Hume's Skeptical Crisis A Textual Study

by Fogelin, Robert J.

• ISBN13: 9780195387391
• ISBN10: 0195387392
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-09-03
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

In Hume's Skeptical Crisis Robert Fogelin provides a textual study of the changes in perspective that emerged as Hume pursued his attempt to introduce the experimental method of reasoning into moral subjects--the subtitle of the Treatise of Human of Nature. In the process of giving an account of the operations of the human mind, Hume discovered that the mechanisms that create and sustain our beliefs are deeply unreliable and, in fact, capricious in their operations. Hume's crisis emerged when he recognized that the weaknesses that he ascribed to the operations of the human mind apply with equal force to the operations of his own mind. How, he asked himself, could he justify pursuing profoundly difficult investigations employing mental faculties that were manifestly not up to the task? His response was to trim back the ambitious program announced at the start of the Treatise. Hume returned to this topic in the opening section of the Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, where, in a more circumspect mood, he weighed the reasons for and against pursuing what he calls abstruse philosophy. Given our limited capacities and the complexities of the subject, what, he asked, are the chances of success in pursing abstruse philosophical investigations? Hume answered that we could expect at least modest success by adopting the stance of a mitigated skeptic, where one cautiously examines only those topics suitable to our limited mental capacities. Hume held that this standpoint could be attained by counter-balancing radical Pyrrhonian doubt on one side with our non-rational instincts to believe on the other side. As a result, Hume's initial attempt to produce a "compleat system of the sciences" was transformed into "reflections of common life, methodized and corrected."

Author Biography

Robert J. Fogelin if Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Dartmouth College.

Table of Contents

Preface

Texts and Citations

Introduction: The Interpretive Problem

Of Knowledge and Probability: A Quick Tour of Part 3, Book 1

Of knowledge

Of probability and of the idea of cause and effect

Why a cause is always necessary?

Of the component parts of our reasonings concerning causes and Effects

Of the impressions of the senses and memory

Of the inference from the impression to the idea

Of the nature of the idea, or belief

Of the causes of belief

Of the effects of other relations, and other habits

Of the influence of belief

Of the probability of chances

Of the probability of causes

Of unphilosophical probability

Of the idea of necessary connexion

Rules by which to judge of causes and effects

Of the reason of animals

Hume on Unphilosophical Probabilities

Unphilosophical as opposed to philosophical probabilities

Sources of unphilosophical probabilities

The effect of the remoteness of the event

The effect of the remoteness of the observation

Reiterative diminution

Prejudice based on general rules

Conflicts within the imagination and skepticism

Hume's Skepticism with Regard to Reason

The turn to skepticism

The basic argument

Reducing knowledge to probability

The regression argument

The principle of reiterative diminution

Hume's response to his skepticala argument

Peritrope

Of Skepticism with Regard to the Senses

Hume's turnabout with regard to the senses

The organization of section 2

The causes of our belief in the existence of bodies

The senses not the source of this belief

Reason not the source of this belief

The operations of the imagination in forming this belief

Hume's informal statement of his position

Hume's systematic statement of his position

The principle of identity

Gap filling

The idea of continued existence

The belief in continued existence

The philosopher's double-existence theory of perception

The Pyrrhonian moment

A concluding note

Of the Ancient and Modern Philosophy

Reasons for examining ancient and modern philosophical systems

Of the ancient philosophy (section 3)

The false belief in the continued identity of changing objects

The fiction of underlying substance, or original first matter

The false belief in the simplicity of objects

The fiction of a unifying substance

The incomprehensibility of the peripatetic system

Skeptical implications

Of the modern philosophy (section 4)

Against the distinction between primary and secondary qualities

Another Pyrrhonian moment

The Soul and the Self

Of the immateriality of the soul (section 5)

Setting the dialectical stage

The soul as substance

The problem of local conjunction

Soul-body interaction

On proofs of immortality

Of personal identity (section 6)

Basic criticisms

Account of the fiction of personal identity

Disputes about identity as merely verbal

The reservations in the appendix

Hume's picture of the mind

Hume's declaration of failure

The Conclusion of Book 1

A gloomy summation of skeptical results

What is to be done?

Being a philosopher on skeptical principles

Two Openings and Two Closings

The Treatise and the Enquiry on skepticism

The opening of the Treatise

The opening of the Enquiry

The response to skepticism in the Enquiry

The science of human nature in the Enquiry

The role of skeptical arguments in the Enquiry

Skepticism concerning the senses

Skepticism concerning reason

Skepticism concerning moral reasoning

Pyrrhonism and mitigated skepticism

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