All right. So treaties book one, part four is cold of the sceptical and other systems of philosophy.
It's not as long as part three. But it's very complex and it's quite hard to understand what's going on.
It's divided into these various sections. We've already seen this.
Uh, what we're going to do now is look particularly at sections one and two.
Next time, what I'll be doing is trying to draw the threads together to understand Hume's overall sceptical position.
But in order to understand that, we first need to look in detail at a few of these sections.
So first of all, of scepticism with regard to reason and reason here means reasoning.
He's HUME is going to draw sceptical conclusions about our capacity to produce arguments that generate evidence for particular conclusions.
And his focus is on the demonstrative silences, as he calls them.
Think of mathematics, which is the paradigm of such reasoning.
So suppose we've got mathematical reasoning.
We've got a piece, a mathematical argument, and let's take for granted that the rules of mathematics are certain and infallible.
So we're not here casting any doubt over the mathematical principles in themselves.
Nevertheless, when we apply those principles, when we actually perform a mathematical argument,
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.
Depends how accurate we are. But occasionally we all make mistakes.
So when we're judging how much evidence is generated by such an argument,
we have to factor in our own fallibility, the fallibility of our own fact faculties, thus knowledge.
And bear in mind again, HUME means knowledge in the strict sense here of absolute infallible knowledge degenerates into probability inevitably.
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.
We ought always to correct the first judgement derived from the nature of the object.
That is the mathematical judgement by another judgement derived from the nature of the understanding.
In other words, the faculty of reason derived from the fallibility of my own reasoning faculty.
And then HUME says, Well, it's not only in demonstrative arguments that we need to make this sort of adjustment
because improbable arguments to our faculties are likely to get things wrong.
So we just made a probable judgement about our reasoning faculty.
I've got this mathematical argument that itself is a demonstrative argument.
But then it, as it were,
degenerated into probability because I'm making a probable judgement about my reliability in assessing a mathematical argument.
That's a probable judgement. Well, that's subject to error, too.
So I need to make another adjustment. We're obliged by our reason to add a new doubt derived from the possibility of
error in the estimation we make of the truth and fidelity of our faculties.
So I might have got that first estimate of my reliability wrong.
Better make another adjustment. This decision,
though it should be favourable to the to our proceeding judgement being founded only on probability must we can still
father our first evidence and must itself be weakened by a fourth doubt of the same kind and so on in infinitum.
And even the vast quantity must, in this manner, be reduced to nothing.
All the rules of logic require a continual diminution.
And at last, a total of extinction of belief and evidence.
So the idea is that if we carry on making these little adjustments, because there's uncertainty,
as it were, all the way down, we judging how accurate our faculties are.
I mean, judging that judgement and then judging that judgement.
All of these things introduce a little bit of extra uncertainty and eventually, however certain the original judgement was, it disappears.
Well, I'm going to turn to see whether that's a good argument in a moment.
But let's first ask the question whether HUME accepts it.
Does HUME himself accept his own argument?
He does seem to think it's a good argument, and therefore it seems a bit paradoxical when he goes on to say.
No, I don't really accept it. Why not?
Well, it might seem through this argument.
That Hugh must be one of those sceptics who hold that all is uncertain and that
our judgement is not in anything possessed of any measures of truth and falsehood.
It seems to undermine all evidence. Even probable evidence reduces down to zero.
So no argument is better or worse than any other, it seems.
But HUME says, Of course, I don't really have that opinion.
I can't have that opinion because nature won't let me have it.
Nature, by an absolute and uncontrollable necessity, has determined us to judge as well as to breathe and feel.
So here we get one of the clearest indications of what is called Hume's naturalistic response to scepticism.
The sceptical argument is theoretically untouchable.
But nature stops us accepting it.
Our natural judgement. We can't help having beliefs, even though theoretically we shouldn't.
Nature defeats scepticism and we'll see. That's a major theme of HUME interpretation.
We'll be talking about that next time. Again a continuation of the passage, putting it in very vivid terms.
Nor can we any more for Beth viewing certain objects in a stronger and fuller
light upon account of their customary connection with the present impression.
Then we can hinder ourselves from thinking as long as we are awake or seeing
the surrounding bodies when we turn our eyes towards them in broad sunshine.
I think it's quite interesting, John Locke, when he's explaining self-evident intuition.
He talks about the bright sunshine and how it, for example, if we think about the proposition one equals one or two,
is greater than one, these intuitively true propositions, they shine on our minds with a force like sunshine.
We just see them to be the case. And here is HUME saying, well, take any customary conjunction, say, between seeing an object.
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,
we find ourselves irresistibly believing that the effect will follow irresistibly like the sunshine.
Just like I can't look over there without seeing what's in front of me.
No more can I resist inferring that the pen will fall when I see it released.
Again, nature dominating scepticism.
And he suggests that the reason he's put this dramatically sceptical argument is extreme argument in here in the treatise is
simply to confirm his hypothesis that all our reasonings concerning causes and effects are derived from nothing but custom,
and that belief is more properly an act of the sensitive than of the cognitive part of our natures.
So he's appealing to this extreme scepticism about reason to back up his conclusions about probable inference and belief.
He said that belief is more a matter of feeling than it is a matter of reason.
It's based not on insight when we expect something to happen in the same way as it has in the past.
It's not because we have any insight into the uniformity of nature.
It's just because we find ourselves expecting it and irresistibly believing that more of the same will follow.
And so he's saying that his argument here is essentially all part of the same project.
That still leaves a question, though how on Hume's own theory does he escape this scepticism?
Well, his answer is essentially that if we try to do refined reasoning,
if we try to adjust our judgement according to the fallibility of our faculties,
and then we try adjusting that judgement according to the fallibility.
And again and again, as we go down this iterative sequence, we lose track.
We can't keep going. We're not good enough at concentrating.
And so the influence of these judgements on the mind weakens.
And fortunately for us, we're able to retain belief.
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.
We're much more easily influenced by simple, intuitive arguments.
He refers back to this in the conclusion of a book, one that's a treatise 1477.
He points out that, according to this theory,
the only thing that saving us from total scepticism because this is an extremely
radical argument is what he calls a trivial property of the imagination.
It just so happens this this sort of. Thing about our imagination that we lose track of complex arguments.
How lucky that is. If it weren't for that, we'd lose all confidence in anything at all.
And this does raise serious doubts about Hume's theory of scepticism in the treaties.
There is an instability there because, as we'll see next time,
there are resources in the treaties to try to build some sort of reasoned answer to the sceptic.
But HUME here seems to be saying that there's nothing rational about it.
In fact, if you like, there's something irrational about it. The fact that we simply can't hold on to complex arguments.
And if it weren't for that, we'd have had it.
It's therefore perhaps significant that in Hume's later work in the in the inquiry, this particular argument disappears.
It's perhaps, along with personal identity, the most important argument that the treatise to disappear from the later works.
Which suggests that perhaps he wanted a rather better answer.
Let's now consider whether the argument is actually a strong one.
Suppose I make a mathematical judgement. Suppose experience suggests to me that I go wrong in such judgements around 1% of the time.
Okay. So I adjust my credence.
I decide. Well, I felt absolutely certain of the conclusion of this.
But since I'm bearing in mind that I go wrong one time in a hundred, I'm just going to assign confidence 99%.
If I had to bet, I would treat it as having confidence.
99%. But wait a minute.
That 1% estimate that may be wrong. Maybe I should make another adjustment.
Okay. Suppose I make another. Or suppose I. It occurs to me to make another adjustment.
What am I supposed to do? I mean, that 1% might be wrong, but it might be too big rather than too small.
It might actually be that my probability of error is less than 1%, not greater than 1%.
So why should uncertainty over the 1% knock down my credence below 99%?
That's not at all clear. Also the very requirement for iteration seems dubious.
Uh, some defenders of him. There's a tendency, naturally enough, amongst some commentators,
whenever one finds a humour argument that seems dubious, since most of Hume's arguments are actually pretty good.
It's very tempting to try to find some way to get him off the hook.
So there's quite an industry with arguments like this of finding interpretations that supposedly justify the argument.
And one response to the point I've just made is to suggest that, okay, when you iterate,
you can't be sure that the judgement is going to go down and down and down.
I mean, you may have overestimated your probability of error rather than underestimated.
But if you go on correcting judgement after judgement after judgement, the idea is that somehow the,
the probabilities will spread and spread and spread and get more fuzzy until it's spread over the whole range from 0 to 1.
So you still end up with complete uncertainty. That's going some way beyond the text, I think.
But it's the text is so short and unclear that maybe that would be an acceptable or at least a plausible interpretation.
But actually I think the case for iteration is pretty weak. Suppose I make a mathematical judgement.
What probability is relevant? The probability that's relevant is how often I go wrong in that kind of judgement.
And that's, if you like, a straight statistical question. You know, 99 times out of 100 I get such judgements, right?
That's it. Who cares how good I am making that judgement?
Why should that matter? So it's not at all clear that it should go all the way down.
From a God's eye point of view, if you like.
There is a certain reliability that I have in such judgements, and I may have a more or less reasonable estimate of that.
From experience, I probably will. I remember getting those sorts of things right most of the time.
Now, the fact that I can't give an accurate estimate of that judgement doesn't seem to me to justify the claim
that one ought to make a judgement about that and then a judgement about that and go all the way down.
So I think Hume's argument in Treatise one for one doesn't work,
and I think it shows good judgement on his part that he dropped it after the treatise.