Friday – July 21
Author meets Critics: Hume on Art, Emotion, and Superstition:
A Critical Study of the Four Dissertations
Amyas Merivale (Author)
Alison McIntyre
Ann Levey
Tina Baceski
Friday Concurrent Sessions
6A Speaker: James Chamberlain – ‘Hume’s “General Rules”
At several key points throughout his Treatise, Hume refers to certain “general rules” which, he claims, influence many of our beliefs, passions, and moral judgments, in ways both good and bad. Unfortunately, however, Hume never explains what he means by the (typically italicized) term “general rules”. In this paper, I argue that Hume’s general rules are lively ideas of a kind that are quickly and automatically produced by customary association with one’s impressions or memories. As such, Hume understands them as causal beliefs. However, they are importantly unlike any reflective causal judgments, and Hume never calls them “judgments”. Reflective judgments can be expressed via quantified sentences (like “many birds lay eggs”), but – I argue – general rules are expressible, if at all, only via generic sentences (like “birds lay eggs”). This feature of general rules has important implications for Hume’s account of their interactions with another kind of causal judgment: a kind which he – rather confusingly – also calls “general rules”. By understanding this, I argue, we can better understand Hume’s accounts of prejudice and recalcitrant emotion. I conclude by observing that, so understood, several of Hume’s observations about human psychology have some intriguing parallels with those of some prominent contemporary theorists.
6B Speaker: Gözde Yildirim – ‘Hume’s Standard of Moral Judgments’
This paper attempts to answer the question of how we make correct or justified moral judgments for Hume. It is not at first clear how a sentiment-based theory of moral judgment, like Hume’s, achieves correct or justified moral judgments. Ignoring Hume’s account of the general point of view, it has been argued that Hume’s sentiment-based philosophy cannot result in justified moral judgements. Even when Hume’s general point view is acknowledged, its role and purpose have been downplayed because it is seen merely as a psychological explanation of why our moral judgments have uniformity, without offering any justificatory standard for morality. However, I argue that Hume’s general point of view is a standard by which we can arrive at correct or justified moral judgments. It is the standard by which we render our moral judgments -that already exist before we take up the general point of view – justified. Thus, it cannot be the moral point of view which distinguishes moral and non-moral judgments, but it is the standard which distinguishes justified and unjustified moral judgments. In arguing that the general point of view provides justification for our moral judgments, I thereby argue that the general point of view is not the moral point of view.
7A Speaker: Graham Clay – ‘Hume Radical and Prescient Contention: Philosophical Beliefs are Causal Beliefs’
The role of our experiences of philosophical arguments is not to cause us to believe their premises but rather to cause us to believe their conclusions—if we believe the premises already and if we are rational—by causing us to believe that their conclusions are supported by their premises. This is the traditional view on the relationship between philosophical arguments and our beliefs about their conclusions. Versions of this view are found throughout the history of Western philosophy from the ancients to the contemporary era. In this paper, I argue contrary to the consensus that Hume emphatically rejects this view, and I explain how we should understand his position. Hume’s position is that we come to believe that, upon impact, a billiard ball will move away from the cue ball in precisely the same way that we come to believe the conclusions of philosophical arguments. This includes our beliefs in those arguments’ conclusions that are true and metaphysically necessary (that is, the conclusions of what Hume calls “demonstrations”). If Hume is right about this, or even approximately so, then philosophical practice ought to be altered in countless ways.
7B Speaker: Michael Jacovides – ‘Hume and the Rotting Turnip’
Right after Philo’s about-face in Part 12 of the Dialogues, he gives an argument that the dispute between the theist and the atheist is merely verbal. Since everything is at least a little like everything else, the atheist must concede that the source of order is at least remotely like a human intellect, even if this source is something like a rotting turnip. This passage provides the main argument for dismissing Hume’s apparent avowals of theism in Part 12 of the Dialogues and elsewhere, since his assertions are so loose as to let in a rotting turnip. The right reading of the passage is more interesting. The paragraph was written in 1776, right before Hume’s death. It’s thus one of his few philosophical texts written late enough to reflect his encounter with the French philosophes in the 1760s. We have very good biographical evidence that Hume was criticized for being too much of an atheist in Britain and for being too much of a theist in France. The turnip is rotting not in order to make fun of theism, but in order to make fun of d’Holbach, Diderot, and Needham’s theory of the origin of life.
8A Speaker: Charles Goldhaber – Hume’s Skeptical Philosophy and the Moderation of Pride
Hume describes skeptical philosophy as having a variety of desirable effects. It can counteract dogmatism, produce just reasoning, and promote social cohesion. When discussing how skepticism may achieve these effects, Hume typically appeals to its effects on pride. I explain how, for Hume, skeptical philosophy acts on pride and how acting on pride produces the desirable effects. Understanding these mechanisms, I argue, sheds light on how, why, when, and for whom skeptical philosophy can be useful. It also illuminates the value of skeptical philosophy for a humanistic education, giving us a reason to include Hume in curricula.
8B Speaker: Wade Robison – Hume on Role Morality’
Hume is committed to officials within governments having special sets of ethical relations because of the roles the form of government gives them. They have special obligations, powers, privileges and immunities that differ from those we take on in ordinary life. They deserve ethical praise for doing what their role requires them to do and ethical blame for failing. So we would judge blameworthy a customs official who gave favors to friends by not levying duties on what they imported.
His commitment to such judgments is found throughout his History of England regarding the monarchs and those who held office under them, and the ethical judgments grounded in such roles are unlike what the usual views of his ethical theory suggest any ethical judgment could be. That suggests that our standard understanding may be misplaced. It is arguable that Hume would hold parents who fail to fulfill the roles they have as blameworthy as the custom official, whatever our feelings.
9A Speaker: Taro Okamura – ‘The Place of Virtue in Hume’s Epistemology’
In the section entitled “Conclusion of this book” at the end of Book One of the Treatise of Human Nature, Hume falls into such radical scepticism that he laments, “I am ready to reject all belief and reasoning” (T 1.4.7.8). At the same time, however, he seems to have somehow overcome this scepticism. How Hume was able to do so is a central question in the study of Hume’s epistemology. In recent years, many scholars have offered what I call “virtue-theoretic interpretations,” according to which Hume’s account of virtue plays an essential role in his response to scepticism. (Owen 1999, ch.9, Ridge 2003, Kail 2005, Qu 2014, Schafer 2014, Sasser 2017). In this paper I argue that there is a tension between Hume’s virtue-theoretic framework and Hume’s response to scepticism. Specifically, I argue that Hume’s response to scepticism requires what I will call an “explanatorily basic motive” for employing a certain kind of reasoning, but virtue cannot be such a motive.
9B Speaker: Gregory Todd – ‘Cause as a Conception of Reason: James Hutton’s Critique of Hume on Causation’
In 1794, Hume’s close contemporary, James Hutton, published a critique of Hume’s analysis of causation as part of Hutton’s treatise on metaphysics. Hutton’s critique of Hume is insightful, coherent, and perhaps convincing. However, it is almost totally unknown.
Hutton disagrees with Hume’s skeptical conclusions in natural philosophy. Finding Hume’s logic sound, Hutton searches for the roots of Hume’s error in his premises, focusing on Hume’s definitions of impressions and ideas, and his rejection of abstract ideas. These premises lead Hume, on Hutton’s account, to make what is in effect a category error, by analyzing the relation of cause and effect – for Hutton, a conceptual relation – in terms applicable to objects of natural philosophy. On Hutton’s account, Hume searches for an impression of necessary connection where none is to be found.
Like Hume, Hutton locates the idea of necessary connection in the mind. Unlike Hume, Hutton identifies this idea as a conclusion of reflective reason, not as an internal feeling or determination of the mind.
Of interest on its own terms, Hutton’s critique is of interest also as the perspective of a Scottish philosopher who, in responding to Hume on causation, developed a philosophy with similarities to Kant’s.