skepticism and common sense –1/14/25
Today's selection -- from The Cambridge Companion to the Scottish Enlightenment by Alexander Broadie. David Hume's philosophical revolution:
“It is uncontroversial that Hume undermined the traditional concept of reason and true knowledge by arguing that all our judgements are based on belief. If belief is nothing but a peculiar feeling or sentiment produced by habit, there is no clear difference between reason, imagination, feeling and sense, or so Hume argues. Rather, even reason is based on imagination and feeling. If this is true, then the Cartesian project has lost its foundation, for then we cannot have any a priori knowledge of substances (body and mind), nor do we have any a priori guarantee that the general law of causality is true. 'Whatever is may not be. No negation of a fact can involve a contradiction' is the battle cry of his empiricist philosophy. There might be, therefore, events in the world which are not even caused by anything. Hume never questioned the 'elements' of his philosophy, nor did he ever have any sceptical reservations about his attack on traditional metaphysics.
“It is also uncontroversial that Hume personally regarded himself as a sceptic. In a series of essays, he argued that there are four different kinds of philosophers: the Epicurean, the Stoic, the Platonist and the Sceptic. It is clear where Hume's preferences lie. As sceptical philosophers, we must mistrust a priori arguments as well as any kind of dogmatic assertion. Our natural faculties are very limited and our arguments may exhibit manifest contradictions, but this does not mean that we should suspend all our judgements, as traditional Pyrrhonism claimed. On the contrary, suspending all judgement would result in self-destruction. Luckily, nature makes us reason on the basis of experience and custom.
“Controversies have arisen over the nature of Hume's scepticism. Is his 'moderate', 'mitigated' or 'academic' scepticism to be viewed in opposition to the ancient form of Pyrrhonism, or did he misinterpret Pyrrhonism? Is his naturalism, a word he himself never used, part of his scepticism, or does it lead beyond epistemological scepticism? Is his naturalism an expression of common sense principles? There is no consensus on these issues.
“Leaving aside the historical questions of whether Hume under stood the ancient forms of scepticism correctly or whether he perhaps misrepresented them intentionally, some preliminary clarification of his epistemology might run as follows: (1) In terms of method, Hume is a descriptive naturalist, because he wanted to de scribe the workings of our faculties in belief formation. (2) Hume is a normative naturalist, because he claims that we have good reasons to believe certain things (for instance, that the sun will rise again tomorrow). Good reasons are based on custom and habit. These reasons may also be called justifying reasons because they are reasons in which we place our trust in doing science and in the common affairs of life. (3) Where, however, justifying reasons are understood as conceptual reasons, Hume is a sceptic. Conceptual reasons are reasons we have independently of our believing anything because of habit and custom. Descartes, Reid and Kant thought that we have conceptual (or formal) reasons, while Hume clearly did not. (4) Normative naturalism has not only a positive, but also a negative side. It shows (a) that Cartesian metaphysics is wrong, (b) that we should be sceptical or modest about our causal judgements, and (c) that some people hold unfounded or unreflective beliefs about what is the case. Common sense, therefore, cannot stand on its own; it needs the critical inspection of philosophy. (5) There are no justifying reasons within normative naturalism to overcome the contradictions and paradoxes inherent in our thinking. Because we cannot live Pyrrhonian scepticism, nature ensures that in the common affairs of our lives we disregard the contradictions and paradoxes. We are not left with any choice in this matter if we are to avoid self-destruction. It has been argued that Reid misrepresents Hume's position by ignoring its positive and naturalistic elements. But though one might admit that aspects of Reid's characterisation of Hume's philosophy are exaggerated, his reading of Hume as a total sceptic makes perfect sense. Because Hume did not accept that there are principles prior to experience or reason, he must hold that ultimate justifying reasons cannot be found. Reid on the other hand was not willing to accept that Hume's normative naturalism is all we need in the sciences and in the common affairs of life. He might have been willing to accept Hume's second, more innocent, version of a scepticism antecedent to study and sciences.
 |
| Statue of Hume, sculpted by Alexander Stoddart, on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh |
“Reid's common sense philosophy also has a naturalistic outlook, but it is different in kind from Hume's. First, the original principles of our constitutions are not found with a method that can be called descriptive naturalism. Rather, they are based on intuition. Secondly, Reid, like Turnbull, is a 'providential naturalist'. he is of the opinion that we can trust our faculties because we are God's creatures. But this interpretation of Reid is not unproblematic either. Important as 'providential naturalism' is for Reid, it is not the normative basis of his philosophy. If we accept the infallibility of first principles because of the goodness of God, our common sense principles are either based on faith or they are based on a circular argument (because our knowledge of God is also based on first principles). With a fully developed 'providential naturalism', Reid would thus under mine common sense philosophy. At one point of his Inquiry, however, he claims that if God deceived us in the belief in first principles, there would be no remedy.
“Reid and Hume 'shared a common philosophical culture’ and were engaged in what they took to be the 'anatomy' or 'geography' of the human mind. But there are decisive differences between them. Hume was a thoroughgoing empiricist, Reid was not. For Hume, judgement is based on feeling; for Reid, we have knowledge about first principles that is based neither on feeling nor on demonstration. Hume's acute comment on a draft of Reid's Inquiry was that it 'leads us back to innate Ideas'. But the most important difference between the two Scots is their personal stance towards philosophy. Hume was at the same time fascinated and disturbed by paradoxes, and philosophy was for him a means not only to advance our knowledge in the moral sciences, but also a personal expedient to ease his mind by suspending judgement on subtle and sublime subjects. Reid never seemed to be disturbed in this way. Being a preacher and practising Christian, he started his philosophical journey on firm ground, wanting only to show that scepticism is altogether absurd. Hume was surely aware of this side of Reid's philosophy. In the famous concluding passage of Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, Philo ironically argues that a person 'seasoned with a just sense of the imperfections of natural reason, will fly to revealed truth', while the 'haughty dogmatist' erects a system of natural theology 'by the mere help of philosophy ... To be a philosophical sceptic is, in a man of letters, the first and most essential step towards being a sound, believing Christian'.
“The lesson we can learn from these discussions is that Hume's naturalism is 'fully compatible with his skepticism', and that our arguments are on firm ground if, as Hume argues in the Enquiry, we restrict our science of man to the domain of common sense. 'Common sense', however, does not mean the same thing in Hume and in Reid. For Hume, our flight to common sense is the result of our ignorance about first principles; for Reid, common sense is nothing other than the domain of the original principles of our human nature; it is the fount of true philosophy.”
COMMENTS (0)
Notice: Trying to access array offset on value of type bool in /home/customer/www/delanceyplace.com/public_html/cmsAdmin/plugins/websiteComments/websiteComments.php on line 279