Marvels, miracles, and mundane order

Australasian Journal of Philosophy

Volumn 79, Issue 1, 2001, Pages 1-31

  Buckle, S ^a  

^a AUSTRALIAN CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY   (Australia)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 84949116042     PISSN: 00048402     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/713659175     Document Type: Article

References (69)

1. Quentin Skinner's use of Austinian speech-act theory is one way of cashing out this thought.
2. See Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978);
3. James Tutty (ed.), Meaning and Context: Quentin Skinner and his Critics (Cambridge: Polity Press, 988).
4. It is welt known that flume removed a version of the miraetes argument from the Treatise before pubtiahing it.
5. Does this mean that the two-pronged strategy I have suggested was onty betatedty recognised by flume, when writing the Enquiry? Not neeessarity.
6. MA. Stewart has suggested, with respect to an early manuscript fragment on evit, that it originatty formed part of a section on natural religion intended for the Treatise.
7. MA. Stewart, 'An Early Fragment on Evil', in MA. Stewart and John P. Wright (eds.), Hume and Humey Connexions (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1994), 164.
8. The argument is sceptical in precisely this (Academic) sense.
9. The scepticism appealed to is neither Pyrrhonian scepticism nor Cartesian doubt, and so implies no doubts conceming the existence of extemal reality-only of the essences of extemsl realities.
10. The key distinctions are provided by Locke in an important passage (Essay, IV. iii. 29), but they derive from the ancient Academics and their rejection of the confident empiricism of Aristotle, the Stoics and the Epicureans.
11. The early modem world, engaged in hammering out a philosophy adequate to the new mechanical conception of material reality, self-consciously appealed to the ancient sceptics to make their point against modern dogmatists.
12. Thus Pierre Bayle observed, at the tom of the eighteenth century, that 'now no good philosopher any longer doubts that the skeptics were right to maintain that the qualities of bodies that strike our senses are only appearances' (Historical and Critical Dictionary: Selections, trans.
13. R. H. Popkin and C. Brush (Indianapolis: Dobbs-Merrill, 1965), 197).
14. The self-conscious sceptical thmst of the doctrine is also clearly stated by Condillac, in his Traité des Sensations (1754): 'Ideas in no way allow us to know beings as they actually are;
15. they merely depict them in terms of their relationship with us, and this alone is enough to prove the vanity of the efforts of those philosophers who pretend to penetrate into the nature of things.'
16. Quoted in Dorinda Outram, The Enlightenment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 53.
17. British Sceptical Realism: A Fresh Look at the British Tradition', European Journal of Philosophy 7 (1999), 1 29.
18. tn this way mechanicat principtes are emptoyed by flume to underwrite the inherent fattibitity of our mentat functions, white insisting that they provide our onty possibte norms.
19. In this way he connects a mechanieat account of mental function with his constmetive moderate scepticism.
20. It is not possibte in the space of this paper to provide a defence of this interpretation.
21. I have attempted the task in Hume 's Enlightenment Tract; but a contribution in the dght spirit is Christine Korsgaard's observation that, for Hume, reflection nn our capacities and mode of functioning 'shows that human nature . is intrinsicatty normative, in a negative [sense]
22. there is no intelligible challenge that can be made to its claims.
23. Korsgaard, The Sources of Normativity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, t996), 66.)
24. This is Hume'a answer so those who have objected that his inductive scepticism teaves him with no standard by which to separate defensibte from indefensibte betiefs.
25. See, for example, CD. Broad, 'flume's Theory of the Credibitity of Miractes', Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 17 (New Series) (1916-1917), 91-4;
26. cf. the response by Penethum, David Hume, op. cit., I 11 3.
27. Hume, Enquiries concerning Human Understanding and concerning the Principles of Morals, 3rd edition, ed. L.A. Setby-Bigge, revised PH.
28. Nidditch (Oxford: Ctarendon Press, 1975);
29. This is Locke's characterisation of demonstrative argument, from which flume devetops his account. Cf. Locke, Essay, xv. 1.
30. For the dissinction between retations of ideas and matters of fact 'flume's Fork' see Enquiries, 25.
31. G.E. Moore, 'Proof of an Extemat Wortd', in his Philosophical Papers (London: Atten and Unwin, 1959).
32. Have put it in this way, with what might seem rather clumsy repetitions of what something is far us rather than tatking more directty of indubitability because this is how Hume tends to put it; and by doing so he tapses into modes of expression which are misteading.
33. Thus something praven fatse by uniform past experience is incredible but this is equivalent to saying that it is,for us, impossible.
34. Hume's preference for the latter way of talking means that, on occasions, he neglects to insert the perspectival marker, and so talks of impossibility simpliciter.
35. This is one main reason why his readers have been tempted to read his proofs as if deductive arguments concemed with objective impossibilities logical or physical.
36. The point is well put (if without regard to flume's sense of 'proof) by J.C.A. Gaskin, 'Hume on Religion', in D.F. Norton (ed), The Cambridge Companion to Hume (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 332.
37. Enquiries, 76, 95, 98, 99, as well as the occurrences in 'Of Miracles' itself (110, 112, 114, 115, 127).
38. Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Scepticism, and J. Bames (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 59-61 (I. 226-9).
39. is Intl snd certain when taken atone, because it impties no doubt, as is the case with alt probabitities; but there are degrees of this species, and when a weaker proof is opposed to a stronger, it is overcome.'
40. in J.Y.T. Greig (ed), The Letters of Davtd Hume (Oxford; Ctarendon Press, 1932), 1, 350.
41. David Fate Norton, David Hume: Common-Sense Moroltst, Sceptical Metaphystcian (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), 299.
42. That interpretations of this kind must be mistaken is supported, from a different direction, by Antony Ftew. As he rightty observes, atthough Huine does tatk of the 'impossibitity' of miracles, 'he is stiti caretht never to say or to impty, either that the events described are inconceivabte, or that the notion of a miracte is setf-contradictory'.
43. Ftew, Hume's Philosophy of Beltef A Study of Hts First Inquiry (London: Routtedge and Kegan Paut, 1966), 186.
44. cloud of witnesses' by employing terminology which appears question-begging becsuse of implicit appeal to proper thnctioning: Cardinal de Retz rejected the testimonies because 'he
45. concluded, like a just reasoner, that such an evidence carried falsehood upon the very face of it'; 'the wise lend a very academic faith to every report which
46. and 'the absolute impossibility or miraculous nature of the events' is decisive 'in the eyes of all reasonable people' (Enquiries, 124-5; emphases added).
47. a Hume's Philosophy of Belief, op. cit., 187. Cf. also the introduction to David Hume, Of Miracles, ed. A. Flew (La Salle, Ill.: Open Court, 1986).
48. Flew, David Hume, op. cit., 84.
49. The example of the Indian pdnce (Enquiries, 113-4) illustrates the point. (Cf. below.)
50. David Hume to Henry Home, 2 December 1737;
51. Letter 1 in Raymond Klibansky and Emeat
52. Mossner (edt.), New Letters of David Hume (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1954);
53. Greig (ed.), The Letters of David Hume, I, 24-5.
54. It is tempting to regard these comments as a fitting epigraph for separate reprintings of the miracles section.
55. see David Wootton, 'flume's "Of Miracles": Probability and Irreligion', in M.A. Stewart (ed.), Studies in the Philosophy of the Scottish Enlightenment (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), 191, 229;
56. and M. A. Stewart, 'Hume's Historical View of Miracles', Hume and Hume 's Connexions, op. cit., 171, 200.
57. Wootton emphasises the importance of French sources on flume's argument Amauld and Nicole, and French libertine somizdat literature.
58. Stewart, in contrast, sees flume as essentially engaged in rewriting Locke.
59. The two positions are not wholly opposed Locke was, in all likelihood, himself influenced at this point by Amauld and Nicole-but the emphases are quite different.
60. Stewart's position ia close to the view to be put here and, indeed, anticipates and complements some aspects of the argument.
61. Wootton'a account seems overly affected by a misreading of the likely positioning of the original version in the (unpublished) Treatise an issue which does reflect the interpretation of both the piece itself, and also the larger dimensions of Hume's argument.
62. He thinks that ita excision from Treatise, Hook I, Part Itt, 'Of knowledge and probability', reflects a move away from probability issues.
63. But this is to fail to notice that it is in much the same context in the Enquiry.
64. He suggests that, in the Treatise, the section was to go immediately after Section XIII, 'Of unphiloaophieal probability'.
65. Perhaps, but since two of the tHree sections which follow that one are 'Of the idea of necessary connexion' and 'Of the reason of animals', sections which precede it in the Enquiry (and both of which are also illustrations of the practical import of 'unphilosophical probability'), it seems more likely that it was originally placed at the very end of Part lIt, immediately after 'Of the reason of animals', as it is in the Enquiry.
66. I suspect that Wootton's view reflects a failure to ace that the argument of 'Of the idea of necessary comsexion' ia itself an application of his principles of probability not least in the fact that the argument aims to provide a proof (This ia also true of the section which, in the Enquiry, immediately follows it, 'Of Liberty and Necessity'
67. In the Treatise, this section is placed in Book It, Part 111, which is devoted to questions of volition. the special character of the argument i.e. that it is a proof in Hume's tense is obscured by that placement, so its position in the Enquiry is rather happier.)
68. All in all, then, it is difficult to agree with Wootton's judgment that issues of probability arc downplayed in the Enquiry (223).
69. It seems tmer to say that, although not much discussed there, probability, including what I have called its 'limit case' of proof, is nevertheless much applied in the service of developing a practical (moderate) scepticism.