Welcome to the eighth and final lecture on David Hume's treatise Book one.
And we're going to be looking particularly at the very final section of book one of the treaties where Hume goes through a sceptical crisis.
But to explain the significance of that crisis, we need to look back at some earlier material.
OK, just to remind you where we were last time we looked at treaties, one for one and one for two.
Scepticism with regard to reason and scepticism with regard to the senses.
And we found that both our beliefs that we achieve through reasoning and also our beliefs in external body seem to be,
according to Hume, seriously problematic.
In both cases, we're unable actually to maintain scepticism, but it's not because we have good arguments against it,
it's just that we cannot psychologically prevent ourselves having the appropriate beliefs in treaties one for three of the ancient philosophy.
He went on to ridicule Aristotelian us for following their imagination like children and poets.
But he noticed a problem that he has in his own philosophy that is,
his own scientific method seems to be based on the imagination because induction he is analysed as being reliant utterly on custom,
which is a principle of the imagination.
So it looks like he may be being unfair in attacking the ancient philosophers for basing their philosophy on the imagination and treaties,
one for, for one, the beginning of the section of the modern philosophy.
He sketches a justification a defence which distinguishes between two categories of imaginative principles.
So we'll see quite a lot on that in what follows.
In is one for four of the modern philosophy, the rest of that he identifies various further problems with the belief in body.
Then he goes on in one for five to six to discuss the image reality of the soul and of personal identity.
Those sections, though humans often thought of as a sceptic about personal identity.
He himself doesn't actually see those sections as seriously problematic from a sceptical point of view
in the way that one for one and one or two other problems do emerge in the appendix to the treatise.
But that's not our concern here. OK, now let's have a look at the development of humans notion of the imagination through treaties, but one,
part three and one part four, because this is plays a very important role in the final section of but one that we're about to look at.
So back in lecture two, we saw how Hume is an empiricist.
He puts a lot of focus on the coffee principle. He sees that as a development of Locke's empiricism.
All of our ideas, all of the the material of our thought is copied from sensational feeling.
So all of our thought is, so to speak, imagistic again, not just visual images,
but essentially all of our thoughts involves replay of sensations or feelings.
Now it follows then that the imagination, as traditionally conceived,
is going to be the locus of our thinking because the imagination that is the faculty that
represents to us imagistic ideas is going to be the faculty that replace all of our ideas.
So it's not surprising that the imagination becomes a very crucial faculty for whom.
But understanding what he means by the imagination can be quite puzzling.
At the beginning, when he starts out, it looks relatively clear the imagination is opposed to reason.
Despite what I've said about on his principles,
imagination becoming the locus of all of our thinking when he presents his famous discussions of induction in the external world,
it looks very much as though the imagination is a rival faculty to reason.
So we get these famous quotations. The next question is whether experience produces the idea.
That's the idea that comes from inductive inference by means of the understanding or imagination.
Whether we are determined by reason to make the transition or by some Association
of Perceptions and Association is here taken to be an imaginative process,
a process of the imagination. And it's clearly a rival to getting that idea.
That inference from reason.
Again, with the external world, the subject of our present enquiry is concerning the causes which induce us to believe in the existence of body.
We'll consider it, whether it be the sense reason or the imagination that produces the opinion of a continued or distinct existence.
Now, moreover, within both of these discussions, the imagination comes in when reason has failed.
Reason is unable to justify inference from past to future the uniformity principle.
And it's at that point that custom comes in as an alternative explanation. A reason is completely unable to justify our belief in body.
And again, it's the imagination that comes in to fill that gap.
So we get an apparent distinction here in these discussions, which commonly taken for granted in discussions of whom, you know,
he's he's seeing these beliefs as arising from the imagination is seen as a sceptical move by these beliefs cannot be justified by reason.
Instead, they have an imaginative explanation, which is not an intellectually respectable explanation.
However, I want to draw attention to the fact that there's a massive distinction in Hume's treatment,
in his attitude between induction and the belief in body.
He consistently treats the belief in body as being rationally questionable.
It involves fictions, falsehood, denial and delusion and so on.
If you go back, I say slide six forty five and seven eight to 13, that's lecture six, slide 45.
Lecture seven eight 13. And there you will see that he he is criticising the belief in body as being seriously faulty in all sorts of ways.
But he treats induction with far more respect.
So even though he has shown that induction is based on custom, which he treats as a principle of the imagination,
nevertheless, custom is not subject to anything like the vilification that the belief in body is.
Now he's most explicit in the abstract and first enquiry.
It is not there for reason, which is the guide of life, but custom custom then is the great guide of human life.
And subsequently, in the treaties, he goes on to treat inference, customary inference, inductive inference as a bona fide operation of reason.
So here are citations from Slide 16 from lecture three.
You'll see that he is consistently treating inference by induction based on custom as an operation of reason.
Right? Take two three three three, for example. Reason is nothing but the discovery of cause and effect relations.
He's saying discovery of cause and effect relations, which of course we do by custom, by induction.
It's the paradigm of what reason is doing right. Reason, in a strict and philosophical sense, discovers the connexion of causes and effects.
OK, now what then is going on here.
We seem to start off with a distinction between reason and imagination,
where imagination is is a catchall for principles that are rationally defective.
But on the other hand, having shown that inductive inference is relies crucially on custom a principle of the imagination,
apparently Hume carries on treating it as respectable. Well, I want to point out some passages from a book one, part three and later one,
part four, where we see the distinction between reason and the imagination blurring.
So first of all, going back to lecture five, slide 12, we saw him.
I didn't discuss it in detail there, but he points out that there are issues to do with general rules.
You may remember the discussion of prejudice,
the idea that you meet a dull Irishman and you draw the conclusion that an Irishman cannot have wit nor a Frenchman solidity, apparently.
And Hume points out that these sorts of prejudices are unjustified.
And in order to deal with such prejudices, we form higher order general rules.
For example, the general rule not to form prejudices on the basis of just one or two cases.
The general rule is attributed to our judgement as being more extensive and constant.
The exception to the imagination as being more capricious and uncertain.
So he's saying there are two kinds of general rules,
there's prejudicial general rules where we jump to a general rule on the basis of an extremely hasty
generalisation and humans saying we attribute that to the imagination because it's capricious and uncertain.
Where is the more extensive general rules, the ones that we get by reflecting more?
We attribute those to the judgement.
Now judgement seems to be just another word for reason or the understanding, as I discussed in lecture three.
Another somewhat similar case is in Treatise one, three nine.
So here this goes back to lecture five slide four.
So bear in mind, custom is supposedly a principle of the imagination.
He has explained inductive inferences as based on custom.
And now in one, three nine, he's explaining why custom has the effect on this, that he does.
Why is it that custom succeeds in giving us belief?
And the answer is that when we do a customary inference, there's a sort of thick city to what we infer, it's not random, it's not arbitrary.
We see a followed by B again and again and again. We see a is a particular place and time.
We infer B at that same place in time. So that is not arbitrary.
It's got false and settled order. So of course, these are just beliefs when I form an inductive belief.
So it is just an idea. All this and everything else, which I believe are nothing but ideas,
though by their false and settled order arising from custom and the relation of cause and effect,
they distinguish themselves from the other ideas which are merely the offspring of the imagination.
So the difference between custom and just the fanciful play of the imagination is that custom has this force and settled order.
Now you can see in that sentence that there is a tension. He's trying to distinguish between the things that are right,
the ideas that arise from custom and those that are merely the offspring of the imagination.
But hang on a moment, come on your principles. Custom is a principle of the imagination.
So ideas that arise from custom are merely the offspring of the imagination.
Oh, dear, says Hume, I realise I've used the word imagination in two different senses here.
Well, what Hume did at the end of the section, and this is, I think you're not easy to miss.
The clue is this phrase offspring of the imagination. It only occurs twice in humans entire philosophical corpus.
One of the instances I've just quoted the other instance is in a footnote that occurs at the end of the section.
Why did you put it at the end of the section in order to make it easier to insert, he had to edit the text in order to make space for this footnote.
And he had to have a special sheet of council leaf printed,
which was circulated with the second volume of the treaty so that the people who
purchased it could take this this leaf and stick it in in place of the original.
OK, so this was a footnote that Hume had specially printed and inserted while the treatise was going through the press.
Here is the footnote Azaro sent to all probable reasonings is founded on the vivacity of ideas.
It resembles many of those witnesses and prejudices which are rejected under the appropriate character of being the offspring of the imagination.
By this expression,
it appears that the word imagination is commonly used in two different senses and in the following reasonings I've often fallen into this ambiguity.
When I oppose the imagination to the memory, I mean the faculty by which we form our fainter ideas when I oppose it to reason,
I mean the same faculty, excluding only our demonstrative improbable reasonings.
So notice what he's doing here, he's I think it's quite clear that this footnote was prompted by this particular paragraph, the earlier paragraph.
And he's he's spotted that he's implicitly using the imagination in two different senses, in one sense, customers a principle of the imagination.
It's a principle that leads us to form ideas of certain vivacity in response to certain experience.
In another sense, the imagination is a is not respectable.
It is. It is the place where prejudices and imaginative fantasies come from.
So those sorts of things are rejected under the opprobrium character of being the offspring of the imagination.
So there's a there's a sense of the imagination in which it is the faculty of our thinking of our forming ideas that we contrast it to the memory.
But the imagination can also mean that a sort of a lawless form of fancy capricious ideas and custom belongs to the imagination in one sense,
but not in the other.
So it looks like the distinction between reason and the imagination now is not being drawn, as you might think, in terms of parts of the mind.
Right. All of these altered principles operating on ideas in the imagination.
The distinction seems to be being drawn on the basis of how reliable the principles are.
But. And his quotations from Slide 22 of lecture,
three lots of blurring between the reason and between reason and the imagination and the understanding or imagination can draw inferences,
the judgement or rather the imagination, the imagination or understanding,
call it which you please the understanding that is the general and more established principles of the imagination.
So in all of these passages,
it looks as though we've got a distinction between types of principle drawn on the basis of how respectable and reliable they are.
And this last paragraph here one four seven seven seems clearly to be alluding back to the distinction that Hume drew one four four one,
the distinct discussion between the permanent, irresistible and universal principles and those that are changeable, weak and irregular.
This was where Hume was drawing a distinction to justify himself, saying, Look,
I've criticised the ancient philosophers for basing their theories on the imagination.
You might say to me. Hang on whom you based all your philosophy on the imagination to own custom.
Well, in order to justify myself, I must distinguish in the imagination betwixt the principles which are permanent,
irresistible and universal, such as the customary transition from causes to effects and from effects to causes.
And the principles which are changeable, weak and irregular, such as those that the ancient philosophers base their philosophy on.
Now, this is controversial, but it seems to me pretty clear that in those earlier passages from Book one,
part three, Hume is alluding to essentially exactly the same distinction as here.
We draw the distinction between judgement and imagination, between different senses of imagination,
between principles that are permanent, irresistible and universal, and those that are changeable, weak and irregular.
In brief between the respectable principles and the disreputable principles,
and we're drawing those distinctions on the basis of how reliable, solid, consistent and so forth they are.
So the distinction between reason and the imagination has to be drawn on the basis of the kinds of principles that govern our thinking,
not in terms of parts of the mind.
Because for whom all of our reasoning takes place in the imagination because the only ideas we have are imagistic ideas.
So the distinction between reason and the imagination can't be drawn in terms of parts of the mind.
It's drawn in terms of the respectability or otherwise of the principles that operate on our ideas within the imagination.
OK. Now this this looks like an important distinction.
When Hume was presenting the argument concerning induction, he doesn't seem to have thought of it as a sceptical argument.
Later on in the abstract and in the enquiry,
he seems clearly to have recognised that it has serious sceptical potential in the treaties, that realisation only came later.
But in the wake of that argument, which, as I've said, implies that all our inductive inferences are founded on custom a principle of the imagination,
it becomes crucial to draw a reliable distinction between those principles that deserve our respect,
which we give the accolade of being reason and those that are not worthy of that respect.
If that distinction fails, then so does Hume's attempt to build a rational science of human nature.
OK. So the crucial point here is that although humour is often thought of as a sceptic about induction,
it is clear that what he is attempting to do in his philosophy is to build an inductive science of human nature.
I'm. Showing that induction is founded on the imagination is not in itself necessarily a sceptical move.
But in order to prevent it being sceptical, he has to be able to justify these principles of the imagination as opposed to others.
Now, in the conclusion of this book, Hume gets into a terrible, sceptical mess.
And the main source of this sceptical mass is precisely the undermining of that attempted distinction.
So I'll go fairly quickly through this,
it's a summary of the sort of main moves that are made in one four seven and then we'll we'll come to the crucial point.
It's a hard section to interpret because it is presented very dynamically.
And very, very much first person, we see him struggling with his sceptical ideas.
We see him expressing despair. Sometimes, you know, where am I or what?
How am I going to escape from these sceptical problems?
And some people interpret the section as being very carefully choreographed as though Hume is in control throughout.
But he's going through these various moves, playing a role and coming out to a satisfactory conclusion in the end.
My own view is that the despair is genuine. I think Section 147 is not very well choreographed.
I suspect that Hume wrote it somewhat in a hurry. He published the treatise in a hurry.
I don't think personally, that he achieved any resolution here, but that's something you can judge for yourselves.
OK, so most of our mental processes have been shown to be dependent on the imagination, depending on the vivacity of ideas.
Trixie's 01:44 has found a manifest contradiction between our causal reasoning and our belief in the independent existence of matter.
OK, we've seen these in earlier lectures. The analysis of causation shows that our thoughts about that are deeply muddled or confused.
We've now seen a number of illusions of the imagination to which we are naturally prone.
And the question is how far we ought to yield to these illusions.
This question is very difficult and reduces us to a very dangerous dilemma, whichever way we answer it.
So. We are bound to accede to some of our of what our imagination prompts us to believe.
The question is, how do we distinguish between things that are worthy of our credence and those that aren't will if on the one hand,
we accept everything that the imagination throws at us if we assent to every trivial suggestion of the fancy?
Remember, the fancy is just another word for the imagination here. Beside that, these suggestions are often contrary to each other.
They lead us into such errors, absurdities and obscurities that we must last become ashamed of our credulity.
Well, OK, it's obviously silly to go along with every trivial suggestion of the fancy, every imaginative leap that we care to make.
Surely we should resolve to reject all the trivial suggestions of the fancy and adhere to the
understanding that is to the general and more established principles of the imagination.
So that's this is exactly the passage quoted earlier.
We're drawing the distinction between the trivial and capricious and the reliable and solid principles.
Let's just go with the reliable and solid principles.
But even this resolution is steadily executed would be dangerous and attended with the most fatal consequences for I've already shown.
And here there's a note to one for one scepticism with regard to reason that the
understanding when it acts alone and according to its most general principles,
entirely subverts itself and leaves not the lowest degree of evidence in any proposition, either in philosophy or common life.
We save ourselves from this total scepticism only by means of that singular
and seemingly trivial property of the fancy by which we enter with difficulty
into remote views of things and are not able to accompany with them them with
so sensible an impression as we do those which are more easy and natural.
So here he's going, he's alluding back to treaties one for one, quite explicitly.
Now we covered that in lecture six. Remember, Hume gives this sceptical argument.
He says, Whenever I do even a demonstration, a mathematical demonstration,
I ought to have some small element of doubt because I'm aware that I sometimes make mistakes.
So therefore, my belief in even a mathematical proof is going to generate into probability.
And then having to generate the probability, I have to ask myself, well, how likely is it that I've made a mistake?
And I make an assessment of that. How likely is it that I just made a mistake in assessing my probability of making an error?
And there's another probability assessment. But now I have to assess that probability assessment.
How likely is it that I might have made an error there? And according to him, all these errors multiply.
So we saw that in lecture six. But fortunately, we're not persuaded by this kind of argument because after the first and second decision,
as the action of the mine becomes forced and unnatural. And the idea is faint and obscure, though the principles be the same.
Yet their influence on the imagination weakens. So what saves us from total scepticism?
What saves us from the disastrous result of the argument of one for one is that we are incapable of following it through.
We lose track after the first step or two, and that is what saves us.
But it looks now like we're being saved, not by one of the general established respectable principles of the imagination.
We are being saved by a trivial principle of the imagination, the fact that we cannot follow the argument through.
Well, suppose we try to get round this by just establishing a general maxim that no refined or elaborate reasoning,
the sort of reasoning that bedevils us in one for one is ever to be received.
Well, that's not going to work by this means you cut off entirely all science and philosophy,
you proceed upon one singular quality of the imagination and by a parity of reason must embrace all of them.
So there's an arbitrariness in it and you express brashly contradict yourself,
since this maxim must be built on the preceding reasoning, which will be allowed to be sufficiently refined and metaphysical.
What party, then, should we choose amongst these difficulties if we embrace this principle and condemn all refined reasoning?
In other words, we say it's a good thing that we can't follow refined reasoning because that leads us into scepticism.
So let's reject all refined reasoning. If we do that, we're going to run into the most manifest absurdities.
If we reject it in favour of these reasonings, we subvert entirely the human understanding because of one well.
We have therefore no choice left, but betwixt a false reason and none at all.
Well, I don't know what to do. I can only observe what's commonly done, which is that this difficulty is seldom or never thought of.
Very refined reflections have little or no influence upon us,
and yet we do not and cannot establish it for a rule that they ought not to have any influence, which implies a manifest contradiction.
What have I said, the reflections, very refined and metaphysical, have little or no influence upon us.
The intense view of these manifold contradictions and imperfections in human reason has so wrought upon
me and heated my brain that I'm ready to reject all belief and reasoning and can look upon no opinion,
even as more probable or likely than another. Where am I or what from what causes do I derive my existence and to what condition shall I return?
I'm confounded with all these questions and begin to fancy myself in the most deplorable condition
imaginable environs with the deepest darkness and utterly deprived of the use of every member and faculty.
So as I say, we get this this intense first personal distress, which I personally think is genuine, I think.
I mean, if you look, if you take the argument of one four one seriously and Hume clearly does.
It puts you in this position.
If you want to draw a distinction between the capricious and unreliable and on the other hand, the solid and permanent principles of the imagination.
And then you find that following the solid and permanent principles, he's going to lead you to this total scepticism.
What do you do? Well.
Carelessness and inattention. Just as at the end of one, four, two.
Most fortunately, it happens that since Reason is incapable of displaying dispelling these clouds,
nature herself suffices for that purpose and cures me of this philosophical, melancholy and delirium.
I dine. I play a game of backgammon. I converse in a Mary with my friends.
And afterwards, these speculations appear so cold and strained and ridiculous that I cannot find it in my heart to enter into them any farther.
So we get this famous sort of perspective or view of him that while he's in the study thinking through all these problems, he's an intense sceptic.
He leaves the study, goes to have dinner, plays backgammon, drinks and chats with his friends, and all the sceptical worries just disappear.
I may now I must yield to the current of nature in submitting to my senses and understanding.
And in this blind submission, I show most perfectly my sceptical disposition and principles under what obligation do I lie?
Of thinking about sceptical issues all the time? No, I'm just going to show my sceptical disposition by being sceptical of my own doubts,
and I'm going to dine and play backgammon and stop worrying about these things.
Now, this doesn't look like a terribly satisfactory philosophical resolution, to put it mildly.
Other commentators have tried to find a resolution in the text, most notably,
Don Garrett claims to see a resolution in what he calls the title principle.
So humans is in this quandary. He seems to be trying to justify him to himself going on.
Well, when he dines and plays backgammon, he can go on with normal life.
But what's going to bring him back into the study? Because after all, he wants to be a philosopher.
He wants to write book two and three of the treaties which have yet to come.
How is he going to justify that? Well, he's doing this all on sceptical principles, why does he need to justify why not just do where pleasure leads?
If we're philosophers either thought only to be on sceptical principles and from an inclination which we feel
to the employing ourselves after that manner where reason is lively and mixes itself with some propensity,
it ought to be assented to where it does not. It never can have any title to operate upon us.
And that's what Don Garrett's called the title principle.
Personally, I see this as just another move in a continuing narrative.
It's not clear to me that Hume is proposing this as a solution to the quandary.
Don thinks he he is that interesting debate there.
I'm just going to contribute a small amount to that debate. OK, so where reason is lively and mixes itself with some propensity?
It's fine for me to pursue it. Well, I can't forebear having a curiosity to be acquainted with the principles of moral good and evil,
the nature and foundation of government and the cause of those several passions and inclinations which actuate and govern me.
I want to go on and do do the work that I'm going to discuss in treaties, book three and book two on morals and the passions.
I'm just curious. So there is an inclination leading me to employ my reason.
Amazon. I haven't seen any good reason for not going with my inclination.
So that's what I'm going to do. Well, OK, but philosophy is not the only kind of reasoning that's lively and mixes itself with some propensity.
Suspicious, superstitious beliefs are very lively.
They mix with human propensities all too readily assume knows.
I mean, he would like to write the natural history of religion, explaining how we have.
We have very, very drawn towards religious impulses through hopes and fears and so on.
So there's plenty of liveliness and propensity in religion. So why choose philosophy rather than superstition?
We ought only to deliberate concerning the choice of our guide and ought to prefer that which is safest and most agreeable.
And in this respect, I make bold to recommend philosophy and give it the preference to superstition of every kind.
The problem is you may prefer philosophy to superstition.
But how can he justify preferring philosophical investigation of these profound questions over superstitious investigation of these questions?
He may have the propensity to philosophy. Others have the propensity to superstition.
Well, what he does give is what I think is a rather lame observation.
The errors in religion are dangerous. Those in philosophy only ridiculous.
So philosophy is at least harmless.
Where is pursuing superstition as anyone in the 17th and 18th centuries would know, leads to all sorts of terrible dangers?
People go around killing each other because of differences in belief in religion.
But actually, if you think about it, the errors in religion are dangerous, those in philosophy only ridiculous.
That's not a claim that any religious person is going to accept.
And they're going to say that actually the biggest danger in your life is hellfire.
It's being condemned to eternal damnation after your death.
And if you pursue the kind of philosophy that Hume pursues, then actually that's where it's going to lead.
So philosophy of that kind is extremely dangerous. More crucial than anything else is to have to correct religious beliefs.
So what kind of enquiry is safe or unsafe actually is going to be something that Hume and the religious people just fundamentally disagree about?
And if there is no objective recourse, if there's no objective, rational criterion that you can use to distinguish between them,
if it just comes down to preference and inclination, then there's an impulse.
Hugh Hume is not going to find any way of being able to justify his way of going over the religious.
So it seems to me that the title principle saying where reason is lively and mixes itself with some propensity.
Therefore, I'm going to pursue my philosophy.
I think that's utterly hopeless because, as I say, superstitious investigation is just as lively mixes just as much with propensities.
And Hume has robbed himself because of his radical scepticism of any objective
justification for pursuing things in his way rather than the alternatives.
No, I've said views about the last section of book, one of the treaties, one for seven differ.
I think he really is in a rut here. He's really got a terrible, sceptical quandary from which he has no escape, no solution.
I do advise you to read what Don Garrett has to say about the section because he, as I say, takes a radically different view.
Hume does find an answer, but I think the answer he finds is in 1748 when he writes the first enquiry.
And there in section 12 of the first enquiry, it was initially published by the way his philosophical essays concerning human understanding.
It was later renamed Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding there in Section 12.
We get a discussion of scepticism which solves the problems, or at least provides a far more plausible resolution.
Now, I have a hypothesis about this, it is just a speculation. The argument of treaties, one for one, I believe, is a terrible argument.
It is hopeless. And I think Hume himself came to see that it is hopeless.
The crucial paragraph one four one six is where Hume is arguing that when we ask ourselves, what is the probability of our having made an error?
And then we have to ask, what's the probability of making an error in that assessment of probability?
And then what's the probability of making a mistake in that assessment of probability and so on?
The and so on is actually completely hopeless. It is just hand-waving.
And I think anybody who is attempting to spell out Hume's argument has resorted to the same kind of hand-waving.
So my hypothesis is this Hugh came to right to work on what became the enquiry.
He was looking he was trying to spell out his arguments like the argument concerning induction gets
spelled out in far more with far more care and detail in the enquiry than it's been in the treaties.
And when he came to think through the argument of one for one. I suspect that he just came apart in his hands.
He just realised this is a rubbish argument. Can't prove that, I mean, the argument disappears.
But let me explain why it's a hopeless argument.
The case for repeated iteration is completely hopeless.
My credence in my mathematical judgement, I gave the example of solving a quadratic equation when we in lecture six.
So I sold the quadratic equation. I'm convinced that I've got the right answer, but I remember that nineteen, you know,
one time out of 20 in the past five percent of the time, I've made a mistake.
So if somebody asks me to bet on my having got the right answer, I'm going to think of the odds.
19 out of 29, I think I'm 95 per cent likely to get this right.
Not 100 percent because I'm aware that I'm fallible. But that Credence should depend on my experience on humans and principles.
I should be thinking about my past track record.
That's how he motivates if he says that you sometimes made mistakes, so you shouldn't be totally certain.
Alright, fine. So the argument explicitly appeals to the history of the instances of my past judgements.
And no part of Hume's argument expresses scepticism about memory or record taking.
It's not like he's saying you might have recorded wrongly in the past when you've got rotten writing, when you've gone wrong.
You should just look at the history of your rights and wrongs and moderate your judgement accordingly.
That's very plausible. But then how can you motivate iteration?
There's no way of doing it, because the statistics of when I was writing, when I was wrong just remain as they are.
My thinking more about them doesn't change them.
And how good I am, it's iterative, reflexive judgements that is judging the probability of my judging,
the probability of my judging, the probability of my getting something right. I may be absolutely rubbish at that.
Sure. It's not something I've practised. That doesn't mean I'm rubbish judging the statistics of when I got quadratic equations right and wrong.
Moreover, even if there were some good reason in principle to iterate up the levels,
and I've just said I don't think there is, but even if there were doing so is in practise impossible for us.
Hume himself emphasises that he says We can't follow it. We can't keep track.
So how can it possibly be an obligation of reason to iterate? And again.
If we do iterate according to who it ends with all our belief dissolving.
How can that be a rational way to go? If somebody says to me, Look, you really ought to iterate your judgements, and if you do,
you'll stop having any confidence at all in your ability to solve quadratic equations.
But that's a lunatic. Look 19 out of 20 times in the past.
I've got him right. How can it possibly be rational for me to follow some procedure, which I find it very difficult to do anyway?
And if I do follow it, it's going to lead me to have a belief, which is completely at variance with the history of my success.
Though on humans, on conception of reason, reflexive checking can only make sense if it makes me better,
if it's warranted by experience, it leads me to better judgement. But it doesn't.
OK, now let's suppose I'm right that Hume, when he came to spell out the argument, realised that it simply can't be spelled out, right?
As I said, people have tried to do this, but scholars who have defended him on this argument,
in my view, have never actually spelled out how the argument is supposed to work.
They sketch some thought that, oh, he must be thinking along these lines and then it works, you know?
But whenever they come to the crucial point, the and so on comes in that as though somehow the iteration just takes care of itself.
And I deny that it does. I do not think that Hume's argument can plausibly be spelled out in one fell well.
Now, I've said that in the enquiry, it's not like you reject this argument, it just never comes up.
But I suspect that reflecting on the argument of one for one might have led Hume
to the comments that he makes about antecedent scepticism can't prove this,
but it seems plausible. Take a look at an enquiry 12 three.
So this is Hume's discussion of antecedent scepticism. That is where you start out with a sceptical view, not because you've encountered problems,
but because you demand that your faculties be justified before you start relying on them.
There's a species of scepticism antecedent to all study and philosophy, which is much inculcated by Descartes and others.
It recommends universal doubt of our very faculties of whose veracity say they we
must assure ourselves by a chain of reasoning deduced from some original principle,
which cannot possibly be fallacious. But neither is there any such original principle which has a prerogative above others.
Or if there were, could we advance a step beyond it? But by the use of those very faculties of which we're supposed to be already diffident?
The Cartesian doubt, therefore, where it's ever possible to be attained by any human creature as it plainly is not would be entirely incurable.
So you cannot you simply cannot demand the justification of your reason before you start
using your reason because your reason is the only tool you've got to justify your reason.
So what's the appropriate reaction? Will the appropriate reaction is to start off trusting your reason by default until you encounter problems?
Don't start off with the impossible demand of justifying your reason a priori I take for granted the faculty of reason that you have.
Until and unless you find that you encounter awful problems.
So what we get is what the enquiry calls consequent scepticism.
Effectively, what we're doing, we're putting the onus on the sceptic to highlight a problem in our reason.
Rather than saying, as Descartes sometimes seems to say to the sceptic, If I can't defeat you, Mr. Sceptic, you win.
What Hume is saying, no. I'm going to start by default, trusting my reason it's up to you, Mr. Sceptic, to show that I'm wrong.
The onus is on you, not on me.
Now, it seems to me that humans Hume applies this strategy, not only in the case of a demonstrative reason and so forth,
as we see there with his discussion of antecedent scepticism. It seems to me that there's also a very similar strategy with induction.
Now we know Hume's argument concerning induction. The famous argument comes in section four of the enquiry.
But what's unique in the enquiry is that in section 12, paragraphs 22 and 23,
Hume himself responds to the sceptic, who is putting forward his sceptical arguments concerning induction.
We don't get that in the treaties. And the the response to the sceptic is along the lines of I don't see why I should go with your doubts.
You haven't given me a reason for giving up induction.
So it may seem that the sceptic has ample matter of triumph while he justly insists on my own argument from enquiry section four.
That's the argument that that's being summarised there.
But my aunt, my reply to the sceptics, says Hume.
What are you trying to achieve by this argument? You surely can't expect that I'm going to give up all inference.
You must acknowledge if you will acknowledge anything that all human life must perish where your principles universally and steadily to prevail.
It's true. So fatal event is very little to be dreaded. Human nature is always too strong for principle, but.
The sceptic is trying. It has brought up this argument, this the argument concerning induction,
saying You've got no reason for supposing that the future will resemble the past.
You can't justify this in any any way. You don't believe in that.
And humans say, no, I don't see why I should give up belief. Why should I? Because as far as I can see if I did, I'd simply die.
Now, the sceptic must acknowledge if he will acknowledge anything, but if I follow his scepticism, it's going to lead to disaster.
Notice the sceptic might not acknowledge anything the sceptic might say, Oh, I have no idea what would happen.
I can't make any prediction about the unobserved.
Any prediction about the unobserved is just as good or bad as any other, so I can't draw any conclusion about what would happen.
But in that case, you can simply say, Well, why should I take your advice?
You don't have any advice to offer. So I'm going to carry on doing induction.
I can't help it anyway, but I can live with it because I've got no good reason for following what you say.
Inductive belief, indeed, is a species of natural instinct,
which no reasoning or process of the thought or understanding is able either to produce or to prevent.
Just as in the treatise, we get this appeal to the inevitability of human nature.
We cannot help doing it. But in the enquiry, I think there is a we actually have a rational response to the sceptic.
It's not just saying if I followed the sceptical arguments, the logic of the sceptical arguments, I would have no belief at all.
The only thing that stops me having no belief is human nature.
Human Stead is saying actually sceptic, you have not given me a reason for giving up my beliefs.
I cannot justify the belief that the future will resemble the past.
But I can't help believing it, and I've not been given any reason for relinquishing that belief.
So the the the change in the onus of proof is quite significant here.
In the end, the Peroni and arguments can have no other tendency than to show the whimsical condition of mankind who must act and reason believe,
though they are not able by their most diligent enquiry to satisfy themselves concerning the
foundation of these operations or to remove the objections that may be raised against them.
But that can lead us to beneficial effects, as we'll see. But notice he's not saying the sceptical arguments are completely pointless.
They show that we are in this whimsical condition where we have to take the way we think for granted in a way that's not surprising.
Why would you expect that our most fundamental methods of reasoning should be ones that somehow we can justify by other means?
How could we possibly do it if their most fundamental methods of reasoning? And the only arguments can have a good effect.
They can make us more modest if we can't justify our most fundamental methods of reasoning.
It's likely to make us less arrogant about what humanity a human reason can achieve.
It also is likely to make us more likely to limit our enquiries to such subjects, as are best adapted to the narrow capacity of human understanding.
If we can't even explain or make sense of our most fundamental methods of reasoning,
if we can't justify even the belief that the future will resemble the past, what chance have we are working out?
The origin and destiny of worlds? Now, notice that all of this is although it may seem sceptical, it does not in any way undermine science if we can,
if we are justified in hanging on to that basic belief that the future will resemble the past.
Why? Because we can't help it and because the sceptics given us no good reason to relinquish it.
I mean, it's the only principle on which we can draw any conclusions about the world.
There's a good enough reason to hanging. Hang onto it. Notice, this means that we can then appeal to induction for a sort of virtuous bootstrapping,
our basic inductive instinct can itself lead to refinement of our inductive beliefs because we find by
experience that refining our beliefs through science and so forth actually leads to better results.
We do actually find that the world is uniform, so we start off with this basic assumption of uniformity.
But then when we do it more and more systematically, what we call science.
Lo and behold, we find it works. We are able to explore all sorts of interesting consequences with technology and so on.
And it works. So we get a kind of virtuous bootstrapping. And now we've got an answer to superstition.
Because actually, superstition doesn't work. The arguments that are used in favour of superstition turn out to violate the norms
of good inductive reasoning of the sort which leads us to scientific success.
And. So I've just sketched there some of the ways in which in the enquiry,
Hume gets a resolution, he is not simply left with this standoff that we're getting.
1:47 Where Hume seems to be saying, I prefer science, I prefer philosophy.
You prefer superstition. Can't give any good reason. Now he can, because the superstitious person is constantly appealing to induction.
Just like the rest of us, the superstitious person who argues in favour of miracles is appealing to induction there,
saying, Look, people normally tell the truth. They said that a miracle would occur did occur, therefore we should believe them.
That's an inductive inference.
And Hume brings the norms of induction to bear and says, actually, if you apply these properly, you won't believe in the miracle.
We're not going to discuss that at length. I think there are problems with Hume's argument,
but it seems clear what he's doing to apply inductive norms to show that actually does not lead in the direction of superstition.
So he can start from the basic thing that is common to all humanity that we take
for granted that the future will resemble the past and we cannot help doing that.
But he now can apply that as a lever in favour of systematic inductive science and against superstition.
In the first enquiry, several sources of radical, sceptical doubt dropped, I mentioned the argument of one for one, it disappears.
We no longer have the problems about identity over time. The severability principle disappears.
We no longer have scepticism about personal identity, and we do therefore seem to have a coherent way of defending inductive science.
What the treatise called the general are more established properties of the imagination,
but now without all the problems that bedevil us in the treaties.
Thank you very much.