian in the Aristotelian model? The world is fundamentally intelligible to us because we can understand God's purposes in it. 36 00:04:43,910 --> 00:04:51,380 Under the new science, the world that we experience is very, very different from what's really there. 37 00:04:51,380 --> 00:04:57,950 We don't actually get to see the fundamental particles of matter and the way in which they're operating. 38 00:04:57,950 --> 00:05:03,200 So we get the possibility of sceptical doubts. 39 00:05:03,200 --> 00:05:12,260 I'm going to introduce Thomas Hobbes because he plays quite a large part, I think, in influencing some of the arguments that he went for. 40 00:05:12,260 --> 00:05:18,320 And the reaction to them. So Hobbs, like Descartes, is a mechanism. 41 00:05:18,320 --> 00:05:26,980 He also, like Descartes, thinks the world is completely composed of matter. 42 00:05:26,980 --> 00:05:30,760 But he takes the view that matter is all there is. 43 00:05:30,760 --> 00:05:36,730 So where is they can't believe that we have immaterial souls, Hobbs wanted to say. 44 00:05:36,730 --> 00:05:43,630 The only things that exist are material things, so he's a materialist in that sense. 45 00:05:43,630 --> 00:05:47,860 He, like Descartes, thinks that everything in the physical world. But for him, that's all. 46 00:05:47,860 --> 00:05:56,260 The world is causally determined by the laws of mechanics. And he thinks that a perfect science would be essentially demonstrative. 47 00:05:56,260 --> 00:06:02,530 So he thinks that the mechanical world view gives an intelligible understanding of how things are. 48 00:06:02,530 --> 00:06:10,130 That's what science should pursue. Now, Hobbs is best known today as a political theorist. 49 00:06:10,130 --> 00:06:15,590 He wrote the leviathan very famously with some notorious views. 50 00:06:15,590 --> 00:06:22,850 But actually, in his day, what was really shocking was the materialism. 51 00:06:22,850 --> 00:06:33,200 Now, Hobbs didn't actually explicitly deny the existence of God, but most people took him to be effectively an atheist. 52 00:06:33,200 --> 00:06:37,310 Because if you deny the existence of immaterial stuff, 53 00:06:37,310 --> 00:06:45,620 if you say the only stuff that exists in the universe is material that makes religion very difficult. 54 00:06:45,620 --> 00:06:55,160 Not only does it seem rather implausible to think of God himself as some sort of material thing, but also obviously immortality, 55 00:06:55,160 --> 00:07:05,410 the doctrine of immortality seems very hard to maintain if in fact, the only part of us that exists is the material body. 56 00:07:05,410 --> 00:07:17,200 And I've noted some cases where the opposition to jobs even played out in parliament and burning of books in Oxford. 57 00:07:17,200 --> 00:07:27,090 He was not the favourite philosopher. Over the following century or two, he was a notorious bogeyman. 58 00:07:27,090 --> 00:07:36,780 In fact, a whole load of philosophers I've listed, some of them just the most prominent at the bottom, they're lined up to attack what they thought. 59 00:07:36,780 --> 00:07:43,620 The doctrine of materialism was absolutely appalling on the main argument against materialism 60 00:07:43,620 --> 00:07:50,400 is that there are certain properties that we have that matter could not possibly have. 61 00:07:50,400 --> 00:07:58,110 And in particular, we are capable of thought. And. 62 00:07:58,110 --> 00:08:04,470 Thinking matter is impossible. Why? Because matter is just inert stuff. 63 00:08:04,470 --> 00:08:13,260 All right. Matter doesn't have active powers of thought is an active power and therefore matter could not have it. 64 00:08:13,260 --> 00:08:17,820 So there must be stuff in the universe besides matter and materialism must be false. 65 00:08:17,820 --> 00:08:25,920 That was the basic argument. Incidentally, this argument is still around with us now in discussions about what we now call physical ism, 66 00:08:25,920 --> 00:08:31,800 whether the mind is actually an operation of physical matter. 67 00:08:31,800 --> 00:08:38,580 Often the argument is trotted out. There is no way that physical matter could have certain properties like consciousness or whatever. 68 00:08:38,580 --> 00:08:51,010 It's essentially the same debate. Now, amongst the people who opposed jobs, the most important is John Locke. 69 00:08:51,010 --> 00:09:01,930 He was influenced by Boyle. He thought of materialist interaction as a particularly intelligible. 70 00:09:01,930 --> 00:09:10,490 But unlike many other philosophers, certainly unlike unlike Boyle, unlike Hobbs, he was far more agnostic. 71 00:09:10,490 --> 00:09:18,460 He far more doubtful about our ability to penetrate into the inner essences of things. 72 00:09:18,460 --> 00:09:23,650 So he puts much more evidence, much more emphasis on empiricism, 73 00:09:23,650 --> 00:09:34,360 finding out things about the world by experience rather than trying to work out with our minds how things must be so very, 74 00:09:34,360 --> 00:09:42,700 very different from Hobbs with his demonstrative science. And he also puts a significant emphasis on probability. 75 00:09:42,700 --> 00:09:47,560 So in trying to find out about the world, we have to accept uncertainty. 76 00:09:47,560 --> 00:09:55,590 We cannot pursue the sort of certain science that people like Descartes and Hobbes aspired to. 77 00:09:55,590 --> 00:10:02,520 So he wrote his great essay concerning human understanding that was published in 60 90. 78 00:10:02,520 --> 00:10:12,940 So three years after Newton, a fantastically influential book, the most influential philosophy book over the following century. 79 00:10:12,940 --> 00:10:17,680 Now, Lock is standardly thought of as the father of British empiricism, 80 00:10:17,680 --> 00:10:24,190 and people think of Lock Berkeley and Hume as the three great British empiricist. 81 00:10:24,190 --> 00:10:32,020 So one important point I want to make here is that we need to distinguish between two different kinds of empiricism. 82 00:10:32,020 --> 00:10:39,040 One of them concept empiricism. And that is a question of where our thoughts come from. 83 00:10:39,040 --> 00:10:44,830 What is the origin of our ideas in contemporary terms and concepts? 84 00:10:44,830 --> 00:10:49,450 Empiricism claims that all our ideas are derived from experience. 85 00:10:49,450 --> 00:10:54,940 You cannot have the idea of anything at all except by experiencing it. 86 00:10:54,940 --> 00:11:02,590 So, for example, there's no way you could have an idea of the colour red without perceiving something that's red. 87 00:11:02,590 --> 00:11:08,470 There's no way you could have the idea of the taste of a pineapple until you've actually tasted it. 88 00:11:08,470 --> 00:11:14,690 It's quite a popular example at the time, because pineapples are rather exotic fruit. 89 00:11:14,690 --> 00:11:21,800 So this is clearly disagreeing with Descartes, who thought that we have certain innate ideas, 90 00:11:21,800 --> 00:11:26,480 he thought the idea of extinction was innately thought the idea of God was innate, 91 00:11:26,480 --> 00:11:33,410 so we could acquire knowledge simply by consulting our ideas in isolation from experience. 92 00:11:33,410 --> 00:11:39,470 Whereas concept empiricism says no, all of our ideas come from experience. 93 00:11:39,470 --> 00:11:42,650 Now that's different from knowledge, empiricism, knowledge, 94 00:11:42,650 --> 00:11:49,610 empiricism claims that all our knowledge of the world derives from and depends on experience. 95 00:11:49,610 --> 00:11:56,180 So the only way we can know anything about the world is by appeal to experience. 96 00:11:56,180 --> 00:12:01,670 So just to give you an example of the distinction here. 97 00:12:01,670 --> 00:12:08,720 Take the idea of a bachelor. A male unmarried man. 98 00:12:08,720 --> 00:12:17,140 Well. There's no way that you could have the idea of a man or the idea of marriage, except through experience. 99 00:12:17,140 --> 00:12:28,510 But once you have got the idea of a bachelor as an unmarried man, you don't need to appeal to experience to see that all bachelors are unmarried. 100 00:12:28,510 --> 00:12:34,930 That just follows by understanding of the definition. So you don't need empirical evidence to support it. 101 00:12:34,930 --> 00:12:42,100 So it's entirely possible for someone to be a concept empiricist to say all our ideas come from experience and yet to 102 00:12:42,100 --> 00:12:49,720 hold that we have a priori knowledge that is knowledge that doesn't need to appeal to experience for its justification. 103 00:12:49,720 --> 00:12:55,420 So you can be a concept empiricist, as Locke was without being a knowledge empiricist. 104 00:12:55,420 --> 00:12:59,420 And indeed, Locke is not a pure knowledge empiricist. 105 00:12:59,420 --> 00:13:03,790 He thinks there are some things we can prove a priori. 106 00:13:03,790 --> 00:13:11,020 Indeed, some of these principles will see feed into his proof of the existence of God. 107 00:13:11,020 --> 00:13:17,650 OK, so let's now turn to some major human themes empiricism, scepticism, naturalism. 108 00:13:17,650 --> 00:13:27,700 So these when when people discuss Hume, one of the major perennial topics of discussion is how we should view Hume, 109 00:13:27,700 --> 00:13:31,510 which is the most prominent theme in his philosophy. Is he a sceptic? 110 00:13:31,510 --> 00:13:38,170 Is he a naturalist? Is he something else? You will see, for example, in the examinations for this paper, 111 00:13:38,170 --> 00:13:46,750 a very common question asks about the supposed tension between his scepticism and his naturalism. 112 00:13:46,750 --> 00:13:54,910 I think we need to look at this with a bit more nuance, and I think there's much less tension between those when they are suitably interpreted. 113 00:13:54,910 --> 00:14:03,570 So I'll sketch a little bit of that today. OK, so the main work we're looking at is a treatise of human nature. 114 00:14:03,570 --> 00:14:11,100 This was published in 1759 1740. So Books one and two of the treatise were published in January 17 39, 115 00:14:11,100 --> 00:14:18,370 and Book three was published in very end of October, beginning of November 17 40. 116 00:14:18,370 --> 00:14:25,090 Now, a work that I would strongly advise you to read is the abstract of the treaties. 117 00:14:25,090 --> 00:14:34,090 This is a short pamphlet, really, that Hume wrote anonymously, and he wrote it in order to provide a puff for the treaties. 118 00:14:34,090 --> 00:14:41,500 So he talks about the author of the treaties in the third person is he talks about what the aim of the author of the treaty seems to be. 119 00:14:41,500 --> 00:14:47,080 Let me try and explain his ideas, make them a little bit more accessible and go and buy the book. 120 00:14:47,080 --> 00:14:51,550 So he's basically wanting to to sell more copies of the treaties. 121 00:14:51,550 --> 00:14:59,590 But it's a fascinating document. We're pretty certain that he wrote it, though that used not to be a generally accepted. 122 00:14:59,590 --> 00:15:04,240 It certainly is. Now there's a lot of evidence that that Hume was the author. 123 00:15:04,240 --> 00:15:12,220 He describes the philosophy of the treaties there as very sceptical. He starts from empiricism. 124 00:15:12,220 --> 00:15:20,770 He celebrates the Association of Ideas. So that's just some of the themes in it, so I'll give a little bit more detail later. 125 00:15:20,770 --> 00:15:27,230 OK, so let's look at Hume's concept empiricism, I said that Locke is a concept empiricist. 126 00:15:27,230 --> 00:15:33,820 Indeed, a large part of Locke's essay concerning human understanding is designed to show how 127 00:15:33,820 --> 00:15:40,090 lots of ideas which you might not have thought were came from experience actually did. 128 00:15:40,090 --> 00:15:46,930 And Hume takes this on board, so he describes what we tend to call his copy principle, 129 00:15:46,930 --> 00:15:55,210 most scholars call it that that's not Hume's term, but it's a useful term. The copy principal Hume describes it as his first principle. 130 00:15:55,210 --> 00:16:04,300 The first principle of his philosophy that all our simple ideas that is our simplest thoughts in their first appearance are 131 00:16:04,300 --> 00:16:14,890 derived from simple impressions is sensations or feelings which are correspondent to them and which they exactly represent. 132 00:16:14,890 --> 00:16:20,790 So all our ideas are copied from sensations or feelings. 133 00:16:20,790 --> 00:16:24,870 And Hume is very explicit that he is here following Locke. 134 00:16:24,870 --> 00:16:30,700 He thinks he's giving a more precise version of Locke's empiricism. 135 00:16:30,700 --> 00:16:37,680 So let's look at some of the potential tensions here. 136 00:16:37,680 --> 00:16:42,840 On the one hand, we find him himself describing his work as sceptical. 137 00:16:42,840 --> 00:16:48,210 And we will see later that there are a lot of sceptical arguments in book one of the treaties. 138 00:16:48,210 --> 00:16:54,120 And one can debate about whether that is something that Hume seeks for its own sake. 139 00:16:54,120 --> 00:17:00,390 Is he deliberately being sceptical or is he being forced into scepticism by his principles, 140 00:17:00,390 --> 00:17:07,800 including the couple of principle, and will be coming to that somewhat later in the series of lectures? 141 00:17:07,800 --> 00:17:08,730 On the other hand, 142 00:17:08,730 --> 00:17:17,520 the subtitle of the treatise of Human Nature describes it as an attempt to introduce the experimental method of reasoning into moral subjects. 143 00:17:17,520 --> 00:17:26,070 He's trying to do empirical science, cognitive science, science of the mind, and he's using the copy principle to explain our ideas, 144 00:17:26,070 --> 00:17:31,020 and he's using principles of Association of Ideas to explain a lot of our thought. 145 00:17:31,020 --> 00:17:38,730 So that makes it look much more positive. So you can see why people think there's a tension between the scepticism and the naturalism. 146 00:17:38,730 --> 00:17:43,410 The scepticism tends to undermine the possibility of knowledge. 147 00:17:43,410 --> 00:17:48,070 The naturalism seems to be pursuing it. 148 00:17:48,070 --> 00:17:55,840 Now, I'll have more to say about this in a later lecture, but for now, I just want to distinguish three different types of naturalism. 149 00:17:55,840 --> 00:18:00,010 I think actually there are two others that are in play when humour is discussed, 150 00:18:00,010 --> 00:18:07,240 but these seem to me to be pretty straightforward and straightforwardly attributable tribute of all to him. 151 00:18:07,240 --> 00:18:16,330 So first of all, he is an explanatory naturalist. He looks for a natural science of human behaviour with down to earth causal mechanisms. 152 00:18:16,330 --> 00:18:26,940 He's not going to have any truck with occult properties with spooks, gods, etc. 153 00:18:26,940 --> 00:18:32,430 He sees man as part of the natural world alongside the animals. 154 00:18:32,430 --> 00:18:36,930 So we get what I call biological naturalism. 155 00:18:36,930 --> 00:18:44,190 He does not think that we have an immaterial soul. 156 00:18:44,190 --> 00:18:50,490 He's also and you can see these are very much connected against invisible, intelligent powers. 157 00:18:50,490 --> 00:18:57,540 He is against religion. I call that A. Supernatural ism. 158 00:18:57,540 --> 00:19:01,620 Now that's not so explicit in most of what he writes. 159 00:19:01,620 --> 00:19:09,710 And that's the prudential reasons he doesn't want to be too explicit about his atheism. 160 00:19:09,710 --> 00:19:15,140 We one can debate exactly the nature of Hume's views on religion. 161 00:19:15,140 --> 00:19:20,810 Some think he's an agnostic. I think most Hume scholars think he's an atheist. 162 00:19:20,810 --> 00:19:29,940 He certainly doesn't accept anything like the conventional view of a good god who created the world. 163 00:19:29,940 --> 00:19:37,400 OK, so notice that naturalism has various varieties, and we'll see that they have. 164 00:19:37,400 --> 00:19:49,650 They figure in different ways in what is to come. OK, so now I want briefly to talk about some early influences on him. 165 00:19:49,650 --> 00:19:55,450 And I'm not going to talk at length about these, but I want to draw these things to your attention at the end of the lecture, 166 00:19:55,450 --> 00:20:01,560 I'll be mentioned some mentioning some readings where you can go and find out more if you're interested. 167 00:20:01,560 --> 00:20:11,010 OK, so you went to Edinburgh University very early. It wasn't that unusual to go to university when you were very young. 168 00:20:11,010 --> 00:20:18,180 He actually went along with his brother, who was two years older, which is why Hume went so well, is obviously very bright as well. 169 00:20:18,180 --> 00:20:25,530 The education there was very traditional, very religious in, mainly in Latin. 170 00:20:25,530 --> 00:20:29,490 His home was at a place called Chirnside, eight miles west of Barrack. 171 00:20:29,490 --> 00:20:35,830 Now Barrack is right on the coast on the border between Scotland and England. 172 00:20:35,830 --> 00:20:47,170 And I said a little bit about what we know of his background there, quite a lot of this comes from a letter that he wrote to a physician in 1734. 173 00:20:47,170 --> 00:20:56,580 And he talked about a disease that he seemed to have been suffering from. 174 00:20:56,580 --> 00:21:06,990 And how he got into the mental state that made him feel so bad, he evidently studied moral philosophy, 175 00:21:06,990 --> 00:21:14,250 traditional moral philosophy from the Greeks, but on doing this, he found it very unsatisfactory. 176 00:21:14,250 --> 00:21:19,320 He was trying to understand the basis of morality. 177 00:21:19,320 --> 00:21:25,920 And but he concluded on reading all these various systems that everyone consulted his fancy in erecting schemes 178 00:21:25,920 --> 00:21:32,520 of virtue and of happiness without regard in human nature upon which every moral conclusion must depend. 179 00:21:32,520 --> 00:21:36,030 This, therefore, I resolved to make my principles study. 180 00:21:36,030 --> 00:21:44,010 He wants to study the principles of human nature so that he can actually get to philosophical truth because he's been 181 00:21:44,010 --> 00:21:55,320 looking at all these philosophers preaching about morality and coming out with schemes of virtue that simply don't work. 182 00:21:55,320 --> 00:22:00,450 And in trying to pursue them himself, he has been led to a mental breakdown. 183 00:22:00,450 --> 00:22:09,420 And he's now trying to start again, understanding human nature in order to build on that. 184 00:22:09,420 --> 00:22:16,710 So hence, his attempt to introduce the experimental method of reasoning into moral subject. 185 00:22:16,710 --> 00:22:25,230 Another aspect of his early life, which we know from much later documents, is his loss of religious faith. 186 00:22:25,230 --> 00:22:29,520 So we've got a letter to Gilbert Ellis of Minto in 1751. 187 00:22:29,520 --> 00:22:37,170 One of his friends and you can see he recently burned an old manuscript book wrote before I was 20, 188 00:22:37,170 --> 00:22:42,480 which contained page after page the gradual progress of my thoughts on that head. 189 00:22:42,480 --> 00:22:50,100 He began with an anxious search after arguments to confirm the common opinion to justify religion. 190 00:22:50,100 --> 00:22:55,620 And he found it was a perpetual struggle of a restless imagination against inclination. 191 00:22:55,620 --> 00:23:05,040 So he wanted to be religious. He'd been brought up religious. But he found that he couldn't maintain that. 192 00:23:05,040 --> 00:23:12,870 Now, interestingly, in a deathbed interview with James Boswell, so this was in 1776, when Hume was dying. 193 00:23:12,870 --> 00:23:17,280 He knew very well that he was dying. 194 00:23:17,280 --> 00:23:21,390 He seems to have had cancer of the colon or something like that. 195 00:23:21,390 --> 00:23:24,700 And he took a long time to die. 196 00:23:24,700 --> 00:23:33,060 So he there was lots of opportunity for him to revise his works, to talk to his friends and to have people like Boswell visit him. 197 00:23:33,060 --> 00:23:44,790 Boswell was fascinated by him and because he found it inconceivable that somebody facing annihilation because Hume did not believe in immortality. 198 00:23:44,790 --> 00:23:52,320 Here he was on his deathbed. Was it really possible that this man could face death with equanimity? 199 00:23:52,320 --> 00:23:57,460 And Boswell found that very disconcerting. 200 00:23:57,460 --> 00:24:01,050 Hume did face it with equanimity. 201 00:24:01,050 --> 00:24:09,360 But in that interview, Hugh said that he was religious when he was young, but that the morality of every religion was bad. 202 00:24:09,360 --> 00:24:18,720 So a major part of his objection to religion is the moral aspects of that of religion, and that comes out in a lot of Hume's works. 203 00:24:18,720 --> 00:24:25,780 And he'd never entertained any belief in religion since he began to read Locke and Clark. 204 00:24:25,780 --> 00:24:31,810 Now, I suspect that there's a little bit of humour in Hume's words here. 205 00:24:31,810 --> 00:24:36,820 And by the way, we do have a record of him joking with Adam Smith on his deathbed, 206 00:24:36,820 --> 00:24:42,610 joking about what he will say to car on the ferryman man who very souls across the sticks. 207 00:24:42,610 --> 00:24:50,530 Hume clearly did retain his sense of humour, which was a very active right up to his death. 208 00:24:50,530 --> 00:24:59,050 Here he is, saying that he never entertained any belief in religion since he began to read Locke and Clark. 209 00:24:59,050 --> 00:25:04,420 Two of the people who had devoted a lot of their energies to proving the existence of God. 210 00:25:04,420 --> 00:25:13,840 So it's not reading atheists that's put him off religion. Apparently, it's reading the atheists and finding their arguments inadequate. 211 00:25:13,840 --> 00:25:18,080 OK, now I want to suggest there's a missing piece in this puzzle, 212 00:25:18,080 --> 00:25:25,180 we've seen reasons why you might be sceptical about established orthodoxies, both moral and religious. 213 00:25:25,180 --> 00:25:32,380 We've seen why he's keen to study human nature through solid empirical methods rather than invention, 214 00:25:32,380 --> 00:25:39,700 and we've seen why he would seek a theory that's independent of religion. How does all this fit with his enthusiasm for empiricism? 215 00:25:39,700 --> 00:25:45,290 The copy principle, his first principle? How does that fit in? 216 00:25:45,290 --> 00:25:48,950 Well, let's go looking for the missing link, 217 00:25:48,950 --> 00:25:54,890 because I'm going to suggest that there is a clear explanation here suggested by a lot of what we know 218 00:25:54,890 --> 00:26:04,010 about Hume's early life and which makes considerable sense of what is going on in one of the treaties. 219 00:26:04,010 --> 00:26:09,440 So lock and unlock what connects, lock and unlock Clark, and he himself has put these together. 220 00:26:09,440 --> 00:26:12,770 He hasn't believed in religion since you read Locke and Clarke. 221 00:26:12,770 --> 00:26:20,660 Well, both Locke and Clark are mentioned in one particular section of the treaties, and it's the section where Hume discusses the causal maxim. 222 00:26:20,660 --> 00:26:29,210 Whatever begins to exist must have a cause of existence. And he argues that that maxim cannot be proved. 223 00:26:29,210 --> 00:26:37,210 It may be true a human seems to believe it, but he doesn't think it is demonstratively provable. 224 00:26:37,210 --> 00:26:41,560 But anyway, Lock and Clark both not only advocated this principle. 225 00:26:41,560 --> 00:26:48,580 They also used it as the basis of their proof of the existence of God, the cosmological argument. 226 00:26:48,580 --> 00:26:54,370 They also appealed within those proofs to the principle that matter cannot give rise to thought. 227 00:26:54,370 --> 00:26:59,020 Remember exactly the same principle that is being used against Hobbs? 228 00:26:59,020 --> 00:27:10,160 That big bogeyman a hugely important principle at the time. So here I've quoted relevant parts from Locke's cosmological argument. 229 00:27:10,160 --> 00:27:15,560 He appeals to the causal maxim everything that begins to exist must have a cause of existence. 230 00:27:15,560 --> 00:27:20,600 That means you've got to have something there from eternity. 231 00:27:20,600 --> 00:27:26,180 The universe can't just spring into existence without a pre-existing cause. 232 00:27:26,180 --> 00:27:32,480 And since matter alone cannot cause thought, the eternal being has to be a thinking being. 233 00:27:32,480 --> 00:27:41,740 So we get God. Clocks cosmological argument, and here I'm actually using Hume's own paraphrase of the argument, he he gives something, 234 00:27:41,740 --> 00:27:47,320 he gives this argument in his posthumous dialogues concerning natural religion, 235 00:27:47,320 --> 00:27:55,380 but it's basically taken from Clarke, and you can see the same sorts of principles being applied. 236 00:27:55,380 --> 00:28:03,960 So who is Samuel Clark? Samuel Clark is someone who's not much discussed now, which actually misrepresents the history. 237 00:28:03,960 --> 00:28:12,000 He was the most prominent British philosopher in the generation after Locke. 238 00:28:12,000 --> 00:28:16,050 He was the most prominent advocates of Newtonian philosophy. 239 00:28:16,050 --> 00:28:23,640 He famously debated with Anthony Collins, a notorious free thinker, about the nature of free will. 240 00:28:23,640 --> 00:28:31,890 Collins wanted to say that human behaviour is subject to causal necessity in the same way as physical things. 241 00:28:31,890 --> 00:28:44,010 Whereas Clark wanted to say, no, they're not human beings act according to moral necessity, but not real necessity, not physical necessity. 242 00:28:44,010 --> 00:28:50,190 So when one billiard ball bashes into another, billy a ball, that's genuine physical necessity. 243 00:28:50,190 --> 00:28:54,440 There is no way that the other ball could not move. 244 00:28:54,440 --> 00:29:01,520 But when I act, I mean, suppose someone holds a gun to my head and says, Give me your phone and I give them my phone. 245 00:29:01,520 --> 00:29:06,110 I'm only acting from moral necessity. You can certainly predict that I'll behave that way. 246 00:29:06,110 --> 00:29:13,970 Any rational person would. But it's not as though I genuinely am necessitated to do it. 247 00:29:13,970 --> 00:29:20,720 We call it necessity. Maybe it's necessary that you do that because it's so predictable. 248 00:29:20,720 --> 00:29:26,960 Any rational person would behave in that way. But that's not genuine physical necessity, according to Clark. 249 00:29:26,960 --> 00:29:34,070 So we'll see that Hume has a comment directly on that a bit later. 250 00:29:34,070 --> 00:29:42,350 OK. Another character here, Henry Hume, Lord later, Lord claims he was elevated as a judge and became Lord Cames. 251 00:29:42,350 --> 00:29:51,810 He was a distant relative of Hume, and he was very much Hume's mentor when he when he was at Edinburgh because he was very young. 252 00:29:51,810 --> 00:29:58,070 Keynes was 15 years older. He corresponded with Samuel Clarke about free will in necessity. 253 00:29:58,070 --> 00:30:03,650 He also corresponded with Andrew Baxter, a prominent Scottish philosopher, 254 00:30:03,650 --> 00:30:11,600 and he took an immense interest in the Locke's chapter in his essay concerning human understanding on power. 255 00:30:11,600 --> 00:30:17,750 The origin of the idea of power, and that's a chapter discusses free will and so on as well. 256 00:30:17,750 --> 00:30:30,440 So here we have a man intimately linked with Hume at a formative period of Hume's life with this set of very serious interests. 257 00:30:30,440 --> 00:30:38,270 So say his family home was nine miles away from Chirnside, where Hume lived. 258 00:30:38,270 --> 00:30:44,360 Also close to Chirnside, eight miles away, a chap called William Dudgeon was writing philosophy. 259 00:30:44,360 --> 00:30:51,800 Now his philosophy was necessity Aryan. He thought that everything in the world is necessitated causally. 260 00:30:51,800 --> 00:30:57,320 God has set up the world in such a way that everything will run determinedly deterministic. 261 00:30:57,320 --> 00:31:03,340 And for the best. And here we have Andrew Baxter. 262 00:31:03,340 --> 00:31:10,300 Who I've already mentioned as being a correspondent with Cames, who's Hume's mentor, 263 00:31:10,300 --> 00:31:18,910 and he's a tutor for the children of gentry, six miles away from Chirnside. 264 00:31:18,910 --> 00:31:33,650 And he published an attack on Dudgeon. So Baxter's enquiry at the time was more famous than than Berkeley, I mean, nowadays we think of, 265 00:31:33,650 --> 00:31:38,900 you know, Lock Berkeley Human Berkeley is this star between Locke and Hume. 266 00:31:38,900 --> 00:31:42,800 At the time, both Clark and Baxter would have been more prominent. 267 00:31:42,800 --> 00:31:48,940 We have Baxter's work, you can see going quickly through several editions. 268 00:31:48,940 --> 00:31:54,650 Interestingly, now Baxter's work is best known as a critique of Berkeley. 269 00:31:54,650 --> 00:32:04,980 But we will see that human Hume's writings interact with those of Baxter. 270 00:32:04,980 --> 00:32:13,020 Now, strikingly, dudgeon, this free thinker who'd been writing an asset, NASA's necessity Orion tracked, 271 00:32:13,020 --> 00:32:17,790 saying that everything in the world is determined and was attacked by Baxter. 272 00:32:17,790 --> 00:32:27,220 He was actually prosecuted at Chirnside, the village where he lived, where his uncle was minister. 273 00:32:27,220 --> 00:32:36,830 And. This happens at a time when Hume is forming his philosophical views. 274 00:32:36,830 --> 00:32:43,670 So we've got a whole sequence of things happening in the close vicinity of Hume 275 00:32:43,670 --> 00:32:52,480 very much associated with these topics of free will determinism God and so forth. 276 00:32:52,480 --> 00:32:57,430 We also have some handwritten memoranda of whom we don't know exactly when these were written, 277 00:32:57,430 --> 00:33:02,110 but the evidence seems to be the late 17th thirties or the early 1740. 278 00:33:02,110 --> 00:33:09,370 So either just before the treaties or while the treaties was being published or very soon after, 279 00:33:09,370 --> 00:33:18,010 and these show humans intense interest at the time in precisely this nexus of topics. 280 00:33:18,010 --> 00:33:29,020 So here are three quotes from the memoranda, so the memoranda consist of lots of little sentences or short paragraphs, 281 00:33:29,020 --> 00:33:38,510 noting down points that Hume presumably was planning to take account in later work that that he would write. 282 00:33:38,510 --> 00:33:47,920 Libertine, not a proper solution of moral ill, because it might have been bound down by motives like those of saints and angels. 283 00:33:47,920 --> 00:33:55,910 Did God give liberty to please men themselves, but men are as well pleased to be determined to good? 284 00:33:55,910 --> 00:33:59,750 God could have prevented all abuses of liberty without taking away liberty. 285 00:33:59,750 --> 00:34:07,580 Therefore, liberty, no solution of difficulties. So what you plainly alluding to here? 286 00:34:07,580 --> 00:34:14,610 Is that if you have a compatible list, view of free will? 287 00:34:14,610 --> 00:34:22,110 Then the free will defence cannot save you from the problem of evil. 288 00:34:22,110 --> 00:34:30,750 If God could have made us such that we were free but at the same time determined us to do good. 289 00:34:30,750 --> 00:34:35,190 Then you cannot appeal to free will to explain why there's evil in the world. 290 00:34:35,190 --> 00:34:42,470 OK, that's very clear. Clearly the point that that human is making here. 291 00:34:42,470 --> 00:34:55,690 So he is he is clearly well aware that sorting out issues of free will and determinism are crucial to questions about the existence of God. 292 00:34:55,690 --> 00:35:05,770 OK, so we have this causal nexus, and that's a little bit of a pun because it's both a causal nexus and a nexus about causation. 293 00:35:05,770 --> 00:35:12,160 We've got a whole load of early influences on whom all of them well attested and all 294 00:35:12,160 --> 00:35:19,750 pointing to the same nexus of philosophical questions about the nature of causation, 295 00:35:19,750 --> 00:35:26,620 necessity, freewill and relating those to God. 296 00:35:26,620 --> 00:35:33,280 There's one missing piece in the jigsaw puzzle, and here is where I am putting a hypothesis. 297 00:35:33,280 --> 00:35:36,970 Unfortunately, I've got no clear proof of this, 298 00:35:36,970 --> 00:35:46,480 but I think it makes evident good sense that Hume was strongly motivated at an early stage by the prospect of applying Locke's concept 299 00:35:46,480 --> 00:35:57,640 empiricism to settle the debate over free will in necessity by clarifying and limiting what could possibly be meant by causal necessity. 300 00:35:57,640 --> 00:36:04,360 So just to spell it out a bit. We've got all these debates about free will and causal necessity. 301 00:36:04,360 --> 00:36:11,390 And Hume is interacting with people like Cames, who's intimately linked with this debate. 302 00:36:11,390 --> 00:36:18,770 Came at the same time says that he is crucified by Locke's chapter of power. 303 00:36:18,770 --> 00:36:25,710 The chapter where Locke gives an account of the origin of the idea of causal power. 304 00:36:25,710 --> 00:36:30,570 And we see him giving us his first principle, the first principle of his philosophy. 305 00:36:30,570 --> 00:36:41,470 What is essentially a restatement of Locke's empiricism? So what I'm suggesting here is Hume reads Locke's chapter of power. 306 00:36:41,470 --> 00:36:49,660 This chapter so obsessed canes, he sees that Locke's explanation of the origin of the idea of power is no good. 307 00:36:49,660 --> 00:36:56,020 And we do know that Hume, so read that and said that that it was no good. 308 00:36:56,020 --> 00:37:05,080 And he I thought this is my suggestion, thought if I find the real, genuine origin of the idea of power, causal power, 309 00:37:05,080 --> 00:37:14,620 causal necessity, I will be able to use that to solve these issues about free will determinism and ultimately God. 310 00:37:14,620 --> 00:37:18,400 So let's say it's a a piece of the jigsaw. 311 00:37:18,400 --> 00:37:25,390 I think it makes perfect sense. We've got lots to support it, but I cannot prove that that is exactly the motivation. 312 00:37:25,390 --> 00:37:32,760 No point have any textual evidence saying, you know, this is what brought me in there. 313 00:37:32,760 --> 00:37:41,450 But we do have plenty evidence of evidence from the text that corroborates this thought. 314 00:37:41,450 --> 00:37:46,460 So first of all, treaties, but one part three is where causation is discussed. 315 00:37:46,460 --> 00:37:54,640 That is the most extensive part of the treaties by some distance, and it contains the topics for which Hume is best known. 316 00:37:54,640 --> 00:37:58,930 You know, induction causation probability. 317 00:37:58,930 --> 00:38:07,000 The whole of the but one part three is structured around the search for the origin of the idea of necessarily connexion that is causal, 318 00:38:07,000 --> 00:38:11,540 necessarily connexion. Book one, part one. 319 00:38:11,540 --> 00:38:17,600 The beginning of the treaties gives great prominence to the coffee principle. 320 00:38:17,600 --> 00:38:25,070 Now, if we look at the abstract of the treaties, which I've suggested, it would be a very good idea for you to read before the next lecture. 321 00:38:25,070 --> 00:38:28,100 I mean, I think that that's the the single best thing to read. 322 00:38:28,100 --> 00:38:38,560 To put all this in context here, what I've done is represent all the different paragraphs of the abstract. 323 00:38:38,560 --> 00:38:46,180 And what's striking here is that the vast bulk of the abstract is devoted to the topics of one part three of the treaties. 324 00:38:46,180 --> 00:38:52,360 So the abstract was published after Hume had published books one and two of the treaties. 325 00:38:52,360 --> 00:39:00,910 But you can see that if you compare this very small abstract with the rather large book one and book two of the treaties, 326 00:39:00,910 --> 00:39:06,190 it's striking that the topics of Book one part three still occupy a large part. 327 00:39:06,190 --> 00:39:13,060 In fact, the argument concerning induction, for example, which only occupies one small section of book one part three of the treaties, 328 00:39:13,060 --> 00:39:18,970 is nearly as long in the abstract as it is in the treaties. About 75 per cent of the length, 329 00:39:18,970 --> 00:39:27,670 this discussion of belief and probability of linking up and connecting the discussion of the copy principle in the idea of necessity. 330 00:39:27,670 --> 00:39:31,210 And you can see the issue of liberty in the necessity that is free. 331 00:39:31,210 --> 00:39:35,110 Will and determinism is also quite prominent there. 332 00:39:35,110 --> 00:39:46,390 So the only topic that gets significant coverage other than those in book one part three is the coffee principle from book one, part one. 333 00:39:46,390 --> 00:39:50,530 And that prepares the way for Hume's denouement, 334 00:39:50,530 --> 00:39:59,300 where he explains the origin of the idea of necessity and how that applies to the question of liberty in necessity. 335 00:39:59,300 --> 00:40:05,720 So what does Hume have to say about the origin of the idea of necessity? I've said he rejects Locke's account. 336 00:40:05,720 --> 00:40:11,000 He and this is putting it very crudely, will be coming back and discussing this in detail. 337 00:40:11,000 --> 00:40:17,690 It's one of the most important areas of Hume's philosophy. He essentially argues that the impression of necessary connexion, 338 00:40:17,690 --> 00:40:26,300 that's the impression from which the idea of causal necessity is copied arises in our minds when we perform inductive inferences. 339 00:40:26,300 --> 00:40:30,050 So when we see one thing followed by another again and again and again say A, 340 00:40:30,050 --> 00:40:36,500 followed by B and then we observe an A, we just find ourselves naturally inferring a b, we can't help it. 341 00:40:36,500 --> 00:40:44,810 That's the way our minds are made. And when we find ourselves inferring B, that is what gives us the impression of necessarily connexion. 342 00:40:44,810 --> 00:40:55,430 And that's where the idea of causal necessity comes from. So the idea of causal necessity actually comes from a kind of inferential necessity. 343 00:40:55,430 --> 00:41:02,340 It's very novel, very odd, uh, not entirely convincing, perhaps, but. 344 00:41:02,340 --> 00:41:07,620 That's Hume's theory, and clearly it has been very influential. 345 00:41:07,620 --> 00:41:15,780 His discussion of this theory culminates with two famous definitions of calls in and I'm mentioning here, 346 00:41:15,780 --> 00:41:19,350 by the way, parallels sections of the enquiry. 347 00:41:19,350 --> 00:41:28,650 The enquiry concerning human understanding published in 1748 will get a fair amount of reference to that in future lectures. 348 00:41:28,650 --> 00:41:34,350 But on these topics, the enquiry is essentially saying the same as the treaties. 349 00:41:34,350 --> 00:41:39,390 I think it's saying it rather better. It's more polished, which is indeed what you'd expect. 350 00:41:39,390 --> 00:41:44,540 But essentially, the treaties and the enquiry are very, very similar here. 351 00:41:44,540 --> 00:41:49,880 The two definitions, of course, and one can ask, 352 00:41:49,880 --> 00:41:56,720 why are there two different definitions that's a famous puzzle in human scholarship that I'll be saying something about in a later lecture. 353 00:41:56,720 --> 00:42:01,040 For now, just take it. There are two definitions. One is based on constant conjunction. 354 00:42:01,040 --> 00:42:06,350 We see a followed by B constantly. That's what Hume calls a constant conjunction. 355 00:42:06,350 --> 00:42:10,010 And the other definition is based on the fact that when we do observe a constant 356 00:42:10,010 --> 00:42:15,440 conjunction between A and B and then we observe and we find ourselves inferring the B. 357 00:42:15,440 --> 00:42:26,300 So one of the definitions is based on the constant conjunction of one of them focuses on the natural inference of the mind. 358 00:42:26,300 --> 00:42:33,560 And having derived these definitions, humour immediately applies them. 359 00:42:33,560 --> 00:42:42,170 All causes are of the same kind. This is the only way we can get an idea of a cause from this impression. 360 00:42:42,170 --> 00:42:47,610 Therefore, the only idea, of course, we can have is this same one. 361 00:42:47,610 --> 00:42:54,120 So the common distinction between moral and physical necessity is without any foundation in nature, clock is wrong. 362 00:42:54,120 --> 00:42:59,430 You cannot distinguish between physical and moral necessity. 363 00:42:59,430 --> 00:43:08,820 The necessity that applies to human actions is exactly the same necessity as applies to billiard balls. 364 00:43:08,820 --> 00:43:13,920 He also mentions the causal maxim here, incidentally, immediately after having provided his definitions, 365 00:43:13,920 --> 00:43:19,620 one of the corollaries he draws is now we can see why the causal maxim wasn't provable. 366 00:43:19,620 --> 00:43:24,200 So you can see these topics are all linking together. 367 00:43:24,200 --> 00:43:33,350 If you look at passenger sections later in the treaties that refer back to the definitions, of course, there are basically two topics. 368 00:43:33,350 --> 00:43:42,530 One of them is of the emitter reality of the soul. Near the end of that section, where humans discussing where the matter could cause thought. 369 00:43:42,530 --> 00:43:53,750 Remember that same issue that so many people raised against Hobbs, the same issue, which is prominent in lochs and Clark's cosmological argument. 370 00:43:53,750 --> 00:44:00,770 And here is Hume applying his definitions of calls to resolving that. 371 00:44:00,770 --> 00:44:04,340 And then the other one is, of course, the discussions of liberty of necessity. 372 00:44:04,340 --> 00:44:10,400 Notice, by the way, that these sections are in book two of the treaties. 373 00:44:10,400 --> 00:44:16,250 But in the enquiry concerning human understanding, which is largely a rewrite of book one, 374 00:44:16,250 --> 00:44:22,190 he very appropriately brought the discussion of liberty and necessity and put it in that book. 375 00:44:22,190 --> 00:44:28,370 So I certainly think of liberty and necessity as really a book one topic rather than a book two topic. 376 00:44:28,370 --> 00:44:32,330 Even though it's eight, it's actually there in Book two. So do not neglect that. 377 00:44:32,330 --> 00:44:40,430 But the the the version of that discussion in the treaties is much less good than the version in the enquiry. 378 00:44:40,430 --> 00:44:45,800 So if you want to see how Hume's view of causation impacts on liberty in the society, 379 00:44:45,800 --> 00:44:52,610 you're actually better reading sections seven and eight of the enquiry where they're very intimately linked. 380 00:44:52,610 --> 00:44:57,920 Anyway, both of these arguments, crucially, turn on Hume's definitions, 381 00:44:57,920 --> 00:45:08,090 vindicating my suggestion that Hume started out trying to analyse the origin of the idea of necessary connexion in order to solve these problems. 382 00:45:08,090 --> 00:45:13,040 That's exactly what he does, though I can't prove that was his original aim. 383 00:45:13,040 --> 00:45:21,040 It seems highly plausible. So here he is discussing. 384 00:45:21,040 --> 00:45:27,850 The cause, a mental causation, whether a matter. 385 00:45:27,850 --> 00:45:30,520 Motion of matter can cause thought. 386 00:45:30,520 --> 00:45:36,910 All objects which are found to be constantly conjoined are upon that account, only to be regarded as causes and effects, 387 00:45:36,910 --> 00:45:42,240 the constant conjunction of objects constitutes the very essence of cause and effect. 388 00:45:42,240 --> 00:45:46,800 And here is a passage from his discussion of liberty in the society. 389 00:45:46,800 --> 00:45:52,590 Free will and determinism to particulars are essential to necessity these the constant union and the 390 00:45:52,590 --> 00:45:57,870 influence of the mind as the two definitions one based on the conjunction one based on inference. 391 00:45:57,870 --> 00:46:03,950 Wherever we discover these, we must acknowledge a necessity. 392 00:46:03,950 --> 00:46:10,720 So in a bit more detail now of the materiality of the soul, this is section one, 145 five. 393 00:46:10,720 --> 00:46:19,960 Here's this argument against hopes that motion and matter cannot possibly cause thought, well, that may seem a very plausible argument. 394 00:46:19,960 --> 00:46:23,170 Nothing in the world is more easy than to refute it. 395 00:46:23,170 --> 00:46:31,060 We need only to reflect on what's been proved at large that to consider the matter a priori, anything may produce anything, 396 00:46:31,060 --> 00:46:34,910 and we'll never discover a reason why any object may or may not be the cause of any other, 397 00:46:34,910 --> 00:46:39,900 however great or however little the resemblance may be between them. 398 00:46:39,900 --> 00:46:43,620 Because as I've shown with my definitions, 399 00:46:43,620 --> 00:46:51,090 the essence of causation is constant conjunction and where you've got constant conjunction, you've got causation. 400 00:46:51,090 --> 00:46:56,940 It doesn't matter. That motion and matter seem to be very different from thinking. 401 00:46:56,940 --> 00:47:04,410 We find by experience that they're constantly united, which being all the circumstances that enter into the idea of cause and effect. 402 00:47:04,410 --> 00:47:11,830 We may certainly conclude that motion may be and actually is the cause of thought and perception. 403 00:47:11,830 --> 00:47:20,290 So and there's another passage they're making the same message, so it's a direct application of Hume's understanding of causation, 404 00:47:20,290 --> 00:47:27,760 which he has pursued through his empiricism by looking for the impression from which the idea of causal necessity is derived. 405 00:47:27,760 --> 00:47:34,140 And there he is, applying it to refute the critique of Hobbs. 406 00:47:34,140 --> 00:47:38,670 Of liberty and necessity here, he's more clearly attacking clock. 407 00:47:38,670 --> 00:47:46,710 The plot to remember thinks that the kind of necessity or so-called necessity that is applied to human action is quite different from real, 408 00:47:46,710 --> 00:47:54,790 genuine physical necessity. And we've already seen Hume denying that there is any such distinction. 409 00:47:54,790 --> 00:48:05,380 And here, his argument spelled out in more length is that because our only understanding of causal necessity comes from the two definitions, 410 00:48:05,380 --> 00:48:12,370 the constant conjunction and the inference those apply to human action, they apply to the motion of billiard balls. 411 00:48:12,370 --> 00:48:22,760 Same necessity. And actually, this argument really is very, very nicely encapsulated in the abstract. 412 00:48:22,760 --> 00:48:29,990 So this is a quotation from paragraph 34 of the abstract. 413 00:48:29,990 --> 00:48:35,990 I've noted there some other references to the treaties and to the enquiry where essentially the same point is made. 414 00:48:35,990 --> 00:48:46,070 The advocates for free will like Clarke, who think that free will is something different that mark the the moral necessity 415 00:48:46,070 --> 00:48:50,960 of human action is quite different from the real necessity of billiard balls. 416 00:48:50,960 --> 00:48:55,160 They must allow this union and inference with regard to human actions, right? 417 00:48:55,160 --> 00:49:00,680 Human actions do do show constant conjunction. We are able to predict human actions. 418 00:49:00,680 --> 00:49:08,180 They follow patterns and we draw inferences accordingly. People like Clarke will only deny that this makes the whole of necessity. 419 00:49:08,180 --> 00:49:13,250 They will say the real necessity involves something more than these two factors. 420 00:49:13,250 --> 00:49:19,060 But then they must show that we have an idea of something else in the in the actions of matter. 421 00:49:19,060 --> 00:49:22,180 Which, according to the foregoing reasoning, is impossible. 422 00:49:22,180 --> 00:49:31,810 In other words, they can't even form an idea of what they're trying to think of that extra thing that supposedly makes physical necessity. 423 00:49:31,810 --> 00:49:37,960 They can't form any idea because they haven't got any impression of it, so therefore they cannot draw that distinction. 424 00:49:37,960 --> 00:49:51,390 Again, it's a direct application of Hume's analysis of causation on a major debate of the time refuting the major advocate of the contrary position. 425 00:49:51,390 --> 00:50:02,430 So what we end up with is an integrated vision of where Hume's philosophy is coming from and a lot of the way in which it's going, 426 00:50:02,430 --> 00:50:07,320 why is causation so prominent in the treaties? 427 00:50:07,320 --> 00:50:13,800 Why is the largest section but one part three overwhelmingly devoted to that topic? 428 00:50:13,800 --> 00:50:20,010 Why is the abstract, which is supposed to supposedly summarising the treaties so focus on but one part three 429 00:50:20,010 --> 00:50:26,430 to the exclusion of nearly everything else or almost exclusion of everything else? 430 00:50:26,430 --> 00:50:33,390 Well. This makes sense of it, I think we've got a nexus of very important topics which are clarified, 431 00:50:33,390 --> 00:50:41,430 and Hume sees his analysis of causation as a yielding attacks on the cosmological argument, 432 00:50:41,430 --> 00:50:46,920 the anti materialist argument, the free will, the odyssey, the problem, the terrible defence. 433 00:50:46,920 --> 00:50:51,840 The problem of evil is a tax, a priority, causal metaphysics in general, 434 00:50:51,840 --> 00:50:58,200 the only way you can know what causes what is by experience, by finding out what is constantly conjoined. 435 00:50:58,200 --> 00:51:07,800 Because a priori anything could produce anything. So actually, we get a vindication of empirical science as the only kind of science that is workable, 436 00:51:07,800 --> 00:51:13,110 trying to work out a priori what will cause what you know, e.g. where the matter could go slow. 437 00:51:13,110 --> 00:51:20,450 That's a non-starter. And also, this causal science is extended into the moral realm, 438 00:51:20,450 --> 00:51:27,980 and that is very important to whom he is attempting to introduce the experimental method of reasoning into moral subjects, 439 00:51:27,980 --> 00:51:32,000 in other words, human science. That's the subtitle of the treatise. 440 00:51:32,000 --> 00:51:41,250 It fits perfectly, I think, with this vision of where he started and where he saw himself as going and. 441 00:51:41,250 --> 00:51:47,178 That's it. Thank you.