Hume - Final Paper

Philosophy 105, ~12/06:

In Chapter 10 of his Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding, Hume lays out a logical process that is designed to disprove the possibilities of miracles by pointing out the fallible nature of humans and the impossibility of anything irrational. Starting off by supposing the existence of universal laws of nature that govern every aspect of the universe without exception, and that miracles are events that contradict these laws, he suggests a rationality to the universe that was absent from (and in some senses contradictory to) his earlier work in the Enquiries. He says that a person who strives to be rational proportions his beliefs to visible evidence, and of various alternatives to the Truth, he should believe the one that is most likely, that is the one that appeals the most to our own sense. However, humans are fallible creatures and we do not always follow a logical course of actions, we are prone to mistake, and other motives replace our search for truth (as will later be discussed as the idea of “antecedent probability”). We then assign to each scenario a possibility greater than zero: that whenever one claims to have witnessed something they could be either mistaken or lying. However, the possibility, according to Hume, of a law of nature being breached is zero, based on his definition of such law. Therefore, it follows that people who claim to have witnessed the impossible are either mistaken or lying, and rational people who consider all the alternative truths, should not believe them. This is the logical process that shows that miracles are impossible and that Christianity is irrational, and I would like to point out two points of contention I hold with his argument.
First, in Hume’s earlier work, he attacks the idea of cause and effect. He says that we can not assume an effect will follow from a cause for two reasons, and that the events present themselves in a “constant conjunction”, rather than a causal relationship. His first reason comes from his problems with learning through the process of induction. He says that because we don’t know every possible example, we can’t draw broad generalizations about whatever it is we are observing. To be more specific, we cannot observe one hundred, one thousand, or even one million swans, see that all of them are white, and then conclude that swans are white because there could be a black swan out there for all we know. In the context of miracles, this means that there could be laws of nature that we do not know which account for many of the supposed miracles that occur. This theory assumes that miracles exist, though not everyone accepts this.
Secondly, in his arguments against cause and effect, we can’t follow scientific theories to lead us to an answer for the same reason that we can’t follow cause and effect - we don’t know everything about it, such as why the principle functions as it does and the purpose of it. That means we can’t logically say that gravity causes a ball thrown up in the air to come back down because we don’t know a) if it is actually gravity causing it to come back down, b) why gravity exists in the first place, and c) if we can ever fully place our faith in gravity. Now, this obviously leads to a very limited spectrum of actual knowledge one could gain, but it is what Hume argues.
So, take this in the context of his argument against miracles. His first presupposition is that there exist laws of nature, that they affect everything, and that they are uniform and unbreakable. My question is, how can we know this? Since we do not understand gravity, cohesion, electricity, and all of the forces of the universe completely, then how can we claim to have any knowledge about them? If we were to assume what Hume does, the possibility still exists that we could discover new laws which explain the currently unexplainable; we could even go so far as to speculate we have the whole scientific thinking wrong. The point is: we simply cannot know these things. It is therefore a contradiction to assume that anything unexplainable stems from human error while at the same time holding to the belief that we cannot know what we must know to validate this theory.

For my other critique of his philosophy, I would like to look critically at Hume’s dismissal of rationality from two points: one being a microcosmic view of human development and nature throughout history, and the second being “antecedent probability” - meaning alternative reasons to accept something as true, other than the pursuit of absolute truth.

Zemel: “Good morning, Mr. Hume. How do you do? In the interest of time and space, I will jump right into my argument.”
Hume: “Please, by all means.”
Zemel: “Our pursuit of God and the comfort that we get from believing there is rationality to the universe is evidence of a drive for stability, much in the same way that we have a hunger and sex drive, both of which we pursue the satiation of unconsciously. The fact that such a need exists, which we can think of as a specifically designed receptor within the human design, points to the existence of something that would give us said comfort. Our need for rationality, our dependence on it, our faith in science, points to a coherent tie to the universe. In every sense of the word, human beings are products of and inherently tied to the idea of rationality.”
Hume: “However, this presupposes rationality, and if we were to assume irrationality then the argument would hold no weight.”
Zemel: “So by your course of logic then everything that happens is completely by chance? According to you, the fact that everything has come together in a way that can be explained and understood is not proof of anything but rather it just exists in a universe of a minuscule probability?”
Hume: “It is human nature to assume that something is true because it is 99.99% likely. We must be look for reasoning that could exist higher than human nature because there is no inherent reason why the actual functionality of the universe has to exist in a way that we can understand.”
Zemel: “The proof of rationality, at least on a microcosmic level, lies in its clear manifestations of human nature and animal instinct. We are instinctively tied to certain actions beyond our own control. This includes a need for security/belonging, a drive for domination over other cultures, and why we are xenophobic. It includes our hunter/gatherer origins, our image of the perfect woman, and our subconscious desire to pass on our genes before we die. We do not have control over these drives, they are the scripts that govern our behaviors. We function according to a plan, we are living creatures, we have minds, and anyone who can truly appreciate the beauty of human nature and of all life, the distinction between that and something that is purely material and abiotic, can FEEL that there is something greater to us. Something pushing us towards our very being, something that ties everything in the universe together, and the fact that we can feel it proves that it is there, making its presence known. At some point we must stop requiring absolute proof of something's existence, the Humean knowledge that something is definitely there, in order to actually believe it.
Besides, your necessity for belief is a self-defeating concept. Since nothing is provable because not everything is known and we must rely on induction and deduction to some extent, then nothing can be known or believed. Therefore the actual pursuit of truth can never be truly attained because of the logical loopholes of skepticism under any circumstance (something you helped to construct). In addition, look towards Descartes’ rejection of what is not provable leading to the exclusion false negatives.
So regardless of it can be proved true or not, we are inclined to accept rationality through our desire for it - antecedent probability. And our desire for it, assuming rationality, validates the existence of one.”
Hume: “However, as apparently obvious as human nature is, the idea requires deductive reasoning that presupposes there is a greater design to human nature, and that we have a human nature, which logically follows that the universe has rationality, which cannot be proven in a way that we can ever know.”
Zemel: “It would appear, then, that we are at a moot point. Both of our points use circular reasoning and require true presuppositions – however, under your criteria for knowledge, you cannot believe that your assumptions are true, whereas I can.
It therefore comes down to each individual’s definition of how important it is to have faith in something, rather than simply looking at if something is true or not. People have different reasons for believing that something is true, and the importance of facts are usually relative. When one reaches the basics of each mode of thought, we discover that we can’t really know anything, and so believing in science requires just as much faith as believing in God.
Antecedent probability shows that there are more reasons for believing something than the pursuit of truth; sometimes we need to believe something that cannot be proven.