Hume on Testimony (Routledge Studies in Eighteenth-Century Philosophy) 9780367217938, 9781032357041, 9780429266133, 0367217937

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Hume on Testimony

This book is the first devoted to Hume’s conception of testimony. Hume is usually taken to be a reductionist with respect to testimony, with trust in others dependent on the evidence possessed by individuals concerning the reliability of texts or speakers. This account is taken from Hume’s essay on miracles in An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding. O’Brien, though, looks wider than the miracles essay, turning to what Hume says about testimony in the Treatise, the moral Enquiry, the History of England, and his Essays. There are social aspects of testimonial exchanges that cannot be explained purely in terms of the assessment of the reliability of testifiers. Hume’s conception of testimony is integrated with his account of how history informs our knowledge of human nature, the relation between sympathy and belief and between pride and the conception we have of our selves, the role played by social factors in the judgment of intellectual virtue, and the importance Hume places on epistemic responsibility and the moral and personal dimensions of testimonial trust. It is not possible to focus on testimony without allowing other aspects of our nature into the frame and therefore turning also to consider sympathy, wisdom, history, morality, virtue, aesthetic judgment, the self, and character. O’Brien argues that Hume’s reliance on the social goes deep and that he should therefore be seen as an anti-reductionist with respect to testimony. Hume on Testimony will be of interest to researchers and advanced students working on Hume and on early modern and contemporary approaches to the epistemology of testimony. Dan O’Brien is a Reader in Philosophy and Subject Co-ordinator for Philosophy at Oxford Brookes University. He is the founder and convenor of the Oxford Hume Forum and book reviews editor for Hume Studies. He is co-author of the Reader’s Guide to Hume’s Enquiry concerning Human Understanding (2007) and Hume’s Critique of Religion (2013) and co-editor of the Bloomsbury Companion to Hume (2015).

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Hume on Testimony

Dan O’Brien

First published 2023 by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 and by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2023 Daniel Jayes O’Brien The right of Daniel Jayes O’Brien to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. ISBN: 978-0-367-21793-8 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-35704-1 (pbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-26613-3 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9780429266133 Typeset in Sabon by SPi Technologies India Pvt Ltd (Straive)

‘As conversation is a transcript of the mind as well as books, the same qualities, which render the one valuable, must give us an esteem for the other.’ (David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, 3.3.4.9)

Contents

Acknowledgementsix Reference Conventionsxi

Introduction 1 1 Hume on Miracles

4

1.1 Miracles in the Enlightenment  4 1.2 Locke on Testimony and Miracles  7 1.3 Part 1 of the Miracles Essay  10 1.4 Part 2 of the Miracles Essay  20 1.5 The Publication History of the Miracles Essay  23 Notes 27

2 Naturalism, Scepticism, and Reductionism 29 2.1 God, Teleology, and the ‘Science of Man’  29 2.2 Hume’s Anatomy of the Mind  32 2.3 Scepticism and Naturalism  36 2.4 Reductionist Epistemologies of Testimony  42 Notes 49

3 Anti-Reductionism 51 3.1 Transcendental and Teleological Anti-Reductionism  51 3.2 The Testimony of History  56 3.3 Collective Experience  60 3.4 Anti-Reductionism and Inductive Inference  63 3.5 Excision and Distortion  69 Notes 73

viii Contents

4 Sympathy, Belief, and Testimony 74 4.1 Sympathy, Self, and Other  75 4.2 Sympathy and Belief  83 4.3 The Sympathetic Spiral of Self-Creation  87 4.4 The Mechanism of Sympathetic Belief Acquisition  92 4.5 Sympathy, Hermeneutics, and Understanding  96 Notes 100

5 Testimony and Virtue 103 5.1 Hume’s Catalogue of Virtues  103 5.2 Conversation and the Education of Virtue  108 5.3 Literary Virtues  113 5.4 The Monkish Virtues and Intellectual Modesty  120 Notes 129

6 Hume’s Social Epistemology 133 6.1 Utility, Agreeableness, and Truth  133 6.2 Testimonial Wisdom  136 6.3 Epistemic Responsibility  142 6.4 Trust, Reliance, and Imperfect Harmony  145 6.5 Testimony, Self, and Society  150 Notes 155

Bibliography Index

158 172

Acknowledgements

Testimony is perhaps an odd topic to get excited about, but as far as any narrative can be constructed, my academic career started with testimony, with, specifically, a workshop and a series of talks on ‘Second Hand Knowledge’ and ‘Moral Testimony’ organized by Max Kölbel in Birmingham in 2003–4. Philosophy at the time, or so it seems to me now, was far less professionalized than it is today: going to a conference was rather exotic, postgraduates rarely thought of publishing, and that terrible phrase ‘on the market’ was never uttered. At Max’s events, I saw philosophers from outside of my department for the first time, some of which appear in this book, and my first journal article, ‘Testimony and Lies’ (2007), had its roots in this workshop, as I think did my interest in Hume’s epistemology of testimony. Some of the chapters of this book are based on and develop themes in the following articles, and I would like to acknowledge their publishers: ‘Hume on Education’, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 2017 (Chapter 2); ‘Hume, Teleology and the “Science of Man”’ (with L. Greco) in W. Gibson, D. O’Brien, and M. Turda, eds., Teleology and Modernity, Routledge, 2019 (Chapter 2); ‘Humeanism and the Epistemology of Testimony’, Synthese, 2021 (Chapter 3); ‘Hume, Sympathy and Belief’ in G. Boros, J. Szalai, and O. Toth, eds., The Concept of Affectivity in Early Modern Philosophy, Eotvos University Press, 2017 (Chapter 4); ‘Sympathy, Self and Others’ in D. O’Brien, ed., Hume on Self and Personal Identity, Palgrave Macmillan, 2022 (Chapter 4); Review of J. Harris, Hume, History of Political Thought, 2017 (Chapter 5); ‘Hume on Humility’ in S. Negri, ed., Representations of Humility and the Humble, Sismel, 2021 (Chapter 5); ‘Hume, Intellectual Virtue, and Virtue Epistemology’ in A. Anton, ed., The Bright and the Good: The Connection between Intellectual and Moral Virtues, Rowman and Littlefield, 2018 (Chapter 5); ‘Hume and the Intellectual Virtues’, Discipline Filosofiche, 2012 (Chapter 5); and ‘Hume and the Virtues’ in A. Bailey and D. O’Brien, eds., The Continuum Companion to Hume, 2012 (Chapter 5). Thanks to Lorenzo Greco, Josef Moural, Enrico Galvagni, James Chamberlain, Anik Waldow, and Hsueh Qu for reading draft chapters, to

x Acknowledgements Andrew Weckenmann, Sam Schuman, and Stephen Poole at Routledge, and to the Hume Society and the Oxford Hume Forum for that ‘League betwixt the learned and conversible Worlds’. I may have ditched SelbyBigge references, but I cannot imagine working on Hume without davidhume.org. Thanks Henry and Peter. I hope my interpretation of Hume is not too flagrantly guilty of ‘not being borne out by the text’, in Henry Merivale’s chilling phrase! Thanks to the animals—Aristotle, Berkeley, Philo, and Missing Shade of Blue—but most of all to Lucy (this is why I did that for [sic]!).

Reference Conventions

T

Abs.

EHU

EPM

DP

NHR

E

A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. D. F. Norton and M. J. Norton, 2 vols., Oxford: Clarendon Press (2007). ‘T 1.2.3.4’ refers to Book 1, Part 2, Section 3, paragraph 4; ‘T 0.1’ refers to the Introduction, paragraph 1. I have not included page numbers from the Selby-Bigge/Nidditch editions of the Treatise (1978) and the Enquiries (1975). Time moves on and battered copies of SBN are not so common at Hume conferences anymore and such double-referencing is rather unwieldy and disruptive to the flow of the text. An Abstract of a Book Lately Published, Entitled, A Treatise of Human Nature in D. Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. D. F. Norton and M. J. Norton, vol. 1, Oxford: Clarendon Press (2007), 407–17. ‘Abs. 1’ refers to paragraph 1. An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, ed. T. L. Beauchamp, Oxford: Clarendon Press (2000). ‘EHU 1.2’ refers to Section 1, paragraph 2. I also refer to this work as the ‘first Enquiry’. An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, ed. T. L. Beauchamp, Oxford: Clarendon Press (1998). ‘EPM 1.2’ refers to Section 1, paragraph 2; ‘EPM App. 1.2’ refers to Appendix 1, paragraph 2; ‘EPM Dial. 1’ refers to paragraph 1 of ‘A Dialogue’. I also refer to this work as the ‘moral Enquiry’. A Dissertation on the Passions in A Dissertation on the Passions; The Natural History of Religion, ed. T. Beauchamp, Oxford: Clarendon Press (2007). ‘DP 1.2’ refers to Section 1, paragraph 2. The Natural History of Religion in A Dissertation on the Passions; The Natural History of Religion, ed. T. Beauchamp, Oxford: Clarendon Press (2007). ‘NHR 1.1’ refers to Section 1, paragraph 2. Essays: Moral, Political, and Literary, ed. E. F. Miller, Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund Press (1987). Citations include page numbers and the title of the essay.

xii  Reference Conventions MOL H DNR

LDH

‘My Own Life’ in Essays: Moral, Political, and Literary, ed. E. F. Miller, Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund Press (1985). ‘MOL 1’ refers to paragraph 1. History of England: from the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Revolution in 1688, 6 vols., Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund Press (1983). ‘H 1.2’ refers to volume 1, page 2. Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, ed. J. Gaskin, Oxford: Oxford University Press (2008). ‘DNR 1.2’ refers to Part 1, paragraph 2; ‘DNR 0.1’ refers to ‘Pamphilus to Hermippus’, paragraph 1. The Letters of David Hume, 2 vols., ed. J.Y.T. Greig, Oxford: Clarendon Press (1932). ‘LDH 1.2’ refers to volume 1, page 2.

Introduction

Hume thought that the works of Thucydides, Strabo, and Tacitus were good sources of belief about the past and that the Bible was not. We should not believe in the resurrection of Christ, but we should believe that Caesar was killed in the Senate House on the Ides of March. Such beliefs are acquired from others via testimony, and Hume claims that ‘there is no species of reasoning more common, more useful, and even necessary to human life, than that which is derived from the testimony of men and the reports of eye-witnesses and spectators’. This claim appears in §10 of An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, sometimes called Hume’s ‘essay’ on miracles since the Enquiry was first published as the Philosophical Essays concerning Human Understanding (1748). Hume focuses on written and spoken testimony concerning alleged miraculous occurrences. He argues that we should not believe reports of miracles and that they therefore do not provide evidence for the existence of God. This argument is the subject of Chapter 1. Testimony is a hot topic in contemporary epistemology and this is usually attributed at least in part to Tony Coady’s book, Testimony: A Philosophical Study (1992), in which he extracts a ‘Humean’ account of testimonial justification from Hume’s discussion of miracles, although Coady argues that this is not a plausible account of testimony. The basic idea is that we must weigh up the evidence for and against the truth of a testimonial report. Such evidence will be inductive: if a speaker has been reliable in the past, then we are justified in believing what they say. This is also called the reductionist or evidentialist view and I turn to this in Chapter 2. In the rest of the book, though, I argue against the reductionist interpretation of Hume on testimony, offering instead an anti-reductionist reading. Some epistemologists working on testimony and perhaps some Hume scholars might think that a book devoted to this topic would be rather limited, consisting of an extended discussion of Hume on miracles. One of my themes, though, is that in order to understand Hume’s approach, we need to look wider than the miracles essay. When we do so, we come to see that Hume has a richer account of testimony than that DOI: 10.4324/9780429266133-1

2 Introduction discussed under his name in the contemporary debate. We shall find that Hume’s account of testimony is integrated with his account of how history informs our knowledge of human nature (Chapter 3), the relation between sympathy and belief and between pride and the conception we have of our selves (Chapter 4), the role played by social factors in the judgment of intellectual virtue (Chapter 5), and the importance that Hume places on epistemic responsibility and the moral and personal dimension of testimonial trust (Chapter 6). As Lorenzo Greco pointed out to me, this isn’t just my account of Hume on testimony, this is my account of Hume. Hume’s attitude to miracle-testimony is clear, but I argue that his treatment of this particular kind of testimony should not be seen as shaping a Humean epistemology of testimony that applies generally across contexts. Hume considers many different kinds of testimony—the testimony of history, conversations between friends, ancient oratory, and that involved in moral and aesthetic education, and the understanding of other cultures, nations, and individuals—and we should look closely at what he says about these kinds of communication rather than limit the evidence for our interpretation to those rare cases where testimony concerns miraculous occurrences. Hume, I argue, does not explicitly spell out an epistemology of testimony and so I am attempting a conjectural interpretation or rational reconstruction of Hume’s views, one that is derived from his discussions of testimony across his works, from A Treatise of Human Nature to the posthumous Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, by way of his six-volume History of England, the Enquiry concerning Human Understanding and the Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, various Essays, and his correspondence. There are times when the ground for reconstruction is less substantial than elsewhere and where I move into more conjectural terrain. This is so, for example, with respect to sympathetic belief (Chapter 4(§2)), testimonial wisdom (Chapter 6(§2)), and the relation between epistemic and non-epistemic normativity (Chapter 6(§1)). Hume may have thought about the details of such issues, and, if so, there is therefore a correct interpretation to be found. Perhaps, though, he just did not consider the mechanism responsible for sympathetic belief or notice the tension between epistemic and non-epistemic notions of normativity, or perhaps his ruminations came to a dead-end. We should not, though, find such speculation frustrating. Dogmatism is a vice for Hume and intellectual modesty a virtue, and so the good Humean should tentatively propose a line of interpretation rather than insist that their interpretation is definitively the correct reading. No postmodern relativism is implied; such modesty, rather, is encouraged by the limited textual evidence and perhaps by our intellectual limitations, those that Hume took great pains to spell out but also those to which Hume himself was presumably prey.

Introduction  3 This book should therefore be seen as a contribution to the ongoing conversation concerning Hume’s account of testimony. One difficulty faced by those interested in Hume’s epistemology of testimony is that reductionism and anti-reductionism are categories whose home is a particular contemporary debate and Hume’s approach to testimony may not neatly fit into either the reductionist or anti-reductionist camp. Hume’s thoughts concerning testimony have as a backdrop Enlightenment debates concerning authority, evidence and science, and the existence of God, along with Hume’s deeply sceptical arguments concerning the pretensions of human reason, the relation between religion and morality, and Hume’s naturalistic, associationist account of the mind. Much of this is a far cry from the concerns of those involved in the contemporary debate concerning reductionism in the epistemology of testimony. Contemporary issues that I will touch upon include the debate between epistemological internalism and externalism (Chapter 2(§3)), transcendental arguments for the likely truth of rational testimonial utterances (Chapter 3(§1)), and contextualism (Chapter 2(§3)). These eighteenth century and contemporary issues are usually pursued in different journals and at different conferences. Such differences aside, there is a fundamental question that can be asked of both Hume and contemporary epistemologists and this concerns the extent to which an individual is responsible for assessing whether she should believe the testimony of others. Reductionists take individuals—or ‘hearers’, in the usual terminology of the contemporary debate—to do all the epistemic work themselves, their testimonial beliefs justified if they possess evidence that speakers or texts are reliable. Saul Traiger (1994, 241–2) nicely characterizes the reductionist approach as follows: ‘[b]eliefs are formed and corrected by one’s private stock of perceptions. On this interpretation, the social contexts are just fluff in Hume’s account; they provide interesting but eliminable examples’. Anti-reductionists, in contrast, take there to be social aspects of testimonial exchanges that cannot be explained purely in terms of the hearers’ assessment of the reliability of testifiers. I argue that Hume’s reliance on the social goes extremely deep and that he therefore should be seen as an anti-reductionist.

1 Hume on Miracles

Hume’s essay ‘Of Miracles’ plays a prominent role in contemporary interpretations of Hume as a reductionist with respect to the epistemology of testimony. His concern is not with the metaphysics of miracles but with testimony concerning miracles and whether it should be trusted. John Hill Burton suggests that a better title for the essay would be ‘The Principles of Belief in Human Testimony’ (1846, 1.285). Section 1.1 of this chapter considers the relation of miracles to the new mechanistic science of the Enlightenment and to disputes between Catholics and Protestants and more finely grained variants of these denominations. Section 1.2 turns to Locke’s account of testimony and his account of miracle-testimony in particular. In Sections 1.3 and 1.4, the two parts of Hume’s argument against belief in miracle-testimony are spelt out, the main purpose of this chapter being to draw out the account of testimony upon which recent reductionist interpretations of Hume are based. Section 1.5 turns to the publication history of Hume’s discussion of miracles, notably its excision from the Treatise.

1.1 Miracles in the Enlightenment For Hume, laws of nature are generalizations to which we have no counterexamples. It is a law of nature that ‘all men must die; that lead cannot, of itself, remain suspended in the air [and] that fire consumes wood, and is extinguished by water’ (EHU 10.12). A miracle is ‘a violation of the laws of nature’ (EHU 10.12): ‘a transgression of a law of nature by a particular volition of the Deity, or by the interposition of some invisible agent’ (EHU 10.12n23). John Mackie puts it thus: The laws of nature…describe the ways in which the world…works when left to itself, when not interfered with. A miracle occurs when the world is not left to itself, when something distinct from the natural order as a whole intrudes into it. (1982, 19–20) DOI: 10.4324/9780429266133-2

Hume on Miracles  5 For Christians, the divinity of Christ was made evident through the working of miracles and his resurrection was also miraculous. The occurrence of miracles is therefore seen by some as an argument for the existence of God and for the truth of Christianity. People believe in God because miraculous happenings can only have a divine explanation. Miracles play a more prominent role in Catholicism. Various religious disputes in the early modern period concerned alleged miracles, with Protestants accusing Catholics of faking miracles (‘lying wonders’) and of being tricked by the devil (Shaw, 2006, 24). Sites of alleged miracles were indiscriminately destroyed in the Reformation, and Counter-Reformation zeal for miracles was inevitably fuelled. Protestant criticism of Catholic miracles focused on the role played by the intermediary figures of priests and saints and on the idolatrous reverence for specific relics and places, all of which weakened relationships between the individual and God: ‘Instead of discerning Jesus Christ in his Word, his Sacraments, and his Spiritual Graces, the world has, according to its custom, amused itself with his clothes, shirts, and sheets’ and with the bones and remains of the apostles, martyrs, and saints (Freeman, 2011, 236). Such idolatry of relics, encouraged by associated miracles, must be avoided, and so Protestants downplayed the role of miracles, holding what Jane Shaw calls the ‘doctrine of the cessation of miracles’ (2006, 3), limiting their occurrence to those for which there is scriptural support and to those that are essential for Christian belief, such as the resurrection of Christ. Such belief in a select number of miracles is enforced by the words of St. Paul: ‘If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised;…and if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain’ (1 Corinthians 15: 13, 17). The denominational divide, though, was not as sharp as sometimes portrayed. John Calvin, for example, accepted that other miracles could occur: although faith properly rests on the Word of God, and looks to the Word as its only object, the addition of miracles is not superfluous, so long as they are also related to the Word and direct faith to it. (1961, 213) Shaw also suggests that miracles had something of a revival in the civil war years of the mid-seventeenth century, when ‘[m]iracles were re-made in a Protestant image’ (2006, 50). Healers, particularly those associated with dissenting orders such as the Baptists, performed miracles that were acceptable to Protestants since there were scriptural injunctions to heal: ‘Is any sick among you? Let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord’ (James 5: 14). Early Christianity was not committed to the conception of miracles as violations of the laws of nature. Augustine, for example, has been interpreted as denying that God can violate the laws of nature, since

6  Hume on Miracles these laws are established by God and even God cannot act against himself.1 A miracle was therefore ‘anything which appears arduous or unusual, beyond the expectation or ability of the one who marvels at it’ (Augustine, 1977, 437). Such events must be awe-inspiring, but violation of the laws of nature is not required in order for an event to qualify as a miracle. In time, though, the Church did come to contrast miracles with lawlike occurrences; Aquinas took Augustine’s ‘arduous and unusual’ events to be ones that contravene natural law (Aquinas, 1912, I, q.105, a.8).2 Hume explicitly distinguishes the merely marvellous or awe-inspiring from the miraculous. Marvellous events need not be contrary to the laws of nature; conversely, miracles need not inspire awe or wonder, so long as they involve a violation of a law of nature: A miracle may either be discoverable by men or not. This alters not its nature and essence. The raising of a house or ship into the air is a visible miracle. The raising of a feather, when the wind wants ever so little of a force requisite for that purpose, is as real a miracle, though not so sensible with regard to us. (EHU 10.12n23) The kind of account adopted by Hume was the dominant one in the Enlightenment, where science had brought a new mechanistic vision of nature and, along with it, the notion of the possible violation of such regularity. It should be stressed, though, that many (if not most) leading figures of the ‘new science’ were not opposed to miracles. God was seen as the orchestrator of the laws of nature and as capable of intervening in how they play out. Hume’s argument should be seen in this context. Miracle reports came to be assessed according to the principles of science. If there is good enough evidence in favour of them, then we should see God as having intervened in his general providence. Many Anglican and (‘Broad Church’) Latitudinarian members of the Royal Society, such as Robert Boyle and Joseph Glanville, believed in miracles for such reasons, even if this would appear to be at odds with their Protestant sensibilities. Science, though, could also provide evidence against miracles. Boyle claimed that it was the job of the good Christian scientist to reveal that ‘the vulgar catalogue of impossible or incredible things to be far greater than it ought to be’ (1744, 679). Thomas Sprat, English bishop and author of the History of the Royal Society (1667), claimed that ‘many things, which now seem miraculous’ will lose their status when we discover ‘their compositions, and operations’ (1667, 214), and Thomas Woolston’s Discourses (1727–9), to which we shall return below, offered natural explanations for alleged miracles. Be that as it may, the important factor relevant to Hume, and the argument of this book, is

Hume on Miracles  7 that miracles had come to be assessed according to the evidence available for their occurrence, and such evidence was in part testimonial for contemporary miracles and wholly testimonial for biblical miracles.

1.2 Locke on Testimony and Miracles The ‘individualistic’ approach to epistemology assumes that justified belief or knowledge cannot be acquired from others via testimony. Descartes is a striking example of such an approach. He sits alone by the fire and proves that God exists and that God would not allow him to be deceived about the existence of the external world. Without such solo inquiry, Descartes does not have any justification for his perceptual or testimonial beliefs. Nothing can be taken on trust. Indeed, the Meditations start with his realisation that testimony can be misleading: Some years ago I was struck by the large number of falsehoods that I had accepted as true in my childhood, and by the highly doubtful nature of the whole edifice that I had subsequently based on them. I realized that it was necessary, once in the course of my life, to demolish everything completely and start again right from the foundations. (1643, 12) According to the individualistic approach, even though you may come to acquire beliefs from others, these do not constitute knowledge unless you can check that they are true for yourself. Such beliefs are second-hand and second-rate. Jonathan Barnes clearly expresses this individualistic view: No doubt, we all do pick up beliefs in that second-hand fashion, and I fear that we often suppose such scavengings yield ­knowledge. But that is only a sign of our colossal credulity: [it is] a r­ otten way of acquiring beliefs and it is no way at all of acquiring knowledge. (Barnes and Burnyeat, 1980, 200) Locke’s empiricism was fundamental to Hume’s philosophy and in this chapter we shall see how Hume builds on Locke’s account of testimony. Alvin Plantinga (2000, 147) and Benjamin McMyler (2011, 25) take Locke to be individualistic, and there are passages, such as the following, that do seem to support this interpretation. I hope it will not be thought arrogance to say, that perhaps we should make greater progress in the discovery of rational and contemplative knowledge if we sought it in the fountain, in the consideration of things themselves, and made use rather of our own thoughts than other men’s to find it: for, I think, we may as rationally hope to see

8  Hume on Miracles with other men’s eyes as to know by other men’s understanding…. The floating of other men’s opinions in our brains makes us not one jot the more knowing, though they happen to be true. What in them was science is in us but opiniatrety. (Locke, 1689, 1.3.24) Testimonial belief is ‘[s]uch borrowed wealth, like fairy money, though it were gold in the hand from which he received it, will be but leaves and dust when it comes to use’ (1689, 1.4.24). However, Joseph Shieber (2015), Lisa McNulty (2013), Jack MacIntosh (2005), and Mark Boespflug (2019) have persuasively argued against this interpretation. Locke, rather, should be seen as an exemplar of the Enlightenment attitude to testimony discussed in §1, in which testimonial reports have an evidential role. Locke works within a Cartesian framework: ‘knowledge’ (or ‘scientia’) refers to certain knowledge and it can be intuitive or demonstrative, both of which involve the perception of the immediate agreement or disagreement of ideas, the latter via proofs or chains of reasoning. Knowledge must be ‘built upon the clear perception of the agreement, or disagreement of our idea attained either by immediate intuition, as in self-evident propositions, or by evident deductions of reason, in demonstrations’ (1689, 4.18.4). We cannot have knowledge in the case of testimony, but we can have ‘probability’ (1689, 4.15.4). Locke’s expressed scepticism with respect to the epistemic role of testimony therefore loses much of its bite in that it is uncontroversial that testimony cannot provide us with knowledge in the Cartesian sense. Empirical science also leads only to probabilities and not knowledge, although these can be so near to certainty, that they govern our thoughts as absolutely, and influence all our actions as fully, as the most evident demonstration: and in what concerns us, we make little or no difference between them and certain knowledge: our belief thus grounded, rises to assurance. (Locke, 1689, 4.16.6) The focus of Locke’s Essay thus turns from knowledge to probability.3 For Locke, probability can be good grounds for belief and testimony can provide such probability. Shieber therefore claims that Locke should not be seen as individualistic and that he ‘sought to devise an epistemology that would do justice to the centrality of testimony in the intellectual lives of growing numbers of his contemporaries in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England and Scotland’ (Shieber, 2009, 22). Locke, though, does distinguish between blind faith in authority and testimonial belief grounded in evidence that speakers are likely to be telling the truth. ‘The floating of other men’s opinions in our brains’ in the quotation above, that suggestive of an individualistic approach to

Hume on Miracles  9 testimony, can be seen as referring to blind faith, and elsewhere he is sceptical of ‘received opinion’. We should not ‘give up our assent only to reverend names’; we should, rather, ‘employ our own reason’ in assessing testimony (1689, 1.3.24). There are two ‘Foundations on which our Assent is built…[and] the measure whereby its several degrees are, or ought to be regulated’ (1689, 4.16.1): ‘First, The conformity of any thing with our own knowledge, Observation, and Experience. Secondly, The Testimony of others, vouching their observation and Experience’ (1689, 4.15.4). These are the ‘two foundations of Credibility’ (4.16.9). Further, Locke provides criteria for assessing the veracity of testimony: In the testimony of others, is to be considered, 1. The number. 2. The integrity. 3. The skill of the witnesses. 4. The design of the author, where it is a testimony out of a book cited. 5. The consistency of the parts, and circumstances of the relation. 6. Contrary testimonies. (1689, 4.15.4) Locke, though, is inconsistent in his application of these criteria in the case of miracle-testimony: ‘there is one Case, wherein the strangeness of the Fact lessens not the Assent to a fair Testimony given of it….This is the proper Case of Miracles’ (1689, 4.16.13). Locke believed that God’s existence can be derived from reason, and he put forward a cosmological argument to this end (1689, 4.10). In contrast, religious experience alone, however revelatory it may appear, is no proof of the existence of God since such experience cannot be assessed in an objective manner, either through reason and natural theology or through the scientifically respectable assessment of evidence. Testimony, however, can be assessed scientifically—that is, by way of probabilities—and so Locke is open to the possibility that there has been testimonial evidence of the requisite standard. He suggests, for example, that the Great Flood should be believed on the evidence of scripture and that this event could be explained by God moving the centre of gravity of the Earth, a feat that would violate the laws of nature (1693, §192).4 One should not, though, believe in miracles that conflict with reason, as would belief in transubstantiation. Simultaneous celebrations of the Mass would require Christ’s body to be present in multiple hosts and thus to be in many different places at the same time. Such divergence from reason leads to ‘extravagant Practices in Religion’ (1689, 4.18.11). The kind of criteria that Locke thinks relevant to the assessment of testimony are closely echoed in Hume’s argument against miracle-testimony, as we are about to see. Sandy Stewart goes as far as to say that ‘the basic epistemology of Hume’s “Of Miracles”…contains no original or distinctively Humean ideas. Hume’s project, in effect, is to make Locke consistent’ (1994, 183). We shall see, though, that Hume is more rigorous in his application of this ‘basic epistemology’ and the result is much more sceptical.

10  Hume on Miracles

1.3 Part 1 of the Miracles Essay Hume’s essay on miracles is in two parts. In part 1, he lays out the epistemic standards that testimony must meet in order for belief to be justified. These standards are particularly high in the case of miracles. In part 2, he argues that these standards have never been met and are never likely to be. I consider part 1 of his argument in this section and part 2 in the next. In Chapter 2, we shall turn to the more fundamental issue of whether Hume can have any notion of justification at all, given the sceptical arguments of the Treatise and the first Enquiry. There are two kinds of evidence that should be weighed against each other in order to determine whether we should believe the truth of a particular testimonial report. We must weigh the intrinsic likelihood of the reported event occurring against the chance that the speaker is mistaken in some way or lying. That Caesar was killed in the Senate House is not such an unlikely event given the political machinations of Ancient Rome, and it is unlikely that such an event would be misreported by the many eye-witnesses and subsequent historians. There are other times, however, when it is not wise to accept someone’s testimony: We entertain a suspicion concerning any matter of fact, when the witnesses contradict each other; when they are but few, or of a doubtful character; when they have an interest in what they affirm; when they deliver their testimony with hesitation, or on the contrary, with too violent asseverations. (EHU 10.7) Or where, conversely, ‘the evidence, resulting from the testimony, admits of a diminution, greater or less, in proportion as the fact is more or less unusual’ (EHU 10.8). Hume, following such reasoning, sided correctly with those who thought the Ossian poems published by James Macpherson were forgeries and not translations of ancient Gaelic texts. These were ostensibly composed by the blind bard Ossian, around the third century ce, and they chronicled the military and romantic exploits of Ossian, his father Fingal, and son Oscar. Macpherson claimed to have acquired an original manuscript of these works and also to have transcribed some of the texts from extant oral traditions in the Highlands, maintained by bards that were still in Hume’s day part of the retinue of Highland Chieftains. Macpherson published two epic poems, Fingal (1762) and Temora (1763), and these were a literary phenomenon in both Scotland and Ireland, and through numerous translations across the continent, fuelling national pride in a newfound noble and learned cultural heritage: ‘Scotland felt that it had found its Homer or, at least its Beowulf’ (Graham, 2001, 260). Macpherson became something of a celebratory. Hume’s

Hume on Miracles  11 friend, Hugh Blair, was impressed and published his Critical Dissertation on the Poems of Ossian (1763), with evidence in support of Macpherson’s findings. Questions, though, had begun to be raised about their authenticity, but Macpherson refused to produce the original manuscripts in order to answer them. In a letter to Sir David Dalrymple in 1760, Hume was not particularly sceptical, although he was ‘surprised at the regular plan which appears in some of these pieces, and which seems to be the work of a more cultivated age’ (LDH 1.330). Hume also noted that popular names for dogs in the Highlands mirrored those of the heroes of Ossian (such as Fingal and Oscar) and that this may suggest the authenticity of the text (LDH 1.331). His worries, though, became more pronounced: to the historian Edward Gibbon, he wrote that [i]t is, indeed, strange that any men of sense could have imagined it possible that about twenty thousand verses, along with numberless historical facts, could have been preserved by oral tradition during fifty generations, by the rudest, perhaps of all European nations; the most necessitous, the most turbulent and the most unsettled. (LDH 2.310) Hume has a psychological explanation for why we may be drawn to such stories: ‘Men run with great Avidity to give their Evidence in favour of what flatters their Passions, and their national Prejudices’ (LDH 2.311). He suggests to Blair that he should investigate more carefully whether there are extant manuscripts, and, if so, the Gaelic should be compared with the ‘translation’, and every surviving bard should be quizzed concerning the exact words that they recite (LDH 1.399–400). To Blair, and in an unpublished essay ‘Of the Poems of Ossian’ (Hume, 1775b), Hume argues that several features of the text are suspicious given the reported provenance. These included the length of the texts, the unlikelihood that such long poems could be preserved by oral tradition, and the ‘correctness, and regularity, and uniformity’ of the style (LDH 1.399). James Boswell describes a conversation with Hume in which he recalls that Hume did not believe that the poems were authentic: not so much for want of testimony, as from the nature of the thing, according to his apprehension. He said if fifty bare-arsed Highlanders should say that Fingal was an ancient poem, he would not believe them. He said it was not to be believed that a people who were continually concerned to keep themselves from starving or from being hanged should preserve in their memories a poem in six books. (Boswell, cited in Mossner, 1980, 418) Hume also tells Blair that he was informed by Edmund Burke that although ‘all the Irish cried out, we know these poems, we have always

12  Hume on Miracles heard them from our infancy’, they could not remember details of any one paragraph (LDH 1.400). It was also suspicious that such an ancient people displayed so much generosity and chivalry and that, in a text so old, monsters and religion did not make an appearance. Their recent discovery by Macpherson also raised an alarm given that he had not found at least some fragments in common with early compilers of oral traditions. In 1805, the Highland Society of Edinburgh undertook a full investigation, finding that there were some genuine Gaelic fragments but that the vast majority were indeed fabrications by Macpherson. In the case of the Ossian poems, Hume’s assessment of the evidence was based on empirical considerations concerning the likelihood of the texts being genuine—that is, composed by Ossian and concerning real historical events. In the Treatise, Hume suggests that the same kind of assessment should be given of the reports of travellers returning from lands where fruits ripen in winter and perish in summer or where the inhabitants are as Plato describes in The Republic or Hobbes in Leviathan (T 2.3.1.10). Hume offers a similar example in the Enquiry concerning reports of the discovery of people whose behaviour is inconsistent with our experience of human nature: Should a traveller, returning from a far country, bring us an account of men, wholly different from any, with whom we were ever acquainted; men, who were entirely divested of avarice, ambition, or revenge; who knew no pleasure but friendship, generosity, and public spirit; we should immediately, from these circumstances, detect the falsehood, and prove him a liar, with the same certainty as if he had stuffed his narration with stories of centaurs and dragons, miracles and prodigies. (EHU 8.8) Experience, rather, has shown us that although there may be ‘some particle of the dove, kneaded into our frame’, this is invariably accompanied by ‘elements of the wolf and serpent’ (EPM 9.4). The same approach is taken to miracles. Hume considers evidence concerning the likelihood of texts and stories correctly reporting real historical events that should properly be seen as miraculous. In the case of miracles, we should weigh evidence in favour of a particular law of nature continuing to hold against testimonial evidence that a miracle has occurred. However, since laws of nature describe universal regularities in our experience, there is ‘uniform experience against every miraculous event’ (EHU 10.12). We therefore have a ‘proof’ that a miracle will not occur: ‘[a] firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very nature of the fact, is as entire as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined’ (EHU 10.12). ‘Proof’ should be taken in a probabilistic sense rather than as a deductive,

Hume on Miracles  13 infallible conclusion. We have a proof that the sun will rise tomorrow if all experience points to it doing so. Hume therefore argues that we have a ‘proof’ against the occurrence of miracles since experiential evidence suggests that the laws of nature are universal regularities.5 We must have very persuasive testimony to counteract such evidence. [N]o testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous, than the fact, which it endeavours to establish….When any one tells me, that he saw a dead man restored to life, I immediately consider with myself, whether it be more probable, that this person should either deceive or be deceived, or that the fact, which he relates, should really have happened. I weigh the one miracle against the other; and according to the superiority, which I discover, I pronounce my decision, and always reject the greater miracle. If the falsehood of his testimony would be more miraculous, than the event which he relates; then, and not till then, can he pretend to command my belief or opinion. (EHU 10.13) Two disciples, Luke and Cleopas, are reported in the Bible to have met a stranger on the way to Emmaus and later to have had supper with him. During the meal, the stranger revealed himself as the resurrected Christ. Their testimony is relayed in Luke’s gospel. Let us assume that there is evidence that these two disciples had always been reliable, that they had never been dishonest, and that their mental health and perceptual faculties were normal. We therefore have a proof that they will continue to be reliable. We also have a proof, derived from experience, that all men must (irreversibly) die. We must, therefore, weigh ‘proof against proof’ (EHU 10.11). This can be done because one proof may be derived from more ‘experiments’ than another. In this case, we would need to consider just how much evidence we have concerning the reliability of these disciples (or of people in general) and of our mortality. In order to justifiably believe that a miracle has occurred, we would require a more persuasive proof in favour of the miraculous occurrence—in this case, that of resurrection—and this we do not have.6 There is a history of a priori arguments against miracles, those that aim to show that miracles are impossible given the nature of God. The deist Matthew Tindal saw the laws of nature as ‘the Permanent Voice of God’ and, as God is consistent, these laws cannot vary or be violated (1730, 27). In Supernaturals Examined (1747), Peter Annet argues that [t]o suppose that God can alter the settled Laws of Nature, which he himself formed, is to suppose his Will and Wisdom mutable; and that they are not the best laws of the most perfect Being; for if he is the Author of them, they must be as immutable as he is. (Annet, cited in Shaw, 2006, 171)

14  Hume on Miracles Hume’s argument is also taken by some interpreters to be a priori. Miracles are defined as violations of the laws of nature and they are therefore impossible since Hume takes the laws of nature, by definition, to be exceptionless regularities supported by ‘uniform experience’. Robert Fogelin sees such interpretations as ‘gross misreading[s]’ and he is right (2003, 33). John Earman, for example, in his book Hume’s Abject Failure (2000), takes Hume to hold that the probability of a miracle occurring is zero and is therefore ruled out a priori. This is how he reads Hume’s statement, in a letter to Blair, that ‘[t]he proof against a miracle…is full and certain when taken alone, because it implies no doubt’ (LDH 1.350). Fogelin argues that this is not Hume’s considered opinion and that here he is speaking loosely. We often say that we are ‘certain’ even when we admit that we have not completely ruled out the possibility that we are mistaken. More tellingly, any such certainty is at odds with Hume’s intellectual modesty and fallibilism: inductive ‘proofs’ are derived from what we have so far experienced and they are always subject to the tribunal of future experience and therefore open to revision.7 Earman himself concedes that his interpretation is counter to central themes in Hume’s texts (Earman, 2000, 32). Fogelin also criticises Earman for ad hominem attacks on Hume’s reputation and for ‘beat[ing] an endless tattoo of… invective’ (Fogelin, 2003, 41). A sense of the high feeling surrounding the debate concerning miracles is given. Fogelin rather mischievously concludes: ‘Is Earman’s argument against Hume’s treatment of miracles, then, a failure? I think it is. Is it an abject failure? It is enough to say it is a failure’ (2003, 53). Hume’s is an empirical argument. In part 1, he establishes the appropriate standards for assessing testimony and then applies these to the special case of miracles. One must weigh up the evidence in favour of a law of nature being exceptionless against testimony in favour of a particular claim that a law has been contravened. Hume does not claim that miracles are impossible and he is explicit about this: ‘there may possibly be miracles, or violations of the usual course of nature, of such a kind as to admit of proof from human testimony’ (EHU 10.36). Part 1 of Hume’s argument is sometimes called ‘a priori’, but this is misleading. Hume’s argument is not an a priori one based on the meanings of ‘miracle’ and ‘law of nature’ or on the relations of these ideas to each other. Miracles are not conceptually impossible; that is, they are not ruled out by definition. Laws of nature are not defined as generalisations that will never be contravened but rather as those which have invariably held in our experience. The standard-setting in part 1 is only a priori in the sense that this method of comparing probabilities can be articulated independently of our looking at the details of a particular report. Hume even describes the kind of evidence that would rightly lead to belief in the occurrence of a miracle:

Hume on Miracles  15 [S]uppose, all authors, in all languages, agree, that, from the first of january 1600, there was a total darkness over the whole earth for eight days: Suppose that the tradition of this extraordinary event is still strong and lively among the people: That all travellers, who return from foreign countries, bring us accounts of the same tradition, without the least variation or contradiction[.] (EHU 10.36) Such an event would appear to be miraculous since a law of nature, the law of nature that the sun always rises, is contravened. There could be widespread, consistent, and seemingly reliable reports concerning this global event and all witnesses may be competent and honest and have no motivation to lie. If this were so, ‘[i]t is evident, that our present philosophers, instead of doubting the fact, ought to receive it as certain’ (EHU 10.36). Hume’s claim, though, is that the evidence for biblical miracles is not as good as that concerning the eight days of darkness. Hume also suggests another option. We can accept testimony concerning eight days of darkness but not believe that a miracle has taken place. Instead, we could look for an explanation of the phenomenon that would enable us to see the laws of nature as stable and unchanging. There may have been darkness over the Earth for eight days because there was a ‘secret opposition of contrary causes’ (EHU 8.13): perhaps, for example, smoke from an enormous forest fire had blocked out the sun. We therefore ‘ought to search for the causes whence it [the eight days of darkness] might be derived’ (EHU 10.36) and thus discover that the surprising course of events is not inconsistent with the laws of nature. There are other places where Hume talks loosely of the ‘absolute impossibility’ of miracles. As argued, such claims should not be taken literally, but they do reveal another aspect of Hume’s attitude to miracles, that of ridicule. There were many reports of miracles in Paris in the late 1720s and ‘[t]here surely never was a greater number of miracles ascribed to one person, than those, which were lately said to have been wrought in France upon the tomb of Abbé Paris, the famous Jansenist’. Hume goes on to apply the evidential considerations that he discusses in part 1 of his argument: ‘many of the miracles were immediately proved upon the spot, before judges of unquestioned integrity, attested by witnesses of credit and distinction, in a learned age, and on the most eminent theatre that is now in the world’. Seemingly persuasive evidence, but not decisive, since what have we to oppose to such a cloud of witnesses, but the absolute impossibility or miraculous nature of the events, which they relate? And this surely, in the eyes of all reasonable people, will alone be regarded as a sufficient refutation. (EHU 10.27; my italics)

16  Hume on Miracles Hume could be taken at his word here, as we saw above in Earman’s interpretation, but it is more likely that ‘absolute impossibility’ is mere hyperbole. Further, the context of this attribution of ‘impossibility’ should be noted. The Jansenists were a sect that shared some aspects of Protestantism and were opposed to Papal authority. Theological disputes raged between Jesuits and Jansenists over doctrinal issues and the respective miracles of the two sects, with one epicentre of Jansenist ‘enthusiasm’ being the tomb of Abbé Paris. Spectators came to see healings and the faithful having trancelike convulsions, self-flagellating, and nailing themselves to crosses.8 Although some Protestants approached miracles in a scientific spirit, others seemingly did not, and it is these who were met with ridicule, particularly from deist writers and from Hume.9 Deists such as Woolston and Thomas Chubb argued that the ridiculousness of contemporary miracles also impugned the miracles of the Bible since the testimonial evidence for the latter was no better than for the former. Further, they explained miracles in natural terms and in terms of the laws of nature, any violation of which would be at odds with God’s wise arrangement. Woolston was imprisoned for blasphemy and died in prison in 1733, only six years before the publication of Hume’s Treatise. In certain cases, then, probability calculations do not need to be carried out since ‘the wise and learned are contented, in general, to deride…[the] absurdity’ of such miracles (EHU 10.22) and the claim of ‘absolute impossibility’ can be seen as part and parcel of such mockery. Hume makes a similar claim concerning a reported miracle in Saragossa, Spain, where the application of holy oil restored an amputated leg. Even though the testimony in support of this miracle appeared to be impeccable, ‘it was not requisite, in order to reject a fact of this nature, to be able accurately to disprove the testimony, and to trace its falsehood, through all the circumstances of knavery and credulity which produced it’ (EHU 10.26). Again, no probabilistic considerations are required, since ‘such an evidence carried falsehood upon the very face of it, and that a miracle, supported by any human testimony, was more properly a subject of derision than of argument’ (EHU 10.26). Such miracles ‘detect themselves by their absurdity’ (EHU 10.19). Such absurdity, though, does not mean we know a priori that such events could not have occurred, only that they are extremely improbable given the physical laws of nature. Hume also had fun in the History of England deriding miracles and those who believed in them and their providential role. Enthusiasm for the Crusades became so great that the leaders of one expedition: permitted an undisciplined multitude, computed at 300,000 men, to go before them, under the command of Peter the Hermit, and Walter the Moneyless. These men took the road towards Constantinople through Hungary and Bulgaria; and trusting, that Heaven, by supernatural assistance, would supply all their necessities, they made no

Hume on Miracles  17 provision for subsistence on their march. They soon found themselves obliged to obtain by plunder what they had vainly expected from miracles; and the enraged inhabitants of the countries through which they passed, gathering together in arms, attacked the disorderly multitude, and put them to slaughter without resistance. (H 1.238) Elsewhere, the tone is lighter and Hume gleefully lists a comical list of relics, those associated with reported miracles that were unearthed during Henry VIII’s abolition of the monasteries: the parings of St. Edmond’s toes; some of the coals that roasted St. Laurence; the girdle of the Virgin shown in eleven several places; two or three heads of St. Ursula; the felt of St. Thomas of Lancaster, an infallible cure for the head-ach; [and] part of St. Thomas of Canterbury’s shirt, much reverenced by big-bellied women. (H 3.252–3) The ‘&c.’ in the following footnote from Hume could also be seen as dismissive and heavy with sarcasm: ‘For that miracle was really performed by the touch of an authentic holy prickle of the holy thorn, which composed the holy crown, which, &c.’ (EHU 10.27n25). Terence Penelhum (2008, 331) suggests that this refers to the miracle of the Holy Thorn that was purported to have occurred at the monastery of PortRoyal. Antoine Arnauld’s sister (Blaise Pascal’s niece) had a tumour in her eye which was cured after being touched by the thorn. We shall return to the Port-Royal monastery in §5 of this chapter. Notwithstanding Hume’s ridicule of Protestant Jansenist miracles, it has been thought by some that Hume is primarily concerned with attacking Catholic ‘superstitions’ and that he does not object to moderate Protestantism. One reason to think this is derived from Hume’s remark at the beginning of the miracles essay that he has ‘discovered an argument of a like nature’ (EHU 10.2) to that provided by Dr. Tillotson, the Protestant Archbishop of Canterbury (1691–94), in his Discourse against Transubstantiation (1684). Transubstantiation is the Catholic dogma that bread and wine literally become the body and blood of Christ during communion. Tillotson notes that there can be no sensory evidence in favour of transubstantiation since the appearance of liquid in the goblet does not change even though it transforms from wine to blood. Catholicism, then, pays no heed to such empirical evidence. This, however, is inconsistent. Catholics endorse various miraculous happenings for which they claim to have sensory evidence. In the context of these occurrences, perceptual evidence is trusted and it should therefore also be trusted in the case of transubstantiation, but this is not the case. The arguments of Hume and Tillotson are therefore similar since they both

18  Hume on Miracles refer to testimony concerning miraculous phenomena, transubstantiation being contrary to the laws of nature. There are, however, important differences between their arguments. Tillotson’s focus is on the epistemological importance of perceptual experience and he claims that perceptual evidence should trump testimonial reports in cases where they clash. Hume’s argument is more sophisticated and it involves the probabilistic weighing up of testimonial and perceptual evidence. Testimony need not be trumped by experience if the testimonial evidence is good enough, as in, for example, the eight days of darkness case or in everyday cases where we trust the word of another over what we seem to see with our own eyes. Their arguments may differ, but both Hume and Tillotson highlight evidential problems with the central Catholic dogma of transubstantiation. Hume has particular enthusiasm for attacking Catholic superstition and especially for ridiculing the alleged ‘real presence’ of the body and blood of Christ in communion: ‘I believe, indeed, that there is no tenet in all paganism, which would give so fair a scope to ridicule as this of the real presence: For it is so absurd, that it eludes the force of all argument’ (NHR 12.3). He follows this lambasting in the Natural History of Religion with two rather pointed jokes: One day, a priest, it is said, gave inadvertently, instead of the sacrament, a counter, which had by accident fallen among the holy wafers. The communicant waited patiently for some time, expecting it would dissolve on the tongue: But finding that it still remained entire, he took it off. I wish, cried he to the priest, you have not committed some mistake: I wish you have not given me God the Father: He is so hard and tough there is no swallowing him. (NHR 12.3) The priest…continued his instructions….How many Gods are there? None at all, replies Benedict….How! None at all! cries the priest. To be sure, said the honest proselyte. You have told me all along that there is but one God: And yesterday I eat him. (NHR 12.4) This is an old anti-Catholic joke. Tillotson, in his Discourse, cites Averroes the Islamic philosopher as saying: ‘but so sottish [foolish] a Sect or Law I never found, as is the Sect of the Christians; because with their own teeth they devour their God whom they worship’, and the entry for ‘Eucharist’ in Denis Diderot and Jean d’Alembert’s Encyclopédie (1751–72) includes the reference ‘see: Cannibalism’.10 Hume’s attitude to miracles, though, should not be seen as merely antiCatholic. He claims that ‘such fooleries, as they are to be found in all ages and nations, and even took place during the most refined periods of antiquity,

Hume on Miracles  19 form no particular or violent reproach to the catholic religion’ (H 3.253). Disputes concerning the miracles of particular denominations and sects had been raging for hundreds of years and even Protestants who accepted the doctrine of the cessation of miracles held some miracles as sacrosanct—that is, those with scriptural support. Hume, though—as we are about to see— was more dismissive: all miracles are worthy of derision. Hume distinguishes the eight days of darkness case from a suggested miracle involving the resurrection of Queen Elizabeth I. With respect to the former, Hume introduces another consideration into our probabilistic assessment of testimonial evidence: The decay, corruption, and dissolution of nature, is an event rendered probable by so many analogies, that any phœnomenon, which seems to have a tendency towards that catastrophe, comes within the reach of human testimony, if that testimony be very extensive and uniform. (EHU 10.36) There are other examples of decay and corruption in the natural world that increase the probability that the usual cycle of night and day could break down. There are, though, no such analogous examples in support of resurrection.11 This example is daring since it refers to resurrection and one cannot but think of the alleged resurrection of Christ. Hume can be seen here as contributing to the ongoing debate mentioned earlier concerning the respective strength of evidence for biblical miracles as opposed to contemporary ones. John Toland’s (1696) Christianity not Mysterious is a deist onslaught on miracles in which he argues that if contemporary miracles can be questioned, then why not biblical miracles as well. Hume, too, does not intend only to question contemporary miracles or the power of relics; he also aims to undermine belief in biblical miracles—those performed by Christ and that of the resurrection, the cornerstone of Christianity. In a long and detailed footnote concerning the Abbé Paris miracles, Hume not very convincingly feigns to distance himself from the strategy of questioning the distinction between contemporary and biblical miracles: There runs, however, through the whole of these a ridiculous comparison between the miracles of our Saviour and those of the Abbé; wherein it is asserted, that the evidence for the latter is equal to that for the former: As if the testimony of men could ever be put in the balance with that of God himself, who conducted the pen of the inspired writers. (EHU 10.27n25) Clearly this is not Hume’s view; elsewhere he says that ‘[t]hough the Being, to whom the miracle is ascribed, be…Almighty, it does not, upon that account, become a whit more probable’ (EHU 10.38). The reference to Tillotson may suggest Protestant sympathies, but, as Edward

20  Hume on Miracles Craig puts it, ‘by the end of the second paragraph of the miracles essay many members of Hume’s audience, in varying degrees anti-Catholic, would have been anticipating something of a feast’, but, he continues, ‘they were indeed about to get one, though not quite the menu they expected’ (1997, 35).

1.4 Part 2 of the Miracles Essay In part 2 of the miracles essay, Hume presents empirical evidence and other considerations to show that there has never been miracle-testimony that has met the requisite evidential standards and that the standards set out in part 1 are never likely to be met: we have supposed, that the testimony, upon which a miracle is founded, may possibly amount to an entire proof, and that the falsehood of that testimony would be a real prodigy: But it is easy to show, that we have been a great deal too liberal in our concession, and that there never was a miraculous event established on so full an evidence. (EHU 10.14) Four considerations are put forward in support of Hume’s scepticism with respect to miracle-testimony. He begins by asserting that there is not to be found, in all history, any miracle attested by a sufficient number of men, of such unquestioned good sense, ­education, and learning, as to secure us against all delusion in themselves; of such undoubted integrity, as to place them beyond all suspicion of any design to deceive others; of such credit and reputation in the eyes of mankind, as to have a great deal to lose in case of their being detected in any falsehood; and at the same time, attesting facts, performed in such a public manner, and in so celebrated a part of the world, as to render the detection unavoidable. (EHU 10.15) The relevant historical details are given rather cursory treatment in the first Enquiry, although specific historical examples of alleged miracles are discussed in the History of England. History reveals a catalogue of deceit and fabricated holy relics. The long history of religious corruption should put us on our guard since ‘[n]ew reliques, perpetually sent from that endless mint of superstition, and magnified by lying miracles, invented in convents, operated on the astonished minds of the multitude’ (H 1.52). As we saw earlier with respect to reported miracles in Paris and Saragossa, Hume does not think we should spend too much time looking for evidence of deceit since

Hume on Miracles  21 every relation must be considered as suspicious, which depends in any degree upon religion….And no less so, every thing that is to be found in the writers of natural magic or alchimy, or such authors, who seem, all of them, to have an unconquerable appetite for falsehood and fable. (EHU 10.39) In places, though, the History does more to illustrate Hume’s probabilistic argument against miracles. With respect to the belief that Joan of Arc was divinely inspired, Hume claims it is much more probable, that Dunois and the wiser commanders prompted her in all her measures, than that a country girl, without experience or education, could, on a sudden, become expert in a profession, which requires more genius and capacity, than any other active scene of life.12 (H 2.403–4; my italics) Hume’s second argument in part 2 of the miracles essay concerns the psychology of religious belief. People have various psychological traits that lead to gullibility when it comes to miracles: ‘if the spirit of religion join itself to the love of wonder, there is an end of common sense; and human testimony, in these circumstances, loses all pretensions to authority’ (EHU 10.17). [W]hen any thing is affirmed utterly absurd and miraculous…[t]he passion of surprize and wonder, arising from miracles, being an agreeable emotion, gives a sensible tendency towards the belief of those events, from which it is derived. And this goes so far, that even those who cannot enjoy this pleasure immediately, nor can believe those miraculous events, of which they are informed, yet love to partake of the satisfaction at second-hand or by rebound, and place a pride and delight in exciting the admiration of others. (EHU 10.16) People are inclined to believe in surprising and wondrous events even if these events are highly unlikely to have occurred and, as the Joan of Arc story illustrates, if events can be emotively portrayed: She was converted into a shepherdess, an employment much more agreeable to the imagination. To render her still more interesting, near ten years were subtracted from her age; and all the sentiments of love and of chivalry, were thus united to those of enthusiasm, in order to inflame the fond fancy of the people with pre-possessions in her favour.13 (H 2.399)

22  Hume on Miracles We find it agreeable to report such noteworthy events and ‘place a pride and delight in exciting the admiration of others’ (EHU 10.16): ‘But what greater temptation than to appear a missionary, a prophet, an ambassador from heaven?’ (EHU 10.29), and ‘[w]ith what greediness are the miraculous accounts of travellers received’ (EHU 10.17). Where miracles are reported, ‘[t]he smallest spark may…kindle into the greatest flame; because the materials are always prepared for it…the gazing populace, receive greedily, without examination, whatever sooths superstition, and promotes wonder’ (EHU 10.30). That belief is influenced by desire, wonder, love, and pride should make us wary of accepting testimony concerning miracles. Hume’s third consideration is that miracles are usually ‘observed chiefly to abound among ignorant and barbarous nations; or if a civilized people has ever given admission to any of them, that people will be found to have received them from ignorant and barbarous ancestors’ (EHU 10.20). We should therefore be sceptical of such reports. The Pentateuch is picked out for particular criticism: ‘[It is] a book, presented to us by a barbarous and ignorant people, written in an age when they were still more barbarous, and in all probability long after the facts which it relates, corroborated by no concurring testimony’ (EHU 10.40).14 Thus, reports of miracles ‘grow thinner every page, in proportion as we advance nearer the enlightened ages, we soon learn, that there is nothing mysterious or supernatural in the case’ (EHU 10.20). Lastly, Hume points out that different religions attempt to justify their beliefs with miraculous happenings specific to their own religion. One cannot, however, believe in the occurrence of all such miracles because different religions make contradictory claims about the world and the nature of God: ‘in matters of religion, whatever is different is contrary’ (EHU 10.24). We cannot therefore believe all miracle-testimony since this would involve holding contradictory claims, and since Christian testimony is no more persuasive than testimony in support of Hindu or Islamic miracles, we have no reason to favour the claims of a particular religion. In part 1 of the miracles essay, Hume argued that belief in miracles requires impeccable testimony in support of it. Now we have seen that in part 2 he provides reasons to think there has never been testimony of the requisite standard. First, the historical evidence for miracles is poor. Second, psychological factors are likely to make us gullible when it comes to stories concerning wondrous events. Third, testimony concerning miracles has its roots in cultures without the requisite enlightened view of the world. And fourth, miracles cannot be taken as providing evidence for a particular religion since there are various religions in the world that hold contradictory views. Hume thus concludes that ‘we may establish it as a maxim, that no human testimony can have such force as to prove a miracle, and make it a just foundation for any such system of religion’ (EHU 10.35). Given that ‘the knavery and folly of men are such common phœnomena,…I should rather believe the most extraordinary events to

Hume on Miracles  23 arise from their concurrence, than admit of so signal a violation of the laws of nature’ (EHU 10.37). We have, then, ‘discovered an argument… which, if just, will, with the wise and learned, be an everlasting check to all kinds of superstitious delusion, and consequently, will be useful as long as the world endures’ (EHU 10.2). Hume’s attitude to religious miracles is unequivocal: ‘all the testimony which ever was really given for any miracle, or ever will be given, is a subject of derision’ (LDH 1. 349). Some have taken the closing paragraph of the miracles essay to reveal that Hume accepts that there may after all be a kind of miracle—the miracle of religious faith: Mere reason is insufficient to convince us of its veracity [that of Christianity]: And whoever is moved by Faith to assent to it, is conscious of a continued miracle in his own person, which subverts all the principles of his understanding, and gives him a determination to believe what is most contrary to custom and experience. (EHU 10.41) Donald Livingston, for example, implausibly claims that Hume’s argument against miracles does not rule[] out the fideistic alternative, which is that belief in miracles is an act of faith, or a gift of faith, which does subvert or at least suspend the ordinary canons of inductive reason; and so Hume concludes the criticism of miracles…on a fideistic note. (1998, 150) As pointed out by Norman Kemp Smith (1947, 47), this was the view of the Calvinist Reformed Churches in the eighteenth century. Faith is possible only with the miracle of divine Grace. However, given Hume’s hostility to orthodox religion, it is clear that this should not be taken as sincere. This is a passage where Hume’s irony is clear. Antony Flew describes the end of this section as containing ‘three of the most mordantly derisive sentences Hume ever wrote’ (1966, 216). Hume is claiming that it is a ‘miracle’ that people still follow Christianity given the paucity of the evidence for its teachings—not a literal miracle but a miracle in the colloquial sense of being beyond belief or simply amazing.

1.5 The Publication History of the Miracles Essay In 1737, Hume wrote a letter to Henry Home (later to become Lord Kames) concerning the preparation of the Treatise, saying ‘I am at present castrating my work, that is, cutting off its nobler parts; that is, endeavouring it shall give as little offence as possible’ (LDH 1.24).15 These nobler parts comprised ‘some Reasoning concerning Miracles, which I once thought of

24  Hume on Miracles publishing with the rest, but which I am afraid will give too much offence’. I will consider why Hume held back from publishing this material and why he changed his mind. Hume wrote the Treatise at the Jesuit college of La Flèche, France, and it was here that he claims to have first composed the argument concerning miracle-testimony, the irony of which Hume recalls in a letter to George Campbell in 1762: It may perhaps amuse you to learn the first hint, which suggested to me that argument [against miracles] which you have so strenuously attacked [in Dissertation on Miracles, 1762]. I was walking in the cloisters of the Jesuits’ College of La Flèche, a town in which I passed two years of my youth, and engaged in a conversation with a Jesuit of some parts and learning, who was relating to me, and urging some nonsensical miracle performed in their convent, when I was tempted to dispute against him; and as my head was full of the topics of my Treatise of Human Nature, which I was at that time composing, this argument immediately occurred to me, and I thought it very much gravelled my companion. (LDH 1.361) The letter continues… but at last he observed to me, that it was impossible for that argument to have any solidity, because it operated equally against the Gospel as the Catholic miracles;— which observation I thought proper to admit as a sufficient answer. I believe you will allow, that the freedom at least of this reasoning makes it somewhat extraordinary to have been the produce of a convent of Jesuits, tho perhaps you may think the sophistry of it savours plainly of the place of its birth. (LDH 1.361) Hume here alludes to the deist strategy discussed above, of suggesting that there is parity between the evidence in favour of contemporary and biblical miracles and so scepticism with respect to the former also casts doubt on the latter. That an earlier version of the miracles essay was written in France, and at La Flèche, is perhaps significant. Dario Perinetti (2018, 52) speculates that Hume would likely have seen the ‘superstition’ of the Jesuits close at hand, with the moving or ‘translation’ of the alleged relics of St. Thomas to the church at La Flèche occurring while he was there, on July 3, 1735. While at La Flèche, Hume wrote that [s]uperstitious people are fond of the relics of saints and holy men, for the same reason that they seek after types and images, in order to

Hume on Miracles  25 enliven their devotion, and give them a more intimate and strong conception of those exemplary lives, which they desire to imitate. (T 1.3.8.6) More importantly, it wasn’t just Locke, Latitudinarians, and the natural scientists of the Royal Society who were turning to probabilistic assessment of testimonial evidence. The Logic and Art of Thinking (or PortRoyal Logic) by Antoine Arnauld and Pierre Nicole was the most influential logic book of the French Enlightenment from its publication in 1662, through the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, and there was a copy in the library at La Flèche. It included a calculus of testimony, whereby testimony should be assessed according to ‘internal’ factors concerning the likelihood of the reported event and ‘external’ factors concerning the sincerity, reliability, and competence of the testifier.16 Such factors are the same as those upon which Hume focuses, but Arnauld and Nicole draw a different conclusion with respect to miracle-testimony: I maintain that persons of good sense, even if they are devoid of piety, ought to recognize as authentic the miracles St. Augustine relates in his Confessions or in City of God as having taken place before his eyes, or about which he testifies to having been particularly informed by the persons themselves to whom these things happened. (Arnauld and Nicole, 1996, 267) Arnauld and Nicole give particular weight to the reliable character of certain speakers—in this case, Augustine. McMyler claims that ‘[w]hat is at stake between Hume and the Logic concerns whether and to what extent the category of other persons plays a distinctive role in human rationality’ (2011, 37). This is a claim I question in Chapter 6(§4). Hume was particularly concerned that Joseph Butler was not offended by the Treatise, as both Kames and Hume held him in high regard.17 Hume’s report to Kames concerning the castration of the Treatise makes this clear: Your thoughts and mine agree with respect to Dr Butler, and I would be glad to be introduced to him….I am endeavouring it shall give as little offence as possible, before which, I could not pretend to put it into the Doctor’s hands. (LDH 1.24) Butler, in the Analogy of Religion (1736a), also discusses testimony in terms of probability, arguing that ‘nothing can destroy the evidence of Testimony in any Case, but a proof of Probability, that persons are not competent Judges of the Facts to which they give Testimony’ (1736a, 363). However, ‘[u]pon the whole: As there is large historical Evidence, both direct and circumstantial, of Miracles wrought upon the Subject; it

26  Hume on Miracles lies upon Unbelievers to shew, why this Evidence is not to be credited’ (1736a, 356). The onus of proof was on the sceptic. Hume must have been itching to show exactly ‘why this Evidence is not to be credited’, but he held back. A discussion concerning miracles was thus excised from the Treatise and it is this which evolved, to a greater or lesser extent, into the miracles essay that was to first appear in his Philosophical Essays concerning Human Understanding in 1748 and then all subsequent editions of the first Enquiry from 1758 on. Why, though, did Hume see fit to reinstate the discussion of miracles just 11 years after he informs Kames that he is castrating the Treatise? Lewis Amherst Selby-Bigge saw ‘Of Miracles’ as merely an opportunity to ‘spice up the work and provoke public notoriety’ (Millican, 2011, 155). Selby-Bigge is condescending to both Hume and his readers. Hume’s motivation, he says, is to ‘attract attention and excite that “murmur among the zealots” by which the author desired to be distinguished’ and to provide something provocative to read for those ‘habitués of coffeehouses’ who would not find discussions of space and time and scepticism interesting (Selby-Bigge, in Hume, 1975, xii). That this was the reason for the return of miracles is implausible given that Hume’s critique of miracles is a key aspect of his irreligion and therefore arguably central to Hume’s whole philosophical enterprise, a claim to which we shall return in Chapter 2(§1). More plausibly, the political climate had changed. As was noted above, as Hume was writing the Treatise Woolston had been tried and imprisoned in 1729 for publishing naturalistic explanations of miracles as part of his deist attack on Christianity and he had died in prison in 1733. It is likely that such events would give Hume pause, and in the letter to Kames from La Flèche, Hume does seem to be genuinely concerned that his arguments should not be seen by those who could take offence or those who might be keen to prosecute: ‘I beg of you to show it to nobody, except to Mr Hamilton, if he pleases; and let me know at your leisure that you have received it, read it, and burnt it’ (LDH 1.24). More time had now passed and in a letter to James Oswald, the year before the publication of the Philosophical Essays, Hume revealed that he had some thoughts of taking advantage of this short interval of liberty that is indulged us and of printing the Philosophical Essays I left in your hands. Our friend, Harry [Kames], is against this, as indiscreet. But…I think I am too deep engaged to think of a retreat. (LDH 1.106) Why, though, did he think the time was now right? What had changed since the late 1730s? One possibility is that the 1745 Rebellion was a major distraction for the government. It was much more important for the courts to concern themselves with the trials of politically dangerous rebels rather than the speculations of philosophers and men of letters.18 Whatever the

Hume on Miracles  27 reasons, Hume did take his chance and decided to include discussion of miracles in 1748, although one can detect a sense of trepidation as he writes to Kames informing him of his decision: ‘The other work is the Philosophical Essays, which you dissuaded me from printing. I won’t justify the prudence of this step, any other way than by expressing my indifference about all the consequences that may follow’ (LDH 1.111). As it turned out, Hume was right and times had clearly changed since Woolston’s imprisonment in 1729. Ironically, though, Hume’s timing still wasn’t quite right. He complained in his autobiographical My Own Life that the first Enquiry was ‘overlooked and neglected’ when first published because of controversy over Conyer Middleton’s Free Inquiry into the Miraculous Powers, Which are supposed to have subsisted in the Christian Church (MOL 8). Middleton’s work had attacked the miracles of the early Church. Hume’s thunder had been stolen. Notwithstanding the implausibility of Selby-Bigge’s interpretation of the motivation behind Hume’s publication of the miracles essay, there is some truth in the claim that Hume yearned for literary fame and perhaps a certain notoriety, and in this regard the Enquiry was supposed to succeed where the Treatise had failed—at least with regard to fame—but this was not to be. Further, if anything was more important to Hume than literary fame, it was friendship, and this, as he predicted, was compromised by the publication of the Philosophical Essays, with some evidence suggesting that Hume’s relationship with Kames soured after publication of the miracles essay in particular.19 That’s not to say that Hume’s essay on miracles was ignored. It was not, and for the rest of his life Hume saw a steady stream of critical responses to his argument. In Chapter 3(§3), we shall consider George Campbell’s 1762 reply to Hume, A Dissertation on Miracles.20 Hume would be pleased to see that today his essay is widely taught in universities and schools around the globe and that it still raises ire in certain circles of theologians and philosophers. The Enlightenment debate on miracles consisted of many overlapping skirmishes: Jansenists vied with Jesuits and others over contemporary miracles, Latitudinarians vied with Catholics over the cessation of postapostolic miracles, and deists, such as Woolston, vied with everyone else over the very existence of miracles. It is clear that Hume’s primary concern was with the last of these skirmishes. With the deists, he questioned the foundational miracles of Christianity, and he did this armed with the probabilistic methods of Jansenists, Latitudinarians, and Locke—slaying them, one might say, with their own sword.

Notes 1 See Hardon (1954, 230–31). 2 The Augustinian notion lingered on in ‘lived religion’ and in the ‘wonder literature’ of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. See Shaw (2006, 32–3). 3 Hume, in the Treatise, also distinguishes between knowledge and probability, with knowledge requiring certainty (T 1.3.11.2).

28  Hume on Miracles 4 Also see Locke’s Discourse on Miracles (1706b). 5 Humean standards are not always lived up to in common life: C.D. Broad claimed to ‘have a Scottish friend who believes all the miracles of the New Testament, but cannot be induced to believe, on the repeated evidence of my own eyes, that a small section of the main North British Railway between Dundee and Aberdeen consists of single line’ (Broad, 1916–7, 81). 6 Richard Price (1768, 413–6) suggests that Hume’s account is in tension with the fact that we readily accept testimony concerning events that are highly improbable—such as winning a lottery—events that, by Hume’s lights, we should doubt occurred (also see Butler, 1736a, §11; Campbell, 1762, 31; Earman, 2000, §5). Price concludes that ‘improbabilities as such do not lessen the capacity of testimony to report truth’ (1768, 165). Millican argues that Hume is sloppy in the presentation of his argument and that what he probably had in mind was this ‘Revised Humean Maxim’: ‘No testimony is sufficient to render a miracle M more probable than not, unless the testimony is of such a kind, that the occurrence of a false M report of that kind (given that M does not in fact occur) would be even less probable than M itself’ (2011, 186; also see Millican, 2013, 7–9). As my primary interest is in the nature of Hume’s argument and not in whether it is successful or persuasive, I shall not pursue this issue here. 7 I shall turn to Hume’s conception of intellectual modesty in Chapter 5(§4). 8 See Blom (2011, 12–13). 9 On deist ridicule, see Herrick (1989). 10 Also see NHR 2.2. 11 Stewart, however, suggests that ‘[t]he devotee of miracles might think Hume did not look very far to find at least remote analogies that would justify him in entertaining the possibility of a resurrection, like recovery from drowning’ (1994, 195). 12 Also see H 1.38, 1.105, 2.420, 2.421, 2.399, 2.492 and 6.494. 13 In Chapter 5(§3), I discuss Hume’s own use of sentimental prose for purposes of persuasion. 14 The Pentateuch consists of the first five books of the Bible: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. 15 Henry Home took the title of Lord Kames in 1752 when he became a judge in the Scottish Court of Session. I shall continue to refer to him only as Kames. 16 McMyler notes that ‘[i]t is an interesting feature of Hume’s arguments that, even though he was surely aware of the very similar discussion of these issues in the Logic, he doesn’t acknowledge the fact that so many other Enlightenment figures appeal to very similar premises while drawing completely different conclusions’ (2011, 34). Hume does mention the Logic at Abs. 4, although, as McMyler claims, no indication is given of how its approach to testimonial evidence is in some ways similar to his own. 17 See Russell (2008, 131–2). 18 Thanks to Bill Gibson for this suggestion. 19 See Beauchamp’s ‘Introduction’ to EHU (lxxvi, n184). 20 See Beauchamp’s ‘Introduction’ to EHU (lxxiv–civ) for details of the initial reception of Hume’s essay.

2 Naturalism, Scepticism, and Reductionism

Hume is sceptical with regard to miracle-testimony and we shall see that this is part and parcel of his irreligion, his wider rejection of teleological thinking, and his naturalistic account of human nature (Section 2.1). The last of these includes what Hume calls an ‘anatomy of the mind’—that is, a description of the underlying principles that explain our ongoing cognitive life (Section 2.2). Part of that life involves the giving of testimony and the acquisition of testimonial beliefs and we shall see how Hume conceives of these in such anatomical terms. Any such naturalistic account of the acquisition of belief demands engagement with the wider issue of the tension in Hume between his naturalism and scepticism and I consider this in Section 2.3. Going forward with Hume’s naturalism, I shall turn to the contemporary reductionism/anti-reductionism debate concerning the epistemology of testimony and start to assess whether he should be seen as a reductionist or an anti-reductionist.

2.1 God, Teleology, and the ‘Science of Man’ There are various interpretations of Hume on religion. As we saw in Chapter 1(§3), some (implausibly, I claim) take the miracles essay only to be critical of Catholic miracles, and although Hume’s considered stance towards religion is usually taken to be atheist, he has also been interpreted as an ‘attenuated’ deist (Gaskin, 1978; Kemp Smith, 1947), an agnostic (Noxon, 1964), and even a theist (Livingston, 1998). In his recent intellectual biography, James Harris takes Hume to have ‘a maximally detached and disengaged point of view’ with respect to religion, considering it with ‘ruthless impartiality, as if describing nothing more emotionally engaging than some bizarre belief systems so long extinct as to be bound to be all but unintelligible to the reader’ (2015, 22, 343). Harris is right that Hume often meets religion with humour rather than anger or frustration— although the latter are sometimes expressed—but the humour can be cutting, mocking, and acerbic, particularly so in the History of England.1 It may be true that the revolutionary zeal and dogmatism of the French atheist philosophes, such as Baron d’Holbach and Diderot, were not to Hume’s DOI: 10.4324/9780429266133-3

30  Naturalism, Scepticism, and Reductionism taste, nor would be the temperamentally akin New Atheists of today. It may also be true that he preferred to talk about politics and economics with his friends rather than religion, but none of this undermines his credentials as a certain kind of atheist, one who is non-dogmatic, tactful with friends whose deeply held commitments are different to his own, perhaps at times weary of the fight and sceptical of any lasting disintegration of religion, but one who, nevertheless, wielded an armoury of argument and biting humour against organised religion in all its forms. Hume, though, did use various strategies to conceal his, to all intents and purposes, atheist viewpoint. One such strategy involves feigning retreat to alternative forms of support for religion, after a particular source of evidence is undermined. As the argument from design is rejected in the Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, it is suggested that revealed religion might support belief in God. We have seen, though, that revealed religion in the form of miracles is rejected in EHU. His overall conclusion concerning religious belief is not therefore immediately obvious if one reads only certain texts. If one reads them all, though, then light will dawn over the whole and the scope and ambition of Hume’s rejection of religion become clear. In the Dialogues and the first Enquiry, he argues that all of the traditional arguments for the existence of God are inadequate. The most they can suggest is some kind of attenuated deism in which the cause of the order in the universe has some limited analogy to human intelligence. All the trappings of organised religion should be rejected. And then, in his Natural History of Religion, he offers an anthropological and psychological explanation of why religious belief is prevalent in human society, one that does not depend on anything supernatural.2 Much early commentary on Hume, up until the present day, saw his writings on religion as fragmentary and intended merely to court controversy, as we saw suggested by Selby-Bigge. It was thought that they could be excised from his philosophy without substantial loss, and there is a precedent for such a view in Hume’s own excision of the discussion of miracles from the Treatise. This is far from so. A central feature of Hume’s naturalistic world view is his abandonment of various forms of teleological thinking.3 Before and into the eighteenth century, teleological explanations had been offered of both the natural world and man’s place within it. Hume, for example, discusses the design argument for the existence of God in his Dialogues. The character of Philo, however, clinically dismantles the argument while Cleanthes’s admiration for the ‘testimony’ of nature drips with irony: The order and arrangement of nature, the curious adjustment of final causes, the plain use and intention of every part and organ; all these bespeak in the clearest language an intelligent cause or author. The heavens and the earth join in the same testimony[.] (DNR 4.13)

Naturalism, Scepticism, and Reductionism  31 Also central to Christianity is the notion of the teleology of individuals: the end-point to which they are directed being (hopefully) eternal life and salvation. Hume has no truck with such thinking and this is agreed upon even by those who do not interpret Hume as an atheist. We have no reason to think that ‘this life [is] merely a passage to something farther; a porch, which leads to a greater, and vastly different building; a prologue, which serves only to introduce the piece, and give it more grace and propriety’ (EHU 11.21). Hume is sceptical not only of the existence of such a destination, or ‘future state’, but also of the kind of mind upon which such a journey depends—that is, a soul that endures through time (T 1.4.5–6).4 Hume’s non-teleological account of human nature is what we would today call a naturalistic philosophy of mind, and, as we shall see, various elements of this play a role in Hume’s account of testimony. Locke and Francis Hutcheson both take important steps towards a fully naturalistic account of human nature and morality, but they do not jettison all teleological elements. For Hutcheson, moral distinctions are based on feelings or ‘natural affections’ of approval and disapproval and not on eternal moral truths that can be discerned by reason alone. Hutcheson thus grounds morality in human nature and this can be investigated empirically. Such investigation, though, reveals the divine origin of our natural sentiments and thus their teleological dimension. Our hard-wired affective responses to the behaviour of others are beneficial to individuals and their social relations. This is not down to chance, but rather to the design of a benevolent creator: ‘This account of Affections will…prepare the way for discerning considerable Evidences for the Goodness of the Deity, from the Constitution of our Nature’ (Hutcheson, 1728, 86). God plays an analogous role in the moral theories of Adam Smith (1759) and Lord Shaftesbury (1711). Hume concurs with the empirical approach that Hutcheson takes to morality and with his emphasis on the importance of the natural affections or ‘moral sentiments’, but he takes the extra step and, as noted by Jacqueline Taylor, he ‘effectively displaces the teleological explanations so prevalent even in the works of those he lauded, such as Locke, Butler, and Hutcheson’ (2015a, 2).5 Hume’s rejection of teleology is confirmed in a 1739 letter to Hutcheson in which, it is thought, Hume is responding to Hutcheson’s criticisms of the account of morality presented in a draft manuscript of the Treatise. By the term ‘Natural’, Hutcheson means created by God; virtue is therefore natural and God-given. Hume questions such a conception of the naturalness of virtue, claiming ‘’[t]is impossible…that the character of natural and unnatural can ever, in any sense, mark the boundaries of vice and virtue’ (T 3.1.2.10). Hume observes that both virtue and vice are natural, as opposed to supernatural or miraculous, and that perhaps vice has more claim to be called ‘natural’ in the sense of usual or common. In this letter, Hume also says that

32  Naturalism, Scepticism, and Reductionism I cannot agree to your Sense of Natural. ’Tis founded on final Causes [that is, teleological ends to which man and nature are directed] which is a Consideration, that appears to me pretty uncertain & unphilosophical. For pray, what is the End of Man? Is he created for Happiness or for Virtue? For this Life or for the next? For himself or for his Maker? Your Definition of Natural depends upon solving these Questions, which are endless, & quite wide of my Purpose. (LDH 1.33) It is upon Hume’s non-teleological account of human nature that the next section begins to focus.

2.2 Hume’s Anatomy of the Mind The subtitle to the Treatise is ‘An Attempt to introduce the experimental Method of Reasoning into Moral Subjects’ and through such a method Hume hopes to develop a ‘science of MAN’ (T 0.4). He saw himself as standing on the shoulders of his empiricist predecessors. Francis Bacon’s inductive methodology enabled Newton and other members of the Royal Society to explain the physical world in lawlike terms, and Locke paved the way for such accounts of human nature. This path was then trodden by ‘some late philosophers in England’ (T 0.7), who are usually seen to include Shaftesbury, Bernard Mandeville, Hutcheson, and Butler. Such a science is based on ‘experience and observation’ (T 0.7) and Hume talks with ‘contempt of hypotheses’—that is, of speculative explanations that are not based on experience (Abs. 2): We must therefore glean up our experiments in this science from a cautious observation of human life, and take them as they appear in the common course of the world, by men’s behaviour in company, in affairs, and in their pleasures. (T 0.10) Such observation leads to Hume being able to ‘anatomize human nature in a regular manner’ (Abs. 2), uncovering our ‘mental geography’ (EHU 1.13). By following this method, one can reduce the science of man to a small number of principles in the same way that Newton arrived at a set of principles in natural philosophy, and it is plausible that Newton’s methodological principles exercised considerable influence on Hume’s own approach. Hume found that, ‘in the course of nature…tho’ the effects be many, the principles, from which they arise, are commonly but few and simple, and that ’tis the sign of an unskilful naturalist to have recourse to a different quality, in order to explain every different operation. How much more must this be true with regard to the human mind’ (T 2.1.3.6).

Naturalism, Scepticism, and Reductionism  33 The geography that is uncovered consists in relations between two kinds of conscious mental states or what Hume calls ‘perceptions’. These are thoughts or ‘ideas’ and experiences or ‘impressions’. Ideas are distinguished from impressions by variations in force and vivacity. Ideas are less forceful, vivid, and lively than impressions. Thinking of a cup of coffee is a less vivid mental experience than actually drinking the coffee. Impressions are of two kinds: impressions of sensation or sense experiences and impressions of reflection or passions. Passions include the emotions, desires, and feelings and we shall see in Chapter 4(§3) that the passion of pride plays a central role in Hume’s account of human nature and consequently in his account of testimony. Let us see, then, how Hume’s mental geography relates to testimony. In a testimonial exchange, I come to believe what you tell me—that, for example, it is raining in Rome. Today we think of this in terms of the transmission of propositional content, whereas Hume sees this in terms of being conscious of ideas and impressions. That it is raining in Rome is a complex thought and its constituent simpler ideas—raining and Rome—have their origin in experience. This is perhaps the central aspect of Hume’s empiricism and has come to be called the copy principle: ‘all our simple ideas in their first appearance are deriv’d from simple impressions, which are correspondent to them, and which they exactly represent’ (T 1.1.1.7). My idea of rain is therefore derived from my impressions of rain or from simpler constitutive ideas, the contents of which are derived from correspondent impressions. My idea of Rome is a complex idea consisting of, for example, the ideas of a city, the river Tiber, and the Colosseum, and these ideas can be derived from my own experience or from the testimony of others— from, that is, ‘such impressions as I remember to have received from the conversation and books of travellers and historians’ (T 1.3.9.4). Further, we come to associate words with ideas. Learning the meaning of ‘rain’ amounts to that word becoming associated with rain and this occurs through the regular concurrence of that word and the phenomenon, again mediated by testimony. Once we have come to associate words or names with things in this way, the hearing of a word ‘revives’ the ideas from which we originally picked up this associative custom (T 1.1.7.7). The word ‘Rome’ elicits in the mind the set of ideas that over time have been associated with that word. Don Garrett calls this the ‘revival set’ (1997, 104). Thus, when I hear or read your testimony concerning the weather in Rome, I come to have these associated ideas in my mind. We do not just acquire ideas from the words of another; we also come to acquire beliefs on the basis of testimony. We therefore need to consider Hume’s account of the acquisition of belief and the further crucial question concerning whether testimonial beliefs are justified. To see how the acquisition of beliefs proceeds, we need to look further into Hume’s anatomy of the mind. Ideas and beliefs do not pop in and out of our mind at random, or at will, or at the behest of God:

34  Naturalism, Scepticism, and Reductionism even in our wildest and most wandering reveries, nay in our very dreams, we shall find, if we reflect, that the imagination ran not altogether at adventures, but that there was still a connexion upheld among the different ideas, which succeeded each other. (EHU 3.1) These connexions are called the principles of association and Hume claims to provide a complete list of them. It is a short list: ‘there is an attraction or association among impressions, as well as among ideas; tho’ with this remarkable difference, that ideas are associated by resemblance, contiguity, and causation; and impressions only by resemblance’ (T 2.1.4.3). An idea of fire before my mind is naturally disposed to call forth the idea of a sunset (through the principle of resemblance), the idea of a hearth (through the principle of contiguity), and the idea of a spark (through the principle of cause and effect). It is a common theme in early modern philosophy that association is a source of error: at times, for example, the mind associates phenomena that have frequently accompanied each other even though there is no good reason to take them to be related. Such emphasis on the misleading nature of the imagination is widespread and appears in Bacon, Descartes, Thomas Hobbes, Nicolas Malebranche, Locke, and Hutcheson.6 It is, however, Locke who has the clearest focus on association, devoting a chapter of his Essay concerning Human Understanding to the principles of association and their malign influence: some ideas that in themselves are not at all of kin, come to be so united in some Mens Minds, that ’tis very hard to separate them, they always keep in company, and the one no sooner at any time comes into the Understanding but its Associate appears with it. (1689, 2.33.5) Locke provides various examples of when this is the case, such as when stories in childhood make us thereafter associate the ideas of goblins and sprights with darkness (1689, 2.33.10). Hume is aware of the dangers of association: ‘resemblance [Hume says] is the most fertile source of error; and indeed there are few mistakes in reasoning, which do not borrow largely from that origin’ (T 1.2.5.21).7 It is crucial to note, though, that Hume does not see all forms of association as a source of error. Quite the contrary—the principle of causation is the source of all judgments concerning matters of fact. This was a new, radical claim. As Christopher Bernard says, ‘Hume’s suggestion that imagination is responsible for all our correct judgments about matters of fact would have astonished his predecessors’ (1994, 226).8 The key distinction for Hume is between different features of the ‘imagination’: those that mislead, such as the principle of resemblance, and that which for him

Naturalism, Scepticism, and Reductionism  35 constitutes probable reasoning—that is, inference grounded in the associative principle of causation.9 Reason does not consist in the ability to discern intelligible, rational connections between ideas—as, for example, Descartes does in his ‘Fifth Meditation’ between the idea of God and the idea of existence (1643, 44–9)—but in a certain kind of associative movement from one idea to another. The principle of causation is the associative mechanism by which we come to have beliefs based on experience. This is the case for perceptual beliefs and at least some testimonial ones. Beliefs for Hume, like all constituents of the mind, are perceptions of which we are conscious. Having the idea of a rainy afternoon in Rome is to conceive or imagine that this is the case and, as an idea, this is a faint perception. However, when I believe that this is so, I have an enlivened idea before the mind, an idea with a high degree of force and vivacity. As the content of my idea of it raining in Rome is the same as my belief, the difference between them is seen as lying in some ‘sentiment or feeling’ that accompanies those ideas (EHU 5.11). For an idea to be enlivened into a belief in this way, there needs to be a source of this extra vivacity. The source of this vivacity is a present vivid impression before the mind. Vivacity can be transferred from this impression to a related idea, thus enlivening a faint idea into a lively belief. Hume thinks of such vivacity transfer in hydraulic terms: ‘The vividness of the first conception diffuses itself along the relations, and is convey’d, as by so many pipes or canals, to every idea that has any communication with the primary one’ (T 1.3.10.7). Billiard balls have become synonymous with Hume’s account of causation. Helen Beebee’s book on Hume on Causation (2016) has them on the cover and I take them as props into my Hume lectures. When I experience the impression of the cue ball about to strike the red ball, the force and vivacity of this impression carry across to the associated idea of the red ball beginning to move—that is, to the usually associated causal effect—via the principle of causation. This transfer of vivacity enlivens the idea and transforms it from a mere idea to a belief that the red ball will begin to move. Such causal reasoning is capable of informing us of the existence of objects and powers that are not directly revealed to us by the senses and memory. When we move from some present fact to a conclusion about something that we have not observed, the crucial connection between them is a causal one. In EHU, Hume uses a testimonial example to illustrate this: The hearing of an articulate voice and rational discourse in the dark assures us of the presence of some person: Why? Because these are the effects of the human make and fabric, and closely connected with it. If we anatomize all the other reasonings of this nature, we shall find that they are founded on the relation of cause and effect, and that this relation is either near or remote, direct or collateral. (EHU 4.4)

36  Naturalism, Scepticism, and Reductionism The specifics of what is said in the dark do not matter in this example; the inference is merely based on our experience of the conjunction between rational utterances and persons. We shall see in §4, though, how causal reasoning is seen to play a role in the reductive Humean interpretation of testimony. Hume also contrasts belief in miracles with testimonial beliefs for which there is better evidence and seems to draw a distinction between beliefs that are justified and those that are not, such as belief in miracles. In the next section, we shall start to consider the key issue of justification.

2.3 Scepticism and Naturalism Perhaps the most contentious area of Hume scholarship concerns the tension between Hume’s scepticism and naturalism. In Book 1 of the Treatise, he provides a battery of sceptical arguments against inductive and demonstrative reasoning and against the existence of the external world, causal powers, and even our enduring selves.10 We have no reason to believe in the common sense picture in which we are enduring individuals inhabiting a world of physical objects with which we causally interact. Hume’s claim is not that we merely have no evidence for the existence of such a world but that we have no conception of such a world. One of Hume’s basic moves is to argue that we do not have impressions of the external world, objective necessary connections, or enduring selves and therefore, in line with the copy principle introduced earlier, we do not even have ideas corresponding to such things. In Book 2 of the Treatise, however, he continues to talk as if there is a causally structured external world populated by individuals with self-consciousness. What, then, should be made of this seeming inconsistency? His line in the Treatise seems to be that the sceptical arguments are unassailable, but owing to human psychology we cannot help but believe the common sense picture. Scepticism is not therefore defeated; it is, rather, ‘mitigated’ by a psychological explanation of why we have such beliefs.11 It is not clear, though, whether such a reading resolves the tension between naturalism and scepticism or what Hume calls the ‘dangerous dilemma’ (T 1.4.7.6). Since my interest is in testimony, we need not dwell on such metaphysical issues concerning the existence of the external world or causation, although we will return to Hume’s scepticism with respect to the self in Chapter 4(§1). What is of more importance to my concerns is Hume’s scepticism with regard to inductive reasoning, since such reasoning is central to his discussion of miracles. We should not believe miracle-reports since the inductive evidence in support of the relevant laws of nature continuing to hold outweighs any inductive evidence we might have concerning the reliability of miracletestimony. It could be thought, though, that all normative pretensions for this discussion are undermined by Hume’s arguments for inductive

Naturalism, Scepticism, and Reductionism  37 scepticism at T 1.3.6 and EHU 4. Inductive inference is not justified a priori since we can conceive that ‘the course of nature may change, and that an object, seemingly like those which we have experienced, may be attended with different or contrary effects’ (EHU 4.18). Reliance on inductive inference must therefore be grounded in experience. It is not clear, though, how this can be so. Inductive inference relies upon our taking experienced regularities to be a good guide to the behaviour of objects that we have not yet experienced or that we will never experience. Such inference relies on the supposition that the course of nature will not change. Hume argues, though, that this supposition cannot be supported by the evidence of experience since this would ‘be evidently going in a circle, and taking that for granted, which is the very point in question’ (EHU 4.19). Inductive inference would not therefore seem to be justified and this is problematic for Hume’s discussion of miracles. The beliefs we have concerning the likely reliability of witness testimony are based on inductive inference and so we are not justified in believing in a reporter’s continued reliability. We also have no reason to take one course of events to be more likely than another and thus Hume cannot coherently use probabilities in his argument against miracles. This is the basis of C.D. Broad’s objection to Hume. I cannot see how Hume can distinguish between our variously caused beliefs about matters of fact, and call some of them justifiable and others unjustifiable….The [religious] enthusiast’s belief in miracles and Hume’s belief in natural laws (and consequent disbelief in miracles) stand on precisely the same logical footing. In both cases we can see the psychological cause of the belief, but in neither can Hume give us any logical ground for it. We see, then, that Hume is really inconsistent in preferring a belief in the laws of nature based on constant experience to a belief in miracles based on a love of the wonderful….On his own theories he has no right to talk about what we ought to believe as to matters of fact. For what we ought to believe means what we are logically justified in believing, and Hume has said that he can find no logical justification for belief about matters of fact.12 (Broad, 1916–17, 91–2) Throughout his works, though, Hume speaks as if there is a distinction between ways of thinking that are ‘justified’ and those that are not. Many passages, as Tom Beauchamp nicely puts it, ‘bristle[] with normativity’ (2008, 506).13 This is, of course, the tenor of the miracles essay, and belief in miracles is seen as unwarranted. The miracle at Saragossa that we discussed earlier was witnessed by Cardinal de Retz, and he ‘concluded, like a just reasoner, that such an evidence carried falsehood upon the very face of it, and that a miracle, supported by any human testimony, was

38  Naturalism, Scepticism, and Reductionism more properly a subject of derision’ (EHU 10.26; my italics). The ‘voice in the dark’ scenario appears in EHU and the Treatise and ‘[o]ne who concludes somebody to be near him, when he hears an articulate voice in the dark, reasons justly’ (T 1.4.4.1; my italics). Hume provides these striking examples but he also proposes a principled distinction between justified and unjustified ways of thinking. In the Treatise, he distinguishes philosophical probability, that grounded in causal reasoning, from sources of unphilosophical probability, such as beliefs acquired through indoctrination, mere repetition, and where the passions have had an undue effect on what we believe, perhaps through fear or wonder (T 1.3.13). In order to correct for such effects, the wise are able to apply ‘general rules’ that show, for example, that inductive reasoning is superior to indoctrination (T 1.3.13.12) and also ‘[r]ules by which to judge of causes and effects’ (T 1.3.15) that enable us to ‘distinguish the accidental circumstance from the efficacious causes’ (T 1.3.13.11). Such detail is omitted from EHU and in its place is one general rule: ‘a wise man… proportions his belief to the evidence’ (EHU 10.4) and it is plausible to read this as shorthand for the more detailed account in the Treatise.14 There are various interpretations of how inductive inference can still be seen as justified given Hume’s sceptical arguments in the Treatise and first Enquiry. One approach is the perspectivalist reading. The philosopher is barred from embracing inductive conclusions since the sceptical arguments cannot be defeated, but one is able to switch to the perspective of common life where epistemic standards are less exacting. Hume also distinguishes between the different kinds of reasoning that can be pursued in common life. There is the vulgar reasoning of the ‘peasant’ and the more sophisticated form of reasoning of the ‘artisan’. A broken watch can be explained by the ‘secret opposition of contrary causes’ (EHU 8.13), by, for example, there being a grain of sand in the mechanism. Such thinking is sometimes called ‘philosophical’ in common life, when, that is, thinkers take ‘slow and deliberate steps’ rather than the ‘precipitate march of the vulgar’ (DNR 2.17). Fogelin (1998), Paul Russell (2008, 209–10), and Bailey and O’Brien (2006) suggest such perspectivalist interpretations. It could be claimed that a perspectival switch is forced because scepticism is psychologically impossible to maintain and everyday beliefs are irresistible. John Passmore (1952, ch. 7) and Fred Wilson (1997), amongst others, offer such a reading. A distinct way of thinking of perspectival switches, however, is to see them not as forced, nor as the result of a practical decision, but as dependent on circumstance and our passiondriven engagement with or disengagement from intellectual activity. Intellectual curiosity led me to Book 1 of the Treatise and I could have found despair there, as did the young Hume (T 1.4.7.1). I struggled on for a while with the text, seeking the help of Kemp Smith and others…but became weary, put the Treatise down, opened a bottle of wine, and found

Naturalism, Scepticism, and Reductionism  39 myself—with the older Hume—relaxed and having switched perspective. The sceptical, philosophical perspective, though, is not banished for good, and for those with a certain mindset it has a siren song. I can work out what Hume had in mind, it’ll just take more study… Livingston (1998) gives a related description of the intellectual journey travelled by those who embrace mitigated scepticism. The ‘vulgar’ adopt a ‘common and careless way of thinking’ (T 1.4.3.9) and take themselves, for example, to really see the cue ball cause the red ball to move during a game of billiards. Philosophers do not take such appearances at face value and construct all kinds of philosophical systems to account for them: causal adequacy principles of which we can have a priori knowledge (Descartes), a God that intervenes on all such occasions (Malebranche), and a distinction between appearances and the substances lying behind (Locke). This for Hume is ‘false philosophy’ (T 1.4.3.9). His sceptical arguments aim to show that all such systems are unfounded, a ‘confusion of groundless and extraordinary opinions’ (T 1.4.2.56). The true philosopher does not rest in this newfound wisdom, confident that his findings are superior to the pretensions of his false namesakes. He cannot, since such scepticism is unliveable. Rather, he ‘return[s] back to the situation of the vulgar’ (T 1.4.3.9), now, as he says in the first Enquiry, with a ‘methodized and corrected’ way of thinking (EHU 12.25). ‘Corrected’, in that his encounter with scepticism has left him more careful in his everyday reasoning and more vigilant of his, sure to return, (false) philosophizing tendencies. However, what Hume calls ‘true philosophy’ (T 1.4.3.9) or ‘mitigated scepticism’ (EHU 12.24) demands careful reflection on our intellectual faculties and their operations, and the true philosopher is one who has followed Hume’s sceptical dialectic: ‘it is only when the entire domain of philosophical speech is reduced to silence that the mute authority of primordial participation can be heard’ (Livingston, 1998, 22). True philosophy involves careful inductive reasoning in the knowledge that traditional philosophical methods lead only to scepticism. Hume recommends a good dinner and a game of backgammon as a cure for the ‘philosophical melancholy and delirium’ brought on by scepticism (T 1.4.7.9). Backgammon itself is not a philosophical pursuit, but such pastimes are part of the true philosopher’s life, and the carefree rolling of the die is perhaps philosophical if we are aware that unconstrained philosophical reasoning threatens to undermine the beliefs upon which we base our life and actions. Again, though, it is not clear that this is a satisfying response to scepticism. There is no reason to prefer inductive inference to other forms of reasoning and thus no reason to prefer empirical science to divination or astrology. One merely switches perspective. To contemporary epistemologists, the shape of such an interpretation of Hume may be familiar. There are some similarities to contextualist accounts of knowledge,15 but

40  Naturalism, Scepticism, and Reductionism even if one finds such an approach persuasive, it would be anachronistic to attribute this to Hume. As Karen Durland says, Hume ‘gives no indication that he regards…radical skepticism as just one isolated position among several that might be adopted. He gives every indication that his doubts pose a serious, “across-the-board” problem for philosophy and common life’ (2011, 88). Distinct but also anachronistic interpretations of Hume are externalist or reliabilist ones. The basic idea is that inductive reasoning mediated by general rules is a reliable guide to truth, even if the sceptical arguments cannot be refuted. Beebee (2016) and Frederick Schmitt (2014) argue for this kind of interpretation of Hume. Such an account is suggested by Hume’s claim that there is ‘a kind of pre-established harmony between the course of nature and the succession of our ideas’ (EHU 5.21). There is, however, a teleological flavour to this claim and to this interpretation, one that is at odds with Hume’s general rejection of teleology. Perhaps, then, we should be suspicious of Hume’s talk of ‘pre-established harmony’. He goes on to say that ‘[t]hose, who delight in the discovery and contemplation of final causes, have here ample subject to employ their wonder and admiration’ (EHU 5.21) and that this harmony and the utility of our being able to infer ‘like effects from like causes, and vice versa’ are put down to ‘the ordinary wisdom of nature’ (EHU 5.22; my italics). Perhaps Hume’s surely ironic mention of ‘final causes’ and ‘wisdom’ suggest that ‘pre-established harmony’ should not be taken at face value. Further, as with the context-relativity of the perspectivalist interpretation, externalist readings are anachronistic. Externalism may now be common currency across epistemology, but, as Hsueh Qu puts it, it is not ‘even close to being on Hume’s radar’ and had he considered such an approach he would have likely found it implausible (2020, 136). Notice that the externalist interpretation is taken from claims explicitly made in EHU and this interpretation is then read back into the Treatise. Others have also found the move to EHU fruitful, and Qu (2020) and Peter Millican (2012) both offer persuasive readings of Hume’s response to scepticism based on claims made in this later work. Qu draws a distinction between antecedent and consequent scepticism. The former is the kind of scepticism presented in Descartes’s (1643) ‘First Meditation’ and Hume argues that this amounts to epistemic suicide from which one cannot recover. To be able to form any beliefs about the world and for the pursuit of any intellectual project whatsoever, our intellectual faculties must be allowed to have default authority. We must first accept the perceptual and testimonial beliefs we come to acquire from the world and those around us, and once we have acquired beliefs in this unrestrained way, we can then reflexively examine the intellectual faculties upon which we have relied. We can assess whether they are reliable and therefore whether we should continue to rely on them. Perception in general provides us with consistent beliefs about

Naturalism, Scepticism, and Reductionism  41 things close at hand and is thus deemed reliable, whereas the word of a priest concerning the constitution of the host at communion is inconsistent with our (provisionally reliable) perceptual evidence and also with evidence that the laws of nature continue to hold. Inductive inference, then, has consequent justification, whereas consequent scepticism is the correct attitude to take towards miracle-testimony. Qu calls such an approach ‘internalist reliabilism’ (2020, 179) as the reliability of beliefforming dispositions and faculties is measured against other faculties that we take to have default reliability rather than against an externally construed standard such as truth. Millican’s (2012) interpretation of Hume also avoids such externalist elements. Hume’s inductive scepticism, he argues, is directed at a Lockean perceptual model of reason according to which we attempt to perceive or apprehend objective, probabilistic connexions between experiences.16 We saw that Locke distinguishes between the understanding and the error-prone imagination, with the understanding being a quasi-perceptual faculty and reasoning seen in perceptual terms: ‘Knowledge then seems to me to be nothing but the perception of the connexion and agreement, or disagreement and repugnancy of any of our ideas’ (1689, 4.1.2). We directly perceive the evidential connections between ideas and in order to avoid the negative effects of association, methods of study should be designed that enable students to apprehend ideas and the connections between them clearly and distinctly (Locke, 1706a, §39). According to Hume, though, inductive inference cannot be justified in this way: there are no inferential connections to be seen since ‘in all reasonings from experience, there is a step taken by the mind, which is not supported by any argument or process of the understanding’ (EHU 5.2). In place of such ‘perceptual’ justification, Hume offers a naturalistic explanation of the custom of inductive reasoning and this, given the impossibility of any rational or perceptual foundations for such reasoning, provides us with all the support we require for inductive inferences. Millican summarizes his interpretation in this way: in the search for ultimate foundations, we hit rock bottom with something that has a cause but no foundation. And that is the tendency, rooted in our animal nature, to infer from past to future, from experienced to not-yet-experienced. This is radically different from the kind of perceptual foundation presupposed by traditional conceptions of reason….[This] position is very far from sceptical…. Hume sees very good reason to accept our faculty of inductive inference as it is (at least when suitably disciplined by general rules etc.), and no good reason to reject it. We have, indeed, no alternative, nor any compelling reason for desiring one. (2012, 90)

42  Naturalism, Scepticism, and Reductionism Whether or not Hume’s account of inductive reasoning is correct and whether or not it can provide an account of justification are not our main concerns here; what is of concern—given the aim of assessing the role played by induction in Hume’s account of testimony—is whether and how Hume thinks inductive inference is justified. As said, it is clear that he does draw a distinction between justified and unjustified kinds of inference—between, that is, what in the Treatise he calls philosophical and unphilosophical probability—but it is in EHU that he comes closest to providing grounds for this distinction. Inferences from past regularity— those upon which the argument concerning miracle-testimony depends— are not countenanced by ‘argument’ but ‘must be induced by some other principle of equal weight and authority; and that principle will preserve its influence as long as human nature remains the same’ (EHU 5.2). That principle, as Millican says, is our tendency to infer from past to future and this tendency has ‘equal weight and authority’ to that which we in vain try to find in reason and understanding. Scepticism dims the lights on poor forms of reasoning. Imagine them going down not smoothly, as one might turn a dimmer switch, but patchily, as lights might go out in a theatre after a show, first the stalls, then the circle, then the gods. These areas of the theatre correspond to different forms of reasoning, and individual seats in these areas correspond to beliefs arrived at via such ways of thinking: the stalls perhaps comprise beliefs that are the result of indoctrination, the gods, those arrived at by faith alone. When all the lights go out, though, it’s not completely dark; the red exit lights remain: inductive reasoning the exit from scepticism and such inductive reasoning, when regulated by general rules, comes to be seen as justified. One common feature of the interpretations of both Qu and Millican is that their Hume rejects a God’s-eye view from where the reliability of induction can be apprehended. We shall return to this theme in Chapter 6(§5). I shall claim there that there is no testimony-free perspective from which the reliability of testimony can be assessed.

2.4 Reductionist Epistemologies of Testimony The contemporary reductionism/anti-reductionism debate concerning the epistemology of testimony is portrayed by its protagonists as having its origins in the eighteenth century and the respective views of Hume and Thomas Reid.17 Hume is characterized as a reductionist, and the justification possessed by testimonially acquired beliefs is explained in terms of perception, memory, and inductive inference.18 I am justified in believing what Cato says because I have perceptual evidence that he regularly tells the truth, I remember his reliable record, and I can inductively infer that he is likely to continue to be reliable. This account of testimony is taken to be found in the miracles essay. Hume claims that our ‘assurance’ that

Naturalism, Scepticism, and Reductionism  43 someone speaks the truth ‘is derived from no other principle than our observation of the veracity of human testimony, and of the usual conformity of facts to the reports of witnesses’ (EHU 10.5). This account is evidentialist: the testimonial beliefs we acquire are those supported by empirical evidence concerning their likely truth, and Hume is seen as explaining trust in testimony in terms of his account of inductive reasoning: It being a general maxim, that no objects have any discoverable connexion together, and that all the inferences, which we can draw from one to another, are founded merely on our experience of their constant and regular conjunction; it is evident, that we ought not make the exception to this maxim in favour of human testimony, whose connexion with any event seems, in itself, as little necessary as any other. (EHU 10.5) Thus, ‘[t]he reason, why we place any credit in witnesses and historians, is not derived from any connexion, which we perceive a priori, between testimony and reality, but because we are accustomed to find a conformity between them’ (EHU 10.8). Here, then, we have the kind of inductive inference we saw earlier. In the past, we have seen how billiard balls react to collisions and the principle of causation leads us to expect them to continue to behave in this way. When we hear an articulate voice in the dark, the principle of causation leads us to expect that its source is a person, as it has been before. And we are similarly led to believe that Cato will continue to tell the truth. As a consequence of this evidentialist approach, the amount of trust we have in particular testimonial reports can vary, dependent on the kind of testimony offered and the reporters in question: as the evidence, derived from witnesses and human testimony, is founded on past experience, so it varies with the experience, and is regarded either as a proof or a probability, according as the conjunction between any particular kind of report and any kind of object has been found to be constant or variable. (EHU 10.6) Consequently, more evidence is required concerning the reliability of a speaker when the events in question are unlikely to have occurred, the prior probability of which we can assess according to the knowledge we have of the laws of nature, that derived from our experience of regularities in the world and in the behaviour of people. In the case of miracletestimony, any assurance that we have concerning the trustworthiness of the reporter is outweighed by the unlikeliness of the reported miracle and so trust in miracle-testimony is never appropriate.

44  Naturalism, Scepticism, and Reductionism This reductionist interpretation of Hume is standard in the literature. Jennifer Lackey, for example, takes Hume to be ‘the most well-known proponent of this view’ (2008, 142); Coady claims ‘[Hume’s] theory constitutes a reduction of testimony as a form of evidence or support to the status of a species…of inductive inference’ (1992, 79); Fogelin refers to the ‘Humean or inductive approach’ (2003, 89) and Mark Webb to ‘Humean reductionism’ (1993, 263). Elizabeth Fricker (1994, 2002), Schmitt (1987), McMyler (2011, 23–24), Alvin Goldman (2002, 173), and Shieber (2009) also interpret Hume in this way. This terminology has been widely adopted and the reductive approach to testimony has become synonymous with Hume. Fricker (1994) distinguishes between global and local reductionism.19 Global reductionists argue that there is good reason to trust testimony in general and trust in specific testifiers and their reports is derived from this global claim. Coady takes Hume to be committed to this kind of reductionism. ‘[T]he usual conformity of facts to the reports of witnesses’ (EHU 10.5) provides evidence that testimony is in general reliable and this evidence justifies beliefs in what particular speakers say or what is written. Coady (1992, 79–100) takes this to be Hume’s account of testimony, but he argues that it is hopeless. We have too little first-hand evidence of the reliability of speakers, whether this is evidence concerning particular individuals or types of speakers such as teachers or politicians. He also highlights what he sees as a ‘fatal ambiguity’ in Hume’s discussion (Coady, 1992, 80–5). It is not clear who Hume is referring to when he says that ‘our assurance…is derived from no other principle than our observation of the veracity of human testimony’ (EHU 10.5; my italics). He could be using ‘our observation’ in a rhetorical sense (Shieber, 2015, 63), referring to the experience of individuals: to his experience and how it grounds his assurance and to his reader’s experience and how it grounds their assurance. The particular examples that he uses, though, suggest that this is not what he intends. When speaking of ‘a uniform experience’ against resurrection, he is claiming not merely that he has not witnessed such an event but that this ‘has never been observed in any age or country’ (EHU 10.12; my italics). He is using ‘our’ observation in a ‘distributive’ (Shieber, 2015, 63), ‘pooled’ (Gelfert, 2010, 69), or ‘collective’ sense (Schmitt, 1987, 75n5): no-one has witnessed such an event. Similarly, the ‘firm and unalterable experience’ which has established the laws of nature is not the consistent experience of Hume himself but of people in general. Such a collective notion of experience is also required to underpin Hume’s explanation in the Treatise of why we attribute continued existence to aspects of the external world which we are not currently perceiving. Some of his examples can plausibly be seen as involving the consistent experience of an individual. The squeak Hume hears just before the porter appears is taken to be the squeak of a door, since, in the past, doors have made such a sound. Further, Hume takes it that the stairs are still in

Naturalism, Scepticism, and Reductionism  45 existence; otherwise, the porter would not have been able to arrive at his door (T 1.4.2.20). In this case, it is plausible that Hume would have enough experience of doors and staircases for him to be able to reason in this way. This may not be so, though, in the following case. I receive a letter, which upon opening I perceive by the hand-writing and subscription to have come from a friend, who says he is two hundred leagues distant. ’Tis evident I can never account for this phænomenon, conformable to my experience in other instances, without spreading out in my mind the whole sea and continent betwixt us, and supposing the effects and continu’d existence of posts and ferries, according to my memory and observation. (T 1.4.2.20) Hume was well travelled, but his first-hand experience of the global postal service would have been limited. It is not his own experience of the postal service that enables Hume to believe in the continued existence of his friend, but collective experience that Hume has acquired by testimony and the details of which might be quite sketchy. Wilson argues that our knowledge of the principles of causation also depends on such collective experience. We accept the principle that ‘[t]he same cause always produces the same effect, and the same effect never arises but from the same cause’ (T 1.3.15.6), but [t]he experience that supports the acceptance of this principle is not simply that of the investigator, the ‘artisan’, say, or the philosopher: it is indeed my experience that is relevant, but my experience is backed up by that of others—what is relevant is our experience, the experience of us taken collectively. (Wilson, 2010, 67) Coady, however, claims that ambiguity between the rhetorical and collective senses of ‘our experience’ undermines Hume’s account of testimony. Hume’s empiricism demands that his account of testimony relies on the experience of an individual, but the beliefs Hume takes us to acquire—concerning, for example, resurrection and the postal service— depend on the latter, collective notion. One cannot, though, depend on the latter notion without begging the question—without assuming, that is, that the testimony of others is reliable. This, Coady notes (1992, 99n10), was a criticism raised to Hume by his contemporary George Campbell. Campbell interrogates Hume’s claim that resurrections have not occurred by asking ‘what has been observed, and what has not been observed, in all ages and countries, pray how can you, sir, or I, or any man, come to the knowledge of? Only I suppose by testimony oral or written’ (Campbell, 1762, 33). Hume is simply assuming that all the

46  Naturalism, Scepticism, and Reductionism testimonial evidence is at odds with resurrection and that all such testimonial evidence is reliable. Coady’s argument is seen by many as fatal to such a Humean account of testimony, and Axel Gelfert concludes that ‘global reductionism…is regarded as a non-starter by most contributors to the debate’ (2014, 107). I shall consider two responses to this difficulty, and I shall focus not on whether a particular form of reductionism is defensible but on how Hume should be interpreted. One response is to see him as an anti-reductionist and I devote the next chapter to this suggestion, and I will also return there to Campbell’s criticism of Hume. Alternatively, one can interpret Hume as a local reductionist and I turn to this strategy first. Fricker draws a distinction between the developmental and mature phases of our epistemic life. In the developmental phase, as children (and perhaps throughout life, as we shall see below), we have no choice but to take much of what we believe about the world on trust: ‘Simply-trusted testimony plays an inevitable role in the causal process by which we become masters of our commonsense scheme of things’ (Fricker, 1995, 403). Consonant with her suggestion, Hume says that children ‘implicitly embrace every opinion propos’d to them’ (T 2.1.11.2). It is not required that testimonial beliefs be justified in the reductive way assumed by global reductionism, but once such default trust has established a coherent picture of how the world and other people work, then, as we enter the mature phase, there is an imperative to check the credentials of the testimony we hear or read for ourselves. And this we can do because: [o]n almost any actual occasion of testimony, a normally knowledgeable adult will be absolutely awash with relevant circumstantial evidence bearing on the question of whether the speaker is to be trusted on her topic. She will have, in the cognitive background in light of which she approaches fresh instances of testimony, a multitude of background beliefs about human and non-human nature which are relevant to whether this fresh instance of testimony, this current invitation to believe on trust in the teller, is indeed to be trusted or not. (Fricker, 2002, 381) The kind of default trust that is necessary in the developmental phase cannot be maintained since ‘[w]e know too much about human nature to want to trust anyone, let alone everyone, uncritically’ (Fricker, 1995, 401). Thus, in order for our testimonial beliefs to be justified, the hearer must always be monitoring the speaker critically. This is a matter of the actual engagement of a counterfactual sensitivity: it is true throughout of the hearer that if there were any signs of untrustworthiness, she would pick them up. (Fricker, 1994, 154)

Naturalism, Scepticism, and Reductionism  47 She should be looking for signs of intoxication, nervousness, and confusion and for twitching, lack of eye contact, and suchlike. Such monitoring need only be ‘registered and processed at an irretrievably sub-personal level’ (1994, 150). The justification acquired from such monitoring is local, concerning the particular speaker in question and the circumstances of their utterance; it does not require any commitment to the global claim that we are justified in believing testimony in general. Hume could therefore be seen as a local reductionist. The ambiguity in his use of ‘our observation’ and ‘our assurance’ would not then be fatal. The references to collective experience reflect beliefs acquired in the developmental phase, beliefs that can then be appealed to in the mature phase in order to validate the credentials of specific cases of testimony: evidence against resurrection, for example, can initially be taken on trust, whilst monitoring for deceit or error should occur with respect to miracle-reports in responsible, mature believers. Gelfert (2009), however, argues that local reductionism is unstable and that, in the end, the local reductionist has either to reject reductionism or embrace the sceptical claim that belief in testimony is not justified.20 He first suggests that ‘developmental’ phases occur throughout our epistemic lives: consider receiving training in a new academic field, acquiring expertise on a topic, learning a new language or technical vocabulary, or immersing oneself in a new cultural environment. In each of these cases, an agent will have to acquire new epistemic standards and criteria of trustworthiness, and one’s grounds for trusting the new testimony cannot be expected to reduce to previously acquired criteria and heuristics. (Gelfert, 2009, 185–6) The sharp line that Fricker attempts to draw between the developmental and mature phases cannot be drawn, but such a line is crucial to the local reductionist since it allows standards of trustworthiness to be taken on trust and insulated from the reductive constraints of the mature phase. Such standards need to be established in this way since, as Coady argues, an individual does not have enough experience on their own to justify the range of testimonial beliefs we take to be justified. If, however, such standards are those wholly established in the developmental phase, then, Gelfert goes on to say, this would ‘severely impair[] the possibility of rationally adjusting, in the light of warranted criticism and correction by others, one’s habitual response to testimony’ (2009, 189). We are, though, able to learn new standards and it’s not clear how the reductionist can account for this. It is important to note that Hume allows for the continual possibility of refining our epistemic standards concerning whom to trust and this

48  Naturalism, Scepticism, and Reductionism therefore puts pressure on local reductionist interpretations of Hume. We sometimes draw rash generalizations and apply misguided general rules. Having never met an Irishman with wit or mental agility (Hume’s example), we may infer that all Irishmen lack intelligence. Such a generalization concerning the Irish would lead to conflict when we meet an intelligent Irishman. Such prejudices, however, can be corrected by general rules of an epistemically superior kind (T 1.3.13.7). These are second-order judgments about the reliability of the various forms of reasoning in which we engage, what Kemp Smith calls ‘wider more reliable forms’ of custom (1941, 95). ‘Unphilosophical probability’ is therefore seen as standing in need of correction by ‘general rules’ or more philosophical ways of thinking. It is the ‘vulgar’ and uneducated who ‘carry all national characters to extremes; and having once established it as a principle, that any people are knavish, or cowardly, or ignorant, they will admit of no exception, but comprehend every individual under the same censure’ (E 197; ‘Of National Characters’). Hume, however, allows that the vulgar can be educated and that prejudices can be overturned. Deborah Boyle (2012, 170) suggests that trust in testimony could depend on a general rule that testimony is reliable, a rule that can then be tempered by other, more precise general rules when we discover kinds of cases where testimony should not be trusted. We may, for example, come to learn that priests are not to be trusted on moral matters and that certain people should be considered good judges when it comes to matters aesthetic. Such education is relevant to Gelfert’s argument against local reductionism since revision of our opinions is not something that we can always manage on our own. Initial faith in others is required; initial faith that is not confined to the developmental phase. To learn about wine, for example, and what makes for a good vintage, we need to trust in experts or wine connoisseurs and we need to trust those who tell us who those ‘true judges’ are. We need to trust those who testify that Jancis is a good judge of wine and we have, at first, to trust Jancis’s statements regarding the quality of a particular vintage and the flavours of which it is composed. In doing so, we come to acquire, through experience, ‘delicacy of taste’ along with a whole range of general rules concerning particular kinds of wine-testimony. We can, for example, come to be sceptical of the restaurant’s claim that their 1991 claret is outstanding or that this year’s Beaujolais nouveau will improve with age. Without the initial trust in Jancis, though, experience could not have equipped us with such refined abilities to assess this kind of testimony. This is precisely the kind of case Gelfert highlights as undermining local reductionism. The claim, then, is that the acquisition of epistemic standards relevant to different kinds of testimony is not restricted to childhood or to a time-limited developmental phase. Throughout our lives, we must at times be open to trust (in the absence of reductive evidence)

Naturalism, Scepticism, and Reductionism  49 in order to be receptive to testimony concerning new domains. This is at odds with local reductionism where trust is insulated in the developmental phase. As said, Gelfert concludes that local reductionism is unstable: we are caught between ‘blissful gullibility or thoroughgoing scepticism’ (2009, 190). It is implausible to offer a sceptical interpretation of Hume given that it is clear that he draws a distinction between testimony that should be trusted and that which should not—miracletestimony, of course, being a case of the latter. For Hume, though, the developmental phase border can be breached and default trust has a role in our epistemic maturity. This amounts to an embrace of antireductionism, to which we turn in the next chapter, and not blissful gullibility.

Notes 1 In O’Brien (2017c), I provide further discussion of Harris’s reading of Hume on religion and criticism of his resistance to the atheist interpretation of Hume. 2 Such atheist interpretations are developed by Russell (2008) and Bailey and O’Brien (2013). 3 See Greco and O’Brien (2019) for further discussion of Hume’s rejection of teleological thinking. 4 Also see Hume’s essay ‘Of the Immateriality of the Soul’ (E 590–8). 5 We shall turn to Hume’s naturalistic account of morality in Chapter 5. 6 For discussion of those who see association as a source of error, see O’Brien (2017a, 620–5). 7 We shall, however, consider a more positive role for resemblance in Chapter 4(§2) when we look at sympathetic belief. 8 That Hume widens the scope of associationism in this way is a point also stressed by Loeb (2002, 58; 2012, 325), Wright (1983, 153–4; 2009, 50), Laird (1932, 41), Aaron (1937, 141), Baier (1993, 38), Yolton (1993, 21–2), Aarsleff (1994, 269) and Taylor (2015a, 62–3). 9 See Garrett and Millican (2011) for discussion of Hume’s conception of reason. 10 See T 1.3.6, 1.4.1–2, 1.4.5–6. 11 The term ‘mitigated’ is taken from Hume’s treatment of scepticism in EHU. See Qu (2020) for discussion of the relation between Hume’s treatments of scepticism in the Treatise and EHU and his claim that Hume is more successful in the latter. 12 Stroud also puts it well: ‘As far as the competition for degrees of reasonableness is concerned, all possible beliefs about the unobserved are tied for last place’ (1977, 54). 13 Beauchamp specifically refers to passages where Hume criticizes the morality of the church and the monkish virtues (see Chapter 5(§4)), but Hume discusses a wider range of cases that bristle in the same way. 14 See D. Boyle (2012, 174). 15 See, for example, M. Williams (1991). 16 Also see Allison (2008, 6–8, 74) and De Pierris (2015, ch. 1) for criticism of the perceptual model of cognition. 17 Well-chosen collections on the epistemology of testimony and on the reductionism/anti-reductionism debate include Chakrabarti and Matilal (1994)

50  Naturalism, Scepticism, and Reductionism and Lackey and Sosa (2006). Gelfert (2014), Shieber (2015), McMyler (2011), and Lackey (2011) also provide up-to-date summaries. 18 We shall turn to Reid in Chapter 3(§1). 19 See Lackey (2008, 142–9) for discussion of the varieties of reductionism. For criticism of global reductionism, see Stevenson (1993) and Insole (2000). For criticism of local reductionism, see Weiner (2003). 20 Gelfert (2009) focuses on the contemporary reductionism debate and does not consider whether Hume should be seen as a local reductionist. We will consider Gelfert’s (2010; 2014, 119–22) interpretation of Hume in Chapter 3(§4).

3 Anti-Reductionism

In this chapter, I shall argue for an anti-reductionist interpretation of Hume.1 I turn first to two alternative versions of anti-reductionism (Section 3.1). These are contemporary accounts based on transcendental arguments concerning the likely truth of testimony and Thomas Reid’s teleological account of trust. Hume is opposed to any such a priori or teleological considerations. He does, though, approve of default trust in testimony and this is clear from his discussion of the testimony of history in the Treatise (Section 3.2). Such trust in the word of others enables Hume to have a collective notion of experience, and my experience consists in my own perceptual experience supplemented by the testimonial reports of others (Section 3.3). Inductive reasoning plays a role in determining who we trust, and I shall argue that inductive inference is compatible with anti-reductionism (Section 3.4). In Section 3.5, I return to the excision of the miracles discussion from the Treatise and its later inclusion in the first Enquiry. I argue that this has clouded two issues. First, Hume argues in EHU that miracle-testimony is not to be trusted and the focus on such a suspicious kind of testimony erroneously suggests the reductionist interpretation that all testimonial belief must be justified by positive reasons to think testifiers are reliable. This, I have argued, is not the case. Second, if one reinserts the discussion of miracles in its likely original home in the Treatise—in, that is, Hume’s discussion of philosophical and unphilosophical probability—then the normative dimension of this distinction is clearer than it might otherwise be, thus suggesting a normative rather than merely a descriptive reading of Hume’s discussion of probability and causal reasoning.

3.1 Transcendental and Teleological Anti-Reductionism Anti-reductionists take testimony to be a fundamental source of knowledge, alongside, and not reducible to, perception, inference, and memory. Testimony causally depends on perception and memory since we must hear what speakers say, see what is written, and remember what their words mean and whether speakers have been reliable in the past, but DOI: 10.4324/9780429266133-4

52 Anti-Reductionism justification for belief in testimony is not provided by inductive reasoning concerning the past reliability of speakers. Anti-reductionists are also called ‘fundamentalists’ (Graham, 2006), ‘credulists’ (Pritchard, 2006, 21), and ‘presumptive right’ theorists. Here is Fricker (1994, 125) articulating the approach: PR [Presumptive Right] thesis: On any occasion of testimony, the hearer has the epistemic right to assume, without evidence, that the speaker is trustworthy, i.e., that what she says will be true, unless there are special circumstances which defeat this presumption. Suggestive of anti-reductionism is what Coady calls the ‘phenomenology of learning’ (1992, 143). There may be times when we seem to weigh up the evidence for and against what someone says in the way the reductionist claims—and miracle-testimony is a good example of this—but this is not usually the case. Normally we just believe what people tell us. That this is a feature of the psychology of testimonial trust does not on its own entail epistemological anti-reductionism with respect to testimony. Antireductionists also argue that such trust is appropriate or justified. As we saw in Chapter 2(§4), local reductionists think that mature-stage beliefs are justified only if the requisite monitoring and assessment of standards occur, and such scrutiny is not required in the developmental phase. Antireductionists, however, take it that we have default justification in all cases of testimony. There are various proponents of anti-reductionism. Peter Strawson claims that ‘[i]f we (often) know, directly and immediately, what our eyes tell us, then we (often) know, no less directly and immediately, what other people tell us’ (1994, 27), and Michael Dummett agrees: ‘We need no particular reason to take things to be as others inform us that they are, save when we have some weaker contrary ground for not so taking them to be as we are told they are’ (1993, 265). Anti-reductionism is the most popular view in contemporary epistemology, although most take Hume to be a reductionist. Some contemporary anti-reductionists present transcendental arguments for default trust based on Donald Davidson’s (1984) claim that understanding others demands the assumption of rationality which itself relies on the assumption that the beliefs of others are mostly true and should therefore be trusted. Tyler Burge, for example, argues that intelligible propositions display rationality and are therefore prima facie credible: A person is apriori entitled to accept a proposition that is presented as true and that is intelligible to him, unless there are stronger reasons not to do so, because it is prima facie preserved (received) from a rational source, or resource for reason; reliance on rational sources—or resources for reason—is, other things equal, necessary to the function of reason. (1993, 467)

Anti-Reductionism  53 One problem with Burge’s approach is that it does not follow that a given piece of testimony is likely to be true, even if, as Burge claims, most of a rational thinker’s beliefs are true or that we are justified in assuming they are. Fricker puts this well: The great mass of a person’s beliefs which must mainly be true… concern what is too boringly obvious and familiar to be worth asserting. We only bother to say what is—relatively—surprising and controversial. Thus there is no implication from the truth-in-the-main of beliefs to truth-in-the-main of assertions. (1995, 410) Most beliefs may be correct, but it does not follow that most reported beliefs are correct. Fricker offers another consideration against anti-reductionism. According to her, anti-reductionists ‘dispense a hearer from the requirement to monitor and assess a speaker for trustworthiness’ (1995, 404): An arbitrary hearer H has the epistemic right, on any occasion of testimony O, to assume, without investigation or assessment, of the speaker S who on O asserts that P by making an utterance U, that S is trustworthy with respect to U. (1994, 144) For Fricker, though, responsible epistemic agents must monitor for defeaters—that is, for factors that may lead us to doubt the truth of testimony on particular occasions. It is our epistemic responsibility to be alert to such defeaters, and ‘she [the hearer] should be continually evaluating him [the speaker] for trustworthiness throughout their exchange’ (1994, 150). It is not the case, however, that anti-reductionists must dispense with the monitoring requirement. Burge says only that ‘a person is entitled to accept as true something that is presented as true that is intelligible to him, unless he has stronger reasons not to do so’ (1993, 467; my italics), and Matthew Weiner, also an anti-reductionist, that ‘[w]e are justified in accepting anything that we are told unless there is positive evidence against doing so’ (2003, 257; my italics). Their claim is only that we have default or prima facie justification, that which can be undermined or defeated in various ways. We are sensitive to indications of a speaker’s reliability, and their tone of voice, facial expressions, and body language may suggest that our trust would be misguided in a particular case. The justification we take testimony to have is therefore defeasible, and a distinction is sometimes drawn between psychological or doxastic defeaters and normative ones.2 The former are beliefs that indicate that testimony is likely to be false. One could come to discover that a certain reporter is an inveterate liar and

54 Anti-Reductionism thus the prima facie justification for believing what they say is undermined. The latter, normative defeaters, are doubts that one should have given the evidence available, even if one has not yet come to that conclusion. Coady’s ‘Martian argument’ (1992, 85–93) builds on the Davidsonian framework. We are to imagine that we are attempting to understand the testimonial reports of a group of previously unencountered Martians. The reductionist claims that we must look for empirical evidence concerning the truth of what they say and in this way we would identify which Martians are reliable and which can therefore be trusted. This, or so Coady argues, is not how such interpretation can proceed. Before we assess whether the Martians’ testimony is reliable, we must understand what their words and utterances mean and we cannot learn this in the empirical way suggested. We must assume that a certain Martian word means ‘cat’ when it is spoken in the presence of cats, and we can go on to assess whether they are reliable in their reports concerning cats. Without such an assumption, interpretation cannot get off the ground, but in making such an assumption, we must adopt an anti-reductionist reading of interpretation—at least, that is, an anti-reductionist interpretation of the first stage of coming to understand a group of thinkers who do not speak our language. I propose an anti-reductionist interpretation of Hume, but my arguments are distinct from those of Burge and Coady. Burge’s approach is profoundly anti-Humean. Burge, following Davidson, draws an a priori connection between rationality and truth. Such an inference is not available to Hume or it’s not one he would accept. Hume provides a naturalistic account of rationality that includes the canons of good causal reasoning mediated by general rules. We cannot know a priori that such rationality is likely to lead to true beliefs. The reductionist interpreter of Hume also does not have to be moved by Coady’s Martian argument. When learning a new language, one may at first have to take the meanings of words on trust. Once one has learnt a stock of meanings, one can go about assessing the reliability of speakers in the way suggested by reductionism. The initial trust that field linguists and children have in the meanings of the words they come to hear is not trust in testimonial utterances—which would require an anti-reductionist interpretation of testimony—but a practical attitude towards the task of interpretation. Without such a provisional assignment of meanings to words, the reductionist programme cannot get going. However, further down the path of interpretation, children and field linguists can come to learn that some testifiers are reliable and some are not and perhaps also that some of their initially assigned meanings were not correct. We find another kind of anti-reductionism at odds with central features of Hume’s philosophy in the work of Reid. Reid and Hume both place great importance in testimony. As we have seen, Hume claims that

Anti-Reductionism  55 ‘there is no species of reasoning more common, more useful, and even necessary to human life than that which is derived from the testimony of men, and the reports of eye-witnesses and spectators’ (EHU 10.5) and Reid that ‘we…receive the greatest and most important part of our knowledge by the information of others’ and that ‘she [reason, that is], finds a necessity of borrowing light from testimony, where she has none within herself’ (1764, 93, 96). As noted earlier, today’s debate concerning reduction in the epistemology of testimony is sometimes painted as reflecting the eighteenth-century views of Hume and Reid: Hume the reductionist, Reid the anti-reductionist. The Humean account is reductive in that testimonial justification is explained in terms of the justification provided by perception, memory, and inductive inference. Reid, however, has an anti-reductionist account: testimony is a basic form of knowledge alongside (and not reducible to) that provided by these other sources of justification. He argues that we should always accept someone’s testimony unless we have good reason to suspect that a particular report is false. He supports his claim by giving an account of certain aspects of human nature. First, there is a ‘principle of credulity’ and that is manifest in our ‘disposition to confide in the veracity of others, and to believe what they tell us’ (Reid, 1764, 95). That we possess such an innate disposition is suggested by the fact that trust appears strongest in children: ‘the principle of credulity…is unlimited in children, until they meet with instances of deceit and falsehood; and it retains a very considerable degree of strength through life’ (Reid, 1764, 95). Note that we now use ‘credulity’ to imply gullibility. This is not Reid’s intention. His claim is only that children are trusting and that they are right to be so, until, that is, they meet with deceit and falsehood.3 Second, Reid claims that credulity is justified because people are naturally disposed to speak the truth: [We have] a propensity to speak truth, and to use the signs of language, so as to convey our real sentiments….Truth is always uppermost, and is the natural issue of the mind. It requires no art or training, no inducement or temptation, but only that we yield to natural impulse. Lying, on the contrary, is doing violence to our nature. (1764, 94) Hume, according to the reductionist interpretation, has no preconceptions about the reliability of testimony; Reid, however, assumes that it is reliable. Empirical evidence therefore plays a different role in their respective accounts. For the Humean, empirical evidence of a speaker’s reliability provides you with justification for accepting their testimony. For Reid, empirical evidence plays only a negative role. If a speaker is found to be unreliable, then your justification—that which all testimony has a priori—is defeated.

56 Anti-Reductionism For Reid, the presumptive right to trust is justified by the co-ordination of these principles of human nature. Given that human beings are disposed to tell the truth, it is epistemically justified to have default trust in what they say. That these principles are the ‘gift of nature’ and the ‘natural issue’ of the mind is understood in teleological terms—in terms, that is, of how we were created by God, ‘[t]he wise and beneficent Author of Nature’ (Reid, 1764, 93). We have seen, then, two distinct motivations for anti-reductionism: Reid’s teleological world view and the transcendental arguments of contemporary anti-reductionists concerning rational constraints on interpretation and the need to take the meanings of alien utterances on trust. Neither of these approaches could inform an antireductionist interpretation of Hume given his hostility towards teleological and a priori considerations. Thus, in the rest of this chapter, I shall suggest a distinct motivation for interpreting Hume as an anti-reductionist, one that is opposed to the reductive view that is labelled ‘Humean’ in the contemporary debate.

3.2 The Testimony of History History consists of testimony concerning the past, and the testimony of history plays a key role in Hume’s account of human nature and in my anti-reductionist interpretation of Hume on testimony. We saw in Chapter 1(§3) how Hume used his History of England as a vehicle for ridiculing miracles, and in Chapter 5(§2) we shall turn to its role in moral education. Hume’s history is taken to be a philosophical history and this implies a corrective to a once prevalent view of the arc of Hume’s career, one in which he essentially abandoned philosophy after the Treatise and instead turned to popular writing. Hume’s History was certainly popular—it was the book that made Hume’s reputation, becoming the best-selling history book published in Britain prior to Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire—and earlier we came across the claim of Selby-Bigge concerning the essay on miracles and his speculation that this was only included in the first Enquiry to court controversy and improve sales. Everything postTreatise is seen by some as impure, tainted with ambition and marketing strategy. To see the History as ‘philosophical’, however, is to see it as continuous with the concerns of the Treatise. Indeed, some see the History of England ‘as the culmination and crowning glory of Hume’s career as a philosophical analyst of the age in which he lived’ (Harris, 2007, 336). History provides us with knowledge of events that occurred in the past but also of the characters, foibles, and thoughts of those who lived through such events and brought them about. History thus informs our account of human nature and therefore contributes to our assessments of who we take to be trustworthy. The relation between our engagement with history and the knowledge we have of our contemporaries is holistic. The actions of those in the past enable us to make inferences

Anti-Reductionism  57 concerning how people will continue to act today, but contemporary evidence of human nature can also be used to interpret the past. Margaret Watkins (2019, 58) notes that Hume’s speculations in the essay ‘Of the Populousness of Ancient Nations’ (E 377–464) concerning primitive battle practices and rates of reproduction are based on what we know of human nature and not on historical documents or excavations, and such knowledge is acquired both from other episodes in the past and from the present. Thus, Hume’s history was philosophical, but also conjectural, in the sense spelt out by Dugald Stewart: We are under a necessity of supplying the place of fact by conjecture…. In such inquiries, the detached facts which travels and voyages afford us, may frequently serve as land-marks to our speculations: and sometimes our conclusions a priori may tend to confirm the credibility of facts, which, on a superficial view, appeared doubtful or incredible. (1980, 293) Further, in the Treatise and in its treatment of historical testimony, we start to find evidence for anti-reductionism. At Treatise 1.3.4.2, Hume introduces the belief that Caesar was killed in the Senate House on the Ides of March. This is a testimonial belief, one passed to us down a very long train of transmission. Hume, though, seems to highlight an epistemic problem with such historical belief. To assess the plausibility of such a claim, it could be thought that we need to assess the reliability of each link in the testimonial chain, each assessment providing a probability concerning, for example, ‘the fidelity of printers and copyists’. However, ‘[e]very new probability diminishes the original conviction’ and this consideration of the ‘millions’ of links in the chain would lead to it being the case that the evidence of all ancient history must now be lost; or at least, will be lost in time, as the chain of causes encreases, and runs on to a greater length….If belief consisted only in a certain vivacity, convey’d from an original impression, it wou’d decay by the length of the transition, and must at last be utterly extinguish’d[.] (T 1.3.13.4) Locke makes a similar point: ‘Any Testimony, the farther off it is from the original Truth, the less force and proof it has’ (1689, 4.16.10). There are various interpretations of what Hume intends here. Elizabeth Anscombe (1973) takes Hume to be highlighting sceptical concerns. On a reductive account, such a belief concerning Caesar can be justified only if one has knowledge of the historical chain of transmission and if one can assess the reliability of each of its links. It is, however, highly unlikely that we can do this and thus we are led to scepticism concerning history. This, Anscombe argues, undermines Hume’s account of belief in history since,

58 Anti-Reductionism first, such scepticism is incredible and, second, Hume would be attempting to answer scepticism about Caesar by appealing to links in a chain of testimony for which we have even less evidence. Fogelin (2009) has a different interpretation of this passage. He focuses on Hume’s claim that [t]here is no variation in the steps [in, that is, the links in the testimonial chain]. After we know one, we know all of them; and after we have made one, we can have no scruple as to the rest. This circumstance alone preserves the evidence of history. (T 1.4.13.6) Usually, when we read history, we do not consider all the links in the relevant testimonial chains and that is epistemically acceptable since most of these proofs [of the reliability of the links in the chain] are perfectly resembling, the mind runs easily along them, jumps from one part to another with facility, and forms but a confus’d and general notion of each link. (T 1.3.13.6) We conflate links, skip over some, and, if we think of them at all, we think of them in somewhat vague and imprecise terms. According to Fogelin, such casual assessment of the provenance of historical belief protects us from scepticism: ‘It seems, then, that beliefs in remote past events are preserved only because we become fuddled when we think of how they have been handed down to us’ (Fogelin, 2009, 35).4 Livingston suggests a third interpretation. As said, when reading history, we do not often assess the links in the testimonial chain, at least not in a dedicated and methodical manner. Rather, Livingston says, our belief in the existence of Caesar is grounded in a fundamental belief in the historians who have written the book we are reading and not in a conclusion reached by inference through the links in a chain of record. (1974, 17) We assume that historical chains of transmission have been in the main reliable: Belief in recorded history is on the whole a belief that there has been a chain of tradition of reports and records going back to contemporary knowledge; it is not a belief in the historical facts by an inference that passes through the links of such a chain. (Livingston, 1974, 14)

Anti-Reductionism  59 Fogelin takes Hume’s claim concerning how we ‘run…easily through links in the chain’ to indicate our casual epistemic assessment of the evidence. Livingston, however, claims that ‘[w]hen Hume speaks of “passing thro’ all the intermediate space betwixt ourselves and the object”, he does not mean that we must methodically infer our way through it as a condition of our knowing the object but, rather, that the idea of the intermediate space is entailed in the idea of the object’ (1974, 18). When we read a text as a history book, we take there to be a testimonial chain of transmission, and our default position—unless something raises our suspicions—is to take this chain to be reliable. Livingston’s ‘fundamental belief in the historians who have written the book’ (1974, 17; my italics) should be read as a default account of testimonial trust, one in which we should trust testimony unless we have specific reasons not to. This suggestion will be supported by consideration of collective experience in the next section and by the anti-foundationalist reading of Hume presented in Chapter 6(§5). For any anti-reductionist account of testimony, there arises the problem of gullibility and this is also the case with respect to the testimony of history. There is, however, a distinction between default acceptance of testimony and gullibility. Anti-reductionist accounts need not engender the latter—that is, if there are mechanisms to alert us to when our default trust in testimony should be overridden. Hume has just such resources. We can discover red flags that prompt us to look more closely at certain links in the testimonial chain, a proviso noted by Michael Welbourne (2002, 421): ‘If previous experience triggers suspicion about some particular testimony we abandon the default mode of response and in fact begin to behave, as in these circumstances we should, more like jurors or historians’.5 We therefore learn to be selective concerning which historical testimonies we trust. Suspicions are raised, as we have seen in the limit case of miracles, when reported events are objectively unlikely. According to Hume, there has never been reported testimony of such impeccable provenance that could support belief in events as unlikely as miracles, regardless of whether there are many links in the chain of testimonial transmission or just one. It is also the case that contradictions between different historical testimonies entail that at least one of those testimonies must be false. Hume notes, for example, that Diodorus Siculus’s narration contradicts those of Xenophon and Demosthenes (E 422n123; ‘On the Populousness of Ancient Nations’), and he highlights various inconsistencies in reported population numbers throughout his ‘Ancient Nations’ essay. Numbers included in written testimony are more apt to include mistakes since ‘[a]ny alteration, in other places, commonly affects the sense or grammar, and is more readily perceived by the reader and transcriber’ (E 421). In relation to testimony concerning quantitative matters such as population estimates, such error is so rife that ‘[n]o attention ought ever to be given to such loose, exaggerated calculations, especially where the author does not tell us the mediums, upon which the

60 Anti-Reductionism calculations were founded’ (E 425). Last, Hume claims that ‘[i]t is dangerous to rely upon writers who deal in ridicule and satyr’ (E 414n100), which is somewhat ironic given Hume’s own use of such registers, although I suspect the irony is not intended.

3.3 Collective Experience In Chapter 2(§4), I considered Coady’s claim that Hume loosely talks of ‘our assurance’ and ‘our observation’ without specifying just what ‘our’ refers to. It could be taken rhetorically, as referring to Hume’s experience and his reader’s experience, or it could be taken collectively. Coady takes the latter interpretation to be indefensible as this, he says, would involve Hume begging the question; that is, Hume would be assuming that the testimony of others is uniform and reliable. I argue, though, that Hume can embrace a collective notion of observation and thus avoid ‘fatal ambiguity’ in his use of the phrase ‘our observation’. That he thinks of experience in collective terms is suggested by his claim in the first Enquiry that ‘books and conversation enlarge…the sphere of one man’s experience’ (EHU 9.5n20), a claim that also appears in his earlier essay ‘Of the Study of History’ (E 563–68): if we consider the shortness of human life, and our limited knowledge, even of what passes in our own time, we must be sensible that we should be for ever children in understanding, were it not for this invention, which extends our experience to all past ages, and to the most distant nations; making them contribute as much to our improvement in wisdom, as if they had actually lain under our observation. A man acquainted with history may, in some respect, be said to have lived from the beginning of the world, and to have been making continual additions to his stock of knowledge in every century. (E 566–7) The same point is suggested in the History of England in Hume’s account of the character of Sir Thomas More and of the murder of Princes Edward and Richard in 1483: No historian, either of ancient or modern times, can possibly have more weight: He may also be justly esteemed a contemporary with regard to the murder of the two princes. For though he was but five years of age when that event happened, he lived and was educated among the chief actors during the period of Richard: And it is plain, from his narrative itself, which is often extremely circumstantial, that he had the particulars from the eye-witnesses themselves: His authority, therefore, is irresistible; and sufficient to overbalance a hundred little doubts and scruples and objections. (H 3.465)

Anti-Reductionism  61 This repeated claim allows me to offer an anti-reductionist reading of passages in Hume that are usually and naturally read as reductionist, such as the following: ‘our assurance in any argument of this kind is derived from no other principle than our observation of the veracity of human testimony, and of the usual conformity of facts to the reports of witnesses’ (EHU 10. 5; my italics). The reductionist takes this principle to apply to all cases of testimony, and she takes ‘observation of the veracity of human testimony’ to mean observation of constant conjunctions between facts and testimonial reports. This reading is also supported by Hume’s claim, noted earlier, that ‘[t]he reason, why we place any credit in witnesses and historians, is not derived from any connexion, which we perceive a priori, between testimony and reality, but because we are accustomed to find a conformity between them’ (EHU 10.8). First, though, it should be noted that this statement is made in the context of miracles and thus, as I have argued, this red flag can trigger reductionist considerations in this kind of case, without also demanding commitment to reductionism across the board. Second, the anti-reductionist can take ‘our observation’ in the collective sense. Trust in history allows us to see, as it were, through other people’s eyes and in this way we are able to assess the trustworthiness (and mendacity) of other people. Such evidence can then be supplemented by our own (private) experience of when testimony is likely to be reliable. There is further textual evidence to consider that may help us to judge what exactly Hume had in mind by ‘our observation’ and this is in the form of Hume’s own reply to the accusation that his wording is ambiguous and misleading. Campbell, in A Dissertation on Miracles (1762), argues that testimony could support belief in miracles and section 2 of this work is entitled ‘Mr Hume charged with some fallacies in his way of managing the argument’. He suggests that one of these fallacies lies in Hume’s phrase ‘our experience’: Hume, Campbell says, ‘uses the term experience in proposing his argument; in prosecuting it, he, with great dexterity, shifts the sense, and, ere the reader is apprised, insinuates another’; ‘he all along avails himself of ambiguity in the word experience’ (Campbell, 1762, 32–3, 39–40). Campbell distinguishes ‘personal’ experience and ‘derived’ experience, that acquired from testimony, and, according to him, the latter should not be discounted, as it is by Hume, when its content is out of line with what are taken to be the laws of nature. Campbell is an anti-reductionist, seeing testimony as one of the ‘original grounds of belief’ (1762, 24) alongside perception. Blair sent Campbell’s manuscript to Hume and Hume returned his thoughts in a letter to Blair. With respect to the accusation of ambiguity, Hume attempts to clarify his position: ‘No man can have any other experience than his own. The experience of others becomes his only by the credit which he gives to their testimony; which proceeds from his own experience of human nature’ (LDH 1.349). The first sentence is clear. I cannot literally

62 Anti-Reductionism have the experiences of others.6 There is another sense, though, in which we can be said to have the experiences of another and that is when we accept their testimony. Hume does say that the experience ‘becomes his’ (my italics); that is, my experience is enlarged by the testimony of others. The question, then, concerning whether Hume is a reductionist or an anti-reductionist can be assessed according to how we interpret Hume’s claim that the credit given to testimony ‘proceeds from his own experience of human nature’. Since Campbell was an anti-reductionist, Hume’s letter, contra my interpretation, could suggest that Hume is here highlighting his reductionist credentials: his ‘own experience of human nature’ constituted by his personal experience of others. This would be to reduce Campbell’s ‘derived experience’ to ‘personal experience’. Such a reading, though, is not compulsory. There is also an anti-reductionist reading. My ‘own experience’ could include things that I have read and learnt from others, as we saw suggested above in Hume’s claims concerning how ‘books and conversation enlarge…the sphere of one man’s experience’ and how history ‘extends our experience to all past ages’. Read in this way, Hume’s reply to Campbell (by way of Blair) is not a reductionist retort to the accusation of ambiguity but rather a clarification that makes clear his anti-reductionist credentials. On such an interpretation, the views of Campbell and Hume are closer than they might appear: they both adopt an anti-reductionist approach to testimony, although they differ concerning how anti-reductionism applies to miracle-testimony. Hume is critical of Campbell’s openness to such testimony, but, relevant to my interpretation of Hume’s reply, he does not seem to dismiss Campbell’s theory of testimony, wishing that Campbell ‘had endeavoured to establish his principles in general, without any reference to a particular book or person’ (LDH 1.349). This could be taken as indicative of Hume’s acceptance of anti-reductionism in general, just not the claims made in the Bible (a ‘particular book’) concerning, for example, miracle-testimony. There is a weary tone to Hume’s letter but no engagement with Campbell’s accusation of ambiguity beyond the two quoted sentences above. This is because Hume finds Campbell ‘a little too zealous for a philosopher’ and admits to not enjoying talking about religion with his clergyman friend Blair: when the conversation was diverted by you [Blair]…towards the subject of your profession; tho I doubt not but your intentions were very friendly towards me, I own I never received the same satisfaction: I was apt to be tired, and you to be angry. (LDH 1.351) Hume’s letter to Blair could be seen as a problem for my anti-reductionist interpretation. One could, for example, accept that Hume acknowledges a collective notion of experience, but only if the experiences of

Anti-Reductionism  63 others can be deemed trustworthy on the basis of personal experience. This is a natural reading of Hume’s claim that ‘[t]he experience of others becomes his only by the credit which he gives to their testimony; which proceeds from his own experience of human nature’. Further, Hume claims that ‘the youthful propensity to believe…is corrected by experience’ (LDH 1.349) and such ‘correction’ could be seen as involving one’s mature, personal experience of human nature. In the next section, though, I shall draw a distinction between reductionism and induction-informed anti-reductionism that enables me to resist such readings and to emphasize the role of inductive reasoning in relation to testimonial trust in the context of my anti-reductionist interpretation of Hume.

3.4 Anti-Reductionism and Inductive Inference I am not alone in resisting the reductionist interpretation of Hume, and in this section I shall consider the views of some other anti-reductionists and critics of reductionism. This will enable me to highlight the distinctive nature of my anti-reductionist interpretation, distinguish between reductionism and induction-informed anti-reductionism, and in so doing identify one source of the reductionist error. Paul Faulkner (1998) and Axel Gelfert (2010) stress that reductionists place too much emphasis on the reliability of particular speakers. In contrast, they focus on the usually two-stage nature of trust. First, we acquire evidence concerning facets of human nature: it is ‘our experience of the governing principles of human nature, which gives us any assurance of the veracity of men’ (T 1.3.9.12). Second, it is this knowledge that we put to use on particular occasions, to explain both how testimonial beliefs are acquired and why we are justified in trusting some sources of testimony and not others: Were not the memory tenacious to a certain degree; had not men commonly an inclination to truth and a principle of probity; were they not sensible to shame, when detected in a falsehood; Were not these, I say, discovered by experience to be qualities, inherent in human nature, we should never repose the least confidence in human testimony. A man delirious, or noted for falsehood and villany, has no manner of authority with us. (EHU 10.5) The same point is made in the Treatise: ‘moral evidence…[is] a reasonable foundation’ for belief in testimony, and moral evidence is nothing but a conclusion concerning the actions of men, deriv’d from the consideration of their motives, temper and situation. Thus when we see certain characters or figures describ’d

64 Anti-Reductionism upon paper, we infer that the person, who produc’d them, would affirm such facts, the death of Caesar, the success of Augustus, the cruelty of Nero; and remembering many other concurrent testimonies we conclude, that those facts were once really existent, and that so many men, without any interest, wou’d never conspire to deceive us; especially since they must, in the attempt, expose themselves to the derision of all their contemporaries, when these facts were asserted to be recent and universally known. (T 2.3.1.15) Such facets of human nature and the general rules concerning testimonial trust that are derived from them are, I argue, ‘discovered by experience’, both in the personal sense and in the collective sense, often through history. History provides ‘so many collections of experiments’ by which we can come to account for human nature ‘in the same manner as the physician or natural philosopher becomes acquainted with the nature of plants, minerals, and other external objects’, ‘furnishing us with materials, from which we form our observations’ (EHU 8.7; my italics). Trust in history should not, of course, be blind, and Hume details defeaters to which we should be sensitive. As we saw in Chapter 1(§3), Hume says that we should be wary of testimony given by those of a doubtful character; when they have an interest in what they affirm; when they deliver their testimony with hesitation, or on the contrary, with too violent asseverations. There are many other particulars of the same kind, which may diminish or destroy the force of any argument from human testimony. (EHU 10.7) Note, though, that knowledge of such defeaters is also something that can be acquired through trust in history. Gelfert’s (2010) interpretation of Hume is similar to mine in various ways. He argues that focusing on the first Enquiry distorts our interpretation of Hume on testimony, and he draws more widely on Hume’s works to support his interpretation. He also responds to Coady’s accusation of ambiguity by taking Hume to see experience in a collective or ‘pooled’ sense. Such collective experience supports his claim, in a later work, that a hearer can draw on his background knowledge of human nature and the social world—much of it itself due to testimony—and in many cases can simply trust his tacit understanding of the various practices of giving and receiving information. (Gelfert, 2014, 122)

Anti-Reductionism  65 Collective experience, that which provides us with knowledge of human nature, is acquired ‘simply through immersion in the social world’ (Gelfert, 2010, 71). Gelfert thus argues that the received, (global) reductionist view ‘is inaccurate at best, and misleading at worst’ (2010, 60). He holds back, though, from an anti-reductionist interpretation and suggests that Hume’s view ‘may be closest’ to local reductionism, a claim that I rejected in Chapter 2(§4) on the grounds that Hume allows for the continual possibility of refining our epistemic standards and that he does not accept that a sharp line can be drawn between developmental and mature phases of trust in testimony upon which the local reductionist approach depends.7 It is important to be clear on the relation between reductionism, antireductionism, and inductive inference. The reductionist claims that I am justified in accepting someone’s testimony if I have empirical evidence that their testimony is likely to be true. This empirical evidence must also be seen as non-testimonial. I have argued that Hume should not be interpreted in this way. Inductive inference, though, can still play an important role in testimonial exchanges and testimonial trust. Our background theory of human nature is acquired through inductive inference, although the ‘experiences’ from which the inferences are drawn should not be limited by an individualistic conception of the experiential evidence. We have personal experience of human nature and we have, via testimony, the experiences of others. Such collective experience of testimonial practice and human nature results in our believing, via inductive inference, what most people say most of the time, but it also enables us to assess particular cases of testimony when the need arises, applying probabilistic assessments drawn from inductive inferences. It can be assumed that only reductionism allows for the role played by inductive inference in testimonial trust. Millican (2011, 156–8), for example, accepts that ‘Hume has no need to dispute the claim that we must start by taking testimony for granted to build our knowledge of the world’ (2011, 158), but sees this as compatible with the reductionism that must be adopted given the role played by induction in Hume’s discussion of miracles, that which is described by the reductionist-sounding claims discussed above. I have argued, however, that inductive inference is compatible with anti-reductionism. Reductionism with respect to testimony is the claim that the trust we place in others is justified in virtue of an individual’s perceptual experience of the reliability of speakers. For Hume, though, the evidential base for inductive inference can include collective experience and so inductive inference can also play important roles in an anti-reductionist epistemology of testimony. Traiger and Welbourne also reject the reductionist interpretation of Hume. Their arguments, though, are distinct in certain ways from mine and from those of each other, although much of our outlook is shared. In

66 Anti-Reductionism the passages from the first Enquiry that suggest reductionism, Welbourne claims that Hume ‘writes carelessly’ or ‘carelessly assumes’ that his inductive account of belief formation concerns all factual beliefs (2002, 407). Hume is ‘so beguiled’ (2002, 413) by his account of inductive inference that he takes it to apply universally and also therefore to testimonial beliefs. Welbourne claims, though, that we do not have the requisite inductive evidence concerning the likely truth of particular testimonial statements. One kind of case upon which he focuses is that of testimony concerning things radically unfamiliar, claims for which there is no track record. Thus, argues Welbourne, Hume’s ‘idea must be that we have learnt to associate testimony as such with reality’ (Welbourne, 2002, 413) and this is something an individual can do: ‘each of us learns from experience that people have this inclination [to truth and probity]’ (2002, 419). This may sound like the claim of a global reductionist, but it is not. When he talks of learning from experience, he is not referring to induction based on constant conjunctions between antecedently understood utterances and our experience that what they refer to is indeed the case. He is referring to our original acquisition of language as children and how we come to learn that some kinds of sounds are testimonial utterances and, at the same time, that such speech acts aim at the truth: ‘The central thought is that…I have become accustomed to associate testimony as such with reality as such, and thus, through experience, I have acquired a general propensity to believe what I am told’ (2001, 84). Testimony, then, should be seen as sui generis, as a kind of evidence that we learn to utilize when we acquire language and, in particular, when we learn to understand the practice of giving testimony. As we saw in Chapter 2(§4), though, local reductionists allow default trust in the developmental phase—which is the crucial phase for Welbourne in establishing the sui generis character of testimony—but insist on inductive standards of assessment for testimony in the mature phase, with inductions based on non-testimonial evidence. I agree that testimony has to be taken on trust by children, but this can also be the case in the mature phase. My account, though, also has the advantage of taking seriously Hume’s inductive-sounding claims concerning testimony and not seeing them, as Welbourne does, as being careless. Induction does play a role in the assessment of testimony and in justifying the acceptance of particular cases of testimony on particular occasions or in undermining the default justification we take other claims to have. Inductive inference is compatible with an anti-reductionist account since inductive inferences can be made on the basis of non-individualistically characterized (testimonial) evidence. When Hume refers to ‘our’ assurance, observation, or experience, he refers to experience in the collective, pooled sense and not the perceptual experience of an individual. Welbourne further claims that ‘Hume has no theory of testimony, properly so-called; hence not even a bad theory. Rather, he takes the

Anti-Reductionism  67 practice of testimony for granted as a highly familiar source of beliefs and does not enquire into its mechanism’ (2002, 410). There is some truth to these claims, and, as I said in the Introduction, Hume does not explicitly spell out an epistemology of testimony. Welbourne backs up his claim that Hume does not have a theory of testimony by suggesting that such a theory should provide both an explanation of the mechanism by which testimonial beliefs are transmitted and also an account of how testimonial utterances are distinguished from other speech acts, those which we may not have the propensity to believe, such as surmising or suggesting. Hume, though, does provide at least schematic explanations of both features of testimony. In the Caesar passage discussed above, the testimonial utterance concerning Caesar’s murder is given as an example of a belief grounded in causal inference. Second, it is not the case, as Welbourne claims, that ‘Hume is entirely silent’ on the distinction between testimonial ‘tellings’ and other speech acts (2002, 415). Hume discusses the difference between taking a text as a history or as fiction, one he grounds in the distinct experiences associated with each, although his account of the phenomenology of reading does not chime with many serious readers of fiction:8 [The reader of history] has a more lively conception of all the incidents. He enters deeper into the concerns of the persons: represents to himself their actions, and characters, and friendships, and enmities: He even goes so far as to form a notion of their features, and air, and person. While the former [the reader of a fictional romance], who gives no credit to the testimony of the author, has a more faint and languid conception of all these particulars; and except on account of the style and ingenuity of the composition, can receive little entertainment from it. (T 1.3.7.8) Traiger also rejects the reductionist interpretation of Hume, although I do not find his diagnosis of the cause of the reductionist error persuasive. Traiger argues that reductionism follows from the assumption that Hume’s empiricism is individualistic. One reason for taking Hume to be committed to individualism is his emphasis on the copy principle and the claim that all ideas have their origin in impressions that an individual has experienced for themselves (Traiger, 1993, 136–7). Traiger claims, however, that such individualism (and the reductionism taken to follow from it) is derived from ‘a misreading of Hume’s texts, specifically a limited and individualistic interpretation of Hume’s texts, specifically a limited and individualistic interpretation of Hume’s theory of ideas’ (Traiger, 2010, 44). Traiger’s claim is not just that reductionism is compatible with individualism or that it is motivated by it, but that ‘[t]he only grounds for excluding the non-reductionist position from

68 Anti-Reductionism Hume is that it is incompatible with his theory of ideas and his account of causal inference’ (2010, 48; my italics). Traiger therefore offers a distinct interpretation of Hume’s theory of ideas, one that is not individualistic and one that is compatible with an anti-reductionist reading of Hume on testimony. Abstract ideas are not grounded in impressions of such abstractions, and beliefs in persisting objects and persons are not grounded in impressions of such enduring things. All such ideas are the result of mechanisms of the imagination, and Traiger argues that these processes of the imagination are described by Hume in non-individualistic, social terms. The word ‘triangle’ is associated, not with an abstract idea but, as we saw in Chapter 2(§2), with a ‘revival set’ of particular ideas of triangles, each of which has its origin in an impression of a particular triangle. Traiger claims that to have an abstract idea is not to have such an idea before the mind but ‘to possess the disposition to apply a socially learned linguistic expression in an appropriate manner’ (2010, 50). Social factors are also relevant to our belief in enduring things and objects. The constancy in my impressions of a mountain through the window of a train causes the mind to feign the ‘fiction’ of its continued existence when I enter a tunnel and the impression of it drops from my mind. Traiger speculates that Hume modelled his account here on the social process of feigning in the context of legal practice, or at least the similarity between the kind of feigning in both cases is ‘striking’ (2010, 52–3). Thus, Traiger claims, ‘[i]f my interpretation of the general outlines of Hume’s use of abstraction and fictions is correct, then Hume isn’t required to treat experience as individual sense-experience purified of reference to other persons’ (2010, 54), and so the way is clear for an anti-reductionist interpretation of Hume on testimony.9 I think Traiger is right about anti-reductionism, but for the wrong reasons. First, as Traiger himself notes, there is no direct evidence that Hume had legal fictions in mind in the context of abstract ideas. Second, given Hume’s development of a basically Lockean anatomy of the mind, Traiger needs to do more to show that Hume does not hold a private language conception of the meaning of words and ideas. Such a conception is clear in Locke since his discussion of simple ideas opens with the claim that ‘all Words…signify nothing…but the Ideas in the Mind of the Speaker’ (1689, 3.4.1). Third, Traiger’s social reading provides an account of the meaning or content of abstract ideas and ideas of enduring objects, and his claim is that this account presupposes the existence of other people and the social relations between them. The reductionism/anti-reductionism debate, though, concerns whether and how we are justified in trusting testimony, and a social account of meaning does not entail a social account of epistemology. It may be the case, as Traiger argues, that ideas of enduring mountains and triangles (in the abstract) depend on social factors, but this does not rule out the possibility that our trust in

Anti-Reductionism  69 testimony concerning such things is grounded in evidence wholly accumulated by an individual. In terms of contemporary analytic philosophy, my claim is that cognitive externalism does not entail epistemological externalism. I do not therefore find Traiger’s diagnosis of the cause of the reductionist error persuasive. Hume is an anti-reductionist. He does not demand that testimonial trust relies on an individual’s perceptual evidence that speakers have been reliable. Induction, though, still plays an important role, particularly when red flags are raised and testimony is brought into doubt. Reductionist-sounding claims are made in the miracles discussion but these are misleading. They reflect the need to be vigilant for deception and error in the special religious context of miracles rather than a general reductionist approach to testimony.10

3.5 Excision and Distortion EHU revisits many of the themes of Book 1 of the Treatise. It is, though, more elegantly written, simpler in structure, and clearer. Even though this is the case, there has been a tendency to regard the Treatise as Hume’s philosophical masterpiece and the first Enquiry as a reader’s guide or abridged popular version for coffee shops and not for scholars. On the face of it this is a surprising reading given Hume’s explicit claims concerning the primacy of the first Enquiry in a 1751 letter to one of his closest friends, Gilbert Elliot: I believe the philosophical Essays [EHU] contain everything of Consequence relating to the Understanding, which you would meet with in the Treatise; & I give you my Advice against reading the latter. By shortening & simplifying the Questions, I really render them much more complete. Addo dum minuo. The philosophical Principles are the same in both. But I was carry’d away by the Heat of Youth & Invention to publish too precipitately. So vast an Undertaking, plan’d before I was one and twenty, & compos’d before twenty five, must necessarily be very defective. (LDH 1.158) In 1775, Hume also instructed his publisher to include an advertisement in all future editions of his collected works, saying that ‘[m]ost of the principles, and reasonings, contained in this volume, were published in a work in three volumes, called A Treatise of Human Nature’; the author ‘not finding it successful…cast the whole anew in the following pieces, where some negligences in his former reasoning and more in the expression, are, he hopes, corrected’ (Hume, 1775a). The advertisement ends with the request ‘that the following Pieces may alone be regarded as containing his philosophical sentiments and principles’, those pieces being

70 Anti-Reductionism EHU and EPM. It would seem, then, that we should give priority to the two Enquiries when attempting to ascertain Hume’s developed views on a particular topic and this is particularly so when the Treatise discussion is hard to pin down or where there are interpretative difficulties. An example of where such a strategy is useful is with respect to Hume’s account of causal inference, a central feature of Hume’s epistemology and his explanation of how we come to acquire beliefs concerning things we have not observed. In the Treatise, the discussion of this topic appears within a much longer discussion concerning the existence of causal powers and the impression of necessary connection. The importance of causal inference is obscured. In EHU, however, things are much clearer. The metaphysical discussion of causation is separated from the epistemological one concerning causal inference and the centrality of the latter explained. Perhaps, then, there is a key to how to interpret Hume. Start with EHU and EPM and interpret the Treatise in light of these later works, using them either to clarify what is said in the Treatise or to conclude that Hume has changed his mind and come to reject his Treatise account. Things, however, are not always so simple and this is because of the distorting effect of the discussion of miracles and the excision of this discussion from its original home in the Treatise. We have already seen that focusing on the miracles essay misleadingly suggests across-theboard reductionism with respect to testimony. I will also argue, though, that Hume’s decision to castrate the Treatise has clouded interpretations of the section from which the miracles discussion was probably excised. Hume’s discussion of the belief about the assassination of Caesar concerns testimony and I have taken this to support my anti-reductionist interpretation. Traiger claims that the discussion of Caesar in the Treatise is only in the service of a causal explanation of the origin of historical belief: ‘his concern is not with justification in these passages’ (Traiger, 1993, 141). The belief about Caesar’s murder is presented as an example of a historical belief and this kind of example is chosen because it emphasizes how ‘[i]nferences from testimony take us beyond our senses by utilizing the sense of other epistemic agents’ (1993, 146). It is not the case, though, that Hume is interested only in a description of the causal origin of this belief, as Traiger claims. An account is given of the origin of this belief, but there is also a normative dimension to the discussion. The reference to ‘printers and copyists’ does not merely provide detail of the links in the causal chain connecting the historical event with contemporary beliefs concerning that event; it also suggests the kinds of facts that ground (justify) our belief, those relevant to whether we should trust the people and social structures upon which the transmission of historical testimony depends, such as traditions of transcribing manuscripts and features of human nature that are relevant to whether we should trust the word of another. We saw earlier how Hume, elsewhere, discusses the

Anti-Reductionism  71 work of printers and copyists in normative terms, where, that is, they are not as reliable when it comes to the transmission of numbers down chains of testimony. The suggestion, then, is not only that their work explains the causal origin of our belief in Caesar’s death but that in this case we should believe what has been passed down to us. Furthermore, the section is titled ‘Of unphilosophical probability’—probability, that is, that is not a reasonable foundation for belief. As we have seen, Hume distinguishes philosophical probability—that grounded in causal reasoning— from sources of unphilosophical probability (T 1.3.13.12). The third kind of case of unphilosophical probability discussed by Hume is where our ‘assurance’ concerning a certain belief is diminished by its derivation via a long chain of arguments or ‘consequences’ (T 1.3.13.3). In this context, the belief about Caesar is presented as a ‘curious phenomenon’ because our belief in Caesar’s murder is not diminished in this way, even though the chain of testimonial links is long. Hume’s aim is therefore to explain why this belief is not diminished and thus why the belief about Caesar does not amount to a case of unphilosophical probability. I have argued that this is because of our default trust in testimony. One difference in content between the Treatise and the first Enquiry is the more explicit treatment of religion in the later work. The Enquiry includes the miracles essay as well as discussion of the argument from design and the problem of evil. Hume concludes that the argument from design provides no reason to believe in the existence of a benevolent deity or the afterlife and therefore that evil does not need to be explained away by theodicy. Natural evil is the result of the unfortunate effects of the physical laws of nature, and moral evil is the result of those ‘elements of the wolf and serpent’ that we find in human nature (EPM 9.4). The second, moral Enquiry supplements this attack on natural theology and revealed religion with a purely secular morality grounded in our natural sentiments and sympathetic responses to others. We shall turn to this in Chapter 5(§1). Religion, though, is not absent from the Treatise. The sections on the soul and self (T 1.4.5–6) are ripe with theological significance, and Russell (2008) argues that the work as a whole is deeply irreligious, if not overtly so. As was noted in Chapter 1(§5), some further material on religion had also been originally included in the Treatise and this included a discussion of miracles. Where exactly, though, would this material have slotted into the Treatise? Consideration of this question will help us interpret the ‘castrated’ sections from which the discussion was excised. It is very plausible that a discussion of miracles was to have been included at Treatise 1.3. Traiger (1994, 258–9n15) suggests that it would have replaced or augmented T 1.3.10, ‘Of the influence of belief’. There Hume discusses how poetry and madness can enliven ideas and thus lead to belief even though the believed ‘fictions are connected with nothing that is real’ (T 1.3.10.11). The same is true of the passions associated

72 Anti-Reductionism with the transmission and acquisition of beliefs concerning miraculous events and so it is not implausible to think that this section could have originally housed the discussion of miracles. I, however, see David Wooton’s suggestion as more plausible; he claims that a discussion of miracles was likely placed within the section ‘Of unphilosophical probability’ (1990, 199).11 The miracles essay, presumably in much shorter form, would slot into this section and be discussed as a form of reasoning that needs to be regulated by philosophical probability (i.e., by general rules). If we assume this is so, then the normative dimension of T 1.3.13 is clearer. The contrast would have been sharp between the two testimonial cases: both belief in Caesar’s murder and belief in biblical miracles are the result of long chains of testimony, but only the former is well grounded. Further, in EHU, where Traiger does take Hume to be interested in justification, he agrees that beliefs concerning human nature play an evidentialist role, but this role is only negative. We have default justification for belief in testimony, except where—as I discussed with respect to miracles— there are red flags indicating that particular kinds of testimony or testifiers are unreliable. There is no need, though, to limit the epistemic role of our knowledge of the causal context of testimony in this way. There can be positive epistemic reasons to believe certain cases of testimony or certain kinds of testimony even if one is not a reductionist of either a global or local stripe and even if, as Traiger says, there is ‘no single, over-arching generalization about testimony’ (1993, 144) and ‘no comprehensive theory of justified belief’ (1993, 146). The testimony of others is taken as a source of enlarged experience, and it seems to be the case that in most circumstances it coheres with our ever-widening experience of the ongoing regularities in the physical world and the behaviour of others. That being said, there are times when red flags are raised and also times when, for one reason or another, we feel the need to think more carefully about the reliability of testimony and where our investigations find positive inductive evidence that provides further justification for testimonial belief. I suggest, then, that the excision of the discussion of miracles from the Treatise and its reinsertion in the first Enquiry have distorted interpretations of Hume’s account of testimony in two ways. In EHU, his account of testimony appears in a section dedicated to religion and thus the need to justify the relevant testimony is highlighted. Miracle-testimony, though, is a special case where, given the nature of religion, we need to be especially vigilant for misleading testimony. The wider everyday acceptance we have of testimony is downplayed and so the anti-reductionist interpretation ignored. Further, the normative status of the testimonial example used in the discussion of causal inference, that concerning Caesar, becomes clearer when it is contrasted with trust in miracle reports. Issues of normativity will be revisited in Chapter 6, but in the following two chapters, I shall consider two related aspects of Hume’s social

Anti-Reductionism  73 epistemology and epistemology of testimony: these are the role played by sympathy in the acquisition of belief (Chapter 4) and the relevance of the intellectual virtues to testimonial exchanges (Chapter 5).

Notes 1 In earlier work, I interpreted Hume as a reductionist (Bailey and O’Brien, 2006, 137–40), but I have now come to reject this interpretation. 2 See Lackey (2008, 44–5). 3 Hume, however, does equate credulity with gullibility and sees it as an intellectual vice. See Chapter 5(§1). 4 This, however, is only a temporary remedy for scepticism (for the philosopher), in light of the sceptical arguments that are about to come down the line in Treatise 1.4. 5 This is a claim also made by Pitson: ‘It is only in those cases where an apparent conflict of evidence arises that we are called upon to evaluate testimony in the light of experience’ (2006, 11). 6 Even when I acquire the emotions of another via sympathy, it’s my sadness I feel. See Chapter 4(§1). 7 My argument in Chapter 2(§4) builds on Gelfert (2009), a paper that argues for the instability of the contemporary local reductionist approach, not one concerned with interpretations of Hume. It should also be noted that Gelfert accepts that there are ‘limits to the similarities’ between Hume’s approach and local reductionism (2010, 74). 8 Traiger notes that ‘for impressions of characters and letters to induce belief, one must take those characters and letters as reports or beliefs of the testifier, and not as stories, fables, dreams, or mere utterances’ (1993, 139). For further discussion of Hume on the notion of taking texts as particular kinds of speech act, see Traiger (1993, 146; 2010, 242, 247–54). 9 That Hume studied law is taken to support Traiger’s interpretation. My antireductionism is also supported by Hume’s cross-disciplinary interests, although I would seem to be on firmer ground in this respect given Hume’s deep interest in history and illustrious career as a historian, as opposed to his only fleeting interest in a legal career. 10 ‘Humean’ has become a widely used label across moral theory, metaphysics, philosophy of action, philosophy of science, philosophy of religion and, as we have seen, the epistemology of testimony—Webb, for example, referring to ‘Humean reductionism’ (1993, 263). In some contexts, the connection to the historical Hume has become tenuous. David Lewis is a Humean but Hume would surely baulk at Lewis’s On the Plurality of Worlds. I have argued that Hume isn’t a reductionist with respect to testimony, but if the label ‘Humean’ becomes too entrenched it may be better to say that Hume is not a Humean with respect to testimony. 11 Nelson (1986), in contrast, opts for T 1.4. He suggests that Hume was tempted to include a section on revelation as a purported further source of knowledge besides the senses and reason.

4 Sympathy, Belief, and Testimony

The reductionist interpretation of Hume on testimony is taken from Hume’s discussion of miracles in the first Enquiry, and according to this interpretation the justification for testimonial belief is grounded in inductive reasoning. This account is evidentialist: the testimonial beliefs we acquire are those that are supported by empirical evidence that individuals have concerning the reliability of testifiers. In Chapter 3, I argued against this interpretation and offered an anti-reductionist reading of Hume on testimony, one informed by what he says about testimony in the Treatise and other works and not one derived solely from the essay on miracles. There are various ways we can acquire belief via testimony. This can be via inductive inference, supported by either personal or collective experience of the reliability of speakers and texts, and such belief can also be taken on trust. This chapter considers a distinct source of testimonial belief and that is sympathy. In Section 4.1, I describe the mechanisms involved in the sympathetic acquisition of emotion. In Section 4.2, I introduce the notion of a sympathetic belief—that is, a belief that is acquired by way of Hume’s mechanism of sympathy. Given that testimonial beliefs can be acquired in this way, there is a question concerning whether such beliefs are ever justified or reasonable. Most interpreters of Hume assume that they are not. This is so, for example, where there is the sympathetic spread of religious belief. Sympathy, though, also plays a positive epistemic role in our coming to understand national character and the minds of others. Further, Section 4.3 considers the relation between sympathy, pride, and the conception we have of our own selves. In Section 4.4, I consider explanations of sympathetic belief suggested by Rico Vitz and Welbourne. I argue, though, that these are not best seen as underlying sympathetic belief acquisition, and I present my own suggested mechanism. In Section 4.5, I argue that hermeneutic interpretations of Hume on sympathy support my anti-reductionist reading of Hume.

DOI: 10.4324/9780429266133-5

Sympathy, Belief, and Testimony  75

4.1 Sympathy, Self, and Other When Hume talks of ‘sympathy’, he does not generally refer to the concern we have for the welfare of others or what we might call pity or compassion. ‘Sympathy’, rather, refers to associative processes by which we come to share the mental states of others.1 Sympathy is closer to what we would today call ‘empathy’ and it plays a fundamental role in Hume’s account of human nature.2 It involves our coming to share the emotions and beliefs of others, underpins our social relations in families and in society, explains our interested engagement in history, politics, and literature and our understanding of the real and fictional characters that play upon these stages. It is central to Hume’s account of the passions, to our sense of beauty, and to moral judgment. It is also a source of moral motivation: sympathetic communication motivating us to act benevolently towards those who are suffering.3 Hume understands sympathetic phenomena through metaphors of mirrors and stringed musical instruments: ‘the minds of men are mirrors to one another, not only because they reflect each other’s emotions, but also because those rays of passions, sentiments and opinions may be often reverberated, and may decay by insensible degrees’ (T 2.2.5.21). In judging virtue, one ‘must move some universal principle of the human frame, and touch a string, to which all mankind have an accord and symphony’ (EPM 9.6).4 Hume here aligns his account of sympathy to an ancient tradition in which musical resonance is indicative of an occult property that binds the universe together. In Hume, though, this metaphor is cashed out in psychological accounts of how sympathy plays a role in empathizing with the emotions of others: these are the direct account and the idea-mediated accounts of sympathy.5 There is a notion of sympathizing with someone’s opinions or emotions where this implies just that one shares them and not that one has acquired those opinions or emotions from the other person. Two parents, for example, may feel the same joy at the achievement of their child. Max Scheler calls this ‘community of feeling’ (1954, 12–13). Hume’s notion of sympathy, though, concerns only cases where the sharing of emotions or beliefs is due to some underlying mechanisms of transmission. In the direct account, inference or associative mechanisms do not seem to be involved; emotions, rather, are propagated or caught from others.6 Hume notes how classical writers were aware of such direct sympathy: The human countenance, says Horace, borrows smiles or tears from the human countenance. Reduce a person to solitude, and he loses all enjoyment, except either of the sensual or speculative kind; and that because the movements of his heart are not forwarded by correspondent movements in his fellow creatures. (EPM 5.18)

76  Sympathy, Belief, and Testimony Hume offers little by way of explanation of how such direct sympathy occurs, although he does say that when observing the behaviour of others, we can have a ‘presensation’ of what another is feeling (T 2.2.1.9). Annette Baier suggests that this involves direct or spontaneous sympathy with the feelings of another (Baier and Waldow, 2008, 70). This is the passage that refers to presensations: ’Tis true, few can form exact systems of the passions, or make reflections on their general nature and resemblances. But without such a progress in philosophy, we are not subject to many mistakes in this particular, but are sufficiently guided by common experience, as well as by a kind of presensation; which tells us what will operate on others, by what we feel immediately in ourselves.7 (T 2.2.1.9) In contrast to the direct account, idea-mediated sympathy involves a two-stage mechanism. In the first stage, one comes to acquire the idea of a certain emotion from another person: ‘when we sympathize with the passions and sentiments of others, these movements appear at first in our mind as mere ideas, and are conceiv’d to belong to another person, as we conceive any other matter of fact’ (T 2.1.11.8). I acquire such ideas from the ‘countenance and conversation’ (T 2.1.11.3) of others via inference, not via the kind of direct contagion-like mechanism we have just discussed. Hume is usually taken to hold that the relevant inferences here are based on analogy: from experience, we know that our mental life is associated with certain kinds of observable behaviour, and when we see others behaving or speaking as we do, we infer that their mental life is similar to our own.8 Tony Pitson (2002, 151) criticizes this analogical interpretation. He argues that we cannot experience constant conjunctions between mental states and behaviour since we cannot be directly aware of the mental states of others. Anik Waldow has a persuasive response (2009, 73–79, 122). Given that my mental states and those of others are of the same kind, the constant conjunctions I have experienced in my own case between my mental states and my behaviour suffice to enable me to infer that the mental states of others are regular in the same way: For when by any clear experiment we have discover’d the causes or effects of any phænomenon, we immediately extend our observation to every phænomenon of the same kind, without waiting for that constant repetition, from which the first idea of this relation is deriv’d. (T 1.3.15.6) This analogical interpretation is supported by what Hume says about our belief in animal minds:

Sympathy, Belief, and Testimony  77 ’Tis from the resemblance of the external actions of animals to those we ourselves perform, that we judge their internal likewise to resemble ours; and the same principle of reasoning, carry’d one step farther, will make us conclude that since our internal actions resemble each other, the causes, from which they are deriv’d, must also be resembling. (T 1.3.16.3) If such an analogical reading is to be plausible, we need to be careful to note the importance of the role played by ‘conversation’—that is, the testimonial evidence we have of the mental states of others and how these are manifest in behaviour. First, an individual’s knowledge of their own behaviour is more limited than one might suppose. I’m not sure exactly how I act when I am disappointed or when I’m excited by events. For the most part, though, I am good at ascribing such emotions to others on the basis of their fine-grained behaviour and this is because experience tells me what bodily expressions and actions are regularly associated with the testimony of others concerning their mental lives. I know how people behave when they are bored because I can see how they behave when they say they are bored. Second, I can ascribe mental states to others even if I do not have first-hand evidence of the kinds of behaviour associated with such mental states. The experiences we have of regularities between the behaviour of others and what they say about their mental life are pooled, and our social education involves the transmission of this knowledge from generation to generation. I may not have had personal experience of how those prey to hallucinations behave, but I can acquire knowledge of how they are likely to behave by reading the literature on religious experience, mental illness, and psychedelic drugs. (Such a pooled or collective notion of testimonial evidence was important to my antireductionist interpretation of Hume in Chapter 3, such pooling involving default trust in the testimony of others.) The second stage of idea-mediated sympathy is where the idea of another’s emotion is ‘converted into an impression, and acquires such a degree of force and vivacity, as to become the very passion itself, and produce an equal emotion as any original affection’ (T 2.1.11.3).9 There is, then, idea acquisition followed by the sympathetic enlivening or vivification of the acquired idea into an emotion. In Chapter 3(§4), I discussed Gelfert’s (2010) claim that we can have knowledge of social pressures that provides indirect evidence for the truth of what others say: that it is human nature to feel ‘shame when detected in a falsehood’ increases the likelihood that we can determine when speakers tell the truth. A further claim—one not discussed by Gelfert—is that sympathy could be involved in the identification of such pressures. If I feel your shame via sympathy, this provides me with evidence that you are likely to be speaking the truth. Two features of this idea-mediated account of sympathy warrant

78  Sympathy, Belief, and Testimony further discussion. They are the source of vivacity that enables ideas to be enlivened into emotions and the role played by the principles of association in such enlivening. Hume thinks of vivacity or liveliness in quantitative terms: emotions and beliefs have more vivacity than mere ideas, and so for the enlivening process to take place, there must be a source of vivacity that provides a reservoir that can be tapped to convert ideas into emotions, and there must also be a transmission system, a process by which vivacity can be transferred from the reservoir to ideas in order to enliven them. I shall first turn to the source. The source of vivacity is the impression we have of our own self: the idea, or rather impression of ourselves is always intimately present with us, and that our consciousness gives us so lively a conception of our own person, that ’tis not possible to imagine, that any thing can in this particular go beyond it. Whatever object, therefore, is related to ourselves must be conceived with a like vivacity of conception[.] (T 2.1.11.4) In the case of sympathy, it is the idea of the emotion of another that ‘must be conceived with a like vivacity of conception’ and this, as we shall see below, is because this idea is related to our self by way of the principles of association, especially that of resemblance. This is perhaps a surprising claim, one that would appear to be in tension with Hume’s apparent scepticism concerning the self in Book 1 of the Treatise. Hume says there that If any impression gives rise to the idea of self, that impression must continue invariably the same, thro’ the whole course of our lives; since self is suppos’d to exist after that matter. But there is no impression constant and invariable. Pain and pleasure, grief and joy, passions and sensations succeed each other, and never all exist at the same time. It cannot, therefore, be from any of these impressions, or from any other, that the idea of self is deriv’d; and consequently there is no such idea. (T 1.4.6.2) What Hume says here is seemingly unambiguous: ‘there is no such idea’ of the self and no ‘impression constant and durable’. Later in the Treatise, though—in Book 2—it is the impression of the self that is ‘always intimately present with us’ and it is this that provides the reservoir of vivacity which enables the sympathetic acquisition of the emotions of others. Remy Debes (2007b, 317) calls this ‘self-association’. Just what is going on here? How can Hume claim that the impression of the self is always present to us, but also claim that there is no such impression?

Sympathy, Belief, and Testimony  79 Some have argued that there is irreconcilable tension between these claims from Books 1 and 2 of the Treatise.10 Here is David Pears expressing what he sees as the deep inconsistency in Hume’s account: if we look at his philosophy as a whole, we see that it has a serious consequence. His philosophy is, for the most part, neither abstract nor remote from human interests. It ranges very widely over morality, politics, aesthetics and religion. In all this he constantly appeals to the idea of the self. But the idea of the self was precisely the idea that he was unable to place on an adequate foundation. So there is an important weakness, a weakness which he himself admits, in the theoretical basis of his science of human nature. (Pears, 1963, 49–50) There is, however, no tension between Hume’s account of the self in Books 1 and 2. In Book 1, Hume is sceptical only with regard to our having the impression, and thus idea, of a ‘simple and continu’d’ self (T 1.4.6.3), a self with ‘perfect identity and simplicity’ (T 1.4.6.1), the kind of self that Descartes finds in his ‘Second Meditation’ (1643). We can, though, have impressions and ideas of our social embodied selves. As Lilli Alanen puts it, I see myself as a ‘particular sentient and thinking person of flesh and bones, appearing and evolving in space and time, and thriving only in a certain kind of natural and social environment’ (2014, 13). It is this kind of self of which Hume is aware when he claims that ‘[t]he idea of ourselves is always intimately present to us’ and when he says that we are ‘intimately conscious of ourselves’ (T 2.2.2.15). Such a self changes over time but only gradually—as do animals, plants, ships, and republics—and the imagination leads us to ascribe ‘identity’ to such a succession, even though it is only ‘imperfect’ (T 1.4.6.8–9) or ‘fictitious’ (T 1.4.6.15), in the sense that a perfectly identical and unchanging self is a fiction.11 We have therefore found the source of vivacity for the enlivening of ideas into passions and, as we shall see below, sympathetic beliefs. The transmission system involves the principles of association. These regulate the flow of vivacity from impressions to ideas, as if controlling valves. All three principles play a role: the principles, that is, of contiguity, causation, and resemblance. We sympathize more with those suffering in our own time or country than with those in the past or in distant lands,12 and ‘relations of blood, being a species of causation, may sometimes contribute to the same effect’ (T 2.1.11.6). Resemblance, though, plays the key role. We sympathize more with those who resemble us. If this relation is vague or tenuous, then little vivacity is allowed to flow; if, however, there are close resemblances between ourselves and others, then vivacity flows easily and the ideas we acquire from others are enlivened. There is general resemblance—‘nature has preserv’d a great resemblance among human creatures…and this resemblance must very much

80  Sympathy, Belief, and Testimony contribute to make us enter into the sentiments of others, and embrace them with facility and pleasure’ (T 2.1.11.5)—and there are also more specific resemblances with those who share our language, interests, culture, age, sex, character, circumstances, or ways of behaving. Accordingly we find, that where, beside the general resemblance of our natures, there is any peculiar similarity in our manners, or character, or country, or language, it facilitates the sympathy. The stronger the relation is between ourselves and any object, the more easily does the imagination make the transition, and convey to the related idea the vivacity of conception, with which we always form the idea of our own person. (T 2.1.11.5) It is the principles of association that modulate the vivacity of ideas and impressions, transferring vivacity between them. In the case of the sympathetic sharing of emotion, vivacity is transferred from the impression of the self to the ideas we have of the emotions of others, and resemblance plays the key role. The impression of the self is integral to the mechanism that enables us to share and come to have beliefs about the emotional life of others. Sympathy therefore involves positive feedback. Resemblance leads, via sympathy, to the sharing of emotions and beliefs, and this has the consequence that we come more closely to resemble those with whom we sympathize—sympathy, in turn, encouraged by closer resemblance.13 The associative mechanisms involved in Humean sympathy are parallel in certain ways with those involved in Hume’s account of the generation of belief via causal reasoning.14 In both, an idea is enlivened and its vivacity increased so that it becomes ‘the emotion itself’ or a belief, and in both accounts this extra vivacity has its source in an impression. For beliefs, the source of vivacity is a ‘present impression’ (T 1.3.7.5) of causes or effects: an impression of a spark may enliven the associated idea of a flame, thus leading us to believe that the spark will cause a fire, or an impression of a flame may enliven the associated idea of a spark, thus leading us to believe that the fire was caused by a spark. For our sympathetic response to the emotions of others, however, the source of vivacity is the impression of the self. Note that the sympathetic acquisition of emotions involves my feeling sad when another is sad and that’s not explicitly to say that I believe that they are sad. Such an account, though, can provide a response to what has come to be called the problem of other minds. Given Hume’s conception of beliefs as vivid ideas, Waldow suggests that ‘belief in the existence of other minds is most likely to emerge somewhere in between our having an idea of another’s mental state and our transforming this idea into an empathetic feeling’ (2009, 141). As the intensity of our idea of another’s

Sympathy, Belief, and Testimony  81 sadness is enlivened, it first moves through the vivacity required for belief, eventually hitting the top of the scale and becoming sadness itself. Byoungjae Kim (2019), however, argues that belief in other minds is not the result of sympathy itself but rather of a preliminary stage of causal inference: the causal inference from the idea of the mental state of another to the belief that someone has that mental state.15 Ideas of the mental states of others are enlivened into beliefs in the mental states of others by vivacity transfer mediated by the principle of causation and supplemented by resemblance. Sympathy itself, he says, does not have a role to play in generating the belief in other minds, and hence making a distinction between perceptions of myself and of others. Rather, it erases the distinction between them, which have been made by an act of causal inference, by converting the belief into the impression. (Kim, 2019, 551) Kim argues that we can come to have beliefs in the minds of others where there is mere general resemblance between us, such resemblance allowing causal inference to take place. Where there is ‘peculiar similarity in our manners, or character, or country, or language, it facilitates the sympathy’ (T 2.1.11.5) and thus we come to feel the emotions of others and such sympathy replaces belief. Kim, therefore, has a narrower conception than Waldow of sympathy. For Waldow, belief in other minds is the result of the sympathetic enlivening of the ideas of the mental states of others, an interim stage in the sharing of emotions. Kim, however, stresses that sympathy itself is the mechanism by which we share the emotions of others; belief in other minds is the product of causal reasoning. On this issue, I side with Waldow since, as we shall see in §2, there is evidence to suggest that Hume thinks we can acquire beliefs via sympathy. This associationist account of vivacity transfer is not mentioned in the moral Enquiry, at least not explicitly. Some, such as Nicholas Capaldi (1975) and Millican (2020), have argued that this is because Hume loses faith in his associationist account of sympathy and such an account is not required to explain either the sharing of the emotions of others or moral judgment. Millican (2020) and Amyras Merivale (2020, 70–90) argue that sympathy is an essential component of Hume’s egoist moral theory in the Treatise: moral judgments are able to play a motivating role only because the pleasures and pains of another become one’s own. After reading Joseph Butler’s Sermons (1736b), though, Hume comes to reject egoism and adopts instead the non-egoist principle of humanity. Others, such as Debes (2007a, 2007b) and Kate Abramson (2001), argue that Hume’s associationism remains essentially the same. Stephen Buckle (2001, 142) has suggested that Hume’s apparent downplaying of association is only because associationism had become mainstream after the publication in 1749 of David Hartley’s Observations on Man, and Hume therefore saw

82  Sympathy, Belief, and Testimony no need to highlight its role. Traces of an explicit associationist account of sympathy can also perhaps be found in EPM: There is no necessity, that a generous action, barely mentioned in an old history or remote gazette, should communicate any strong feelings of applause and admiration. Virtue, placed at such a distance, is like a fixed star, which, though to the eye of reason, it may appear as luminous as the sun in his meridian, is so infinitely removed, as to affect the senses, neither with light nor heat. Bring this virtue nearer, by our acquaintance or connexion with the persons, or even by an eloquent recital of the case; our hearts are immediately caught, our sympathy enlivened, and our cool approbation converted into the warmest sentiments of friendship and regard. These seem necessary and infallible consequences of the general principles of human nature, as discovered in common life and practice. (EPM 5.43) At the very least, though, Hume’s confidence in his associationist account of sympathy seems to have lessened in his later works. In An Abstract to…A Treatise of Human Nature, Hume was proud of his associationism, claiming that if any thing can intitle the author to so glorious a name of that of an inventor, ’tis the use he makes of the principle of association of ideas, which enters into most of his philosophy. (Abs. 35) Such ‘acquiring a name’ by one’s ‘inventions and discoveries’ is a source of pride (T 1.4.7.12). Such pride in his associationism is not present in EPM, where he suggests that [i]t is needless to push our researches so far as to ask, why we have humanity or a fellow-feeling with others. It is sufficient, that this is experienced to be a principle in human nature. We must stop somewhere in our examination of causes; and there are, in every science, some general principles, beyond which we cannot hope to find any principle more general. No man is absolutely indifferent to the happiness and misery of others. The first has a natural tendency to give pleasure; the second, pain. This every one may find in himself. It is not probable, that these principles can be resolved into principles more simple and universal, whatever attempts may have been made to that purpose. But if it were possible, it belongs not to the present subject; and we may here safely consider these principles as original: Happy, if we can render all the consequences sufficiently plain and perspicuous! (EPM 5.17n19)

Sympathy, Belief, and Testimony  83 Whether such insouciance is due to Hume’s abandonment of associationism or merely an expression of, what I call in Chapter 5(§4), intellectual modesty, is something that need not be decided here. In his post-Treatise work, Hume does make it plain and perspicuous that emotions and beliefs can be acquired sympathetically, and for my purposes, this is sufficient for sympathy to be seen as an important aspect of my anti-reductionist reading of Hume.

4.2 Sympathy and Belief For Hume, we can sympathize not just with the emotions of another but with their thoughts, opinions, ‘inclinations’, and ‘turn of thinking’ (T 2.1.11.2). In this section, I shall argue that such sympathy plays a role in the acquisition of testimonial belief and can therefore contribute to an anti-reductionist account of testimony. James Farr (1978, 291) puts it well: ‘Clearly, sympathy involves the communication of both thought(s) and feeling(s), of both cognitive and affective elements’. Others have also stressed this point, but there has been little discussion of the mechanisms involved.16 Claudia Schmidt, for example, merely says that ‘the influence of sympathy in the communication of opinions, like the association of ideas, is spontaneous and unreflective’ (2003, 182). One exception is Vitz (2015), who I discuss in §4. I shall, though, reject his account and suggest a distinct interpretation of sympathetic belief acquisition, one, though, that Hume does not explicitly spell out. Let us first look at what Hume says about sympathy and belief. He claims that ‘[s]o close and intimate is the correspondence of human souls, that no sooner any person approaches me, than he diffuses on me all his opinions, and draws along my judgment in a greater or lesser degree’ (T 3.3.2.2; my italics). Such sympathy is not only conspicuous in children, who implicitly embrace every opinion propos’d to them, but also in men of the greatest judgment and understanding, who find it very difficult to follow their own reason or inclination in opposition to that of their friends and daily companions. (T 2.1.11.2) There is no explicit mention here of the sympathetic acquisition of belief, but ‘diffuses’ suggests that one passively comes to adopt the opinions of another, and this is suggestive of sympathy rather than inference or causal reasoning. In the Dissertation on the Passions, this is clearer: Our opinions of all kinds are strongly affected by society and sympathy, and it is almost impossible for us to support any principle or sentiment, against the universal consent of every one, with whom we have any friendship or correspondence. (DP 2.33)

84  Sympathy, Belief, and Testimony We have, then, ‘opinions’ acquired via sympathy and also, here, conceptions: A person, who is related to us, or connected with us, by blood, by similitude of fortune, of adventures, profession, or country, soon becomes an agreeable companion to us; because we enter easily and familiarly into his sentiments and conceptions[.] (DP 3.4; my italics) Should we take Hume to mean beliefs when he talks of opinions and conceptions or some other kind of epistemic state that is acquired sympathetically? Suggestive of the latter interpretation are various places where Hume distinguishes between beliefs and other kinds of vivid ideas. He claims that poets can marshal our imagination to enliven an idea, but the result is a ‘phantom’ of belief (T 1.3.10.10), and that liars through mere repetition of their lies can come to have ‘counterfeit’ beliefs (T 1.3.5.6).17 It could therefore be argued that poetry, repetitive lies, and sympathy do not have the kind of epistemic force that leads us to take these enlivened ideas as representing reality and thus as warranting the name of ‘belief’. Such an interpretation, though, cannot be upheld. In the case of lies, the distinction between belief and counterfeit belief is only temporary since with enough repetition liars do ‘come at last to believe’ their lies (T 1.3.5.6). With poetry, the transition between belief and merely vivid ideas can go in the opposite direction: poetry can readily induce belief, although the beliefs produced are unstable since ‘the least reflection dissipates the illusions of poetry, and places the objects in their proper light’ (T 1.3.10.10). Hume’s talk here of illusion and ‘proper’ light suggests that he is attempting to draw a distinction between justified sources of belief, such as causal reasoning, and unjustified ones such as poetry. Unjustified beliefs, though, are still beliefs, and Hume does say that ‘full conviction’ can be generated by poetry: ’Tis however certain, that in the warmth of a poetical enthusiasm, a poet has a counterfeit belief, and even a kind of vision of his objects: And if there be any shadow of argument to support this belief, nothing contributes more to his full conviction than a blaze of poetical figures and images, which have their effect upon the poet himself, as well as upon his readers.18 (T 1.3.10.10; my italics) Beliefs in the illusions of poetry can amount to ‘full convictions’, but they are unjustified or ‘counterfeit’. Such a reading is supported by what Hume says about beliefs that are the product of madness. Clearly, such beliefs are not justified, but he is nevertheless explicit that it is beliefs that can be acquired in this way:

Sympathy, Belief, and Testimony  85 Nor will it be amiss to remark, that as a lively imagination very often degenerates into madness or folly, and bears it a great resemblance in its operations; so they influence the judgment after the same manner, and produce belief from the very same principles.19 (T 1.3.10.9) We should see Hume as claiming that beliefs can be acquired sympathetically. He talks of how ‘we enter so deep into the opinions…of others’ (T 2.1.11.7) and, as we have seen, of ‘embracing’ opinions to the point where ‘men of the greatest judgment and understanding…find it very difficult to follow their own reason or inclination, in opposition to that of their friends and daily companions’ (T 2.1.11.2).20 Such deeply held opinions would, it seems, amount to belief since ‘[a]n opinion…or belief may be most accurately defin’d, A lively idea related to or associated with a present impression’ (T 1.3.7.5). Thus, as Kemp Smith says, ‘if…the relation of resemblance enters to reinforce such uniformities, it is evident that belief can be evoked by, and is at the mercy of, all sorts of influences which have a source quite other than that of causal connexion’ (1941, 381). The testimony of another may be believed because one infers that the testifier is reliable, but one may also acquire testimonial belief via sympathy. I shall call beliefs acquired in this way ‘sympathetic beliefs’. Hume, though, seems to claim that belief can only originate in causal reasoning: ‘But as we find by experience, that belief arises only from causation, and that we can draw no inference from one object to another, except they be connected by this relation’ (T 1.3.9.2).21 As Henry Allison puts it, causal reasoning is our ‘single empirical “inference ticket”’ (2008, 88). This is not, however, consistent with what Hume says elsewhere about the acquisition of belief. As we have just seen, we can acquire beliefs through the literary skill of poets and from madness and repetition, and elsewhere he talks of beliefs acquired from astonishment (at the apparent occurrence of a miracle) (T 1.3.10.4) and through indoctrination or ‘education’ (T 1.3.9.19).22 Louis Loeb (2002, 76–7) has argued that Hume should be seen as claiming only that causal inference is required for knowledge or ‘reasonable belief’ whereas mere belief can be acquired in various ways.23 I suggest below, however, that not even reasonable beliefs have such a singular origin in causal reasoning. In §1, we considered a kind of belief that is acquired via sympathy— that is, beliefs concerning the emotions and minds of others. Hume also refers to other kinds of sympathetically acquired beliefs. First, there are those collective beliefs constitutive of our national character; as put by Ronald Butler: ‘thoughts so deeply embedded in the body of accepted opinion that to question them is suspect, to disestablish them well nigh impossible’ (1975, 15). In his essay ‘Of National Characters’ (E 197–215),

86  Sympathy, Belief, and Testimony Hume points to the role of sympathetic mechanisms in the cultivation of such character.24 The human mind is of a very imitative nature; nor is it possible for any set of men to converse often together, without acquiring a similitude of manners, and communicating to each other their vices as well as virtues. The propensity to company and society is strong in all rational creatures; and the same disposition, which gives us this propensity, makes us enter deeply into each other’s sentiments, and causes like passions and inclinations to run, as it were, by contagion, through the whole club or knot of companions. (E 202) This passage refers to a range of sympathetic phenomena, and it should be noted that when Hume says our virtues and vices are communicated to each other, by ‘communicating’ he does not mean only verbal communication. Communication also refers to the sympathetic sharing of passions and emotions: ‘No quality of human nature is more remarkable, both in itself and in its consequences, than that propensity we have to sympathize with others, and to receive by communication their inclinations and sentiments’ (T 2.1.11.2). Hume only explicitly mentions communication of manners, vices and virtues, sentiments, and inclinations, but not sympathetic beliefs. Later in the passage, though, he refers to the ‘great uniformity we may observe in the humours and turn of thinking of those of the same nation’ (T 2.1.11.2), and ‘turn of thinking’ suggests the content of beliefs. Hume notes how ‘[o]thers enter into the same humour, and catch the sentiment, by a contagion or natural sympathy’ (EPM 7.2; my italics); in a letter to Adam Smith, of how the behaviour and countenance of a depressed person can throw a ‘Damp on Company’ (LDH 1.313) and in the Treatise of how ‘[a] chearful countenance infuses a sensible complacency and serenity into my mind; as an angry or sorrowful one throws a sudden damp upon me’ (T 2.1.11.2; my italics). Henrik Bohlin (2009, 148) suggests that ‘sudden’ implies ‘immediate emotional resonance’ and artfully chosen language can play a role in this kind of transmission. Hume talks of how ‘[t]he orator, by the force of his own genius and eloquence, first inflamed himself with anger, indignation, pity, and sorrow; and then communicated those impetuous movements to his audience’ (E 104; ‘Of Eloquence’).25 At various places in the History of England, Hume suggestively talks of religion as a ‘contagion’ and in The Natural History of Religion he refers to the ‘irresistible contagion of opinion’ (NHR 15.13), and it’s plausible to take contagion here to suggest the sympathetic spread of religious beliefs.26 The medical language should be taken seriously. Religious beliefs really are, according to Hume, akin to an illness;

Sympathy, Belief, and Testimony  87 disruptive both to the mental health of believers and to the societies which they contaminate. This is something Hume stresses across his works: religion is an ‘affliction’ (DNR 12.29), ‘a natural frailty’ (NHR 3.2), a ‘malady…almost incurable’ (H 3.366), an ‘intoxicating poison’, an ‘epidemical frenzy’ (H 5.348), and ‘a disease dangerous and inveterate’ (H 6.322).27 In the essay ‘Of Suicide’ (E 577–89), Hume sees philosophy as providing a ‘sovereign antidote’ to superstition’s ‘pestilent distemper’ and ‘virulent…poison’ (E 577). Jennifer Herdt takes Hume’s account to involve ‘emotional infection’ (1997, 42), Martin Lenz (2022) describes such sympathetic transmission of mental states in terms of the ‘medical model’, and Kemp Smith talks of the sympathetic spread of belief in ‘epidemic forms’ (1941, 378). Hume also refers to the dangers associated with ‘social sympathy’, and this can be dangerous not just with respect to religion but also in the political context: ‘Popular sedition, party zeal, a devoted obedience to factious leaders; these are some of the most visible, though less laudable effects of this social sympathy in human nature’ (EPM 5.35). At times, Hume thinks in terms of the metaphor of wildfire. In ‘Of the Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences’ (E 111–37), he discusses how easily the ‘multitude’ is ‘seized by the common affection’ and ‘governed by it in all their actions’ (E 112), and the spreading of the ‘common affection’ is described as ‘fire’ that ‘runs along the earth’ and ‘is caught from one breast to another’ (E 114).28 Sympathetic beliefs are therefore responsible for the ill effects of religion or party zeal on society and for endangering the well-being and character of those affected by this contagion. It should not be assumed, though, that all beliefs spread in this way are pernicious. Sympathy is just a mechanism and its effects can be negative or positive. Hume does think that the sympathetic spread of beliefs and emotions associated with religion is dangerous, but it is also clear that there are, for example, certain beneficial aspects of national character that are cultivated in this way, such as the honesty of the Swiss and the bravery of the Turks (E 197, 205; ‘Of National Characters’). Traits beneficial to society can also spread like wildfire. In an unpublished essay, ‘An Historical Essay on Chivalry and Modern Honour’, Hume writes that when the example of modern manners ‘was once broken upon it run like Wildfire over all the Nations of Europe who being in the same Situation with these Nations kindled with the least Spark’.29 In the next section, I turn to another kind of belief that is acquired sympathetically, one that plays a positive epistemic and psychological role.

4.3 The Sympathetic Spiral of Self-Creation Beliefs concerning what others think of us are acquired via sympathy and such beliefs play a central role in Hume’s account of the conception we have of our changing, embodied selves. The opinions of others

88  Sympathy, Belief, and Testimony concerning our achievements, virtuous behaviour, and commendable ways of thinking result in pride and this passion plays a constitutive role in the construction of the self. Further, the resulting impression of the self that we experience plays a wider role in our mental life, providing, as we have seen, the source of vivacity for the enlivening of the ideas of the emotions of others and thus the sympathetic appreciation of their feelings and beliefs. In this section, I shall unpack these deeply entwined sympathetic relations between self and other. Jacqueline Taylor takes Hume to have a ‘social theoretical account of human nature’ in which ‘our passionate education includes…a process of learning appropriate ways of expressing the passions, as well as who can do so and under what circumstances’ (2015a, 30–31). We feel pride, for example, through sympathizing with the opinions of others concerning our successes and place in society. In this way, I may come to feel pride in my profession, wealth, and family, learn how to express this pride appropriately, and in turn come to see myself as the person that I am. In Chapter 5(§4), I contrast this psychologically positive notion of pride with the Christian view that pride is a sin. Such pride involves more than a warm glow as I check my bank account or dine with my family; it involves believing that these things are respected in the community in which I live. Taylor discusses such societal valuation in terms of general rules, those that can be applied even though some do not find pleasure in wealth and family. She notes that ‘the cultural competence required for recognizing the value of things is a process of learning and habituating ourselves to the social meanings, values, and norms of our community’, and this is acquired through education and sympathy: ‘sympathy is the means of communicating and sustaining the different valuations placed on the various qualities that produce pride’ (2015a, 39, 40). Sympathizing with the opinions and beliefs of others concerning our pride-worthy traits enables us to have a clear view of our own characters and of the values of our community. There are two ways that such communication can proceed. First, you can sympathize with the approving behaviour of those around you and come to feel the pleasure they express in their smiles and body language when they appreciate your actions or achievements. Such sympathy can be direct or idea-mediated. Second, one can sympathize with the testimonial utterances of others. The positive sentiments others feel towards you are often expressed in language, and such approval can also be acquired via sympathy. As Hume says, ‘nothing is more natural than for us to embrace the opinions of others in this particular’ and one way of doing so is via ‘sympathy, which renders all their sentiments intimately present to us’ (T 2.1.11.9).30 There is also a reciprocal relation between the opinions we have of ourselves and the opinions that others have of us. Sources of pride, such as ‘virtue, beauty and riches; have little influence, when not seconded by the opinions and sentiments of others’ (T 2.1.11.1); yet, ‘[t]he praises of

Sympathy, Belief, and Testimony  89 others never give us much pleasure, unless they concur with our own opinion, and extol us for those qualities, in which we chiefly excel’ (T 2.1.11.13). Such pride—the feeling of which involves sympathy with the opinions of others—plays a foundational role in self-consciousness, or, as Jane McIntyre puts it, ‘somewhat paradoxically…self-concern is a product of the fact that we are social beings’ (1989, 557). As we have seen, Hume is sceptical concerning the existence and the very notion of a Cartesian self; however, the object of pride and humility ‘is self, or that succession of related ideas and impressions, of which we have an intimate memory and consciousness’ (T 2.1.2.2).31 For Hume, the mind consists in nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement….There is properly no simplicity in it at one time, nor identity in different; whatever natural propension we may have to imagine that simplicity and identity….They are the successive perceptions only, that constitute the mind[.] (T 1.4.6.4) The ‘true idea of the mind’ is the idea of ‘a system of different perceptions or different existences, which are link’d together by the relation of cause and effect, and mutually produce, destroy, influence, and modify each other’ (T 1.4.6.19). We come to feel pride in certain aspects of this flux of different perceptions and thus come to acquire a distinct conception of our own character and personhood. Pauline Chazan (1992), Amélie Rorty (1990), and Lorenzo Greco (2015) argue that the kind of consciousness we have of such a bundle is sustained by pride. The claim is not that we have an independent impression of the self that at times pleases us and leads us to feel pride; rather, ‘the self and pride or humility present themselves simultaneously, in a sort of reciprocal construction’ (Greco, 2015, 708) or ‘mutual construction’ (Chazan, 1992, 51): nature has given to the organs of the human mind, a certain disposition fitted to produce a peculiar impression or emotion, which we call pride: To this emotion she has assign’d a certain idea, viz. that of self, which it never fails to produce. (T 2.1.5.6) Mutual construction is required since neither pride nor the impression of the self can exist independently of the other. On the one hand, pride without an object amounts to mere pleasure. My orchids may bring you pleasure, but they make me feel proud because the idea of those orchids is associated with the idea of my self and of the time I have devoted to their cultivation. On the other hand, the scepticism of T 1.4.6 entails that

90  Sympathy, Belief, and Testimony there is no independent impression of an enduring self—there is only a constantly evolving and changing bundle of perceptions. Pride, however, weaves this bundle into something we recognise as a person: some are proud of their gardens and thus being a gardener is part of their selfconception—it is part of who they are. Others see themselves, reinforced by the opinions of others, as good fathers, academics, or friends (and perhaps as good gardeners as well).32 Chazan suggests that, for pride to maintain such self-consciousness, ‘we need, not constant self-inspection, but constant feeding’ and we are sustained in this way by the ‘impressions of pleasure and esteem others have on perceiving our admirable qualities and attributes which are then reflected back to ourselves’ (1992, 49). As said, many of these impressions of pleasure and esteem are communicated by the testimony of others. Thus, ‘[o]ur pride, our self-consciousness, and ultimately our moral self-hood are, for Hume, dependent on others’ (Chazan, 1992, 48).33 This simultaneous presentation of pride and self is the product of a double relation of ideas and impressions. Looking out the window at my garden gives me pleasure. Since I recognize that I am the source of its harmonious planting scheme, I associate the idea of my garden with the idea of myself. Simultaneously, the feeling of pleasure becomes associated with the feeling of pride, but only if the former association of ideas has occurred (‘When self enters not into the consideration, there is no room either for pride or humility’ (T 2.1.2.2)). The double relation consists of one relation between ideas (the idea of the garden and the idea of myself) and one between impressions (the impression of pleasure and the impression of pride). Hume explains this in rather tortuous prose: [T]he transition of the affections and of the imagination is made with the greatest ease and facility. When an idea produces an impression, related to an impression, which is connected with an idea, related to the first idea, these two impressions must be in a manner inseparable, nor will the one in any case be unattended with the other. ’Tis after this manner, that the particular causes of pride and humility are determin’d. (T 2.1.5.10) You only become self-conscious—aware, that is, of your complex, multifaceted, social self rather than your Cartesian self—as you become aware that you possess certain virtues acknowledged by others and of achievements and status that such virtues have enabled you to attain. Hume stresses the role of pride in the consciousness we have of the self, although it would seem that other self-directed emotions must play related roles. Humility and shame, for example, are also a product of the double relation of ideas and impressions: I associate the idea of terrible parking with the idea of my self and feel shame at my lack of skill in this

Sympathy, Belief, and Testimony  91 area. Vices, traits, and failures of which we are ashamed can also frame the sense we have of our own selves.34 In Book 1 of the Treatise, we may be shocked to discover that the self is a mere bundle of perceptions but in Book 2 we find that this bundle has structure since our enduring character traits weave the bundle together, and we become aware of such traits and achievements through sympathizing with what others say about us. There are, as we shall see in Chapter 5(§1), a motley catalogue of moral, intellectual, and bodily traits that are seen as virtuous, such as compassion, courage of mind (H 2.126), and broad shoulders (T 3.3.5.3), but I shall focus there on intellectual virtues that are relevant to testimonial exchanges. The impression of the self that I have acquired in this way enables me, in return, to sympathize with the emotions and beliefs of others. As we saw earlier, the impression of the self is the reservoir of vivacity upon which vivacity transfer and sympathy depend. I acquire ideas concerning your mental life from your ‘countenance and conversation’ and these ideas are enlivened into beliefs by vivacity that was originally acquired from the pride I feel concerning my own achievements and virtues. Selfknowledge depends on the opinions of others, and beliefs about the minds of others depend on the vivid conception we have of our own selves. My neighbours’ praise of my garden communicates to me the idea that they are impressed by its design and planting scheme. The resemblance between my neighbours and myself—with respect to our interests, age, nationality, and upbringing—enlivens the idea I acquire from them regarding my garden. This idea will be converted, via sympathy, into the very sentiment itself—that of approval—and I will thus come to feel pleasure. Sympathy can play such an enlivening role only if there is a source of vivacity from which it can be transferred and, as we have seen, this source is the self. The source of this vivacity is the impression I have of myself, an impression that is itself produced by just such acquired beliefs concerning aspects of my life of which I should be proud (at least according to the value system of suburban England, where I live!). Here, then, we come full circle, and the conception we have of our self, in turn, is constituted by the pride we feel as a result of the feelings others have towards us, feelings with which we sympathize. A spiral, though, is a better description of this process. The vivacity that allows me to share my neighbours’ positive responses to my garden, that transferred from the impression of my self, itself has its source not in my present activities but in previous actions and displays of virtue that have found favour in others, and the resultant self—the proud self that I am now—will, in turn, hopefully go on to sympathize with future approval of my actions. My existence is constituted by a spiral of self-creation into the future, constantly fed by the reactions of others.

92  Sympathy, Belief, and Testimony I have considered various kinds of belief that are acquired sympathetically: those concerning the emotions of others, those constitutive of national character, religious beliefs, and beliefs concerning what others think of us and what is worthy of respect in society. Sympathetic religious beliefs are pernicious, but beliefs constitutive of national character need not be, and, according to Hume, beliefs related to pride play a complex epistemic role in the very conception we have of ourselves which, in turn, enlivens the ideas we have of the emotions and beliefs of others. Beliefs acquired sympathetically may not always reflect upon ourselves, but all sympathetic beliefs ride piggyback on this underlying mechanism involving pride, since without this there would not be an impression of the self to fuel sympathetic belief acquisition in general. The picture that has emerged is therefore one in which sympathy and pride can play a positive epistemic role in the acquisition of beliefs concerning the emotions and mental states of others and in the beliefs we acquire from others through testimony.

4.4 The Mechanism of Sympathetic Belief Acquisition One question that arises is whether sympathetic belief involves direct sympathy or sympathetic mechanisms mediated by ideas (or both). It was noted that Hume saw certain religious beliefs as contagious, and such a description may suggest a direct account of sympathy. I think, though, that Hume is here emphasising the sometimes virulent social effects of sympathetic belief transmission and not the direct character of the mechanism involved. Sympathetic belief acquisition is better seen as involving idea-mediated sympathy. This is more plausible given what it is like to acquire beliefs: we do not just find ourselves with beliefs, as we sometimes do with moods and emotions caught from others; we first hear an idea, entertain it, and then perhaps come to find we believe it. I will consider idea-mediated mechanisms suggested by Vitz (2015) and Welbourne (2002). I will argue, though, that the mechanisms suggested are not best characterized as sympathetic or are characterized as such only in an oblique way. Sympathy, for Hume, in its idea-mediated form, involves a two-stage process of idea acquisition and vivacity transfer from a present impression of the self, mediated by resemblance, and, as we shall see, the mechanisms suggested by Vitz and Welbourne are not of this kind. Vitz considers various ways in which sympathy could lead to belief. His first kind of case involves a child observing the fear on her mother’s face and coming to believe that she and her mother are in danger. Vitz does not elaborate on the mechanism involved here, although it’s plausible to assume a two-stage process at work: first, the mother’s emotion is caught, via sympathy (either directly or mediated by the idea of fear); second, fear leads the daughter to infer that they are in danger. This

Sympathy, Belief, and Testimony  93 second stage could involve causal reasoning grounded in previous instances of where fear had been felt in dangerous circumstances. Second, there are cases Vitz describes as involving ‘Sympathy and Custom’. This is when repetitive experience leads to the enlivening of ideas, when they ‘kindle[]...in the common blaze’ (EPM 9.9). On moving to a new town, you acquire the idea that the local team is better than its rivals, and if you hear this enough, you also come to believe that it’s true. For Hume, repetition can play an enlivening role: suppose, that a mere idea alone…shou’d frequently make its appearance in the mind, this idea must by degrees acquire a facility and force; and both by its firm hold and easy introduction distinguish itself from any new and unusual idea. (T 1.3.9.16) This phenomenon explains how ‘we may feel sickness and pain from the mere force of imagination, and make a malady real by often thinking of it’ (T 2.1.11.7), and, as we have already noted, how ‘liars, by the frequent repetition of their lies, come at last to remember them’ (T 1.3.9.19). The subversive role of repetition extends to what Hume calls ‘education’— that is, indoctrination—which should be ‘disclaim’d by philosophy, as a fallacious ground of assent to any opinion’ (T 1.3.10.1).35 Vitz (2015, 206n15) says that beliefs acquired in this way ‘probably are in many cases’ examples of contagious or sympathetic beliefs but that ‘such beliefs could be acquired without the operations of sympathy and, hence, are not necessarily instances of contagious beliefs’. He seems, then, to be drawing a distinction between mere repetition and sympathetic belief acquisition, but it is not obvious on what this is based. Taylor (2015a, 195) also aligns sympathetically acquired beliefs with the enlivening effect of repetition, describing such cases as those involving ‘sympathetic absorption’ of repeated judgment.36 Vitz then suggests a third kind of case of sympathetic belief, that involving ‘Sympathy, Custom and Reason’. This is where the effects of repetitive experience are supplemented by inductive reasoning, where we come to believe the reports of those who have been reliable in the past, those who have ‘authority’. There is a sense in which Vitz’s examples could be described as involving sympathetic belief. In his first kind of case, sympathy is involved in the acquisition of emotion from which belief is then acquired. This is not so in the cases involving ‘sympathy and custom’, but it is natural to talk of sympathy when thinkers are in close proximity to each other and come to think in the same way. Vitz’s descriptions of the mechanisms involved in these cases are plausible, but, I argue, such belief acquisition should not be seen as sympathetic in Hume’s sense. They involve other associationist forms of thinking such as causal reasoning or repetition, but there

94  Sympathy, Belief, and Testimony is no role to play for the impression of the self and resemblance, central features of Humean sympathy. Welbourne (2002, 421–2) also suggests a mechanism to explain default trust in testimony and this mechanism could be seen as underlying sympathetic belief acquisition.37 He highlights the importance of resemblance between the content of a testimonial report and the idea that it produces in the hearer’s mind. The content of your testimony concerning Rome resembles the idea of Rome that I acquire from you, and this idea is then enlivened via the associative principle of resemblance and becomes a belief concerning Rome.38 Contiguity can also play a role: ideas of biblical events enlivened for those ‘who have seen Mecca or the Holy Land’ (T 1.3.9.9), places contiguous to where the reported events occurred. Suggestive of sympathy is the role played by resemblance in Welbourne’s account. He claims that this explains the ‘too easy faith’ we have ‘in the testimony of others’ (T 1.3.9.12). Such resemblance could have a supplementary effect on vivacity transfer, but again I do not think such a mechanism should be described as involving sympathy. The resemblance in question is between testimonial utterances and ideas, not between self and other, and it is this latter kind of resemblance that is characteristic of sympathy. I therefore suggest an alternative mechanism for sympathetic belief acquisition, one closely parallel to Hume’s account of the sympathetic acquisition of emotion and therefore one that is consonant with the passages discussed in §2 where Hume seems to speak in the same way about the sympathetic acquisition of emotions, opinions (beliefs), and conceptions. In the sympathetic acquisition of emotions, there is first the acquisition of the idea of the emotion felt by another, and this is followed by vivacity transfer from a present impression of the self, resulting in the enlivening of the idea into the emotion itself. A parallel two-stage mechanism could result in the acquisition of sympathetic belief. Hume does not provide details of any such mechanism, but I suggest an account that could, by Hume’s lights, explain such belief. First, I hear your testimony and come to acquire the idea that it is raining in Rome. We saw in Chapter 2(§2) how this involves the revival sets of ideas associated with ‘rain’ and ‘Rome’. Since ‘a particular idea is commonly annex’d to such a particular word, nothing is requir’d but the hearing of that word to produce the correspondent idea’ (T 1.3.6.14). Further, my idea of Rome need not be acquired from the experience of actually being in Rome, but from impressions derived from the testimony of travellers or historians, those that I may have taken on trust. The next stage of sympathetic belief acquisition involves the enlivening of ideas, as it did in the case of the sympathetic acquisition of emotion. Belief, for Hume, is a lively idea related to a present impression, and, in the context of sympathetic belief, the relevant impression is that of the self. The second stage of sympathetic belief acquisition could therefore

Sympathy, Belief, and Testimony  95 involve the enlivening of ideas through self-association. Here, as with emotion, resemblance will play an important role. The more I resemble the testifier in general and specific ways, the more vivacity is transferred to the ideas acquired from them. We therefore have a lively idea, the source of vivacity being a present impression of the self and this, for Hume, amounts to a belief. I first suggested this mechanism in O’Brien (2017b) but have since found similar, though less detailed, suggestions in Mercer (1972) and Herdt (1997, 43). Mercer, for example, says that in so far as Hume thinks that belief is merely a lively idea or impression, there can be no objections to saying that an idea that X is the case can, through being associated with an impression, be so enlivened as to become a belief that X is the case. It follows that beliefs, opinions, and attitudes are just as susceptible to communication from one person to another by means of the sympathetic mechanism as passions and emotions are. (1972, 34) The mechanism I have suggested here could appear ad hoc. Hume’s associationist account of vivacity transfer allows ideas to be enlivened in a variety of ways: by, for example, repetition, inductive inference, and resemblance between ideas and impressions and between individuals. Hume does not provide details of how sympathetic belief acquisition proceeds and so interpreters are free to tweak his associationism in different ways in order to account for the phenomenology of our mental life and the flux of vivacity between ideas, beliefs, sensory impressions, and emotions. Let us, though, consider the rationale behind Hume’s account of vivacity transfer. The vivacity of an idea is a measure of its believability. The principle of causation increases the vivacity of the ideas of the usual effects of certain causes, therefore leading me to believe in their occurrence (T 1.3.6). Vivacity is transferred from my impression of the cause—say, a fire flickering in the hearth—to the associated idea of heat that has customarily followed such impressions. Here, then, the vivacity of such an idea is keyed to our ongoing experience of the world; regularities in experience determine the credit that should be placed in present ideas. The source of vivacity in the suggested mechanism for sympathetic belief acquisition, though, is our experience not of the world but rather of the self. The ideas I acquire from you are enlivened—are given credit—in proportion to how closely you resemble me. I trust the ‘testimony’ of my own senses, and I place a proportion of this trust in what I take to be the deliverances of the senses of those who resemble me in general and specific ways. I place more trust in family and friends, for example, than I do in strangers. The claim is not that this is justified but that it is a plausible interpretation of the mechanism behind Hume’s account of sympathetic belief

96  Sympathy, Belief, and Testimony acquisition. There may be no rational basis for this, just as there may be no rational basis for feeling sad when those around you do so. We do not, though, indiscriminately acquire sympathetic beliefs from everyone who resembles us, and I will explore why this might be so when I turn to testimonial wisdom in Chapter 6(§2). I have highlighted how Hume thinks that sympathy is involved in the communication of both emotions and beliefs, and in this section I have speculated concerning a possible associative mechanism that could underlie sympathetic belief acquisition. These details are not provided by Hume. My suggestion, though, is intended not as a contemporary Humean interpretation of sympathetic belief acquisition—for the good reason that contemporary Humeans usually jettison the details of his associationism—but as a reconstruction of what Hume might have had in mind or what he should have said about such belief, by his own lights. Further, sympathetic belief acquisition is of a piece with my anti-reductionist interpretation of Hume on testimony since it does not depend on inductive inference concerning the reliability of speakers. If sympathetic belief were only pathological, as is the case with religious beliefs, then reductionism could be maintained. The reductionist claim would be that all justified testimonial belief is grounded in inductive inference but that sympathetically acquired religious beliefs are not justified. We have seen, though, that sympathetic belief plays a wider role for Hume and that it can have an epistemically positive effect, where, for example, it communicates beliefs about national character, about the minds of others, and about our own traits of which we should be proud, in turn contributing to the very notion we have of our selves.39

4.5 Sympathy, Hermeneutics, and Understanding Some of the sympathetic beliefs we have considered in this chapter concern our understanding of other people. We come to have beliefs about the mental states of individuals and about national characters. There is, though, a distinct dimension of understanding that can be communicated by sympathy. If I sympathize with your beliefs, I can come to see the world in the way that you do. One’s national character, for example, is not just a matter of being enflamed with certain characteristic emotions; it involves, rather, adopting the distinctive point of view or turn of thinking of a group of people. This is true when one tries to understand contemporaries of a different nationality or those from past cultures and societies. Hume’s fascination with cross-cultural understanding can be seen in ‘A Dialogue’ (EPM) in the clash between ancient Athenian and modern French customs and in the meeting of a Moorish ambassador and Capucin friar in The Natural History of Religion (NHR 12.6).40 Elsewhere, Hume says that to understand the ‘speculative opinions’ of an age, ‘[t]here needs but a certain turn of thought or imagination to make

Sympathy, Belief, and Testimony  97 us enter into all the opinions, which then prevailed, and relish the sentiments or conclusions derived from them’ (E 247; ‘Of the Standard of Taste’). To understand the opinions and beliefs of another age or culture is to come, via sympathy, to understand their (perhaps at first) alien point of view. In §3 of this chapter, we saw how Taylor places our linguistic abilities at the core of her account of sympathy and human nature. We sympathize with the testimonial expression of the approval of others towards our behaviour and achievements and feel pride in the context of linguistically communicated societal structures, those that would be alien to those not in sympathy with our community: ’tis evident, that if a person full-grown, and of the same nature with ourselves, were on a sudden transported into our world, he wou’d be very much embarrass’d with every object, and wou’d not readily find what degree of love or hatred, pride or humility, or any other passion he ought to attribute to it. (T 2.1.6.9) In this section, I consider such cross-cultural understanding in the context of hermeneutic interpretations of Hume on sympathy. Positivists take historical explanations to be akin to the kind of lawlike explanations given in the natural sciences. Hume’s science of man (Chapter 2(§1)) provides an account of human psychology, and we saw in Chapter 3(§2) the holistic relation between this and the evidence we acquire from history: our knowledge of human nature informed by history and our knowledge of history informed by what we know about human nature. Hume’s inductive methodology would therefore seem to ally him with positivism. Some, however, have found Hume to ‘anticipate’ (Schmidt, 2013, 175) or be the ‘fore-runner’ (Bohlin, 2009, 165) of hermeneutic theories of empathetic understanding, an approach at odds with positivism. For this school, history involves coming to adopt the point of view of its protagonists and this cannot be attained merely by the application of lawlike generalizations to thinkers in history.41 A consequence of such an account of historical interpretation is that historians or readers of history can only understand the thoughts and actions of those in the past with whom they can sympathize. Good historians have an aptitude for this. However, someone of limited experience, with a perhaps jaundiced or sheltered view of the drives that compel other people, may not be able to put themselves in the place of a historical tyrant or saint. Such people would not make good historians, however agile they may be at extracting textual or archaeological evidence. Hume does seem to be committed to this kind of limit on interpretation since in EHU he says that ‘[a] man of mild manners can form no idea of inveterate revenge or cruelty; nor can a selfish heart conceive the heights of friendship and generosity’ (EHU 2.7), and he notes in the Treatise that ‘we never remark any passion or

98  Sympathy, Belief, and Testimony principle in others, of which, in some degree or other, we may not find a parallel in ourselves’ (T 2.1.11.5). Hume’s acknowledgement of such limits could be taken as supporting a hermeneutic interpretation of Hume on (historical) understanding, such understanding requiring the ability to adopt the point of view or mindset of another, something which is not always possible. One reason, though, to resist this interpretation is to consider the contrast between Hume and Adam Smith with respect to sympathetic understanding. Smith stresses how this involves stepping into the shoes of another (as it were): By the imagination we place ourselves in his situation, we conceive ourselves enduring all the same torments, we enter as it were into his body, and become in some measure the same person with him, and thence form some idea of his sensations, and even feel something which, though weaker in degree, is not altogether unlike them. (1759, 9) Wilhelm Dilthey (1907–10), from the hermeneutic tradition, also stresses the re-creation and reliving of the thoughts of others, as does, more recently, Robert Gordon, who argues in the context of the debate between theory-theorists and simulation theorists, that coming to understand another person involves an ‘egocentric shift, a recentering of [one’s] egocentric map’, with ‘[s]uch recentering…the prelude to transforming…in imagination’ into the other person (1995, 55).42 Hume’s account of sympathy, though, is generally seen not to involve such imaginative identification with another person.43 We do not think ourselves into their situation. Sympathy involves, rather, as put by Harris, ‘a kind of forgetting of the self, as one is taken over by the sentiments of another person and in a way briefly becomes that person in the process’ (2015, 110). Only, though, in a way, since ‘[n]o force of imagination can convert us into another person, and make us fancy, that we, being that person, reap benefit from those valuable qualities, which belong to him’ (EPM 6.3). Gerard Postema (2005, 259) takes Hume to have a projective account in which we can ‘transcend the immediate, momentary experiences of the object of sympathy and…sympathize with the suffering individual as a temporally extended and socially located person’, as opposed to Smith’s introjective account in which one places oneself in the position of another. The projection involved is shallow: enough for us to feel what others would feel, and for this to guide our responses to them, but not enough for us to take ourselves to be in their situation. Through sympathy, we are taken ‘out of ourselves’ (T 3.3.1.11); ‘our own person is not the object of any passion, nor is there any thing, that fixes our attention on ourselves’ (T 2.2.2.17). Postema, though, does note that Hume

Sympathy, Belief, and Testimony  99 discusses a range of cases that ‘are best seen to fall along a spectrum from very primitive responses to responses that depend on sophisticated, intentionally engaged exercises of imaginative projection’ (2005, 258). At one end, there are cases of sympathy that are ‘immediate, involuntary, and unreflective’; at the other, those where ‘the sympathizer is engaged cognitively and imaginatively, and the process seems to be in substantial part under the sympathizer’s voluntary control’ (2005, 258): when, for example, we feel pity for someone who is about to have an operation when we see the prepared surgical instruments and the faces of onlookers (T 3.3.1.7). Here I have to imagine what kinds of procedures will be performed on the patient and whether, say, fear or relief would be the predominant emotion felt by them.44 There may be no identification with the other, but, nevertheless, the locution of ‘enter so deep’ is frequently used by Hume to refer to a sympathetic engagement with the emotions, opinions, and beliefs of others. Here Hume talks in this way of coming to sympathize with those in a ‘barren or desolate country’: ‘The view of a city in ashes conveys benevolent sentiments; because we there enter so deep into the interests of the miserable inhabitants, as to wish for their prosperity, as well as feel their adversity’ (T 2.2.9.17). Such understanding involves coming to share the cognitive and affective states of others. We come to know how another is feeling by feeling their emotions for ourselves, and we come to understand them through having their beliefs and opinions. It is because of this that Bohlin (2009, 165) takes Hume’s ‘analyses of sympathy and explanatory knowledge [to] contain the fundamentals of a hermeneutic theory’. It is in this sense, Bohlin suggests, that Hume is ‘a fore-runner of hermeneutics’.45 In §§1–4 of this chapter, I argued that Hume’s account of sympathetic testimonial belief supports my anti-reductionist interpretation of Hume. Now we have found further support for this interpretation. There are times when one cannot understand the actions or testimony of another by merely assessing the regularities in their behaviour in one’s own terms. To understand the thoughts of another age, the character of another nation, and the social hierarchies and expectations of another society or culture, one has to share the relevant aspects of their point of view and to do this one must, through sympathy, enter into their emotional and cognitive world. I began this chapter by recalling the evidentialist interpretation of Hume on testimony in which thinkers are trusted according to evidence concerning whether they have been reliable in the past. This is an individualistic picture, and the acquisition of belief is wholly dependent on the epistemic capacities of the believer themselves. For Hume, though, thinkers can also be naturally tuned in to the beliefs of others via sympathy and this enables us to understand each other, other cultures, and ourselves.

100  Sympathy, Belief, and Testimony

Notes 1 Also see EPM 6.3, EPM App. 2.5n60. In places, though, Hume uses ‘sympathy’ to refer to the sentiment produced by such mechanisms (T 3.3.5.5). 2 For a useful discussion of various kinds of empathy relevant to contemporary psychology, cognitive science and philosophy of mind (including Humean sympathy), see Coplan and Goldie (2014, ix–xlvii). Vitz (2016) provides a helpful overview of the various roles that sympathy plays in Hume’s account of our cognitive and emotional life. 3 See T 3.3.3.2, 2.2.6.1–6, 2.2.9.1–20. 4 Also see T 2.3.9.12, 3.3.1.7. Cicero talks of sympathy in terms of the resonating strings of the lyre (44 bce, 2.33). For this musical conception of sympathy, see Gerbino (2015). This is included in Schleisser’s (2015) collection on the history of the concept of sympathy. 5 See Taylor (2015a, 43–4) for discussion of sympathy in Malebranche, Shaftesbury, Butler, and Hutcheson. 6 Vaccari (2019), however, argues that sympathy is always idea-mediated, and it is true that Hume does not provide any details of how direct sympathy is supposed to work. It is, though, idea-mediated sympathy that is relevant to my account of sympathetic belief and so I will not dwell on this issue. 7 Waldow, however—in reply to Baier—only allows such a role for presensations in cases where sympathetically aligned people are exposed to the same kind of situation (Baier and Waldow, 2008, 71). 8 See, for example, Brown (2008, 233). 9 Also see T 3.3.1.7. 10 For discussion of this tension and its resolution, see McIntyre (1989), Penelhum (2000, 40–126), and Lecaldano (2002). 11 For discussion of this distinction between a Cartesian self and the social self, see Herdt (1997, 41), Árdal (1966, 43–5), Sandis (2019, 5), Baier (1991, 130–1), and Greco (2015). Also see the papers by Boeker (2022), Waldow (2022), Greco (2022), and O’Brien (2022b) in my edited collection on Hume on the self and personal identity (O’Brien, 2022a). 12 Robert Caro, the acclaimed biographer and journalist, carefully expresses the relation between place and sympathy, which for Hume is mediated by the associative force of contiguity: ‘if the place played a significant role in shaping his feelings, drives and motivations, his self-confidence and his insecurities, then, by making the place real to the reader, the author will have deepened the reader’s understanding of the subject, will have made the reader not just understand but empathize with him, feel with him’ (2019, 142). 13 See Baier (1991, 70). 14 Kemp Smith (1941, 169–70) speculates that Hume’s account of belief was modelled on his account of sympathy and that the latter was the first to be developed. 15 Kim (2019) distinguishes three different interpretations of Hume on the problem of other minds: one Wittgensteinian, one related to contemporary simulation theory, and the analogical interpretation discussed above. 16 See Brown (2008, 232), Herdt (1997, 43), Mercer (1972, 34), Árdal (1966, 46–7), Baier and Waldow (2008, 82), Bricke (1996, 133), Schmidt (2003, 179, 181–2), Taylor (2015a, 32–70; 2015b, 194–200), Butler (1975, 15–16), Bohlin (2009, 161–2), and Postema (2005, 257). 17 Hume also talks of how eloquent writing can instil belief. I shall consider Hume’s attitude to eloquence in Chapter 5(§3). 18 This passage does not appear in the version of T 1.3.10.10 included in the Clarendon edition of the Treatise or at davidhume.org. This is because it was

Sympathy, Belief, and Testimony  101 replaced by a longer section taken from the Appendix (see Norton and Norton, 2007, 751). It is, however, included in Selby-Bigge’s edition of the Treatise (Hume, 1978). 19 Hume highlights the literary style of the Bible and how it engenders various epistemic and social dangers: ‘That the poetical style, in which a great part of it was composed, at the same time that it occasioned uncertainty in the sense, by its multiplied tropes and figures, was sufficient to kindle the zeal of fanaticism, and thereby throw civil society into the most furious combustion’ (H 3.232). We shall return to this metaphor of fire and combustion later in this section. 20 Also see T 2.3.6.8. 21 Also see T 1.3.2.2 and EHU 4.4. 22 See Falkenstein (1997, 32–42) for a detailed inventory of the various mechanisms that Hume sees as underlying the acquisition of belief. Falkenstein, though, does not discuss sympathy. 23 Also see Loeb (2012, 326). 24 His view is opposed to those, such as Montesquieu (1750), who see the source of national character in physical causes such as climate. 25 In this kind of case, the terms ‘infection’ and ‘contagion’ are appropriate given that the orator communicates emotions that he himself feels, but this need not be the case. It is, for example, observable behaviour that throws a damp on company and this could be feigned or misread. See Árdal (1966, 16). 26 Also see H 1.333, 3.366, 4.223, 4.57, 5.12, 5.258, 5.348, 6.32, 6.491; EPM 7.2, 7.21. 27 Siebert picks out these references to disease (1990, 95–119: ‘Religion: A Virulent Disease’). 28 Also see T 2.2.4.7. 29 This essay is transcribed by Mossner (1947) and is archived in the National Library of Scotland: ms. 23159, IX, 4. 30 One can also—the passage continues—acquire the opinions of others ‘from reasoning, which makes us regard their judgment, as a kind of argument for what they affirm. These two principles of authority and sympathy influence almost all our opinions; but must have a peculiar influence, when we judge of our own worth and character’ (T 2.1.11.9). 31 For the relation between pride and self, see Purviance (1997), Mercer (1972, Ch. 2), Penelhum (2000, ch. 4), Ainslie (2005), Pitson (1996), and Lecaldano (2002). 32 Harris (2015) argues that Hume would like to have seen himself as an eminent man of letters, a self-conception that was at times difficult to maintain given that he was acutely aware—overly so, suggests Harris—of what he saw as his literary failures and struggles. See, however, the last paragraph of ‘My Own Life’ for Hume’s proud assessment of his own character. 33 Hume may stress the creative role of pride with respect to the self in order to distance himself from the morality of the church and the claim that pride is a cardinal sin, as we shall see in Chapter 5(§4). 34 Greco (forthcoming), however, argues that for Hume shame can only play a limited role in the construction of the conception we have of ourselves. 35 See O’Brien (2017a) for a contrasting interpretation of Hume on education. 36 Also see Árdal (1966, 47–8). 37 Welbourne does not explicitly make the connection with sympathetic belief, nor does he find Hume’s ‘far-fetched’ mechanism plausible (2002, 421). 38 This is Welbourne’s reading of T 1.3.9.12, but it is not obvious that this is what Hume has in mind here or what Hume means when he says that testimony should be ‘consider’d as an image as well as an effect’.

102  Sympathy, Belief, and Testimony 39 Sympathetic beliefs could also be seen as providing a mechanism for the pooling of experience, with ‘the sphere of one man’s experience’ enlarged by beliefs sympathetically acquired from others. See Chapter 3(§3). 40 See Baumstark (2020, 35–40) for discussion of these cases and the role that Hume’s own travels might have played in his accounts of such understanding. 41 On the hermeneutic approach to history, see Sandis (2019, 113–6), who finds parallels between Hume’s philosophy of history and that of R.G. Collingwood. 42 See Bohlin (2009, 151–2) for discussion of the relation between Gordon’s account of simulation and Humean sympathy. 43 For the contrast with Smith see Herdt (1997, 143–56). Taylor (2015a, 42n16), however, notes that Capaldi (1976), Mercer (1972), and Hirschmann (2000) do not draw such a distinction with Smith; they claim, rather, that Hume does take sympathy to involve imagining oneself in the place of another. 44 See T 2.2.9.13, 2.2.7.5–6, 2.2.9.14–17. 45 Farr (1978) also offers three arguments for a hermeneutic interpretation of Hume, based on the holistic interpretations we give of mental states and actions, the omission of associationist details in EPM, and the background of socio-politico-historical context that is required for interpretation. Bohlin (2009, 144–5), however, does not find these arguments persuasive, claiming that these considerations are compatible with the usual positivist interpretation of Hume.

5 Testimony and Virtue

In order to understand Hume’s approach to testimony and trust, we need to look wider than his discussion of miracles in §10 of the first Enquiry, and in Chapter 3 we saw how Hume’s treatment of testimony in the Treatise suggests an anti-reductionist interpretation of his epistemology of testimony. Chapter 4 turned to sympathy and its role in the acquisition of testimonial belief. This chapter considers the relevance of Hume’s account of the intellectual virtues to testimony. In Section 5.1, I sketch Hume’s wide account of virtue. He argues for a ‘catalogue’ of virtues grounded in character traits that are agreeable and useful to ourselves and to others. These include intellectual virtues, many of which contribute to the acquisition of testimonial beliefs and to the transmission and acquisition of knowledge. Section 5.2 considers the role of testimony in moral education and in particular the role played by historical testimony. Section 5.3 turns to stylistic features of Hume’s works that contribute to successful testimonial communication and persuasion. Section 5.4 draws a distinction between Christian intellectual humility and the Humean virtue of intellectual modesty and suggests that the latter plays a role in regulating testimonial exchanges.

5.1 Hume’s Catalogue of Virtues For Hume, moral judgments concern the character and character traits of individuals: ‘If any action be either virtuous or vicious, ’tis only as a sign of some quality or character. It must depend upon durable principles of the mind, which extend over the whole conduct, and enter into the personal character’ (T 3.3.1.4). Those aspects of a person’s character of which we approve are virtues and those of which we disapprove are vices. Approval and disapproval are seen as emotional or sentiment-involving responses to the character-driven actions of others: ‘To approve of a character is to feel an original delight upon its appearance. To disapprove of it is to be sensible of an uneasiness. The pain and pleasure, therefore, being the primary causes of vice and virtue’ (T 2.1.7.5). We approve of traits that are agreeable and useful to ourselves and others, and we DOI: 10.4324/9780429266133-6

104  Testimony and Virtue disapprove of traits that are disagreeable and that hinder our social relations and lives. Virtue is therefore a broad category that encompasses traditional moral virtues but also ‘intellectual…endowments’ (EPM App. 4.2), talents, abilities, physical attributes, and traits such as cleanliness that are hard to categorize. Baier describes Hume as ‘realistic about what we do admire and deplore in one another and rightly says that no one wants to be thought stupid. So stupidity counts as a vice, just as much as cruelty or dishonesty’ (Baier, 2011, 47). To call a ‘lank belly’ or ‘broad shoulders’ (T 3.3.5.3) virtues can sound rather overblown, but, Hume claims, ‘if…the sentiments are similar, which arise from these endowments and from the social virtues; is there any reason for being extremely scrupulous about a word, or disputing whether they be entitled to the denomination of virtues?’ (EPM App. 4.6).1 It is agreeable and useful for people to be kind and courageous, but it is also agreeable and useful for them to have broad shoulders.2 Such a ‘wide’ account of virtue was controversial since it was at odds with Christian morality, a point to which I will return in §4 of this chapter. As Debes nicely puts it, Hume’s account of virtue ‘continues to challenge us by demanding the uncomfortable admission that our esteem for, say, a self-sacrificing humanitarian aid worker, is not fundamentally different than our admiration for a witty game show host, a tireless banker, or a honey-tongued poet’ (Debes, 2020, 117). Colin Heydt highlights Hume’s mischievous suggestion that cleanliness is a virtue: Hume’s awareness of criticisms of his doctrine of virtue and the numerous editions of EPM that offered opportunities for revision makes this claim about cleanliness into a philosophical doublingdown. It’s as if Hume is saying ‘Yes, I really meant it’.3 (Heydt, 2020, 130) The title of Book 3 of the Treatise may be ‘Of Morals’, but it discusses much else besides: all agreeable and useful human qualities, from the merchant who has ‘dexterity in business’, to the military hero ‘so dazzling in his character’, to the attentive friend.4 Human life is better for the existence of such people, better for them to have such traits, and better for others. In EPM, he highlights his wide conception by talking in terms not of ‘virtues’ but of that complication of mental qualities, which form what, in common life, we call personal merit: We shall consider every attribute of the mind, which renders a man an object either of esteem and affection, or of hatred and contempt; every habit or sentiment or faculty, which, if ascribed to any person, implies either praise or blame, and may enter into any panegyric or satire of his character and manners. (EPM 1.10)

Testimony and Virtue  105 As said, Hume includes intellectual endowments in his catalogue of virtues, and much of this chapter will focus on these and their relevance to the assessment of whether we should trust testimony and to what makes testimony effective. I shall refer to such endowments as intellectual or epistemic virtues, although these are not Hume’s terms. Such intellectual traits are seen as virtues since they are agreeable and useful to ourselves and others, and particular emphasis is laid on utility in the moral Enquiry: ‘A disposition or turn of mind, which qualifies a man to rise in the world, and advance his fortune, is entitled to esteem and regard’ (EPM 6.29). The following passage also appears in both the Treatise and EPM: When it is asked, whether a quick or a slow apprehension be most valuable? Whether one, that, at first view, penetrates far into a subject, but can perform nothing upon study; or a contrary character, which must work out every thing by dint of application? Whether a clear head or a copious invention? Whether a profound genius or a sure judgment? In short, what character, or peculiar turn of understanding is more excellent than another? It is evident, that we can answer none of these questions, without considering which of those qualities capacitates a man best for the world, and carries him farthest in any undertaking.5 (EPM 6.17; T 3.3.4.6) Intellectual virtues play various roles in the acquisition of knowledge and understanding, and they promote discourse and sociality upon which the cultivation of knowledge depends. It is good, for example, to show ‘industry’ in acquiring knowledge. ‘Industry’ can specifically refer to business concerns, but Hume usually uses it in the sense of general diligence with respect to both practical and intellectual endeavours.6 Other epistemically praiseworthy traits include ‘penetration’ and ‘courage of mind’, that which consists in the ability to go out on a limb and defend our views in the face of opposition, and both ‘vivacity’ and ‘solidity of understanding’.7 In the moral Enquiry, Hume praises ‘that sagacity, which leads to the discovery of truth’, ‘perseverance,…quickness of conception, facility of expression’, ‘ingenuity’, creativity or ‘fertility of invention’, ‘[h] onesty, fidelity’, and ‘good sense, and sound reasoning’.8 Other virtues concern how we intellectually engage with others. Henry VIII and Richard I were frank, and it is also virtuous to show ‘discretion’, ‘candour’, and ‘eloquence’.9 There are, of course, no hard and fast rules, and the benefits of such traits are highly dependent on context, but it is easy to think of times when it is useful for testimony to be frank, discrete, candid, or eloquent. To know when discretion rather than frankness is appropriate requires a kind of wisdom, and I shall consider Hume’s account of this in Chapter 6(§2). Such traits are praised because they are useful to society and also to the person who possesses them. They can aid the acquisition

106  Testimony and Virtue of knowledge and help secure our practical goals, and in so doing they can be seen by others as traits worthy of respect and as ‘the source of that trust and confidence, which can alone give a man any consideration in life’ (EPM 6.13). And, as we saw in Chapter 4(§3), the testimony of others can play a role in forming the very idea we have of ourselves. Rousseau, for example, could come to see himself as a great conversationalist in part because of the pride he feels as a result of Hume’s testimony concerning ‘the gaiety and finesse of his conversations’ (LDH 2.36). In response to Hume’s refusal to draw a clear line between moral and intellectual virtues, Julia Driver (2003) attempts to delineate their distinctive characteristics along two axes: virtues can be self- or other-regarding and, independently, epistemic or non-epistemic (epistemic in the sense of being related to the acquisition of belief and knowledge). Intellectual virtues are self-regarding and epistemic, moral virtues are other-regarding and non-epistemic, and prudential virtues are self-regarding and nonepistemic. Driver also suggests distinguishing a set of testimonial virtues. These are other-regarding and epistemic and would include intellectual honesty and also the kinds of qualities possessed by charismatic teachers and orators, those which others find agreeable. Hume cites various examples of those who possess such traits: Henry II’s conversation was ‘entertaining: His elocution easy, persuasive, and ever at command’ (H 1.370), and the ‘affability’ of Henry I’s ‘address encouraged those who might be overawed by the sense of his dignity or of his wisdom’ (H 1.276). Charles, king of Navarre, was ‘engaging’ and ‘eloquent’ (H 2.244). In contrast with intellectual virtues, intellectual vices are traits that are disagreeable or that hinder the search for truth and understanding. It is, for example, a character flaw to display ‘pedantry’, ‘avidity’ and ‘obstinacy’, and ‘[i]ndolence, negligence, want of order and method,…fickleness, rashness’ and loquacity are also seen as epistemically vicious.10 Loquacity should be avoided because it shuts down conversation and ‘[i]n conversation, the lively spirit of dialogue is agreeable’ and useful (EPM 8.5). Credulity or that ‘too easy faith in the testimony of others’ (T 1.3.9.12) is a vice to which the religious are especially prone. Virtues also have associated vices when overplayed: ‘scarce any of them pure, or free from the contagion of neighbouring vices’ (H 5.121). King James’s ‘learning’, for example, bordered on ‘pedantry…his wisdom on cunning’ (H 5.121). Hume distinguishes between natural and artificial virtues. Natural virtues such as benevolence are manifest in instinctive behaviour, whereas the artificial virtues are character traits that are encouraged in society by the ‘artifice and contrivance of men’ because we have discovered that they are useful and agreeable (T 3.3.1.1). Politeness and tolerance are thus artificial virtues, as are chivalry, loyalty and obedience to government, (female) chastity, promise-keeping, and justice.11 Some intellectual virtues, such as industry and ‘quickness of apprehension’ (H 5.573) could perhaps be natural, but most, it would seem, are artificial: we praise

Testimony and Virtue  107 ‘facility of expression’ and sincerity because we have found that they promote testimonial communication and the cultivation of knowledge, and society has therefore established conventions to encourage testifiers to express themselves in these ways. Hume is alive to the benefits and dangers that intellectual traits bring to society and to the individuals who possess them and thus he sees no need for them to be distinguished from moral virtues in this regard. We may feel stronger approval towards benevolence than we do towards quick apprehension or facility of expression, but Hume does not find the ‘boundaries are exactly fixed between virtues and talents’ (EPM App. 4.2).12 Feelings and sentiments, though, can be fickle, and our emotional responses to others can be biased. I may approve of Daphne’s intellectual arrogance because I am dazzled by her charm. Judgments concerning her character, though, should be made not solely from my own idiosyncratic and perhaps biased point of view but from ‘some common point of view’, ‘overlook’, or ‘distant view’.13 We should consider a person’s character, not only from our own perspective but from the perspectives of others, and we should ‘confine our view to that narrow circle, in which any person moves, in order to form a judgment of [her] moral character’. We should consider those who have a ‘particular connexion’ or ‘immediate connexion or intercourse’ with them (T 3.3.3.2). Sharing the common point of view with others leads to us being able to sympathize with the approval or disapproval others would feel towards Daphne. In Chapter 4(§1), we saw how we can sympathetically catch the emotions of others and it is here, in Hume’s account of virtue, where the wider significance of this mechanism becomes clear. I may delight in Daphne’s arrogance, but others disapprove, and in sympathising with their disapproval, I come to judge her arrogance a character flaw. I ‘receive by communication’ and ‘enter into’ and ‘embrace’ (T 2.1.11.2, 5) the sentiments of others, thus following an imaginative ‘progress of the sentiments’ (T 3.2.2.25) that enables me to adopt the common point of view from where the utility and agreeableness of character traits can be assessed. Virtues are character traits of which we approve, and we do so because we are capable of sympathizing with their beneficial effects on individuals and on society. This is determined by how agreeable the varying forms of our character traits are to ourselves and to others: a certain amount of cheerfulness, for example, is good for everyone; too much can cloy. Virtue is keyed to our ongoing social interaction with others and not to a static, unchanging (moral) standard. The moral outlook of a community and its conception of what should be seen as virtuous unfold as that community finds itself in new circumstances and as its members sympathize with each other in response to their changing world. Throughout history, we therefore see moral diversity between cultures, as we saw in Hume’s discussion of the differences between the French society of his

108  Testimony and Virtue day and that of ancient Greece (EMP Dial. 25). Intellectual virtues also vary across time. In the Treatise, Hume provides two reasons why a good memory should not be seen as a virtue. Appealing to memory is not intrinsically agreeable, in contrast to reasoning and reliance on the faculty of judgment which is ‘never exerted in any eminent degree, without an extraordinary delight and satisfaction’ (T 3.3.4.13).14 Further, attempts to improve one’s memory have little effect on utility since ‘all its middling degrees serves almost equally well in business and affairs’, and again this contrasts with the faculty of judgment for which differences in reasoning capacities are significant (T 3.3.4.13). As in our world of hard drives and cloud storage, Hume did not see a prodigious memory as a particularly useful trait. In the ancient world, however, Hume notes that a good memory was taken to be a ‘sublime’ quality of man and presumably therefore a virtue (EPM 6.19). Hume’s account of virtue is sentimentalist, in the sense that moral judgment is explained by feelings or sentiments of approval and disapproval. The term ‘sentimentalism’ is a modern one and would not have been recognised by Hume and his contemporaries. In the eighteenth century, Hume was seen as a ‘moral sense theorist’, although this is a misleading term since it suggests that moral judgment is akin to perception and that we possess, à la Hutcheson (1725) and Shaftesbury (1711), a distinct moral sense.15 For Hume, though, sympathy does not enable us to perceive virtue, but rather to feel its effects and thus come to be able to make judgments concerning virtuous and vicious character traits. Hume is better interpreted, as he is by Christine Swanton (2015), Geoffrey Sayre-McCord (1994), and Greco (2013), as a kind of virtue ethicist, one, though, who embraces a sentimentalist account of virtue, in contrast to the teleological notion of virtue central to Aristotelian virtue ethics.

5.2 Conversation and the Education of Virtue According to Hume’s sentimentalist account of virtue, it is sympathetic mechanisms and not reason that enables us to determine what is virtuous. Reason, though, is not inert with respect to the judgment of virtue. Adopting the general point of view involves associative processes whereby one comes to imagine what others (the narrow circle) would feel in response to another’s actions or words, and then one sympathizes with their response and thus comes to feel approval or disapproval in line with them. Causal reasoning is involved in such sympathy-modulated judgment. Reason enables us, for example, to gauge the likely effects of character traits on others: ‘reason must enter for a considerable share’ in all moral judgments; reason, that is, can ‘instruct us in the tendency of qualities and actions, and point out their beneficial consequences to society and to their possessor’ (EPM App. 1.2). It is causal reasoning that informs us that facility of expression is likely to be beneficial to society, given the experience we have of conversations and situations where this has been

Testimony and Virtue  109 the case (‘experience’ is here being used in the collective, pooled sense discussed in Chapter 3(§3)). In order to determine whether we should approve or disapprove of an action or turn of thinking, ‘it is often necessary…that much reasoning should precede, that nice distinctions be drawn, distant comparisons formed, complicated relations examined, and general facts fixed and ascertained’ (EPM 1.9).16 The associative processes involved in sympathy and causal reasoning hold centre-stage in Hume’s account of virtue, but Hume also spotlights a role for language and testimony. Judgments concerning virtues can be corrected by ‘argument and reflection’ (EPM 1.9), and sympathy can be corrected not by purely associative mechanisms but by conversation: The intercourse of sentiments, therefore, in society and conversation, makes us form some general inalterable standard, by which we may approve or disapprove of characters and manners. And tho’ the heart does not always take part with those general notions, or regulate its love and hatred by them, yet are they sufficient for discourse, and serve all our purposes in company, in the pulpit, on the theatre, and in the schools. (T 3.3.3.2) Hume draws an analogy between the judgment of virtue and that of beauty: [I]n many orders of beauty...it is requisite to employ much reasoning, in order to feel the proper sentiment; and a false relish may frequently be corrected by argument and reflection. There are just grounds to conclude, that moral beauty partakes much of this latter species, and demands the assistance of our intellectual faculties, in order to give it a suitable influence on the human mind. (EPM 1.9) Moral and aesthetic judgments are a matter not just of sentiments but of sentiment modulated by reason and conversation.17 In Chapter 2(§4), we saw how it is beneficial for newcomers to wine to trust what Jancis says about certain vintages, grapes, and wine regions. Moral and aesthetic judges have ‘delicacy’ of taste or judgment, a delicacy that is cultivated through conversing with others and reading what others have to say about character, beauty, and taste. Delicacy involves being aware of the fine grain of one’s experience—being able to tell, for example, that a certain wine has a slight taste of leather or iron and therefore judging that the balance of flavours is distorted (E 234–5; ‘Of the Standard of Taste’). We could learn from the testimony of good judges what exactly to look for in our experience: which details of a painting are important, which flavours should be dominant in the wine. In joining such conversations,

110  Testimony and Virtue one comes to see what is relevant to aesthetic, gustatory, and moral appraisal. It is difficult, perhaps impossible, to acquire delicacy of taste by merely sitting in front of a painting for hours; a ‘frequent survey or contemplation of a particular species of beauty’ (E 237) may be necessary for the aesthetic appreciation of a work, but one must also talk to others, read what experts say, and open oneself up to their testimony. Conversation tunes our sympathetic abilities and thus, as put by Taylor, ‘the delicate taste of the connoisseur reflects a specialized process of education, including a sympathetic appreciation for like-minded souls, which has helped her to acquire superior powers of discernment and discrimination’ (2015a, 59). This is true of both aesthetic judgment and that concerning our appreciation of moral and intellectual virtues. The general point of view is encapsulated in the moral wisdom of society and this is expressed in language and passed to us through testimony. Testimony plays a role in both the developmental and mature phases of the acquisition of moral wisdom. Moral language must be learnt, as all language must, and we are taught that ‘virtues’ are traits to be praised. In the developmental phase, parental instruction is crucial and children usually have default trust in what their parents say concerning moral matters (T 3.2.2.26). Moral language thus comes to carry its evaluative nature on its face. Once we have been taught the meaning of virtue terms, we do not, each time we use them, have to engage with the associative and sympathetic mechanisms upon which Hume’s account of virtue is based. Rather, ‘[t]he very nature of language guides us almost infallibly in forming a judgment of this nature’ (EPM 1.10). If one is told that Mildred is a cruel person, one does not have to imagine the effect of Mildred’s cruel actions on her narrow circle and sympathize with their disapproval in order to ascertain whether cruelty is a virtue or a vice. If this were so, moral debate and conversation would be a psychologically damaging emotional rollercoaster.18 Similarly, the judgment that a text is written in a simple and elegant style carries with it the sense that this is a good thing and that the author manifests intellectual or literary virtue. One does not need to actually feel the sentiment of approval derived from sympathy with author and readers; as Hume says in ‘Of the Standard of Taste’: There are certain terms in every language, which import blame, and others praise; and all men, who use the same tongue, must agree in their application of them. Every voice is united in applauding elegance, propriety, simplicity, spirit in writing; and in blaming fustian, affectation, coldness, and a false brilliancy[.] (E 227) The associationist machinery, though, does not drop out of Hume’s account of virtue. The term ‘cruel’ imparts blame because through time cruelty has been disagreeable and damaging to society and such effects

Testimony and Virtue  111 have been hardwired into the language we use to describe virtue and vice. And the same is true when it comes to the literary or testimonial virtues: elegance and simplicity are agreeable to the reader and so to describe works in these terms is to thereby impart our approval. To initially acquire the language of virtue, we need good moral guides, both as children (in the developmental phase) and at other times throughout life (in the mature phase of moral education). As discussed in Chapter 2(§4), there is no hard cut-off between the developmental and mature phases of trust. We can, for example, come to see that the morality we learn as children is distorted or worse, and we can learn this through conversation, discussion, and debate. This can sometimes involve understanding a point of view that is at odds in certain fundamental ways with one’s own, and, as seen in Chapter 4(§5), sympathy can be involved in such understanding. The conversations concerning virtue that Hume has in mind are not those of the theologian or the philosopher—at least not those related to their day jobs—but those engaged in by professions that have a better understanding of human nature. In this way, our sympathetic mechanisms are tuned by the testimony of parents, politicians, playwrights, novelists, and, importantly, historians, and by joining these conversations, we can come to have a fine-grained appreciation of how character traits and actions have (or don’t have) useful and agreeable effects on ourselves and the society in which we live. Hume’s History explores and develops his philosophical interests in politics, religion, and morality and it does so through revealing aspects of human nature.19 Hume’s focus is on the characters of those involved in historical events—not merely the events themselves, as events—and on how consideration of such characters can be edifying and morally instructive. Throughout the History, we have character sketches of key figures and vignettes in which we see the effects that such characters have on those around them. History therefore provides evidence in support of Hume’s moral theory: cases, for example, where courage and perseverance were beneficial to society and those where cruelty and arrogance were not: ‘History, the great mistress of wisdom, furnishes examples of all kinds; and every prudential, as well as moral precept, may be authorized by those events, which her enlarged mirror is able to present to us’ (H 2.311). Human nature is revealed through history and through observation of our social relations with others. Further, history reveals facets of human nature that can play a role in assessing testimony at other times and places. The protagonists of history can be seen as role models, but more often than not they have a mixed character.20 Through sympathizing with their predicaments and situation, we come to appreciate their reasons for acting or the psychological explanations for why they were unable to act, and we learn to be sensitive to the subtle moral dimensions of the actions

112  Testimony and Virtue of others. History thus ‘amuses the fancy, as it improves the understanding, and as it strengthens virtue’, and ‘historians have been, almost without exception, the true friends of virtue, and have always represented it in its proper colours’ (E 565, 568; ‘Of the Study of History’). History, Hume argues, is well suited for the assessment of virtue since [t]he writers of history, as well as the readers, are sufficiently interested in the characters and events, to have a lively sentiment of blame or praise; and, at the same time, have no particular interest or concern to pervert their judgment. (E 568) The perspective provided by engagement with history is ‘a just medium betwixt…extremes’: When a man of business enters into life and action, he is more apt to consider the characters of men, as they have relation to his interest, than as they stand in themselves; and has his judgment warped on every occasion by the violence of his passion. When a philosopher contemplates characters and manners in his closet, the general abstract view of the objects leaves the mind so cold and unmoved, that the sentiments of nature have no room to play, and he scarce feels the difference between vice and virtue. (E 568) The testimony of history can therefore teach us the effects that character traits have on individuals and on society, and it can also teach us to be more virtuous. According to Hume’s account of virtue and morality, this must involve character change, in that we must acquire enduring principles of the mind. Sharon Krause suggests that knowledge of history enables us to ‘deliberate not only about what we ought to do but also about who we ought to be and on the basis of this kind of deliberation we are capable of making changes in ourselves’ (2008, 106). Hume is clear that character change or changes upon the temper and disposition…may be produced by study and application. The prodigious effects of education may convince us, that the mind is not altogether stubborn and inflexible, but will admit of many alterations from its original make and structure.21 (E 170; ‘The Sceptic’) History enables us to understand the actions of others and to see how certain character traits are beneficial or detrimental to ourselves and to society; it therefore invites us to emulate role models from the past:

Testimony and Virtue  113 Let a man propose to himself the model of a character, which he approves: Let him be well acquainted with those particulars, in which his own character deviates from this model: Let him keep a constant watch over himself, and bend his mind, by a continual effort, from the vices, towards the virtues; and I doubt not but, in time, he will find, in his temper, an alteration for the better. (E 170; ‘The Sceptic’) Further, Hume carefully considers how history should be written in order for it to play such an instructive and potentially transformative role and it is this to which I turn next.

5.3 Literary Virtues Hume was intensely interested in the literary quality of his writing. Early in his career, in 1739, he asked Pierre Desmaizeaux, editor and biographer of Bayle, whether he had found his ‘System of Philosophy [in the Treatise]… sufficiently intelligible? Does it appear true to you?’, but he also asks: ‘Do the Style & Language seem tolerable?’ (LDH 1.29). The art of writing remained something of an obsession. As Harris puts it, ‘[e]legance, readability, correctness of language: these continued to matter more to Hume than to any previous historian writing in English’ (2015, 376). One reason for this is that Hume wanted to be read in coffee shops and drawing rooms, enabling him ‘to bridge the gap between the worlds of scholarship and of conversation’ (Harris, 2015, 323). His ‘ruling passion’, Hume proclaimed in his short autobiography, My Own Life, was the love of literature and literary fame (MOL 3). Such yearning for fame and the pride that would come with this are not vices for Hume, as we shall see in §4. Harris’s biography of Hume stresses this aspect of Hume’s character, claiming that Hume was happy at a distance from academic specialisms, ‘carefully cultivating the persona, the self-image, of a sedentary man of letters, able to make light of his pedantries and foibles, but all the same dedicated wholly to his books’ (2015, 199–200). Such a claim is compatible with my rejection of Treatisepurism (Chapter 3(§2))—that is, my rejection of the view that Hume’s postTreatise works are merely watered-down versions of the Treatise. If philosophy is well written, then it can both have intellectual depth and be read in coffee shops. There is, however, more to Hume’s obsession than readability and his own self-image, and in this section, I shall consider the deeper reasons for Hume’s focus on literary style; in particular, we shall consider his attitudes to accuracy and precision, eloquence, sentimentality, and humour and how each of these is reflected or used in his works. He was particularly careful to excise Scotticisms from his writing, even publishing a list in the Scots Magazine of phrases to be avoided for an English or European audience (Hume, 1760). He took ‘incredible pains’ in editing multiple new editions of his works,22 saying

114  Testimony and Virtue I know, that a man might spend his whole Life in correcting one small Volume, and yet have inaccuracies in it, I think however that the fewer the better, and it is a great Amusement to me to pick them out gradually in every Edition. (LDH 2.243, 250) His second Enquiry ran to 11 editions. Precision and accuracy are virtues in a text and by extension they are testimonial virtues in writers: agreeable to the writer themselves (certainly in Hume’s case) and to readers, and useful in terms of readability and the transmission of knowledge or insight. Not everyone, though, would wholeheartedly agree with this.23 Hume’s attention to detail was frustrating for his publishers and booksellers. William Strahan, Andrew Millar, and Thomas Cadell all wanted him to write more history in the last decade or so of his life since it sold well, but Hume was more interested in fine-tuning his already published work.24 He was committed to ‘extreme Accuracy of Style’, saying that ‘it is one great advantage that results from the Art of printing, that an Author may correct his works, as long as he lives’ (LDH 2.246–7). He would have been an early adopter of the word processor! Hume’s death is seen by some as a ‘philosopher’s death’ that reveals much about Hume as a person—his humour and composure—and about his attitude to religion and morality and the relation between the two. It also, though, highlights his obsession with style and accuracy. He was editing texts up to 13 days before his death, and, rather poignantly, one of his last letters includes the instructions: Please to make with your Pen the following Correction. In the second Volume of my philosophical Pieces, p. 245, l[ine] 1, and 2, eraze these words, that there is such a sentiment in human nature as benevolence. This, Dear Sir, is the last Correction I shall probably trouble you with. For Dr Black has promised me, that all shall be over with me in a very little time. (LDH 2.331–2) Right at the very end, then, his mind was on editing—a philosopher’s death, perhaps, but also that of a writer or stylist. Reference is also made to these final corrections in Smith’s letter to Strahan in which he recounts Hume’s final hours. Hume light-heartedly considers what excuse he might give to Charon, the boatman of Ancient Greek mythology, who carries the souls of the dead over the River Styx to Hades: ‘Good Charon, I have been correcting my works for a new edition. Allow me a little time, that I may see how the Public receives the alterations’. But Charon would answer, ‘When you have seen the

Testimony and Virtue  115 effect of these, you will be for making other alterations. There will be no end of such excuses; so, honest friend, please step into the boat’. (Smith, 1987, 219) This, one suspects, is both tongue-in-cheek and sincere: he really cared about the commas and capitalization, but he also perhaps saw the humour in his obsessive nature. When it comes to Hume’s frequent discussions of religion, humour is never far away.25 In the early sixteenth century, the ‘holy Maid of Kent’ was ensconced in the local church by Richard Masters, vicar of the parish, and Dr Bocking, canon of Canterbury, where, while having convulsions, she had visions and uttered ‘strange sayings’ and prophecies. This was good business for the church since it now became a place of pilgrimage and ‘[m]iracles were daily added, to encrease the wonder’ (H 3.219). Hume notes, though, that [t]hose passions, which so naturally insinuate themselves amidst the warm intimacies maintained by the devotees of different sexes, had taken place between Elizabeth and her confederates; and it was found, that a door to her dormitory, which was said to have been miraculously opened, in order to give her access to the chapel, for the sake of frequent converse with heaven, had been contrived by Bocking and Masters for less refined purposes. (H 3.220) We have here bawdy humour and there are also knockabout stories of deceit involving fake blood, mechanical crucifixes, and collapsing floors.26 Elsewhere, though, things are darker. Here is part of Hume’s description of the execution of Charles I: While everything around him bore a hostile aspect; while friends, family, relations, whom he passionately loved, were placed at a distance, and unable to serve him; he reposed himself with confidence in the arms of that Being who penetrates and sustains all nature, and whose severities, if received with piety and resignation, he regarded as the surest pledges of unexhausted favour. (H 2.378) There is no explicit condemnation of Charles’s faith here, but it is nevertheless suggested that Charles’s confidence is rather bizarre, given that the Being who ‘sustains all nature’ is surely also responsible for Charles’s ills. The reader might start to wonder whether such ‘severities’ should be seen as ‘pledges of unexhausted favour’, however much ‘piety and resignation’ with which they are received! Perhaps, instead, Charles should find consolation in the love of ‘friends, family, [and] relations’.

116  Testimony and Virtue There is a deeper reason for some of Hume’s stylistic choices, including his use of humour—deeper, that is, than merely his own enjoyment and that of his readers and perhaps his desire for literary fame. ‘Reason’, Hume provocatively claims, ‘is...the slave of the passions’ (T 2.3.3.4) and this key Humean theme is played out across his works. Moral rationalism is rejected and reason alone cannot motivate us to act. This view is now enshrined in contemporary philosophy as the ‘Humean’ view of action and motivation. In the context of Hume’s writings on religion, reason is unlikely to persuade the devout believer that their faith is irrational. There has been, Hume claims, no instance where ‘argument has ever been able to free the people from that enormous load of absurdity, with which superstition has every where overwhelmed them’ (H 1.555). If reason alone will not weaken the grip of religious and political fanaticism, writers and orators might have more luck with humour and irony. Here Hume offers witty commentary on the Church’s vehement condemnation of a certain mode of footwear in the eleventh century: ‘Though the clergy, at that time, could overturn thrones, and had authority to send over a million of men on their errand to the desarts of Asia, they could never prevail against these long-pointed shoes’ (H 1.242). This is rather funny, but the humour also brings home the arbitrariness of a certain clerical prohibition and, perhaps, also makes us think about whether we should respect the Church’s opinion on more central moral issues.27 Wayne Booth suggests that when one understands the ironic message of an author, one feels in sympathy with them, ‘clamped inescapably into the author’s patterns’ (1978, 11). Herdt takes Booth’s claim to apply to Hume’s use of irony, that which ‘builds a bond of sympathy between author and reader’: one feels ‘in on the secret’ and such intimacy with Hume supplements the effect and reception of his works (Herdt, 1997, 191). We have, then, a text working on (at least) two levels: irony aims at relaxing the hold of religion on those with faith, and sympathy strengthens the views held in common with the author. It is easy to see this as a deliberate strategy on Hume’s part since he himself reflects on such sympathetic engagement with writers. Hume notes that Sir William Temple’s vanity shows through in his writing, and ‘[b]y means of it, we enter into acquaintance with the character of the author, full of honour and humanity; and fancy that we are engaged, not in the perusal of a book, but in conversation with a companion’; ‘[t]hat mixture of vanity which appears in his works, is rather a recommendation to them’ (H 6.544).28 Further, the more specific the resemblance between author and reader, the greater the sympathetic engagement, and age plays an important role here:29 A young man, whose passions are warm, will be more sensibly touched with amorous and tender images, than a man more advanced in years, who takes pleasure in wise, philosophical reflections concerning the conduct of life and moderation of the passions. At twenty,

Testimony and Virtue  117 Ovid may be the favourite author; Horace at forty; and perhaps Tacitus at fifty. Vainly would we, in such cases, endeavour to enter into the sentiments of others, and divest ourselves of those propensities, which are natural to us. We choose our favourite author as we do our friend, from a conformity of humour and disposition. Mirth or passion, sentiment or reflection; whichever of these most predominates in our temper, it gives us a peculiar sympathy with the writer who resembles us. (E 244; ‘Of the Standard of Taste) There is, then, humour and irony in Hume’s works, but at times he also slips into a sentimental, emotion-soaked register. In his writing on the English civil war, Hume took the side of Charles, but this was only on pragmatic grounds; it did not reflect his commitment to the Royalist cause or to the Tory ideology of his time. Given such pragmatism, it can seem odd that Hume’s account of Charles’s execution is so dripping with sentimentality (H 5.535–44). In the days approaching the execution, we are coerced into empathizing with Charles’s family—‘Mark! Child, what I say. They will cut off my head!’—and then, more subtly, with Charles: ‘Every night, during this interval, the king slept sound as usual; though the noise of workmen, employed in framing the scaffold, and other preparations for his execution, continually resounded in his ears’. We learn of his saintly forgiveness of parliament and his ‘murderers’, and, after such a build-up, we almost feel the blow of the axe: ‘A man in a vizor performed the office of executioner: Another, in a like disguise, held up to the spectators, the head, streaming with blood, and cried aloud, This is the head of a traitor!’ Such seeming injustice had ‘prodigious’ effects on the assembled crowd: ‘Women are said to have cast forth the untimely fruit of their womb: Others fell into convulsions…Nay some…it is reported, suddenly fell down dead’. The scene here is akin to that which took place by the tomb of Abbé Paris, that discussed in Chapter 1(§3), and so it’s clear that Hume didn’t take such reports seriously. They are used for effect. This rather bizarre account fades out with a final image of the once-living king: ‘This prince was of a comely presence; of a sweet, but melancholy aspect. His face was regular, handsome, and well-complexioned: his body strong, healthy, and justly proportioned’.30 Hume’s hagiographic study of Charles is not sincere: it is part and parcel of his strategy to dampen the ideological zeal of Whig commitment to the Parliamentarian cause. The lives of people and the society within which we can thrive depend on stability and order, and the status quo generally maintains these better than violent upheaval. Any attempt to radically change the political order is more than likely to fail and cause harm. Cromwell’s republic was ‘a wild aberration fuelled largely by religious fanaticism’ (Harris, 2015, 335). Hume does not engage in politicalphilosophical debate concerning the relationship between liberty and

118  Testimony and Virtue authority and the appeal to inalienable rights—Tories favouring those of the monarch, while Whigs sought a return to ancient freedoms possessed before the Norman Conquest. Hume thought that such a ‘prelapsarian’ state was mythical: ‘English history was a story of continual change, not of a return to first principles’ (Harris, 2015, 389). It was the result of the monarchy, nobility, and people vying for power, with a future that was open; one that was not always in the process of being borne back into a past of ‘first principles’, be they Tory or Whig. Rather than take a side in the philosophical debate, though, Hume appeals to the emotions of his reader, and in the essay ‘Of the Original Contract’ (E 465–87), he satirizes attempts to provide philosophical justification for politics.31 In order to engage the emotions of the reader, Hume used humour, irony, sentimentality, and also horror. ‘Paris flowed with blood’ during the St. Bartholomew Massacre of 1572 (H 4.163), and his descriptions of the Irish Rebellion of 1641 (H 5.341–47) and the crusades (H 1.248–51) are peppered with brutality, butchery, and dead bodies: ‘Infants on the breast were pierced by the same blow with their mothers, who implored for mercy’ (H 1.250). These descriptions reveal our dark side and also our contradictions. Theatrically, in the midst of a sea of carnage, the crusaders sung anthems to their Saviour, who had there purchased their salvation by his death and agony: And their devotion, enlivened by the presence of the place where he had suffered, so overcame their fury, that they dissolved in tears, and bore the appearance of every soft and tender sentiment. So inconsistent is human nature with itself! And so easily does the most effeminate superstition ally, both with the most heroic courage, and with the fiercest barbarity! (H 1.250) Harris discusses how in The History of England: Hume’s reader was encouraged, coerced even, into a sympathetic emotional engagement with the victims of history….Perhaps Hume believed that success as a historian could not be the result of intellectual appreciation alone. Possibly he thought that the reader needed to have his emotions stirred as well. (2015, 348–9) In order to do this, Hume borrows some of the methods of poets and playwrights, aiming to communicate the emotional life of the historical figures he portrays; the readers of history therefore come to be akin to theatre-goers or ‘spectators; who weep, tremble, resent, rejoice, and are enflamed with all the variety of passions, which actuate the several personages of the drama’ (EPM 5.26). The ability to move the

Testimony and Virtue  119 passions in this way is a rare talent and thus it ‘may exalt the person possessed of it, above every character of the age in which he lives’ (EPM 7.27). Not all historians, though, are possessed of this talent. Thucydides and Guicciardin do not hold our attention and Suetonius has an ‘indifferent, uninteresting stile’. Hume prefers those who emotionally engage the reader, such as Tacitus (EPM 5.33–4). This makes for a more entertaining read—‘The perusal of a history seems a calm entertainment; but would be no entertainment at all, did not our hearts beat with correspondent movements to those which are described by the historian’ (EPM 5.32)—but also, given Hume’s account of belief, such histories are more likely to have epistemic impact, in that readers may more readily believe accounts painted in such colours. There is, though, a danger inherent in Hume’s approach. Humour, sentimentality, and appeals to emotion can persuade, and in many cases can do so more successfully than reasoned argument, but that is precisely why such techniques have been used throughout history by unscrupulous politicians, clerics, and monarchs. Sensitive to this danger, Hume alerts us to the deceptive strategies of some historians and politicians: ’Tis difficult for us to withhold our assent from what is painted out to us in all the colours of eloquence; and the vivacity produc’d by the fancy is in many cases greater than that which arises from custom and experience. We are hurried away by the lively imagination of our author or companion; and even he himself is often a victim to his own fire and genius. (T 1.3.10.8) It is often the case that in intellectual pursuits, ‘’tis not reason, which carries the prize, but eloquence; and no man needs ever despair of gaining proselytes to the most extravagant hypothesis, who has art enough to represent it in any favourable colours’ (T 0.2). In the Natural History of Religion, Hume argues that fear is a primary cause of religious belief, that caused by encountered dangers and the precariousness of existence but also that whipped up by the dramatic performances of clerics (T 1.3.9.15). The focus here may be on oratory and not the written word, but it’s clear that the dangers are not any less in the case of literary eloquence. We must therefore be on our guard when eloquence is shown by unscrupulous orators or writers, but writers with virtuous ends should not abandon such effective literary techniques. Thus, in his essay ‘Of Eloquence’ (E 97–110),32 Hume argues for a return to ‘ancient eloquence’ and attempts to draw a distinction between virtuous and corrupt uses of literary style. Elsewhere, Hume discusses the virtues of good writing or written testimony and suggests that one should aim for the just medium between elegance and simplicity:

120  Testimony and Virtue Too much ornament is a fault in every kind of production. Uncommon expressions, strong flashes of wit, pointed similes, and epigrammatic turns, especially when they recur too frequently, are a disfigurement, rather than any embellishment of discourse…[T]he mind, in perusing a work overstocked with wit, is fatigued and disgusted with the constant endeavour to shine and surprize. (E192–3; ‘Of Simplicity and Refinement’) Testimony in the form of both the written and spoken word can be evaluated in terms of its utility and agreeableness and thus, on Hume’s account, writers can acquire literary skills that can be seen as virtuous and vicious. Hume’s goal at points in the History and elsewhere is prose that is entertaining, but also that which reveals the absurdity of certain political or religious convictions, and is also morally instructive. To this end, the historian should attempt to meld cognitive factors—such as good causal reasoning—with non-cognitive ones, such as emotion and humour. Without the stabilising role of reason, eloquence can corrupt, as is the case with religious discourse, since the clergy’s ‘taste in eloquence will always be greater than their proficiency in reasoning and philosophy’ (E 201; ‘Of National Characters’). That (some) historians aim to engage our emotions and that they do so for moral edification is not a distinctively Humean thesis; as Jacob Jost says, ‘for eighteenth-century readers raised on Livy and Tacitus, this was the oldest game in town’ (2014, 161). What is distinctive in Hume’s works, though, is the continuity between his philosophy and his historical writings, and one of the aims of this book is to focus on the relations between the testimony of history and Hume’s epistemology of testimony.

5.4 The Monkish Virtues and Intellectual Modesty On both the reductionist interpretation and my own anti-reductionist reading of Hume, the religious are sometimes found wanting when it comes to the assessment of testimony, as is the case with respect to miracle reports. This section considers Hume’s wider critique of the intellectual traits of religious thinkers. In §2, we saw how Hume’s account of virtue encompasses the kinds of intellectual traits that are necessary for skilful, persuasive, and entertaining testimony. Hume’s aim is to reveal the merely verbal distinctions between the different kinds of human characteristics of which we approve, but he also has a more pointed purpose. Hume, ‘Christian-baiting’, as Baier (1991, 207) puts it, claims that we should ‘transfer’ the religious virtues ‘to the opposite column, and place them in the catalogue of vices’ (EMP 9.3). The morality of the Church is perverted. Its central ‘virtues’—the ‘monkish virtues’—are in fact vices, and in the moral Enquiry he targets ‘celibacy, fasting, penance, mortification, self-denial, humility, silence,

Testimony and Virtue  121 [and] solitude’ (EPM 9.3), adding ‘passive suffering’ to this list in the Natural History of Religion (NHR 10.2). Such practices and associated traits are disagreeable and not useful and should therefore be seen as vices. They’re fostered by specific features of Christianity: by, for example, focus on the afterlife rather than earthly utility and pleasure.33 The resultant monkish virtues therefore ‘cross all…desirable ends; stupify the understanding and harden the heart, obscure the fancy and sour the temper’, and in the Dialogues, Philo criticizes religion for ‘raising up a new and frivolous species of merit’ (EPM 9.3; DNR 12.16). The monkish virtues are mere ‘useless austerities and rigours, [resulting in] suffering and self-denial’ (EPM 9.15), and with relish, Hume mocks the saints and those who live according to such constraints: ‘A gloomy, hairbrained enthusiast, after his death, may have a place in the calendar; but will scarcely ever be admitted, when alive, into intimacy and society, except by those who are as delirious and dismal as himself’ (EPM 9.3).34 Saints and monks are not paragons of virtue: their ‘conduct was probably, to the last degree, odious or contemptible, and whose industry was entirely directed to the pursuit of objects pernicious to mankind’ (H 1.337). Religion has perverted their sense of morality and also those who admire such figures and their way of living. We should instead aspire to the life of those whose characters are useful and agreeable and these can be businessmen, soldiers, kings, scientists, and politicians. It is such people we come to admire when we ‘judge of things by…natural, unprejudiced reason, without the delusive glosses of superstition and false religion’ (EPM 9.3). Pierre Bayle (1683) may have argued for the possibility of an atheist living a virtuous life, but Hume is more radical in his claim that Christianity is also a danger to the virtuous life.35 For Christians, pride is the most serious of the seven cardinal sins. It involves ascribing excessive importance to yourself and taking yourself to be self-sufficient—that is, wholly responsible for your excellences, virtues, and successes. This is seen as an epistemic flaw since it misconstrues our place in nature and ignores the role played by our relationship to God. God is the ultimate source of our goodness and acknowledgement of this should foster other-directed love, gratitude, and faith towards our divine creator and not self-directed pride. Further, God created us as social creatures and pride threatens the equitable relations we should have with our neighbours.36 Humility therefore has a therapeutic role, providing us with knowledge of our true nature and enabling us to adopt the epistemically and morally appropriate relations with our creator: those of submission, gratitude, and love. This not only helps us to avoid the sins associated with pride but enables us, through God’s grace and presence in our lives, to live a virtuous Christian life of faith, hope, and charity. Pride and humility thus form an axis that defines the Christian life and Christianity: ‘It was pride that changed angels into devils; it is humility that makes men as angels’ (St. Augustine).37

122  Testimony and Virtue Hume, however, argues that Christian attitudes towards pride and humility are a threat to our psychological well-being, a danger to society, and at odds with human nature. Such attitudes can be epistemically flawed and immoral. There is a distinction in Hume between epistemically vicious forms of intellectual humility, those which Hume ascribes to religious thinkers, and virtuous forms of intellectual modesty, those which are a feature of Hume’s mitigated scepticism which, we shall see below, plays a role in both the giving and assessment of testimony. Humility is a monkish virtue. Once we remove the distorting lens of religion, we can come to see it as a vice, and, consequently, pride as a virtue. Pride is good: it is ‘always agreeable to ourselves’ (T 3.3.2.9), and it is useful to society for people to be proud of their achievements. It ‘capacitates us for business’, giving us the confidence to carry out plans and look to the future (T 3.3.2.14).38 Christianity takes pride to be the source of all other vices; for Hume, though, pride and the self-confidence that stems from it lead to other virtues such as courage, magnanimity, and ambition, all qualities of greatness. It is ‘nothing but a steady and well-establish’d pride and self-esteem’ that makes a ‘great’ person (T 3.3.2.13). We saw in Chapter 4(§3) how pride is fostered by the testimony of others, and in the final section of the moral Enquiry, Hume stresses the role of pride in the development of a virtuous character. By our continual and earnest pursuit of a character, a name, a reputation in the world, we bring our own deportment and conduct frequently in review, and consider how they appear in the eyes of those who approach and regard us. This constant habit of surveying ourselves, as it were, in reflection, keeps alive all the sentiments of right and wrong, and begets, in noble natures, a certain reverence for themselves as well as others; which is the surest guardian of every virtue. The animal conveniences and pleasures sink gradually in their value; while every inward beauty and moral grace is studiously acquired, and the mind is accomplished in every perfection, which can adorn or embellish a rational creature. (EPM 9.10) There could hardly be a greater contrast between the moral psychology of Hume and that of the Church, a contrast further emphasized by the range of attributes and achievements that Hume takes to be deserving of pride. We are right, for example, to take pride in ‘qualities of the mind; wit, good-sense, learning, courage, integrity: from those of the body; beauty, strength, agility, good mein, address in dancing, riding, fencing: from external advantages; country, family, children, relations, riches, houses, gardens, horses, dogs, [and] cloaths’ (Abs. 30). The term ‘pride’, however, covers a range of self-attitudes, some clearly virtuous for Hume, but others not so. Hume at times talks of virtuous

Testimony and Virtue  123 pride in terms of ‘vanity’, although today this term more naturally describes a kind of self-attitude that Hume takes to be a vice or to be related to other vices.39 Pride, if excessive, can lead to hubristic attitudes that should be resisted, such as smug self-satisfaction, vain preening, selflove, arrogance, and conceit. These are dangerous both to the subjects of such attitudes and to the society in which they live. As Watkins notes, such vanity can reveal that one is ‘outwardly arrogant but inwardly insecure’, not therefore possessing virtuous pride (2019, 174). This is a point made by Hume at EPM 9.11, and Simon Blackburn arrives at the same thought via his ‘inchoate despair at L’Oréal [the cosmetics company]’ and their well-known advertising tagline: ‘I came to understand that the underlying message was not “because you’re worth it” but “because you aren’t worth it. But you could be if you buy the stuff”’ (2014, 57). Displays of pride, even if well founded, can also raise in others ‘the disagreeable passion of humility’ (T 3.3.2.17), as others compare themselves to those who are proud of their achievements.40 Thus, society has introduced the rules of good-manners or politeness; in order to facilitate the intercourse of minds, and an undisturbed commerce and conversation. Among well-bred people, a mutual deference is affected: Contempt of others disguised: Authority concealed: Attention given to each in his turn: And an easy stream of conversation maintained, without vehemence, without interruption, without eagerness for victory, and without any airs of superiority. (EPM 8.1) Such rules ‘conciliate affection, promote esteem, and extremely enhance the merit of the person, who regulates his behaviour by them’ (EPM 8.1). We should therefore show tempered pride or ‘decent assurance’ (E 553; ‘Of Impudence and Modesty’): ‘we must carry a fair outside, and have the appearance of modesty and mutual deference in all our conduct and behaviour’ (T 3.3.2.10).41 The testimony of others concerning my virtues (and vices) plays a constructive role in the conception I have of myself, but I should not sing my own praises too loudly. Such modesty, though, should not be equated with humility. Modesty is a socially orientated virtue, concerning how we present ourselves to others, and a private stance of pride is consistent with such modesty. In contrast, the kind of humility encouraged by Christian teachings is not merely an attitude to how we present ourselves; it concerns, rather, our sincere assessment of our lack of self-worth. As such, or so Hume argues, it is vicious because it leads to or reflects low self-esteem and undermines self-confidence and self-respect. It is associated with humiliation, shame, and embarrassment, emotions that have a detrimental effect on our wellbeing and those around us: ‘An abjectness of character…is disgustful and contemptible….Where a man has no sense of value in himself, we are not

124  Testimony and Virtue likely to have any higher esteem of him’ (EPM 7.10n42). In contrast, the ‘most usual meaning [of “modesty”] is when it is opposed to impudence and arrogance, and expresses a diffidence of our own judgment, and a due attention and regard for others’ (EPM 8.8). Modesty is thus agreeable to ourselves and to others and is therefore a virtue. We can be modest or humble with respect to intellectual abilities and achievements just as we can be modest or humble with respect to other aspects of our life or character. However, the kind of intellectual modesty that is central to Hume’s mitigated scepticism and to his account of philosophical or epistemic wisdom is different in character to such ‘decent assurance’. The wise do not merely present themselves as fallible, nor do they do so for the sake of good manners; theirs, rather, is a sincere attitude towards the pretensions of reason and our cognitive capacities: ‘nothing can be more unphilosophical than to be positive or dogmatical on any subject’ (EPM 9.13). Hume is not entirely consistent with the terminology he uses to draw this distinction and neither is everyday language: ‘humble’, for example, sometimes has virtuous connotations (certainly so for Christians) but sometimes negative ones, as do ‘humility’ and ‘modesty’, and sometimes the terms are treated as interchangeable. For the sake of clarity, I shall therefore be stipulative and by ‘humility’ I mean the kind of attitude that Hume takes to be a vice and I shall use ‘modesty’ to refer to the relevant virtue or virtues. For Hume, dogmatism is a vice, one to which the religious are particularly prone and one which feeds other intellectual and moral vices. In Thomas à Becket and his followers, we find ‘a most entire and absolute conviction of the reason and piety of their own party, and a disdain of their antagonists’, a conviction which carried over into ‘[t]he spirit of revenge, violence, and ambition’ throughout their lives (H 1.334).42 In political disputes, it is ‘the ignorant multitude, who are always clamorous and dogmatical, even in the nicest questions, of which, from want of temper, perhaps still more than of understanding, they are altogether unfit judges’ (E 507; ‘Of the Protestant Succession’; my italics). Dogmatism and self-assurance usually suggest that beliefs have been arrived at ‘without that proper deliberation and suspence, which can alone secure them from the grossest absurdities’ (EPM 9.13). That Hume’s attitude to dogmatism is central to his epistemology is clear from the opening paragraph of the moral Enquiry: Disputes with men, pertinaciously obstinate in their principles, are, of all others, the most irksome; except, perhaps, those with persons, entirely disingenuous, who really do not believe the opinions they defend, but engage in the controversy, from affectation, from a spirit of opposition, or from a desire of showing wit and ingenuity, superior to the rest of mankind. The same blind adherence to their own arguments is to be expected in both; the same contempt of their

Testimony and Virtue  125 antagonists; and the same passionate vehemence, in inforcing sophistry and falsehood. And as reasoning is not the source, whence either disputant derives his tenets; it is in vain to expect, that any logic, which speaks not to the affections, will ever engage him to embrace sounder principles. (EPM 1.1) In recent discussions of virtue epistemology, dogmatism is contrasted with open-mindedness. Wayne Riggs describes the latter as the ability ‘to be aware of one’s fallibility as a believer, and to be willing to acknowledge the possibility that anytime one believes something, it is possible that one is wrong’ (2010, 80). According to Hume, just this virtue is inculcated in the ‘true philosopher’ by mitigated scepticism. In ‘Of skepticism with regard to the senses’, for example, Hume provides and embraces arguments to the conclusion that none of our beliefs about mind-independent objects have any justification whatsoever (T 1.4.2). This does not have the disastrous Pyrrhonian result of forcing us to withhold all belief concerning such matters since ‘[n]ature, by an absolute and uncontroulable necessity has determin’d us to judge as well as to breathe and feel’ (T 1.4.1.7). This is where we left mitigated scepticism in Chapter 2(§3)—as, that is, a naturalistic response to scepticism. Hume, though, also argues that his scepticism plays a positive epistemic role. Such scepticism is both ‘durable and useful’ and ‘could such dogmatical reasoners become sensible of the strange infirmities of human understanding…such a reflection would naturally inspire them with more modesty and reserve, and diminish their fond opinion of themselves, and their prejudice against antagonists’ (EHU 12.24). Mitigated scepticism induces a ‘degree of doubt, and caution, and modesty, which, in all kinds of scrutiny and decision, ought for ever to accompany a just reasoner’ (EHU 12.24). It also assists us in limiting ‘our enquiries to such subjects as are best adapted to the narrow capacity of human understanding’ (EHU 12.25). In undermining our intellectual pretensions, it helps make us more co-operative inquirers who are modest about our own expertise, more likely to consider the opinions and testimony of others and less likely to dogmatically assert our own views. Hume has an ‘accuracy’ account of intellectual modesty: one who is modest is more likely to have an accurate sense of their abilities and achievements, and they can acknowledge their mistakes and limitations.43 They are therefore more likely to be open to new ideas and to information that contradicts or is in tension with their current beliefs and to take advice from others. We therefore need to gauge the right degree of openmindedness when it comes to judging when we should trust another and when, conversely, trust errs towards credulity or gullibility. To avoid ‘too easy faith in the testimony of others’ (T 1.3.9.12), a certain level of selfawareness is required: awareness, for example, of when one is likely to be led astray by biases, wishful thinking, and enthusiasm. Here, again,

126  Testimony and Virtue intellectual modesty—that inculcated by mitigated scepticism—can play an executive role in promoting careful assessment of such biases. As Riggs puts it, ‘the open-minded person is moved by her awareness of her own fallibility to search for domains and situations in which she is prone to these habits of thought that produce closed-mindedness’ (2010, 183). In Hume’s discussion of testimony concerning alleged miracles, he suggests just such scrutiny of our cognitive capacities. We must closely monitor the influence of certain passions on our belief in miraculous occurrences, and we should be on the alert for disruptive passions when determining what to believe. Such modesty is a deep feature of Hume’s epistemology. We cannot have knowledge of metaphysical matters, such as the nature of causation (EHU 7) and a ‘considerable part of metaphysics’ manifests the ‘fruitless efforts of human vanity, which would penetrate into subjects utterly inaccessible to the understanding’ (EHU 1.11). Knowledge of God is inaccessible to us, and longstanding theological puzzles are unsolvable. It cannot, for example, be understood ‘how the Deity can be the mediate cause of all the actions of men, without being the author of sin and moral turpitude’ (EHU 8.36).44 To decide one way or the other on such issues ‘seems too presumptuous for creatures, so blind and ignorant. Let us be more modest in our conclusions’ (DNR 11.12). Reason, therefore, must be ‘sensible of her temerity, when she pries into these sublime mysteries’ (EHU 8.36). Philo is usually seen as the character in the Dialogues who is the voice of Hume, and Philo’s plea for intellectual modesty further encourages such temerity: ‘Let us become thoroughly sensible of the weakness, blindness, and narrow limits of human reason’ (DNR 1.3). Once our ‘narrow limits’ are revealed to us, ‘who can retain such confidence in this frail faculty of reason as to pay any regard to its determinations in points so sublime, so abstruse, so remote from common life and experience?’ (DNR 1.3). Intellectual modesty is encouraged across Hume’s works and such modesty has a good claim to be called the central feature of Hume’s philosophy. We have seen how the moral Enquiry begins with the dangers of dogmatism and how in the Dialogues Hume argues that modesty should have a chastening effect on religious belief, a claim also developed throughout EHU: ‘Our line is too short to fathom such immense abysses’ and to acquire knowledge of ‘subjects, that lie entirely out of the sphere of experience’; we must therefore confine our reasoning to ‘the narrow bounds of human understanding’ (EHU 7.24).45 We should ‘return, with suitable modesty, to…[reason’s] true and proper province, the examination of common life; where she will find difficulties enow to employ her enquiries, without launching into so boundless an ocean of doubt, uncertainty, and contradiction!’ (EHU 8.36). If we are ‘modest in our pretensions...then we may make a kind of merit of our very ignorance’ (EHU 4.14).46

Testimony and Virtue  127 Intellectual modesty is a virtue: it counters dogmatism in our testimonial utterances and encourages accurate assessment of when we may be too trusting and when it is wise to trust others. This must be distinguished, however, from the monkish virtue of humility. For both Hume and the monkish, there is a sense in which we are limited in our cognitive capacities and such limitations should be acknowledged and guide us in our intellectual and moral lives. It therefore needs to be made clear why the Humean acknowledgement of our inadequacies is virtuous whereas this is not the case for the kind of humility fostered by religion. Hume highlights several features of intellectual humility that are not virtuous. In the Dialogues, Demea combines the vices of dogmatism or ‘rigid inflexible orthodoxy’ and humility (DNR 0.6). For him, the aim and ‘chief care’ of his philosophy of religious education is ‘[t]o season… minds with early piety…and by continual precept and instruction… imprint deeply on their tender minds an habitual reverence for all the principles of religion’. He aims to ‘tame[] their mind to a proper submission and self-diffidence’ (DNR 1.2). Central to such education is reverence and respect for divine knowledge against which our capacities are compared. This brings in its train, Hume claims, negative emotions concerning our inadequacy—‘Wretched creatures that we are!’ (DNR 10.1). The contemporary Christian epistemologist, John Kvanvig, illuminates such attitudes: ‘in Christian and other religious contexts…people experience a deep sense of their own fallenness and inadequacy, and an awe and respect for something greater than themselves, yielding a context in which the evaluative dimensions that underlie humility are pronounced’ (2018, 190). Humean intellectual modesty is distinct from monkish humility in that the former does not involve any such feelings of inadequacy or submission to the divine, those—in extreme cases of monkish devotion—accentuated by concerted programmes of self-flagellation, penance, passive suffering, and fasting. This is because there is no good reason to believe in a deity to whom we can meaningfully compare ourselves. There is, however, ample proof of our own deficiencies when it comes to our cognitive capacities, and Hume’s intellectual modesty is driven by the kinds of sceptical arguments presented in the Treatise, those which are mitigated by the careful and tentative empirical reasoning that creatures like us cannot help but pursue once we have been cured of any higher aspirations. One response to such intellectual humility is that of fideism and this is sometimes attributed to Philo in part 12 of the Dialogues. In parts 1 through 11, Philo seems intent on demolishing the arguments of Cleanthes and Demea—that is, the traditional ontological, cosmological and design arguments for the existence of God. In part 12, though, there is a change of tack and an apparent ‘reversal’ (Bailey and O’Brien, 2013, 217) or ‘volte-face’ (Dancy, 1995, 30) on Philo’s part. Philo claims that

128  Testimony and Virtue [a] person, seasoned with a just sense of the imperfections of natural reason, will fly to revealed truth with the greatest avidity….To be a philosophical sceptic is, in a man of letters, the first and most essential step towards being a sound, believing Christian. (DNR 12.33) As our reasoning capacities are so impoverished, natural theology is impotent and Christian belief should be grounded in faith. Part 12, though, is slippery and Philo’s volte-face is not all it seems.47 At the very most, the ‘true religion’ of the philosophical sceptic amounts only to belief in the ‘undefined proposition, That the cause or causes of order in the universe probably bear some remote analogy to human intelligence’ (DNR 12.33). This does not suggest the existence of the God of Christianity and it is not ‘devotionally nourishing’ (Penelhum, 2000, 19). Philo should not therefore be seen as representative of fideism.48 Intellectual humility, that of the Christian and that contrasted with Humean intellectual modesty, is an epistemic vice, and elsewhere Hume provides extensive criticism of other intellectual vices that thrive in the religious context, those that could be said to comprise ‘monkish epistemology’. In Chapter 1, we saw how Hume singles out credulity with respect to miracle-testimony as an intellectual vice characteristic of the religious. Elsewhere he also discusses self-deception and hypocrisy.49 Testimony concerning one’s faith is prone to be inaccurate: ‘Hear the verbal protestations of all men: Nothing so certain as their religious tenets. Examine their lives: You will scarcely think that they repose the smallest confidence in them’ (NHR 15.7). Self-deception is rife: Men dare not avow, even to their own hearts, the doubts which they entertain on such subjects: They make a merit of implicit faith; and disguise to themselves their real infidelity, by the strongest asseverations and most positive bigotry.…The usual course of men’s conduct belies their words, and shows, that their assent in these matters is some unaccountable operation of the mind between disbelief and conviction, but approaching much nearer to the former than to the latter. (NHR 12.15) Clergymen are particularly prone to such dissimilation, testimony concerning their faith and devotion part and parcel of their chosen profession and so they will find it necessary, on particular occasions, to feign more devotion than they are, at times, possessed of, and to maintain the appearance of fervor and seriousness, even when jaded with the exercises of their religion, or when they have their minds engaged in the common preoccupations of life. (E 199–200n3; ‘Of National Characters’)

Testimony and Virtue  129 Becket, again, is targeted by Hume: This was the tragical end of Thomas a Becket, a prelate of the most lofty, intrepid, and inflexible spirit, who was able to cover, to the world and probably to himself, the enterprizes of pride and ambition, under the disguise of sanctity and of zeal for the interests of religion. (H 1.333) Further, Hume draws a connection between self-deception and hypocrisy: ‘in order to support the veneration paid them by the multitude, they must not only keep a remarkable reserve, but must promote the spirit of superstition, by a continued grimace and hypocrisy’. Such hypocrisy is dangerous for society, spreading the contagion of religion, but also for the clergy themselves since ‘[t]his dissimulation often destroys the candor and ingenuity of their temper, and makes an irreparable breach in their character’ (E 200n3; ‘Of National Characters’). Hume can’t help but inject humour into such a serious issue: ‘Even minced pyes, which custom had made a Christmas dish among the churchmen, was regarded, during that season, as a profane and superstitious viand by the sectaries; though at other times it agreed very well with their stomachs’ (H 5.453n).50 Hume therefore not only transfers Christian moral virtues to the opposite column but also highlights intellectual vices characteristic of those with religious beliefs, those that in various ways undermine the trust we should put in their testimony. We see again, then, that Hume draws a sharp distinction between the testimony of history and that of the Bible. Appreciation of history enables us to have a fine-grained and subtle appreciation of human nature and of the various virtues and vices possessed by those in the past. Reading history—or at least history written by the historians that Hume respects—is morally instructive and it can play such an educational and potentially transformative role if historians themselves possess the intellectual and literary virtues that their works help us appreciate.

Notes 1 Also see T 3.3.4.4. 2 Such bodily attributes are at times included in Hume’s character sketches in the History of England. Edward I, for example, had ‘a majestic figure’ and was ‘in the main well-proportioned in his limbs, notwithstanding the great length and the smallness of his legs, he was as well qualified to captivate the populace by his exterior appearance, as to gain the approbation of men of sense by his more solid virtues’ (H 2.141). 3 See Fieser (1998) for discussion of early criticism of Hume’s ‘wide’ conception of virtue. 4 T 3.3.1.25, 3.3.2.15, 3.3.3.5. 5 The passages in EPM and the Treatise are almost identical. This, however, is the EPM version. 6 See Watkins (2019, ch. 3).

130  Testimony and Virtue 7 H 4.351, 2.126, 2.419, 4.308. 8 EPM App. 4.11, 6.21, App. 4.3, DNR 7.18, EPM 6.13, 8.7. 9 Hume refers to frankness at H 3.227, 1.403, 3.127, discretion at H 1.276, 6.466, and candour at H 3.450. Eloquence is discussed in §3 below. 10 See H 1.277, 5.146, 3.461, EPM 6.1, 8.5. 11 On Hume on politeness, see Tolonen (2008); on chivalry, Susato (2007); on obedience to government, Hume E 37–41 (‘Of the Origin of Government’) and Cohon (2001); on religious toleration, Sabl (2009); on chastity, O’Brien (2008) and Watkins (2019, 206–9); on promise-keeping, Cohon (2006); and on justice, Baier (2010). 12 Also see T 3.3.4.4, EPM App. 4.22. 13 T 3.3.1.30, 3.3.1.16, 3.3.1.18. 14 Testimonial virtues are therefore agreeable and useful for communication. In contrast Hume notes that ‘[w]hen a person stutters, and pronounces with difficulty, we even sympathize with this trivial uneasiness, and suffer for him. And it is a rule in criticism, that every combination of syllables or letters, which gives pain to the organs of speech in the recital, appears also, from a species of sympathy, harsh and disagreeable to the ear. Nay, when we run over a book with our eye, we are sensible of such unharmonious composition; because we still imagine, that a person recites it to us, and suffers from the pronunciation of these jarring sounds. So delicate is our sympathy!’ (EPM 5.37; also see T 3.3.1.22). 15 Kail (2007, 236) and Schafer (2010), however, do take Hume to be a moral sense theorist. 16 Also see EPM App. 1.2. 17 See Watkins (2019, 154–60) for an instructive discussion of the role of conversation in aesthetic judgment. 18 As put by Baier: ‘we would be emotional wrecks if we had to really feel with everyone affected by any moral matter, such as genocide, or rape, that we seriously consider, or even to feel with everyone in a hospital ward’ (Baier and Waldow, 2008, 79). 19 See Siebert (1990, 19) and Jost (2014, 151). 20 In Chapter 6(§2), we shall look at how Hume sees King Alfred as a role model, and Hume rarely fails to find something virtuous in even the most flawed characters, such as, for example, Thomas à Becket (H 1.334; §4, this chapter) and Hannibal (EPM App. 4.17). 21 Some question whether Hume allows for the possibility of character change. Ainslie (2007, 106), for example, claims that ‘Hume denies the possibility of character change’ and Harris does not think there can be any significant changes (2011, 41–2). These are claims at odds with many people’s experience and at odds with what Hume says in the quoted passage from ‘The Sceptic’ and at T 2.3.2.7 and T 1.4.6.19 (‘the same person may vary his character and disposition…without losing his identity’). Boeker (2022, §5), Waldow (2012) and Reed (2017) argue for this more plausible interpretation of Hume. 22 See, for example, Beauchamp’s ‘Introductions’ to EPM (xxiii–lxxx) and EHU (xxxv–lxxiv). 23 In between leaving Edinburgh and moving to La Flèche to write the Treatise, Hume worked as a clerk for Michael Miller, a merchant in Bristol. It did not appear to be a happy time and after a few months Hume ‘found that scene totally unsuitable’ (MOL 4). It is suggested by Roberts (1834, 1.20) and Latimer (1893, 189–90) that this is because Hume was sacked because he continually criticized and corrected the English in the business letters of his employer. Thanks to Tomáš Kunca for these references.

Testimony and Virtue  131 4 See Beauchamp’s ‘Introduction’ to EPM (xl–xli). 2 25 Jost (2014, 158–9) picks out some highlights. 26 See H 2.76, 3.253. 27 The humour in the History owes a lot to Swift. In a letter to Gilbert Elliot, Hume says ‘I have frequently had it in my Intentions to write a supplement to Gulliver, containing the Ridicule of Priests. ’Twas certainly a Pity that Swift was a Parson. Had he been a lawyer or Physician, we had nevertheless been entertain’d at the Expense of these Professions. But Priests are so jealous, that they cannot bear to be touch’d on that Head; and for a plain Reason: Because they are conscious they are really ridiculous. That Part of the Doctor’s Subject is so fertile, that a much inferior Genius, I am confident, might succeed in it’ (LDH 1.153). Parts of the History can indeed be seen as worthy supplements to Gulliver. 28 This is noted by Box (1990, 108–9). 29 As noted by Kim (2019, 552n). 30 Here again we see Hume’s focus on the body. See §1 of this chapter. 31 On Hume’s position with respect to the Tory-Whig debate, see Watkins (2019, ch. 1). 32 Hume also praises eloquence at H 1.276, 4.308, 4.338, 5.407 and 5.422. For discussion of the tension in Hume’s attitude to eloquence, see Watkins (2019, 110–14) and Potkay (1994). 33 See Holden (2020) for further discussion of how features of Christianity foster the monkish virtues. 34 Hume notes how extreme the monkish can be in his description of a heretic burnt at the stake: ‘He suffered with so much satisfaction, that he hugged and caressed the faggots, that were consuming him; a species of frenzy, of which there is more than one instance among the martyrs of that age’ (H 3.367). 35 Hume is at odds here not only with the orthodox Presbyterians of his day but also with those of the Moderate Party. For Hume’s relationship with the Moderates, see Bailey and O’Brien (2013, 210–17) and Ahnert (2014, 66–70). 36 See St. Augustine (2003, 14.13). 37 St. Augustine, quoted in Hibernicus (1483). 38 See Watkins (2019, 175) and Taylor (2015a, 67–8). 39 See Watkins (2019, 161–84) for Hume’s terminology concerning such selfattitudes and Galvagni (2020) for a subtle discussion of Hume’s distinction between pride and vanity. 40 See T 3.3.2.6, 2.2.9.1. 41 Also see T 3.3.2.10. 42 Elsewhere, Hume describes how religious dogmatism leads to violence: ‘a people, who never were allowed to imagine, that their principles could be contested, fly out into the most outrageous violence, when any event (and such events are common) produces a faction among their clergy, and gives rise to any difference in tenet or opinion’ (H 3.432). 43 See Bommarito (2018, §2). Ignorance accounts, in contrast, take the modest to be underrating their abilities. 44 The discussion here in the first Enquiry explicitly concerns this theological puzzle rather than the existence of God, but the implication is that there is no reason to believe in the God of Christianity. 45 Also see DNR 4.11. 46 Also see Bailey (2012, 162). 47 For further discussion of Philo’s ‘reversal’, see Bailey and O’Brien (2013, 217–21).

132  Testimony and Virtue 48 I considered a similar retreat to faith in Chapter 1(§3) in the context of Hume’s essay on miracles. There, too, Hume’s professed fideism was not taken to be sincere. 49 For Hume on self-deception and hypocrisy, see Herdt (1997, 168–88) and Bailey and O’Brien (2013, 176–8). 50 Also see H 3.386, 4.45, 5.450, 5.502, 5.572.

6 Hume’s Social Epistemology

In Chapters 4 and 5, we looked at two ways that sympathy is related to testimony. Testimonial beliefs can be acquired sympathetically, and the attribution of intellectual virtue involves sympathetic appreciation of the utility and agreeableness that others find in character traits related to the assessment of testimony and the oratory and literary skills of testifiers. In Section 6.1 of this chapter, I highlight tension in Hume’s epistemology of testimony between the affective factors relevant to sympathy and virtue and cognitive factors relevant to the objective reliability of testimony. I start to offer my own interpretation of the relation between these epistemic and non-epistemic considerations in Section 6.2 by building on the account of intellectual virtue considered in Chapter 5 and developing an account of testimonial wisdom. This alone, though, does not address the tension between epistemic and non-epistemic normativity; it merely provides a richer account of the latter. Section 6.3 introduces a distinct normative element to considerations of testimonial exchanges and that is a Humean notion of epistemic responsibility. We are responsible for our intellectual lives and this includes the trust we place in others and how we communicate our beliefs to others through testimony. Humean responsibility is cashed out in terms of character traits and virtues. Section 6.4 draws out the ethical and person-centred flavour of Hume’s account of trust. Testimony is an area in which epistemology meets ethics, and the focus on persons provides a distinct kind of motivation for anti-reductionism. Section 6.5 situates the persons or epistemic agents that have been the focus of this chapter in the context of the society of which they are a part and highlights the deeply social nature of Hume’s epistemology of testimony.

6.1 Utility, Agreeableness, and Truth Intellectual virtues at times grace our intellectual pursuits, everyday lives, intercourse with others, and the acquisition of testimonial belief. To talk of virtue in these contexts is to imply success of some sort, and epistemology involves the investigation of what it is to be a successful thinker. Thinkers DOI: 10.4324/9780429266133-7

134  Hume’s Social Epistemology are commended for the conclusions they draw, for the testimony they give, and for the way they weigh up whether to believe the utterances and reports of others. As we saw in Chapter 5(§1), Hume argues that there is only a verbal distinction between moral and intellectual virtues, and both would therefore seem to be assessable according to the criteria of utility and agreeableness. It is good, for example, to have courage of mind and it’s also virtuous to show ‘perseverance…quickness of conception, [and] facility of expression’ (EPM 6.21). Such intellectual traits are virtuous in light of the effects they have on our activities in society. Success with respect to intellectual pursuits, though, should be assessed not only in these terms but in terms of epistemic criteria directly relevant to the acquisition of true or justified or warranted beliefs. The reductionist account of Hume on testimony focuses on such epistemic criteria, highlighting the role of inductive evidence and general rules concerning the reliability of speakers and testimonial sources. The normative elements I find in Hume’s Enquiry discussion of miracles (Chapter 1) and in his discussion of probability in the Treatise (Chapter 2(§3)) are of this epistemic kind. In contrast, the normative elements involved in Hume’s account of virtue (Chapter 5) and of sympathetic belief (Chapter 4) are non-epistemic. There is, to say the least, some tension here. However sophisticated Humean accounts of intellectual virtue and sympathy may be, Qu has argued that attempts to incorporate these into interpretations of Hume’s epistemology are untenable since these fail ‘to maintain a substantive distinction between epistemic and moral justification’, a distinction, though, that Hume seems to endorse (Qu, 2014, 502). In the Treatise, Hume says that ‘[l]audable or blameable…are not the same with reasonable or unreasonable’ (T 3.1.1.10)—the former non-epistemic, the latter epistemic. In the moral Enquiry, the same distinction is drawn: ‘What exists in the nature of things is the standard of our judgment; what each man feels within himself is the standard of sentiment’ (EPM 1.5). And, again, in ‘Of the Standard of Taste’: All sentiment is right; because sentiment has a reference to nothing beyond itself, and is always real, wherever a man is conscious of it. But all determinations of the understanding are not right; because they have a reference to something beyond themselves, to wit, real matter of fact; and are not always conformable to that standard. (E 229) Various ways could be suggested to ease the tension between the nonepistemic criteria relevant to intellectual virtue and the references Hume makes to epistemic criteria. I shall first sketch three different strategies and then in the rest of the chapter develop my own resolution. First, attributions of intellectual virtue can be seen as mere gloss on a basically epistemic story. Justified beliefs are those arrived at via the canons

Hume’s Social Epistemology  135 of good causal reasoning, and intellectual virtues add a non-epistemic, broadly moral evaluation to descriptions of intellectual performances. Christ’s disciples do not arrive at belief in the resurrection via good causal reasoning and so they are epistemically culpable. Their acquisition of this belief, though, can also be assessed with respect to the non-epistemic criteria relevant to the attribution of intellectual virtues and vices. Such belief may display gullibility (a vice) but also perhaps intellectual courage (a virtue), and these attributions of virtue and vice are assessed according to whether or not the latter are useful and agreeable. A second approach to the tension between epistemic and non-epistemic normativity is to accept only the non-epistemic standard involved in the assessment of virtue. Hume’s scepticism entails that it is no more (epistemically) justified to believe testimony concerning miracles than it is to believe the testimony of a conscientious empirical scientist. However, we praise the latter and not the former because of the non-epistemic advantages that such thinking brings. David Owen, for example, argues that Hume’s ultimate defence of philosophy, and the preference for reason, is that those who practice it have the virtue of reasonableness: they themselves are happier and better off, and more useful to society. We morally approve of the wise and reasonable person. (1999, 212) We approve of those whose testimony has been reliable in the past and of those who weigh up whether to trust the word of another based on such reliability, but this kind of philosophical probability tracks not truth but rather utility. Miriam McCormick has a related interpretation grounded in social and political considerations. Her claim is that ‘Hume’s preference and recommendation for following reason is politically motivated. The point is that the world will be a better place if more people choose reason as their guide’ (2005, 12–13).1 Neither of these approaches, though, is consistent with Hume’s apparent acceptance of both epistemic and non-epistemic criteria for the acquisition of intellectual virtue. Hume has an epistemic account of what is required for testimonial belief to be justified, that involving causal reasoning mediated by general rules, and he also sees various intellectual virtues and vices as relevant to such belief acquisition, those attributed according to the criteria of utility and agreeableness. Vitz (2009), however, proposes a disjunctive account that attempts to acknowledge this duality in Hume’s epistemology. At times, thinkers form their beliefs according to the canons of good causal reasoning and therefore epistemic, truth-tracking factors are in play. Those who reason in this way possess what Vitz calls ‘doxastic virtue’, but this kind of virtue is not limited to such cases. The acquisition of beliefs is also virtuous if the beliefs acquired are ‘useful for the conduct of common life’ (2009, 223). Good causal

136  Hume’s Social Epistemology reasoning produces beliefs that are likely to be true and it is wise to reason in this way, but we also praise other intellectual virtues and this is because of their utility in the domain of what we broadly call the ‘intellectual’, namely the world of conversation, knowledge, and understanding. Intellectual virtue is a disjunctive category consisting of truth-conducive and useful beliefforming dispositions. This disjunctive account includes both epistemic and non-epistemic dimensions, but these now seem too divorced from one another. Distrust in miracle-testimony on probabilistic grounds is epistemically virtuous, but the doxastic virtue manifest in engaging monologues and candid remarks appears to be lacking in epistemic content. In §4, I therefore adopt a distinct interpretation of the relation in Hume between these dimensions of assessment, one that allows us to see Hume as upholding the distinction between epistemic and non-epistemic normativity but also one that places intellectual virtues at the heart of his epistemology of testimony—intellectual virtues, that is, that are evaluated in terms of their utility and agreeableness. The intellectual virtues, and virtues in general, play a fundamental role in Hume’s epistemology and that is because Hume’s epistemology is person-directed and not belief-centred. Hume’s primary focus is not, for example, the question concerning whether the belief in the miracle at Saragossa is unjustified; belief, for Hume, is merely a lively idea—in this case, a lively idea of the renewal of an amputated leg—and it’s not clear what it would mean to say that such a lively idea was itself justified. The important question, rather, is whether the person is justified in having this belief, given the evidence available to them concerning the improbability of such an occurrence and the propensity of people to believe in such remarkable events even when the evidence available is sparse. Humean persons are not body-soul hybrids who have access to the light of reason; they are, as discussed in Chapter 4(§3), bundles of perceptions that are woven into recognizable and distinct individuals through sympathy and pride. I come to see myself as the person that I am through feeling proud of my attributes and achievements for which others give me praise, and I also come to see others as persons through the lens of virtue. If it is persons that are the primary focus of epistemic normativity, then it follows that epistemic considerations depend on non-epistemic considerations. Thinkers can follow the canons of good causal reasoning only if they are persons, and the non-epistemic criteria involved in the attribution of virtue are essential for that to be so. I start to substantiate this interpretation in the next section by developing an account of testimonial wisdom that characterizes the virtuous thinker.

6.2 Testimonial Wisdom Hume says the ‘wise man…proportions his belief to the evidence’ (EHU 10.4), but the kind of epistemic wisdom that lies at the heart of the reductionist interpretation of Hume is one-dimensional, keyed only to

Hume’s Social Epistemology  137 experienced constant conjunctions between what is said and what appears to be the case. There are, though, other dimensions to Hume’s account of the kind of wisdom involved in weighing up whether to trust the word of another. Hume does not explicitly claim that these dimensions are constitutive of what I shall call testimonial wisdom, but I shall draw out an account of such wisdom from what Hume says across his works. Explicit references to wisdom are rare in the Treatise, but their frequency increases in his later writings, particularly so in the Essays and the History of England. There are also, though, terms that Hume equates with wisdom and intellectual capacities that it is plausible to see as possessed by those who are wise. The wise are ‘learned’ and ‘judicious’; they have ‘solid judgment’, ‘good sense’, and ‘greatness of mind’.2 Wisdom is also contrasted with the thoughts of fools and with madness.3 Wisdom is therefore a normative term: those who are wise think and act well, and for Hume, wisdom is manifest in a variety of ways. It plays a role in the assessment of empirical and testimonial evidence and the subsequent acquisition of belief, and this has practical import, both in our meansends reasoning and at the political and social level. In the Dialogues, Cleanthes expresses this relation between wisdom and practical reasoning in terms of God’s wisdom, which ‘is infinite: He is never mistaken in chusing the means to any end’ (DNR 10.24). Hume cites many examples where wise decisions are made in the contexts of politics and military matters, and such wisdom is equated with ‘prudence’, being ‘politic’, and ‘sound policy’ and with decisions that foster peace and happiness.4 It is shown by Canute in his careful integration of Danish invaders with the English (H 1.122–3), by Henry’s wise governance that ‘raised France, from the desolation and misery, in which she was involved, to a more flourishing condition than she had ever before enjoyed’ (H 4.305), and by the foreign policy of Elizabeth I (H 5.176). Politicians and monarchs can be wise and by extension so can nations. Hume praises the wisdom of the laws and constitution of Venice and England and the balance of power between aristocratic burgomasters and democracy in the Dutch republic (‘United Provinces’).5 The wisdom of the English constitution, though, does not imply that there is a wise designer; it is, rather, a ‘concurrence of accidents’ (H 5.569). Here again, then, we see Hume’s antipathy to teleology, and in various places he makes the same point with respect to the apparent design of the world.6 Hume, of course, does not believe in the existence of the kind of infinite wisdom suggested by Cleanthes. Further, with respect to adjustments to the constitution, wisdom is often associated with conservatism. The wise magistrate should ‘bear a reverence to what carries the marks of age’ and should ‘adjust his innovations, as much as possible, to the ancient fabric’ (E 512–3; ‘Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth’). Utility thus trumps philosophical justification. To acquire wisdom and political and military nous, we should, as we saw

138  Hume’s Social Epistemology earlier, turn to history, ‘the great mistress of wisdom’ (H 5.545), where the successes and follies of others are laid before us. The acquisition of such wisdom therefore involves default acceptance of the testimony of history, and beliefs acquired in this way inform the general rules by which we mediate our causal reasoning in the present. For Hume, virtues are character traits of which we approve since they are agreeable and/or useful for the possessor of those traits and for society. Hume treats wisdom in the same way: it is virtuous since it is both useful to the person who is wise (T 3.3.4.8) and agreeable to others: ‘Eloquence, genius of all kinds, even good sense, and sound reasoning, when it rises to an eminent degree...; all these endowments seem immediately agreeable, and have a merit distinct from their usefulness’ (EPM 8.7).7 Some virtues have direct beneficial effects on the promotion of utility and agreeableness: industry, for example, in the context of intellectual pursuits, can lead to practical or philosophical benefits and the pursuit itself can be agreeable (T 2.3.10.8–9). Wisdom, though, can also work at a higher level, in that it plays a regulative or executive role, mediating or orchestrating the action of other virtues and behavioural dispositions. King Alfred had wisdom in that he could mediate between the demands of different virtues. He seems indeed to be the model of that perfect character….So happily were all his virtues tempered together; so justly were they blended; and so powerfully did each prevent the other from exceeding its proper boundaries! He knew how to reconcile the most enterprising spirit with the coolest moderation; the most obstinate perseverance with the easiest flexibility; the most severe justice with the gentlest lenity; the greatest vigour in commanding with the most shining talents for action. (H 1.74–5) Hume does not explicitly say that Alfred is ‘wise’, but this is a natural way of describing someone with this kind of character. Queen Elizabeth I also possessed this kind of wisdom: by the force of her mind…[she] controuled all her more active and stronger qualities, and prevented them from running into excess: Her heroism was exempt from temerity, her frugality from avarice, her friendship from partiality, her active temper from turbulency and a vain ambition. (H 4.351) Other virtues can play such a regulative role; this is so, for example, in the case of benevolence:

Hume’s Social Epistemology  139 A propensity to the tender passions makes a man agreeable and useful in all the parts of life; and gives a just direction to all his other qualities, which otherwise may become prejudicial to society. Courage and ambition, when not regulated by benevolence, are fit only to make a tyrant and public robber. ’Tis the same case with judgment and capacity, and all the qualities of that kind. (T 3.3.3.3) Such executive virtues are also interrelated: benevolence, for example, regulated by wisdom (DNR 11.1). Intellectual virtues are also mediated in this way, and we shall therefore see how such wisdom is related to both the giving of testimony and trust in testimony. Hume talks of mediation between the ‘inclination for science’ and ‘talents for action’ (H 1.74), between facetious humour and discretion, between ‘sedentary pursuits’ and activity in government, and between leisure and learned conversation (H 1.276–7). Some of these cases involve mediation between virtues (between, say, humour and discretion), but others are described as involving mediation between different kinds of activities: between, for example, leisure and various kinds of more active or intellectual pursuits. The latter, though, reflect the mediation of underlying virtues, those of industriousness and, as it were, the ability to switch off. This is something that Hume saw as essential to the good life: dinner and backgammon are a necessary respite from philosophical toil (T 1.4.7.9), although, conversely, ‘[t]o be entirely occupied with the luxury of the table,…without any relish for the pleasures of ambition, study, or conversation, is a mark of stupidity, and is incompatible with any vigour of temper or genius’ (E 269; ‘Of Refinement in the Arts’). We see precision as a virtue because we can sympathize with the utility this brings, although we are also aware that too much emphasis on precision could lead to inflexibility, staleness, or slow progress in our intellectual pursuits. It can be difficult for a writer to decide whether or not to edit a manuscript one more time (a task that Hume greatly enjoyed, as we have seen). Sometimes it is a hard call whether or not to be intellectually courageous, or will such an approach, in this particular circumstance, be seen as arrogant or stubborn (‘neighbouring vices’). Such wisdom is required with respect to testimony and trust. As Linda Zagzebski puts it, we must ‘strike the proper balance between relying on the authority of others and relying on our own intellectual powers’ (1996, 221). In Hume’s discussion of miracles, the emphasis is on our own intellectual powers, specifically on our ability to assess the reliability of speakers. There is, though, a contrasting theme in Hume, one we see in his thoughts on intellectual modesty (Chapter 5(§4)). Hume’s mitigated scepticism instils intellectual modesty in the virtuous, a modesty that opens one up to the testimony of others. The reductionist, evidentialist interpretation of Hume on testimony focuses solely on how the receiver

140  Hume’s Social Epistemology of testimony assesses the reliability of the testifier. Trusting wisely, however, amounts to more than good causal reasoning. For causal reasoning to be epistemically virtuous, it needs to be tempered by further traits: it needs, for example, to be impartial and penetrating and to strike the right balance between intellectual courageousness and modesty. Not everyone can achieve this balance, and the acquisition of such wisdom can take time, it being easier to acquire in the ‘middle Station of Life’ (E 547; ‘Of the Middle Station of Life’). As we shall see in §3 and §4, such wisdom plays a role in Hume’s account of epistemic responsibility and, I argue, in Hume’s person-centred account of trust. First, though, let us return to sympathetic beliefs and how they are acquired. Hume does not spell out the mechanism involved, but in Chapter 4(§4) I suggested one based on Hume’s account of the sympathetic acquisition of emotion. A Humean account can also be given of the regulation of such sympathetic belief and this can also be seen as a component of Hume’s account of wisdom. Hume sees the shift from partial to corrected sympathy as analogous to the correction of perceptual judgments, where, for example, we judge that a plate is circular even though it looks oval or that the moon is a large object even though it appears small (EPM 5.41). We can correct for moral partiality as we do for distance and perspective by adopting the common point of view. We are also partial when it comes to testimonial belief: the opinions of those close to us weigh more upon us (‘close to us’, that is, in terms of relations of contiguity, resemblance, and causation, the last of these including family ties). Regulatory mechanisms could perhaps be involved in the correction of sympathetic belief, either enabling us to sympathize more readily with those who are likely to have true beliefs or inhibiting sympathy with those who are likely to mislead us. Reason, as with morality, could play an important role here. First, sympathetic belief can be overridden by causal reasoning. As we saw in Chapter 2(§3), prejudices, such as that concerning the lack of intelligence of the Irish, can be corrected by general rules of an epistemically superior kind. Beliefs acquired sympathetically could also be corrected in this way. Waldow (2009, 151–7) suggests a related case. The beliefs we have concerning the mental states of others are corrigible. Sympathetic mechanisms enable us to come to share and have beliefs about the emotions of others, but such beliefs can be corrected if we discover reasons to think that our beliefs are not warranted: ‘[w]e can do so if, by means of probability calculation, we realize that processes of sympathy are no longer a reliable guide to the prediction of behaviour’ (Waldow, 2009, 156). Second, instead of overriding beliefs that have been acquired sympathetically, reason could help us sympathize with the right people, with, that is, those who are likely to have true (or useful) beliefs. Inductive inference could suggest that certain individuals are more

Hume’s Social Epistemology  141 trustworthy than others, that certain types of people—perhaps those of a particular profession—are not to be trusted, or that one needs to take care in certain kinds of circumstances where sympathetic belief has led us astray in the past. It could, for example, highlight salient resemblances between ourselves and others of which we may not have been aware, thus facilitating vivacity transfer between the impression of the self and the ideas we acquire from them; conversely, it could highlight significant differences between us, thus damping down sympathy. I may initially sympathize with someone on a certain issue since she is my compatriot, but reason could reveal important dissimilarities between us and thus stem the flow of vivacity to the ideas I acquire from her. Third, reasoning could lead us to acknowledge that we believe certain things that we should not. General rules are required for times when we do not feel the ‘correct’ moral sentiments—when, for example, someone’s charm blinds me to their arrogance, but I nevertheless describe them as such, since we are taught this ‘method of correcting our sentiments, or at least, of correcting our language’ (T 3.3.1.16). Similarly, with respect to belief, the application of reason and general rules could lead to our expressing opinions that we should believe even though we do not because we have sympathetically acquired the contrary beliefs of others. The hydraulic metaphor encourages us to see the correction of sympathy as a rather blunt affair involving the regulation of the flow of vivacity in terms of taps being turned on and off. Language, however, enables reason to play a sophisticated role with respect to the correction of sympathy, with sympathetic mechanisms being able to respond to the fine grain of our social lives. General rules are articulated in language, and knowledge of these can be acquired via testimony: we learn that meteorologists, and not soothsayers, are reliable with respect to weather forecasting. Further, we can see what others think of us in their countenance and behaviour, but their approbation is also expressed in language, and it is with sentiments expressed in this way that we sympathize. Language allows us to understand more clearly what others think of us and of which aspects of our life and behaviour we should be proud. The fine linguistic distinctions we draw enable sympathetic mechanisms to engage with the subtle and fine-grained responses of others to aspects of our behaviour in the context of our socially defined roles within society. Conversation and testimony are therefore crucial to the correction of sympathy and sympathetic belief. In this section, I have provided an account of Humean wisdom. Trust involves the wise assessment of evidence and this can engage causal reasoning regulated by general rules, mediation between various virtues relevant to testimonial transmission, and the correction of sympathetic belief.

142  Hume’s Social Epistemology

6.3 Epistemic Responsibility As said, there appears to be tension between normative constraints on good causal reasoning and the non-epistemic assessment of intellectual virtue and wisdom, but I shall argue for a deep relation between the epistemic and non-epistemic. Testifiers are agents; that is, they are individuals or selves engaged in intellectual and practical projects.8 To see oneself as such is to feel proud of the fruits of one’s agency. Without pride playing such a constructive role, there would merely be bundles of perceptions, and bundles of perceptions cannot be seen as reasoning or as wise or as engaging in intellectual pursuits at all. Such pursuits involve effort over time and thus an enduring practical self. Thus, before our cognitive achievements can be assessed in epistemic terms, we must see ourselves as possessing virtues, assessed as such by others and according to criteria of utility and agreeableness. Non-epistemic assessment is therefore more fundamental than epistemic—fundamental, that is, to the mental life of agents and to their very selves. There are two features of such non-epistemic assessment that are central to my account and these are epistemic responsibility, which I shall consider in this section, and the intra-personal nature of trust to which I turn in §4. There is an ancient conception of virtue according to which the virtues are inter-dependent on each other. An extreme version of this is the ‘unity of the virtues’ thesis, which holds that in order to have a particular virtue one must have them all. This is a view held by Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics. A compassionate person requires courage in order to stand up for those who are oppressed, and a person with courage must have wisdom and knowledge of the dangers involved, otherwise their actions would be merely foolhardy. Hutcheson (1725) also sees virtues as interrelated, as they are all derived from (God-given) benevolence. Although influenced by the role of emotions in Hutcheson’s account of morality, Hume rejects such unity: in a letter to Hutcheson, he says: ‘Were Benevolence the only Virtue no Characters cou’d be mixt, but wou’d depend entirely on their Degree of benevolence’ (LDH 1.34). Necessary unity of the virtues is at odds with Hume’s naturalistic, cataloguing approach and with the way we have of describing each other in mixed terms. Quotidian experience and history reveal the messiness of life and of morality: the worst of us have redeeming features, the best of us flaws. Virtues can be mixed in various ways and across different dimensions. One can have a mixed set of virtues and vices: he is kind (virtue) though a little over-bearing (vice). Someone can be intellectually brave yet careless and witty yet closed-minded, and such mixtures can at times cause conflict with regard to how we judge character. We cannot help but feel some kind of admiration for the courage of a tyrant such as Cromwell or Hannibal, even though their actions bring misery to others (EPM App. 4.17). One’s character can be mixed in relation to the distinction between

Hume’s Social Epistemology  143 intellectual and moral virtue: one can be morally virtuous yet lack certain intellectual virtues, and one can use one’s intellectual abilities for nefarious ends. Hume notes that Gondomar, the Spanish ambassador in England at the time of Walter Raleigh’s skirmishes with Spain, was ‘a man whose flattery was the more artful, because covered with the appearance of frankness and sincerity; whose politics were the more dangerous, because disguised under the masque of mirth and pleasantry’ (H 5.79– 80).9 A trait may also be useful to oneself yet disagreeable to others, as was the ‘military capacity [and] political craft’ of Simon de Montford (H 2.60), and, as we have seen with pride, where ‘good breeding’ is required to mitigate the belittling effect that self-assurance can have on others (Chapter 5(§4)). A trait may also be a virtue in one person but a vice in another, as is the case with discretion: To a Cromwell, perhaps, or a De Retz, discretion may appear an alderman-like virtue, as Dr. Swift calls it; and being incompatible with those vast designs, to which their courage and ambition prompted them, it might really, in them, be a fault or imperfection. But in the conduct of ordinary life, no virtue is more requisite, not only to obtain success, but to avoid the most fatal miscarriages and disappointments. (EPM 6.8) Russell (2013, 118n45) describes Hume as committed to pluralism and fragmentation: ‘there exists a wide variety of models of a virtuous person’ and ‘virtuous individuals may possess very different combinations of virtue and lead very different kinds of life’; further, ‘almost everyone possesses some mixture or combination of virtues and vices’. Hume, he says, ‘is resistant to the (optimistic) ideal that suggests that all the virtues may coexist in one individual who is free of any taint of vice’. This may be true, but there is a form of unity in Hume’s account. We see ourselves or each other not as mere bundles of character traits but as unified people, individuals proud of our make-up—of our moral virtues and intellectual abilities. With respect to the latter, pride is not felt merely in isolated, independent manifestations of intellectual virtue; in, say, the derivation of a particularly tortuous proof; such achievements, rather, are seen as part of one’s wider life and personhood. Greco (2018) notes that at times Hume talks of ‘a character’ rather than of character traits: ‘To approve of a character is to feel an original delight upon its appearance’ (T 2.1.7.5; my italics), and he argues that the primary focus of Hume’s moral theory is such unitary (but not unified) character.10 The complexity of our characters offers us a ‘fragmented unity’ (Greco, 2022), one that we can strive for, even given our inconsistencies, and one, if successful, of which we can be proud. Praise and blame accrue to a person, not piecemeal as virtues are individually manifest but holistically as sets of virtues interact in one’s

144  Hume’s Social Epistemology social and intellectual life. In ‘Of Refinement in the Arts’ (E 268–80), Hume notes the interrelations between anger, courage, politeness, refinement, sense of honour, and knowledge (E 274). One’s dedication to academic pursuits does not warrant pride if it’s at the expense of other aspects of life that one finds important and that meet approval in others, be that one’s family or games of backgammon with friends. Hume has an uneasy relationship with his life’s calling: the scholar’s life can at times skirt close to that of the monk, with its associated monkish virtues. In thinking of virtues as possessed by people—those of mixed character— we can come to see thinkers as epistemically responsible, as, that is, responsible for their thinking and for (some of) the beliefs they acquire and the testimony they give. Individual character traits cannot be responsible, but people can, and for Hume such responsibility does not depend on the voluntariness of our thoughts and actions or on the possession of ‘liberty of indifference’ (T 2.3.2.2). Hume is a determinist with respect to human nature. It is universally acknowledged, that there is a great uniformity among the actions of men, in all nations and ages, and that human nature remains still the same, in its principles and operations. The same motives always produce the same actions: The same events follow from the same causes. Ambition, avarice, self-love, vanity, friendship, generosity, public spirit; these passions, mixed in various degrees, and distributed through society, have been, from the beginning of the world, and still are, the source of all the actions and enterprizes, which have ever been observed among mankind. (EHU 8.7) Voluntarists take such determinism to be incompatible with freedom and responsibility. Responsibility for one’s actions depends on there being alternative things one could have done. Whether we act compassionately is up to us, and thus, if we do, then we deserve to be praised, and in the case of vices, we deserve to be blamed and perhaps punished.11 Hume, though, notes that many traditional moral qualities are involuntary and, in some sense, not under our control. These include those that ‘all moralists…comprehend under the title of moral virtues’ (T 3.3.4.3): ‘courage, equanimity, patience, self-command’ (EPM App. 4.2), ‘constancy, fortitude, magnanimity; and, in short, all the qualities which form the great man’ (T 3.3.4.3). Further, Hume has a distinctive, non-voluntarist account of how we are responsible for our actions and intellectual lives, one that is compatible with his deterministic reading of human nature.12 As nicely put by Constantine Sandis, ‘[o]nce we rid ourselves of a certain kind of metaphysical ambition we are left with a perfectly adequate account of how it is that people can act in character, freely, and for good reasons’ (2019, 2). I am responsible for my patient parenting if I possess the

Hume’s Social Epistemology  145 enduring character trait of patience, one that forms a fragmented unity with my other virtues (and perhaps vices). If, therefore, one’s intellectual performances have their origin in intellectual character traits, then one can be seen as intellectually responsible and praised or blamed accordingly. You can be seen as responsible for your intellectual courage even if it comes naturally and praised for your humour even if it is difficult or impossible for you to turn it off. With respect to the acquisition of beliefs, Hume is a doxastic involuntarist (Qu, 2017), opposed to what Vitz (2009, 217) calls the ‘[v]oluntarist view of attributability’ of the intellectual virtues, in which responsibility is attributed to thinkers only if beliefs are acquired voluntarily or if one voluntarily chooses to maintain or rid oneself of a certain belief. Those who trust the word of another are responsible for the beliefs they acquire in this way if such trust is the result of their possession of enduring character traits such as open-mindedness and penetration. According to Hume, I’m responsible for my gullibility with respect to miracle-reports if gullibility is an enduring character trait of mine, whether or not it is something I can voluntarily control, which, owing to the kind of psychological quirks of human beings discussed in part 2 of the miracles essay, I often cannot. I have moved from discussing whether testimonial beliefs are justified to whether we are responsible for things we say and for the beliefs we acquire from others. This is of a piece with the claim in the next section that we trust people and not beliefs. Hume’s epistemology is personfocused; that is, it is concerned not merely with whether beliefs are justified but with the way individuals conduct their intellectual lives. For Hume, recognition of personhood in oneself and in others depends on the sympathetic mechanisms discussed in Chapter 4(§3) and on the pride we feel in our characters. Epistemic assessment, that involved in the drawing of the distinction between philosophical and unphilosophical probability, can occur only in an arena—the social arena—where we assess each other in non-epistemic, moral terms. We should not therefore see virtue as at odds with epistemic assessment; good causal reasoning can be pursued only by epistemic agents, those who are proud of certain aspects of their character and praised by others for the possession of that character.13 Such a Humean account of intellectual agency and epistemic responsibility suggests an account of Hume on testimony that is distinct from the reductionist interpretation.

6.4 Trust, Reliance, and Imperfect Harmony There is a third approach to testimony in the contemporary debate, distinct from both reductionism and anti-reductionism, and this is taken by those who offer trust-based accounts of testimony. These focus on the ethical dimension of trust and distinguish trust from mere reliance. I suggest that some aspects of these accounts can be seen as reflected in Hume’s

146  Hume’s Social Epistemology anti-reductionist approach to testimony. When climbing, I trust the rope to hold my weight and I trust my climbing partner to firmly hold the belay rope and to testify truthfully that it is safe to climb. There are two distinct kinds of trust at play here. One can say that I rely on the rope because I have good empirical evidence that this make and thickness of rope have been reliable in the past, and I also rely on my partner’s testimony partly in virtue of her past reliability. There is, however, a difference between reliance on the rope and trust in my partner, and that can be brought out by thinking about how I would respond if my trust were to be misplaced. Richard Holton puts this well: [T]he difference between trust and reliance is that trust involves something like a participant stance towards the person you are trusting. When you trust someone to do something, you rely on them to do it, and you regard that reliance in a certain way: you have a readiness to feel betrayal should it be disappointed, and gratitude should it be upheld….When the car breaks down we might be angry: but when a friend lets us down we feel betrayed. (1994, 67) Trusting someone treats them as a person, and that’s the case when you trust someone to do something and when you trust what they say, as noted by Jonathan Adler: ‘If I am offered directions and do not challenge them, then if the speaker observes me not following his directions, he will be offended (“Why didn’t you trust me?”; and if he confronts me, I am shamed’ (2002, 144).14 Ironically, a trust-based interpretation of Hume on testimony was suggested to me by McMyler’s discussion of the history of the role of probability in the assessment of testimony and his claim that Hume is not interested in the character of testifiers. We saw in Chapter 1(§5) that Arnauld and Nicole distinguish knowledge based on reason from that derived from divine authority or faith. Knowledge can thus be acquired from testimony by employing reason in the right way, and that involves weighing up internal and external circumstances that are relevant to the truth of what someone says. Internal circumstances are those that concern the likelihood of the event occurring, and external circumstances concern the testifier themselves and their sincerity, reliability, and honesty. We see the same distinction in Hume’s discussion of miracles. The Port-Royal Logic, however, gives greater weight to the character of certain testifiers. The miracles described by St. Augustine in his Confessions or The City of God should be accepted as true since Arnauld and Nicole claim that Augustine’s character is unimpeachable. Scepticism with respect to these miracles would, quoting the Logic, be ‘to doubt the testimony itself of St. Augustine, and to suppose that he altered the truth to legitimize the Christian religion in the minds of the pagans. No one can

Hume’s Social Epistemology  147 say this with the slightest plausibility’ (Arnauld and Nicole, 1996, 269). Irrespective of whether the Logic correctly weighs internal circumstances against external ones, McMyler claims that [t]hese kinds of personal assessments are largely lacking from Hume’s discussion….The Logic tends to construe the assessment of the reliability of testimony as the assessment of a person….In contrast, Hume tends to construe the assessment of the reliability of testimony as the assessment of an event. (McMyler, 2011, 35–6) It is the latter claim that I now question. Hume’s detailed consideration of the characters of those involved in testimonial exchanges and the relation of their character to epistemic responsibility is suggestive of a trustbased approach. McMyler claims that ‘what is at stake between Hume and the Logic concerns whether and to what extent the category of other persons plays a distinctive role in human rationality’ (2011, 37). It is certainly true that, according to Hume, evidence concerning the objective unlikeliness of miraculous events plays a crucial role in our assessment of miracle-testimony, always, it seems, swamping the trust we may have in a text or person. He also, though, provides detailed character analysis of the kinds of traits that are relevant to the assessment of testimony, those possessed by testifiers and those constitutive of the ‘character’ [Hume’s word] of the witnesses of miracles (EHU 10.7). Character traits are traits of people, not of events. Hume’s focus on character traits can also be seen if we reassess a passage that I admitted was problematic for my anti-reductionist interpretation of Hume on testimony. Hume says that [i]t will be sufficient to observe, that our assurance in any argument of this kind is derived from no other principle than our observation of the veracity of human testimony, and of the usual conformity of facts to the reports of witnesses. (EHU 10.5) It is easy to see this as suggesting a reductionist account in which trust is grounded in reliability. ‘Veracity’, though, can be taken as a character trait, one closer to honesty than to objective reliability and one with an ethical flavour.15 In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, ‘veracity’ was often seen as having a moral dimension. John Norris, in his Collection of Miscellanies, defines veracity as a ‘due conformity between the Words and the Understanding, when I speak as I think; which is moral Truth or Veracity’ (1699, 154)—note: speak what I think, not necessarily what is objectivity true. A similar definition is given in Fiddes’s Practical Discourses:

148  Hume’s Social Epistemology ‘Veracity is a moral virtue, and consists in a due conformity of our words, or declarations, with our thoughts’ (1714, II.87).16 In Reid, too, the emphasis is not on objective reliability but on honesty, veracity being ‘a propensity to speak the truth…so as to convey our real sentiments’ (1764, 6.24)—‘Lying’, Reid goes on to say, ‘is doing violence to our nature’. Thus, when Hume says ‘that our assurance in any argument of this kind is derived from no other principle than our observation of the veracity of human testimony, and of the usual conformity of facts to the reports of witnesses’, he may not be implying that veracity should be equated with reliability, with, that is, the usual conformity of facts to witness testimony. He could be interpreted as claiming that assessments of testimony involve two considerations, one concerning the ‘veracity of human testimony’—veracity seen as a character trait—and another concerning objective reliability, or the ‘usual conformity of facts to the reports of witnesses’. Veracity may not be the same thing as reliability—the former a character trait, the latter a probabilistic notion—but there is a relation between them, between those who possess that character trait and ‘the usual conformity of facts to the reports of witnesses’ (my italics). The relation is causal. Given that speakers are generally honest—which is the case, given societal pressures—it is ‘usual’ that testimony conforms to the facts.17 Thinking of veracity in this way enables us to see Hume’s account of trust as person-centred rather than focused solely on the probability of events. In the case of miracles, though, the latter takes centre-stage because in such a context the usual conformity of facts to the reports of witnesses breaks down. Having considered the person-centred focus of Hume’s account of testimony, let us return to the tension between epistemic and non-epistemic normativity, the former relevant to reliability and the latter to assessments of virtue, both seemingly playing a role in Hume’s account of testimony. Intellectual virtues relevant to testimony are assessed according to their utility and agreeableness, but the epistemic role of such virtues should be assessed according to truth-directedness or reliability. Some epistemically virtuous traits lend themselves to a reductionist interpretation; that is, the possession of such traits could be assessed purely in terms of the reliability of speakers or witnesses. There are, for example, those with ‘tenacious’ memory or an ‘inclination to truth’. It is harder, though, to see others in a wholly reductionist light, those such as integrity and candour, or for there to be a reliabilist reduction of how testifiers are ‘sensible to shame when detected in a falsehood’ or of the possession of substance, vigilance, sagacity, wisdom, or sense. There are, though, causal relations between different virtues and vices and between virtues and reliable belief-forming dispositions. Someone who is vain may think he is always right and ignore the testimony of others: vanity is therefore unlikely to be accompanied by open-mindedness. Sarah Wright suggests that a poor memory may cause someone to be

Hume’s Social Epistemology  149 unjust with respect to the property of others because they may not remember who they borrowed certain items from and would not therefore be able to return them to their rightful owners; conversely, though, ‘if I have evidence that someone has a history of returning borrowed items, I have evidence that this person has the kind of competence that would also make her a good source of testimony’ (2011, 259). There may not be necessary unity of the virtues, nor are all intellectual virtues keyed to reliability, but there is, Wright argues, ‘weak reciprocity’ between the moral and intellectual virtues and between virtues and reliable causal reasoning (2011, 257–60). Dogmatism—a cardinal epistemic vice for Hume—leads to impatience: while men zealously maintain what they neither clearly comprehend, nor entirely believe, they are shaken in their imagined faith, by the opposite persuasion, or even doubts of other men; and vent on their antagonists that impatience, which is the natural result of so disagreeable a state of the understanding. (H 3.431–2) Pride, as we have seen, leads to courage, magnanimity, and ambition, and we find that honesty is often accompanied by understanding and industry (EPM App. 4.2). Wright therefore argues that ‘we have available a variety of new sources of information about both the honesty and competence of speakers’ (2011, 259). Evidence of the character trait of veracity or honesty can provide some evidence of the kind of intellectual traits that enable thinkers to be reliable, and evidence of such reliability will also suggest that testifiers have the virtue of veracity. The more we know about the character of a thinker, the more evidence we have that is relevant to assessing their testimony. Wright takes such weak reciprocity to support a reductionist interpretation of Hume, in that the evidence base for trust is now wider. I suggest, though, that weak reciprocity can also play a role in my anti-reductionist interpretation. The more knowledge we have of human nature in general, that informed by default trust in history and collective experience, the more sensitive we become to factors relevant to testimonial trust. Intellectual virtues, those assessed according to the criteria of utility and agreeableness, play an epistemic role at two levels. First, we see the characters of others in terms of the virtues and vices they possess, and we saw in Chapter 4(§3) how pride in virtue plays a constitutive role in our coming to see ourselves as the individuals that we are. It is such individuals or agents who are the focus of epistemic assessment and so the criteria of utility and agreeableness play an essential role in our conception of what it is to be a person and therefore what it is to be an agent who can be assessed as a reliable thinker and testifier.

150  Hume’s Social Epistemology Second, there is a kind of harmony between epistemic and non-epistemic assessment.18 Zagzebski (1996, 182) argues that ‘any evidence of an intellectual virtue that is not truth conducive (or knowledge conducive) is more reasonably interpreted as evidence that such a trait is not a virtue than as evidence that some intellectual virtues are not truth conducive’ (1996, 185). Such strong reciprocity, though, may be plausible for some intellectual virtues but not for others: it is unlikely, for example, that engaging monologues are in general truth-conducive or that candid remarks are reliable in virtue of their candour, and so, again, Hume’s praise of those who can engage the listener and those who are frank threatens to open up a gap between the epistemic and non-epistemic. Weak reciprocity, though, comes to the rescue. Trustworthiness is built into the notion we have of ourselves and others. If others come to see you as courageous and benevolent, then this will provide them with some evidence that you are reliable. Further, the corresponding conception of ourselves as virtuous and in some measure reliable will be acquired sympathetically from others who have judged us to be so. Utility and agreeableness are not intrinsically truth-directed, but we see the fragmented unity of persons in terms of the virtues that depend on these criteria and, given weak reciprocity, epistemic reliability comes as part of this package. Weak reciprocity therefore provides backing for default trust in testimony. Such harmony is not a priori, nor does it have transcendental or teleological backing, nor is it all-pervading and consistent. The wise epistemic agent has a fragmented character with some traits keyed to reliability and others that are not, but as she is wise, the overall tenor of her thinking is usually compatible with the canons of good causal reasoning. There will be times when such canons are overridden for reasons of showboating or wit or where vanity and perhaps dogmatism creep in, but these will be rare. The tension, then, between epistemic and non-epistemic criteria is diminished through the web of causal relations between intellectual virtues, moral virtues, and reliability—diminished to the point that insistence on significantly greater harmony would smack of teleology and be empirically unwarranted. Such weak reciprocity results in testimonial belief transmission and testimonial trust that is, much of the time, useful, agreeable, and truth-directed. There is therefore imperfect harmony between the epistemic and non-epistemic criteria involved in the assessment of intellectual virtue relevant to testimony, but this is harmony enough.

6.5 Testimony, Self, and Society What we see in Hume’s account of testimony is the rejection of a foundationalist picture in which testimonial justification is reducible to an individual’s perception of the reliability of others. In order to assess such reliability, we require a theory of human nature, one derived from our

Hume’s Social Epistemology  151 observations of ‘men’s behaviour in company, in affairs, and in their pleasures’ (T 0.10) but also one that requires us to take historical testimony on trust and thus to greatly expand the scope of empirical evidence available to us. Testimonial justification does not have a foundation in pure, testimony-independent perceptions of the constant conjunctions between the contents of utterances and reality, but neither does history provide ultimate foundations for our theory of human nature, independent of our ongoing experience. History and quotidian experience are, to borrow an image from Quine, ‘in the same boat—a boat which, to revert to Neurath’s figure…, we can rebuild only at sea while staying afloat in it’.19 History informs our understanding of human nature upon which testimonial trust depends, and the resultant account of human nature, along with our first-hand experience, guides our interpretation of history: ‘What would become of history, had we not a dependence on the veracity of the historian, according to the experience, which we have had of mankind?’ (EHU 8.18). The reductionist ‘Humean’ interpretation of Hume on testimony is at odds with Hume’s situated view of humanity. It assumes, as Livingston puts it, ‘some Archimedean point outside the prejudices and customs of common life from which the order as a whole can be judged’ (1984, 6), a point from which individuals abstract themselves from the fray and attain, with their own resources, epistemic authority concerning the reliability of others. Such a point is unattainable. We have no choice but to trust in history and in the testimony of others, perhaps most of the time, questioning their authority only when the stakes are high—in the case of miracles, for example—but, even then, the epistemic resources we bring to bear are infused with knowledge that we have ultimately acquired on trust.20 Our experience of the testimony of others is not of the same kind as our experience of which ropes hold our weight and which fray. The boat in which we find ourselves contains people, those to whom we ascribe characters and those we trust as persons. Assessment of testimony ultimately depends on the knowledge we have of human nature, knowledge that requires evidence that is personal but also that which is pooled; such testimony can be taken on trust from others and at times seen as reliable, as good ropes can be, but also as trustworthy, as only people can be. Reciprocally, our knowledge of human nature also depends on the testimony of contemporaries and of history. The apparent tension between standards based on truth and utility and agreeableness is grounded in a foundationalist picture in which such standards can be independently assessed. This is an illusion. Assessments of the reliability of testimony can be made only if we see testifiers as people and this depends on the kind of non-epistemic assessment involved in judgments of character. Contemporary discussion of the epistemology of testimony is narrow, and much of the focus is on the single question of how testimonial beliefs are justified. Hume has been co-opted into this debate, but I have

152  Hume’s Social Epistemology argued that an account of testimony requires holistic discussion of the wider mental and social life of epistemic agents. One tries to focus on testimony, but we find that this is not possible without allowing other aspects of our nature into the frame and therefore turning also to consider sympathy, wisdom, history, morality, virtue, aesthetics, the self, and character. One could, of course, have diverse initial interests, starting, perhaps, with wisdom or sympathy, but, as one looks deeper, one approaches the same holistic network from a different direction, through a different strand, and one will find testimony brought into one’s ambit. The complexity of our intellectual lives cannot be described only in terms of reliable faculties and neither can specific cases of the acquisition of belief. Success in science, for example, demands not just good eyesight, careful logical reasoning, and productive testimonial exchanges between colleagues but also intellectual courage, perseverance, and creativity. Hume has a naturalistic account of such intellectual virtues, one that provides an explanation of how we are responsible for such traits, why we approve of them, and how they depend on our wider social relations. As Harris (2015, 115) puts it, ‘Hume’s conception of human nature is intensely, almost claustrophobically, social’—our very conception of ourselves dependent on the reactions others have to us and our sympathetic absorption of their opinions expressed though testimony. An author may feel pride in the clarity of her expression, in the way that she can articulate an argument, and thus she comes to see herself as possessing testimonial virtues. Such pride plays a constructive role with respect to the practical self, as she comes to see herself as an articulate person. It is because of this lively impression of her self that she can come to feel pleasure in the testimonial reports of others concerning her virtues and abilities—in, for example, the reviews and student assessments that she reads—and the idea of the approbation of others is enlivened into the feeling of pleasure through vivacity inherited from the lively idea of her own self. Thus continues the spiral of self-creation where vivacity from the evolving self contributes to trust in others and the acquisition of testimonial beliefs. This sympathetic spiral is also regulated in further ways. First, from sympathizing with the community, she comes to know that being an author is a respected profession (in some circles), and thus she learns when and where to express pride in her abilities and whose approbation she should respect and share. Second, she may learn—via testimony—which reviewers are sycophantic and which publishers mere vanity presses, who is to be trusted and who is not, and thus she develops general rules that further modulate her sympathetic responses, the pride she feels, and the conception she has of her self. Thus, we come to see ourselves as epistemic agents only in the context of social relations in which testimonial transactions occur, where we are praised and blamed and where we come to feel proud of some of our traits.

Hume’s Social Epistemology  153 The social relations that Hume emphasizes with respect to the acquisition of testimonial knowledge are not those of the philosophy seminar or, God forbid, the theological seminary! At times, Hume sees ‘philosophy’ in a positive light. This is so with respect to those with ‘a philosophical mind’ (H 5.459) who can be amused by the ‘gloomy enthusiast’ and with ‘principles of sound philosophy…exempt from superstition’ (H 3.191). The ‘philosophical precision’ of scholars is praised (H 5.573), as is ‘the mildness and humanity of an accomplished philosopher’ (H 2.40). Hume, though, often distances himself from the views of ‘philosophers’, when, for example, they lead to what he calls ‘melancholy and delirium’ arising from metaphysical reflection (T 1.4.7.9). In the History of England, ‘philosophy’ and ‘philosophers’ are not in general words of approval. Hobbes’s philosophy is a ‘lively instance [of] how precarious all reputations, founded on reasoning and philosophy!’ (H 6.153). Philosophy is often aligned with theology and with ‘the dreaming and captious philosophy of the schools’ (H 3.229), with theologians or ‘despicable philosopher[s]’ (H 5.155) ‘infected with superstition and sophistry’ (H 2.521).21 Hume is particularly wary of the insular nature of philosophy and the ‘endeavour to confine our pleasures altogether within our own minds’. In the pursuit of such a life, we will ‘reason ourselves out of all virtue, as well as social enjoyment’ (EHU 5.1). Hume’s wisdom is not that of the ‘sage’ who looks down with indifference on human affairs (EPM 7.16) or comes ‘to despise the world’ (H 6.219–20): The mere philosopher [note, ‘mere’] is a character, which is commonly but little acceptable in the world, as being supposed to contribute nothing either to the advantage or pleasure of society; while he lives remote from communication with mankind, and is wrapped up in principles and notions equally remote from their comprehension. (EHU 1.5) The ‘Separation of the Learned from the conversible World seems to have been the great Defect of the last Age’ (E 534). Thus: Learning has been…a Loser by being shut up in Colleges and Cells, and secluded from the World and good Company….Even Philosophy went to Wrack by this moaping recluse Method of Study, and became as chimerical in her Conclusions as she was unintelligible in her Stile and Manner of Delivery. And indeed, what cou’d be expected from Men who never consulted Experience in any of their Reasonings, or who never search’d for that Experience, where alone it is to be found, in common Life and Conversation? (E 534–5; ‘Of Essay Writing’)

154  Hume’s Social Epistemology The conversation—and testimony—to which Hume refers here is that of the burgeoning commercial cities of Scotland and the salons of Paris. The perfect character should be able to converse in both realms, ‘retaining an equal ability and taste for books, company, and business; preserving in conversation that discernment and delicacy which arise from polite letters; and in business, that probity and accuracy which are the natural result of a just philosophy’ (EHU 1.5). Wisdom is thus acquired and it is essentially social: the wise man is not the solitary sage but the thinker immersed in sympathetic engagement with the community. In contrast to Rousseau’s ideal of the rustic life, Hume praises urban living since it puts the ‘minds of men…into a fermentation’. The wise do not shun society; rather, ‘[t]hey flock into cities; love to receive and communicate knowledge; to show their wit or their breeding; their taste in conversation or living, in clothes or furniture’. Testimony provides the social glue that enables such advancements in society, with ‘industry, knowledge, and humanity…linked together by an indissoluble chain’, a chain reliant on testimonial transmission (E 271; ‘Of Refinement in the Arts’). Discussion of Hume’s account of testimony usually focuses on the essay on miracles, and all agree that we find there an argument against belief in religious miracles, along with subsidiary claims concerning epistemic vices to which the religious are particularly prone. Elsewhere Hume’s thoughts on testimony can be contrasted with those of the Church. One of the monkish virtues is silence, a vice at odds with our humanity and the role that testimony plays in the cultivation of virtue, taste, and our very selves. Religion also perverts or mystifies language: ‘This earth or building, yesterday was profane; to-day, by the muttering of certain words, it has become holy and sacred’ (EPM 3.36), and ‘reasoning, and even language, have been warped from their natural course, and distinctions have been endeavoured to be established, where the difference of the objects was, in a manner, imperceptible’ (EMP App 4. 21), as Hume argues is the case with respect to alleged distinctions between moral and intellectual virtues and abilities. Hume took immense care with his English and was highly suspicious of the Church’s continued use of Latin: The mass had always been celebrated in Latin; a practice which might have been deemed absurd, had it not been found useful to the clergy, by impressing the people with an idea of some mysterious unknown virtue in those rites.22 (H 3.364) In the Abstract, Hume uses the biblical character of Adam to illustrate his empiricist account of causal inference. The newly minted Adam ‘without experience…would never be able to infer motion in the second [billiard] ball from the motion and impulse of the first’ (Abs. 11). Imagine

Hume’s Social Epistemology  155 now the arrival of Eve. According to the reductionist, Adam would have no evidence that Eve is reliable, at least for a while, and so would not, or should not, believe her testimony. Similarly, Eve would not, or should not, believe the testimony given by the serpent. Things could have turned out very different! Adam and Eve, and perhaps the serpent, given Hume’s account of animals, all possess sympathetic mechanisms, but, according to the reductionist, these play a role only in the moral judgments that they make and perhaps in the formation of sympathetic beliefs grounded in unphilosophical probability. Hume, however, has a more positive picture of the role played by the passions and of the interaction between the affective and epistemic. Without Eve, Adam is barely more than a bundle of perceptions. Eve’s testimony, though, enables Adam to feel pride in his life and character and to have a conception of himself; Adam’s testimony having a reciprocal effect on Eve and her own self-conception. They initially take each other’s testimony on trust since, as Hume says, we readily accept the good word of another about ourselves. Many generations later, the descendants of Adam and Eve now have a written and oral history and much of this is also taken on trust. This history provides knowledge of human nature, that which can be supplemented by their ongoing social interactions and that which carries—in the meaning of language— evaluative assessment of virtue and vice. Inductive inference is widely used in empirical investigations and in the correction of sympathy, but such evidence is not purged of social content—it is not privately accumulated by individuals; it is pooled. It is the testimony of history that enables us to pool inductive evidence in this way and it’s the testimony of others, via sympathy and pride, that binds our bundles of perceptions together. We have ended up a long way from consideration of contemporary evidentialist accounts of testimonial belief and of whether a hearer’s belief that p is justified by her experience of the reliability of the speaker. But it’s right that we should end up here, given that the things we say and our trust in others go to the heart of human nature. Testimonial utterances are not the mere productions of reliable machines but expressions of the thoughts and lives of persons, and a Humean account of testimony should reflect this. What’s more, I suggest this is Hume’s account.

Notes 1 Also see Ridge (2013) and Kail (2005) for such ‘practical’ or ‘ethical’ readings of Hume’s epistemology. 2 Hume talks of the learned at EHU 1.2, 10.2, 10.22, 10.33, and 11.3 and of the judicious and solid judgment at EHU 10.21 and 10.37. 3 For comparison with fools and folly: T 2.1.11.29–30, EPM App. 4.14, EPM 6.16, NHR 15.2, E 203 (‘Of National Characters’), E 539 (‘Of Moral Prejudices’), and E 81 (‘Dignity or Meanness of Human Nature’); and with madness: T 2.3.1.13. 4 See H 6.504 and E 336 (‘Of the Balance of Power’).

156  Hume’s Social Epistemology 5 See E 24 (‘That Politics Be Reduced to a Science’) and E 526 (‘Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth’). 6 See, for example, DNR 8.8. 7 Also see EPM App. 4.6. 8 Capaldi also stresses that Hume sees persons as ‘agents, as doers, immersed in both a physical world and a social world along with other agents’ (1989, 23). 9 A danger easy to find in certain prominent politicians today! 10 Hume also refers to ‘a character’ rather than to character traits at T 3.1.2.3, 3.3.1.5; EPM 9.10, 25; E 170 (‘The Sceptic’) and E 241 (‘Of the Standard of Taste’). 11 Garfield argues that Hume sees the voluntarist conception of responsibility as having its roots in theological responses to the problem of evil (2019, 86–88). 12 See Russell (1995) and Vitz (2009, 213–19). 13 There are certain similarities between my interpretation of Hume and the kind of virtue epistemology suggested by Roberts and Wood: ‘we aim not to produce a theory of justification, warrant, knowledge, or rationality; nor are we trying to answer the skeptic. Instead, we have aimed to use the virtues as the focus of reflections to increase our practical understanding of the inner workings of the intellectual life…[O]ur purpose…has been less to produce an epistemological theory than to generate understanding of the epistemic agent and thereby to guide practice’ (2007, 323). 14 I also rely on this make of rope based on the testimony of other climbers; trust in the rope therefore involves trust between persons. 15 Hume, though, does say the ‘veracity of human testimony’, suggesting that veracity is a quality of the testimony rather than of the person, but this is not decisive. When we say that a certain testimony is trustworthy, we mean that we should trust the testifier and this can be taken as a judgement of their character rather than merely as an assessment of the likely truth of their utterance. 16 Bernard Williams also points out that the word ‘truth’ in Early and Middle English meant fidelity, loyalty, or reliability and that ‘[t]ruthfulness is a form of trustworthiness, that which relates in a particular way to speech’ (2002, 94). 17 Michael Root takes Hume to have two accounts of testimony, one—in EHU—based on inductive reasoning and another based on his account of the virtues. The latter is not explicit in Hume, although Root suggests that it’s natural to see Hume as endorsing it. Root also focuses on the artificial virtue of honesty or veracity. We have reason to expect people to follow the convention of honesty even if we have no evidence concerning their past record, since ‘[h]onesty, fidelity, truth, are praised for their immediate tendency to promote the interests of society; but after those virtues are once established upon this foundation, they are also considered as advantageous to the person himself, and as the source of that trust and confidence, which alone can give a man any consideration in life’ (EPM 6.13). 18 See Qu (2014, 518–9) for discussion of such harmony. 19 Quine uses Neurath’s metaphor to illustrate his naturalized epistemology in which he sees philosophy as continuous with science and not as providing its a priori foundations: ‘There is no external vantage point, no first philosophy’ (Quine, 1969, 127). 20 Tim Milnes also stresses the holistic nature of Hume’s empiricism: ‘Hume is far from being the reductionist on testimony that he is commonly portrayed as being. Indeed, I suggest that his position can be more accurately described as a form of coherentism, in that it suggests that all our experience must hang

Hume’s Social Epistemology  157 together as a web of belief—as an interdependent, organized whole. From this perspective, the “testimony” of other persons is theoretically neither a stronger nor weaker foundation for knowledge than the “testimony” of sense’ (2019, 78). 21 Also see H 2.71, 2.518n, 4.209, 5.211. 22 The monkish also avoid the company of women, but Hume highlights the positive influence women have on conversation and on the intellectual life of a community. Cities are where we ‘gather[] together in mixed company’ and ‘[p]articular clubs and societies are every where formed: Both sexes meet in an easy and sociable manner; and the tempers of men, as well as their behaviour, refine apace’ (E 271; ‘Of Refinement in the Arts’). See O’Brien (2010) for discussion of some feminist themes in Hume and for my early exploration of Hume on testimony.

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Index

Page numbers followed by n indicate notes. Abramson, Kate 81 Adler, Jonathan 146 aesthetic judgment 2, 48, 79, 109–10, 152 agents, epistemic 53, 70, 133, 142–5, 149–50, 152, 156n13 agnosticism 29 d’Alembert, Jean 18 Allison, Henry 49n15, 85 animal minds 76–7, 155 Annet, Peter 13 Anscombe, Elizabeth 57–8 anti-­foundationalism see foundationalism anti-­reductionism 1, 3, 42, 46, 51–73, 74, 83, 96, 99, 120, 134, 147, 149; see also reductionism Aquinas, Thomas 6 argument from design 30–1, 71, 127 Aristotle 108, 142 Arnauld, Antoine 25, 146–7 associationism 32–6, 41, 78, 82, 93, 95–6, 110–11; see also causal inference; contiguity; principle of resemblance atheism 29–31, 121 attenuated deism 29, 30 Augustine, St. 121, 146–7 Averroes 18 Bacon, Francis 32, 34 Bailey, Alan 38, 127 Barnes, Jonathan 7 Bayle, Pierre 113, 121 Beebee, Helen 35, 40 belief: counterfeit 84; Hume’s account of 35–6, 83–7; phantom of 84

Bernard, Christopher 32 Blackburn, Simon 123 Blair, Hugh 10–2, 14, 161–2 blind faith 8, 9, 64 Boespflug, Mark 8 Bohlin, Henrik 86, 97, 99 Booth, Wayne 116 Boswell, James 11 Boyle, Deborah 48 Boyle, Robert 6 Broad, C. D. 28n5, 37 Burke, Edmund 11–2 Burton, John Hill 4 Butler, Joseph 25–6, 31, 32, 81 Butler, Ronald 85 Calvin, John 5, 23 Calvinism see Calvin, John Campbell, George 24, 27, 45–6, 61–2 Capaldi, Nicholas 81, 156n8 Cartesianism see Descartes, René Catholics and Protestants 4–5, 17–9, 20, 24, 27, 29 causal inference 34–6, 38, 39, 43, 45, 46, 54, 67–8, 70–2, 79, 80–1, 83, 84–5, 92, 93, 95, 109, 120, 126, 134–6, 138, 140, 142, 145, 148–9, 150, 154–5 causation see causal inference character 48, 56, 60, 64, 74, 80, 81, 85, 87–92, 96, 99, 103–13, 116, 121–2, 124, 129, 134, 138, 142–4, 146–50, 151, 152, 155; see also national character Chazan, Pauline 89–90 children, trust in 46, 54, 55, 56, 66, 83, 110, 111

Index  173 Christian morality 49n13, 120–9, 144, 154, 157n22 Christianity 4–27, 71, 121–2, 128 Chubb, Thomas 16 Coady, Anthony 1, 44–7, 52, 54, 60, 64 cognitive externalism 69 common point of view 107, 109–10, 140 contextualism 3, 39–40 contiguity 34, 79, 94, 100n12, 140 copy principle 33, 36, 67 Craig, Edward 19–20 credulity see gullibility Davidson, Donald 52–4 death of Hume 114–5 Debes, Remy 78, 81, 104 deism 13, 16, 19, 24, 26, 27, 29, 30 deists see deism delicacy of taste and judgement 48, 109–10, 154 Demosthenes 59 Descartes, René 7, 8, 34, 35, 39, 40, 79, 90 determinism 144 Diderot, Denis 18, 29 Dilthey, Wilhelm 98 dogmatism 2, 29–30, 124–7, 149–50 doxastic virtue 135–6 Driver, Julia 106 Dummett, Michael 52 Durland, Karen 40 Earman, John 14, 16 education 2, 48, 56, 77, 85, 88, 93, 108–13, 127, 129 Elliot, Gilbert 69, 131n27 eloquence 82, 86, 100n17, 105, 106, 113, 119–20, 138 empathy 75, 99n2; see also sympathy Enlightenment, the 3, 4–7, 8, 25, 27 enthusiasm 16, 21, 126 epistemic agents 53, 70, 133, 142–5, 149–50, 152, 156n13 epistemic responsibility 53, 132, 140, 142–5, 147 epistemological externalism 3, 40, 41, 69 evidentialism 1, 43, 72, 75, 99, 139, 155 experience, collective and personal 44–5, 47, 51, 59, 60–6, 74, 77, 85, 109

externalism see cognitive externalism, epistemological externalism faith, blind 8, 9, 64 fame, literary 26, 27, 113, 116 Farr, James 83, 102n45 Faulkner, Paul 63 fictions, legal 68 Fiddes, Richard 147–8 fideism 23, 127–8, 132n48 Flew, Antony 23 Fogelin, Robert 38, 44, 58–9 force see vivacity foundationalism 42, 59, 150–1 Fricker, Elizabeth 44, 46–7, 52–3 Garfield, Jay 156n11 Garrett, Don 33 Gaskin, John 29 Gelfert, Axel 44, 46, 47–9, 50n20, 63–5, 73n7, 77 general point of view see common point of view general rules 38, 40, 41, 42, 48, 54, 64, 72, 88, 134, 135, 138, 140–1, 152 Glanville, Joseph 6 Goldman, Alvin 44 Gordon, Robert 98 Greco, Lorenzo 2, 108, 143 Guicciardin, Francesco 119 gullibility 16, 21, 22, 49, 55, 59, 106, 128, 125, 135, 145 Harris, James 29–30, 56, 98, 101n32, 113, 117, 118, 130n21, 152 Hartley, David 81–2 Herdt, Jennifer 87, 95, 116 hermeneutics and history 75, 96–9 history: philosophical 56; positivist conception of 97, 102n45; testimony of 2, 51, 56–60, 120, 129, 138, 151, 155; hermeneutics and 75, 96–9 Hobbes, Thomas 12, 34, 153 d’Holbach, Baron 29 Holton, Richard 146 Home, Henry see Kames, Lord humility, intellectual 89–90, 97, 103, 120–9 humour 114–7, 119, 120 Hutcheson, Francis 31–2, 34, 108, 142 hypocrisy 128–9 ideas and impressions 33–4; double relation of 90

174 Index individualism 7–9, 65–9, 99 indoctrination 38, 42, 85, 93 induction see inductive inference inductive inference 1, 14, 32, 36–44, 51–2, 63–9, 72, 74, 93, 95–6, 97, 134, 140–1, 155 intellectual humility 89–90, 97, 103, 120–9 intellectual modesty 2, 14, 83, 103, 120–9, 139–40 intellectual virtues 103, 105–8, 110, 133–6, 139, 142–3, 145, 148–50, 152, 154 internalist reliabilism 41 irony 60, 116–7, 118 irreligion see atheism Jansenists 15–7, 27 Jesuits 16, 24, 27 Jost, Jacob 120 justification 1, 7, 10, 37, 41–2, 47, 52–6, 70, 72, 74, 125, 133–6, 150–1 Kames, Lord 23, 25–7 Kemp Smith, Norman 23, 29, 38, 48, 85, 87, 100n14 Kim, Byoungjae 81 Krause, Sharon 112 La Flèche 24–5, 26, 130n23 Lackey, Jennifer 44 latitudinarians 6, 25, 27 laws of nature 4–6, 9, 12–8, 23, 36–7, 41, 43, 44, 61, 71 legal fictions 68 liars 10, 53, 55, 84, 93, 148 lies see liars literary fame 26, 27, 113, 116 Livingston, Donald 23, 29, 39, 58–9, 151 Loeb, Louis 85 Logic or the Art of Thinking 25, 28n16, 146–7 MacIntosh, Jack 8 Mackie, John 4 Macpherson, James 10–2 madness 71, 84, 85, 137 Malebranche, Nicolas 34, 39 Mandeville, Bernard 32 Martian argument, the 54 McCormick, Miriam 135 McMyler, Benjamin 7, 25, 28n16, 44, 146–7

McNulty, Lisa 8 memory 35, 42, 45, 51, 55, 63, 108, 148 Merivale, Amyras 81 Middleton, Conyer 27 Millican, Peter 28n6, 40–2, 65, 81 miracles 4–28; Hume’s argument against belief in 10–28; impossibility of 15–6 mitigated scepticism 36, 39, 122, 124–7, 139 Moderate Party 17, 131n35 modesty, intellectual 2, 14, 83, 103, 120–9, 139–40 monkish virtues 49n13, 120–9, 144, 154, 157n22 Montesquieu 101n24 moral: diversity 107–8; education 108–13; motivation 116; sentiments 31, 108, 124 Mossner, Ernest 11, 101n29 narrow circle 107, 108, 110 national character 48, 74, 85–7, 91–2, 96 natural and artificial virtues 106–7 naturalism and scepticism 36–42 Nelson, John 73n11 Neurath, Otto 151 Newton, Isaac 32 Nicole, Pierre 25, 146–7 normativity, epistemic and non-­ epistemic see justification Norris, John 147 open-­mindedness 125, 145, 149 oratory 2, 86, 101n25, 106, 116, 119, 133 Ossian controversy 10–2 Owen, David 135 Pascal, Blaise 17 Passmore, John 38 Pears, David 79 Penelhum, Terence 17, 128 Perinetti, Dario 24 perspectivalist response to scepticism 38–40 philosophy: Hume’s attitude to 153–4; false and true 39 Pitson, Tony 73n5, 76 Plantinga, Alvin 7 Plato 12, 142 poetry 71, 84

Index  175 Port Royal Logic see Logic or the Art of Thinking Postema, Gerald 98–9 Price, Richard 28n6 pride: and self 33, 87–92, 97, 106, 136, 142, 143–4, 145, 149, 152, 155; and Christianity 113, 88, 121–9 principle of resemblance 34, 78, 79–81, 85, 91, 92–5, 116, 140–1 principles of association 34, 78–80; see also associationism; causal inference; contiguity; principle of resemblance probability, philosophical and unphilosophical 38, 42, 48, 52, 71–2, 145, 155 problem of other minds 80–1 Pyrrhonism 125 Qu, Hsueh 40–1, 42, 49n11, 134, 145 Quine, Willard 151 real presence see transubstantiation reason, perceptual model of 41; see also inductive inference; probability, philosophical and unphilosophical; virtue/s and reason reductionism 1, 3, 42–9, 61, 63, 65–8, 70, 96; local and global 44–9, 52, 65–6; see also anti-­reductionism Reid, Thomas 42, 51, 54–6, 148 relativism, moral see moral diversity reliabilism see epistemological externalism, internalist reliabilism relics 5, 17, 19, 20, 24 religion see agnosticism, argument from design, atheism, attenuated deism, Catholics and Protestants, Christian morality, Christianity, fideism, Jansenists, Jesuits, latitudinarians, Moderate Party, resurrection of Christ, transubstantiation resemblance, principle of 34, 78, 79–81, 85, 91, 92–5, 116, 140–1 responsibility, epistemic 53, 132, 140, 142–5, 147 resurrection of Christ 1, 5, 13, 19, 44–6, 47 ridicule of belief in miracles 15–8, 60, 131n27 Riggs, Wayne 125–6 Root, Michael 156n17 Rorty, Amélie 89

Rousseau, Jean-­Jacques 106, 154 Royal Society, the 6, 25, 32 Russell, Paul 38, 71, 143 Sandis, Constantine 101n41, 144 Sayre-­McCord, Geoffrey 108 scepticism: antecedent and consequent 40–1; external world 7, 36, 44–5; mitigated 36, 39, 122, 124–7, 139; and naturalism 35–42; perspectivalist response to 38–40; with respect to the self 78–9 Scheler, Max 75 Schmidt, Claudia 83, 97 Schmitt, Frederick 40 scientia 8 Selby-­Bigge, Lewis Amherst 26–7, 30, 56 self see scepticism with respect to the self, pride and self self-­deception 128–9 sentimentalism with respect to morality 108 sentimentality 113, 117 Shaftesbury, A. A. C.: Third Earl of 31, 32, 108 shame 63, 77, 90, 101n34, 123, 146, 148 Shaw, Jane 5 Siculus, Diodorus 59 silence 154 Smith, Adam 86, 98, 114–5 soul see scepticism with respect to the self Sprat, Thomas 6 Steward, Dugald 57 Stewart, Sandy 9, 28n11 Stoics 142 Strabo 1 Strawson, Peter 52 Suetonius 119 superstition 17–8, 20, 22, 24, 87, 116, 118, 121, 129, 153 Swanton, Christine 108 sympathy 74–99, 107–11, 116–8, 133, 134, 136, 139, 140–1, 145, 150, 152, 154, 155; and belief 83–96, 134, 140–1, 155; correction of 140–1, 155; direct and idea-­mediated 75–8, 88–92; and emotion, 77–81 Tacitus 1, 117, 119, 120 Taylor, Jacqueline 31, 88, 93, 96–7, 110

176 Index teleology 29–32, 40, 51, 56, 108, 137, 150 testimonial virtues 106 Thucydides 1, 119 Tillotson, John 17–9 Tindal, Matthew 13 Toland, John 19 Traiger, Saul 3, 65, 67–9, 70, 71–2, 73n8 transubstantiation 9, 17–8 trust: -based accounts of testimony 145–6; developmental and mature phases of 46–9, 52, 65, 66, 110–1; person-­centred account of 145–50; and reliance 145–50; see also children, trust in; gullibility unity of the virtues 142–5, 149–50 Vaccari, Alessio 6 vanity 116, 122–3, 126, 131n39 veracity 147–8, 149, 151 virtue epistemology 125, 156n13 virtue ethics 108 virtue/s: doxastic 135–6; ethics 108; Hume’s account of 103–8; intellectual 103, 105–8, 110, 133–6, 139, 142–3, 145, 148–50, 152, 154;

mixed 111, 142–4; natural and artificial 106–7; monkish 49n13, 120–9, 144, 154, 157n22; and reason 108–9; testimonial 106; weak and strong reciprocity of 149–50; wide account of 103–4; unity of 142–5, 149–50 Vitz, Rico 74, 83, 92–3, 135, 145 vivacity 33, 35, 57, 77–81, 88, 91–2, 94–9, 105, 119, 141, 152 Waldow, Anik 76, 80–1, 100n7, 140 Watkins, Margaret 57, 123 Webb, Mark 44 Weiner, Matthew 53 Welbourne, Michael 59, 65–7, 74, 92, 93–4 Williams, Bernard 156n16 Wilson, Fred 38, 45 wisdom, testimonial 136–42 Woolston, William 6, 16, 26–7 Wooton, David 72 Wright, Sarah 148–9 Xenophon 59 Zagzebski, Linda 139, 150