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All right. So treaties book one, part four is cold of the sceptical and other systems of philosophy.

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It's not as long as part three. But it's very complex and it's quite hard to understand what's going on.

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It's divided into these various sections. We've already seen this.

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Uh, what we're going to do now is look particularly at sections one and two.

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Next time, what I'll be doing is trying to draw the threads together to understand Hume's overall sceptical position.

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But in order to understand that, we first need to look in detail at a few of these sections.

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So first of all, of scepticism with regard to reason and reason here means reasoning.

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He's HUME is going to draw sceptical conclusions about our capacity to produce arguments that generate evidence for particular conclusions.

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And his focus is on the demonstrative silences, as he calls them.

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Think of mathematics, which is the paradigm of such reasoning.

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So suppose we've got mathematical reasoning.

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We've got a piece, a mathematical argument, and let's take for granted that the rules of mathematics are certain and infallible.

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So we're not here casting any doubt over the mathematical principles in themselves.

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Nevertheless, when we apply those principles, when we actually perform a mathematical argument,

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we know from experience that there's some chance we'll get it wrong. Maybe one time in a thousand, maybe one time in the hundred.

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Depends how accurate we are. But occasionally we all make mistakes.

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So when we're judging how much evidence is generated by such an argument,

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we have to factor in our own fallibility, the fallibility of our own fact faculties, thus knowledge.

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And bear in mind again, HUME means knowledge in the strict sense here of absolute infallible knowledge degenerates into probability inevitably.

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Okay. So when I'm thinking how much confidence to place in a judgement that I've made on the basis of a mathematical argument, I have to correct it.

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We ought always to correct the first judgement derived from the nature of the object.

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That is the mathematical judgement by another judgement derived from the nature of the understanding.

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In other words, the faculty of reason derived from the fallibility of my own reasoning faculty.

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And then HUME says, Well, it's not only in demonstrative arguments that we need to make this sort of adjustment

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because improbable arguments to our faculties are likely to get things wrong.

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So we just made a probable judgement about our reasoning faculty.

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I've got this mathematical argument that itself is a demonstrative argument.

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But then it, as it were,

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degenerated into probability because I'm making a probable judgement about my reliability in assessing a mathematical argument.

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That's a probable judgement. Well, that's subject to error, too.

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So I need to make another adjustment. We're obliged by our reason to add a new doubt derived from the possibility of

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error in the estimation we make of the truth and fidelity of our faculties.

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So I might have got that first estimate of my reliability wrong.

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Better make another adjustment. This decision,

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though it should be favourable to the to our proceeding judgement being founded only on probability must we can still

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father our first evidence and must itself be weakened by a fourth doubt of the same kind and so on in infinitum.

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And even the vast quantity must, in this manner, be reduced to nothing.

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All the rules of logic require a continual diminution.

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And at last, a total of extinction of belief and evidence.

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So the idea is that if we carry on making these little adjustments, because there's uncertainty,

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as it were, all the way down, we judging how accurate our faculties are.

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I mean, judging that judgement and then judging that judgement.

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All of these things introduce a little bit of extra uncertainty and eventually, however certain the original judgement was, it disappears.

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Well, I'm going to turn to see whether that's a good argument in a moment.

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But let's first ask the question whether HUME accepts it.

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Does HUME himself accept his own argument?

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He does seem to think it's a good argument, and therefore it seems a bit paradoxical when he goes on to say.

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No, I don't really accept it. Why not?

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Well, it might seem through this argument.

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That Hugh must be one of those sceptics who hold that all is uncertain and that

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our judgement is not in anything possessed of any measures of truth and falsehood.

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It seems to undermine all evidence. Even probable evidence reduces down to zero.

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So no argument is better or worse than any other, it seems.

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But HUME says, Of course, I don't really have that opinion.

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I can't have that opinion because nature won't let me have it.

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Nature, by an absolute and uncontrollable necessity, has determined us to judge as well as to breathe and feel.

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So here we get one of the clearest indications of what is called Hume's naturalistic response to scepticism.

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The sceptical argument is theoretically untouchable.

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But nature stops us accepting it.

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Our natural judgement. We can't help having beliefs, even though theoretically we shouldn't.

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Nature defeats scepticism and we'll see. That's a major theme of HUME interpretation.

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We'll be talking about that next time. Again a continuation of the passage, putting it in very vivid terms.

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Nor can we any more for Beth viewing certain objects in a stronger and fuller

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light upon account of their customary connection with the present impression.

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Then we can hinder ourselves from thinking as long as we are awake or seeing

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the surrounding bodies when we turn our eyes towards them in broad sunshine.

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I think it's quite interesting, John Locke, when he's explaining self-evident intuition.

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He talks about the bright sunshine and how it, for example, if we think about the proposition one equals one or two,

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is greater than one, these intuitively true propositions, they shine on our minds with a force like sunshine.

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We just see them to be the case. And here is HUME saying, well, take any customary conjunction, say, between seeing an object.

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Released in air and seeing the object fall. We're so used to seeing that again and again that if we actually see the cause,

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we find ourselves irresistibly believing that the effect will follow irresistibly like the sunshine.

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Just like I can't look over there without seeing what's in front of me.

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No more can I resist inferring that the pen will fall when I see it released.

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Again, nature dominating scepticism.

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And he suggests that the reason he's put this dramatically sceptical argument is extreme argument in here in the treatise is

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simply to confirm his hypothesis that all our reasonings concerning causes and effects are derived from nothing but custom,

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and that belief is more properly an act of the sensitive than of the cognitive part of our natures.

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So he's appealing to this extreme scepticism about reason to back up his conclusions about probable inference and belief.

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He said that belief is more a matter of feeling than it is a matter of reason.

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It's based not on insight when we expect something to happen in the same way as it has in the past.

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It's not because we have any insight into the uniformity of nature.

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It's just because we find ourselves expecting it and irresistibly believing that more of the same will follow.

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And so he's saying that his argument here is essentially all part of the same project.

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That still leaves a question, though how on Hume's own theory does he escape this scepticism?

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Well, his answer is essentially that if we try to do refined reasoning,

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if we try to adjust our judgement according to the fallibility of our faculties,

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and then we try adjusting that judgement according to the fallibility.

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And again and again, as we go down this iterative sequence, we lose track.

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We can't keep going. We're not good enough at concentrating.

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And so the influence of these judgements on the mind weakens.

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And fortunately for us, we're able to retain belief.

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And this is, after all, a fairly familiar phenomenon. We if you come across a complex argument, it can be very difficult to hang onto it.

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We're much more easily influenced by simple, intuitive arguments.

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He refers back to this in the conclusion of a book, one that's a treatise 1477.

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He points out that, according to this theory,

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the only thing that saving us from total scepticism because this is an extremely

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radical argument is what he calls a trivial property of the imagination.

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It just so happens this this sort of. Thing about our imagination that we lose track of complex arguments.

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How lucky that is. If it weren't for that, we'd lose all confidence in anything at all.

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And this does raise serious doubts about Hume's theory of scepticism in the treaties.

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There is an instability there because, as we'll see next time,

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there are resources in the treaties to try to build some sort of reasoned answer to the sceptic.

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But HUME here seems to be saying that there's nothing rational about it.

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In fact, if you like, there's something irrational about it. The fact that we simply can't hold on to complex arguments.

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And if it weren't for that, we'd have had it.

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It's therefore perhaps significant that in Hume's later work in the in the inquiry, this particular argument disappears.

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It's perhaps, along with personal identity, the most important argument that the treatise to disappear from the later works.

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Which suggests that perhaps he wanted a rather better answer.

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Let's now consider whether the argument is actually a strong one.

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Suppose I make a mathematical judgement. Suppose experience suggests to me that I go wrong in such judgements around 1% of the time.

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Okay. So I adjust my credence.

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I decide. Well, I felt absolutely certain of the conclusion of this.

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But since I'm bearing in mind that I go wrong one time in a hundred, I'm just going to assign confidence 99%.

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If I had to bet, I would treat it as having confidence.

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99%. But wait a minute.

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That 1% estimate that may be wrong. Maybe I should make another adjustment.

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Okay. Suppose I make another. Or suppose I. It occurs to me to make another adjustment.

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What am I supposed to do? I mean, that 1% might be wrong, but it might be too big rather than too small.

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It might actually be that my probability of error is less than 1%, not greater than 1%.

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So why should uncertainty over the 1% knock down my credence below 99%?

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That's not at all clear. Also the very requirement for iteration seems dubious.

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Uh, some defenders of him. There's a tendency, naturally enough, amongst some commentators,

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whenever one finds a humour argument that seems dubious, since most of Hume's arguments are actually pretty good.

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It's very tempting to try to find some way to get him off the hook.

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So there's quite an industry with arguments like this of finding interpretations that supposedly justify the argument.

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And one response to the point I've just made is to suggest that, okay, when you iterate,

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you can't be sure that the judgement is going to go down and down and down.

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I mean, you may have overestimated your probability of error rather than underestimated.

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But if you go on correcting judgement after judgement after judgement, the idea is that somehow the,

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the probabilities will spread and spread and spread and get more fuzzy until it's spread over the whole range from 0 to 1.

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So you still end up with complete uncertainty. That's going some way beyond the text, I think.

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But it's the text is so short and unclear that maybe that would be an acceptable or at least a plausible interpretation.

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But actually I think the case for iteration is pretty weak. Suppose I make a mathematical judgement.

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What probability is relevant? The probability that's relevant is how often I go wrong in that kind of judgement.

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And that's, if you like, a straight statistical question. You know, 99 times out of 100 I get such judgements, right?

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That's it. Who cares how good I am making that judgement?

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Why should that matter? So it's not at all clear that it should go all the way down.

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From a God's eye point of view, if you like.

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There is a certain reliability that I have in such judgements, and I may have a more or less reasonable estimate of that.

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From experience, I probably will. I remember getting those sorts of things right most of the time.

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Now, the fact that I can't give an accurate estimate of that judgement doesn't seem to me to justify the claim

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that one ought to make a judgement about that and then a judgement about that and go all the way down.

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So I think Hume's argument in Treatise one for one doesn't work,

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and I think it shows good judgement on his part that he dropped it after the treatise.