Knowledge is natural – Hume

For this session, you are going to have to have some awareness of Hume's sceptical arguments against both the nature of causation (he's sceptical of a link between events so that one event makes another event happen) and induction (he's sceptical about the justification of beliefs about the future based on the past). Having looked for a causal connection and found nothing and having looked for a justification of induction and failed to find one he proposes what he calls a 'sceptical solution' instead.

If you do not know about Hume's worries about causation or induction you can look at my summaries (follow the links in this sentence). But the focus of this session is not the scepticism, but how Hume responds to it, not the loss of knowledge but how, in practice if not in rationalistic philosphy, it is regained.

Essential reading:

• • Hume, D. ([1748] 1975) Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding and Concerning the Principles of Morals, Oxford: Clarendon Press §34-45 pp40-55.

You can find this online here. Read the whole of parts 1 and 2 up to the words "objects totally depends".

The key issue raised by this is whether one can invoke claims about the nature of humans, our customs and practices to shed light on knowledge in the face of apparently unnatural but compelling philosophical arguments that knowledge is impossible. Compare Hume's view with that of Wittgenstein. Think again about whether Wittgenstein can slough off sceptical threats.

The library has a range of secondary texts on Hume but they mainly focus on Hume's sceptical discussions (of causation, of induction and other matters) rather than what we might call his 'naturalism': the idea that he downplays the role of reason (or Reason, perhaps) in favour of a description of our natural customs and habits, which was our topic. Two, slightly tricky, papers which do address this issue are:

• • Smith, N. (1905) 'The naturalism of Hume' Mind, 14: 149-73 (JStor link)

  • Stroud, (2006) The Constraints of Hume's Naturalism Synthese, 152: 339-351 (link to paper for on-campus pcs)

This week's slides are here.

Reflections on this session will soon be here.