[This entry begins the series on
David Hume (1711-1776).]
As a preamble to my first Hume entry, I must right away rise to the
defense of induction as a method of
scientific and philosophical inquiry, which appears under attack from Hume’s
severe criticism. However, it is important to understand that Hume’s
discreditation of induction stands only in so far as reason alone is involved.
Actually, the best support for logical induction lies not in the reason, but in
the intuition, that is, in the irrational element of human thought. Thus, in
the example of the opening paragraph below, we cannot rely on scientific
conjecture without involving our intuitive sixth sense that will inform us
whether or not it is more likely to have the last item of the set like all the
others, or not at all, or else the odds of either this or that were dead even.
Having said that obligatorily, lest I forget to say it later on, this is the
end of our short, but philosophically significant preamble…
Ever since my memorable trip to
Scotland in 1969, at the impressionable age of twenty-one, I have a little
weakness for everything Scottish (granted that some of the most interesting
Scots are actually Irish). This would have been a good enough reason for me to
become interested in David Hume, had it not been a fact that I had already been
interested in him from a past experience. While still in high school, an
interesting challenge had been brought to my attention by one of my most
helpful mentors, claiming to represent the gist of Hume’s philosophy. Imagine a
school inspector coming into a class of students, and in alphabetical order
starting calling them out, to test their learning levels. One by one,
thirty-nine out of forty students fail his test, and the inspector gives up on the class,
“reasonably” concluding that it is a class of failed students. Is he right to
make such a conclusion? What if the fortieth student was a prodigy, the best
not just at the school, but in the whole town, and, perhaps, even country, and
the inspector had just missed this fact? Well, according to “science,” our
inspector was right, having called upon what is called scientific induction,
but, according to the Scottish philosopher David Hume, he was wrong,
because thirty-nine misses in a row do not prove that the fortieth should also
be a miss!
Therefore, what we call the
scientific method is essentially unreliable, but were we to discard it on
such an uncomfortable basis, we would have discarded much of scientific
progress with it, which is something that we just cannot do.
Ironically, this has been perhaps
Hume’s greatest achievement to rub our nose into the fact that our science
rests on most questionable premises, but having been alerted to this fact, we
now have to overrule him, and for a very good reason at that, because without
such an overrule, without a reckless leap beyond cold logic, we ourselves
should count ourselves as failures.
Having said that, here is
Bertrand Russell’s valuable opening summary of the Hume chapter in his History
of Western Philosophy:
Hume is
one of the most important among philosophers, because he developed, to its
logical conclusion, the empirical philosophy of Locke and Berkeley, and by
making it self-consistent made it incredible. In a sense, he represents a dead
end: in his direction it is impossible to go further. To refute him, has been,
ever since he wrote, a favorite pastime of metaphysicians. For my part, I find
none of their refutations convincing, but nevertheless I cannot but hope that
something less skeptical than Hume’s system may be discoverable.
As for Nietzsche, he never liked
British philosophy, anyway and Hume to him was no exception:
They are
no philosophical race, these Englishmen… Hobbes, Hume and Locke [signify] a
debasement and lowering of the value of the concept of philosophy for
more than a century. It was against Hume that Kant arose, and rose. (Jenseits
252.) In the posthumous Wille zur Macht collection of
Nietzsche’s notes, Hume is again contrasted with Kant, at the same time,
putting Hume’s philosophical legacy into sharp focus: Hume
had declared: There are no synthetic a priori judgments. Kant says: But
there are! Those of mathematics! And if there are such judgments, perhaps,
there is also metaphysics, a knowledge of things by pure reason! (#529)
Meantime, with all his dislike,
Nietzsche is fair, in giving Hume his due: We have no sense
for the causa efficiens: here Hume was right. (ibid. #550.)
Incidentally, Hume’s denial of
the sense for the causa efficiens is in plain language his denial of our
sense of causality, which indeed, if taken seriously, can play dirty tricks on
us, like in the opening example of this entry, where from the experiential fact
that thirty-nine classroom students have failed, causally follows the
conclusion that the fortieth student must also be a failure. No wonder Nietzsche
praises Hume for denying such causality!
Hume is called one of the
greatest empirical philosophers of all time for a very good reason. He teaches
us not to trust reason with its so-called innate ideas, nor reason’s
most common tools, such as the presumption of causality. To make sure that the
classroom example sinks in properly, our notion that the last student in the
class is a failure does not come to us empirically, that is, from
experience, but from conjecture, which we mistake for a rational conclusion. And,
yes, Hume is right here,--- not in the sense that we must abandon induction,
but that we have to be extremely careful with it, realizing that, in the
final analysis, it is certainly unreliable.
From all of the above-said it
follows (this time not causally, but common-sensibly!) that we ought to take a
closer look at Hume’s theory; but, rather than overstuffing the present entry
with too much stuff, it should make sense to do it in a separate entry, which
follows. But before we leave, let us understand why Hume’s philosophical
offering is indeed a veritable cul-de-sac. By convincingly denying our sense of
causality any legitimacy, we are put into a position of either accepting our
total incompetence to judge in this necessary manner, thus depriving ourselves
of the most important tool of the scientific method, or, seeing this
cul-de-sac, retreating from it altogether, leaving behind the traffic sign Not
a Through Street!
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