The argument from miracles is an argument for the existence of God relying on eyewitness testimony of the occurrence of miracles (usually taken to be physically impossible/extremely improbable events) to establish the active intervention of a supernatural being (or supernatural agents acting on behalf of that being). One example is the claims of some Christians that historical evidence proves that Jesus rose from the dead, and this can only be explained if God exists. This is also known as the Christological argument for the existence of God. Another example is the claims of some Muslims that the Qur'an has many fulfilled prophecies, and this can also only be explained if God exists.

Criticisms[link]

A counter-argument to the Argument from miracles is the Argument from inconsistent revelations, which states that multiple incompatible miracles are alleged to have occurred which provide evidence for different religions. Not all these can be correct.

Another counter-argument is Occam's Razor, which can be used to argue that God is unnecessary to explain "miracles" for which natural explanations can be found. In his documentary The Root of All Evil?, British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins utilises this argument when examining the supposed miracles in Lourdes, France. According to Catholic theology, supernatural cures may occur in the area. Dawkins expresses doubts as to their divine nature, noting that all the recorded cures comprise diseases which may have healed by themselves without the need for a divine cause.

References[link]

• David Hume An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, L. A. Selby Bigge, ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1902. ISBN 978-0-19-824535-3
• Richard Swinburne [ed.] Miracles. London: Collier Macmillan Publishers, 1989. ISBN 0-02-418731-3

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In logic and rhetoric, a fallacy is usually an improper argumentation in reasoning often resulting in a misconception or presumption. Literally, a fallacy is "an error in reasoning that renders an argument logically invalid".^[1] By accident or design, fallacies may exploit emotional triggers in the listener or participant (appeal to emotion), or take advantage of social relationships between people (e.g. argument from authority). Fallacious arguments are often structured using rhetorical patterns that obscure any logical argument.

Though an argument is not "logically valid", it is not necessarily the case that the conclusion is incorrect. It simply means that the conclusion cannot logically be arrived at using that argument.

Though often used unintentionally, fallacies can be used purposefully to win arguments regardless of the merits. Among such devices, discussed in more detail below, are: "ignoring the question" to divert argument to unrelated issues using a red herring, making the argument personal (argumentum ad hominem) and discrediting the opposition's character, "begging the question" (petitio principi), the use of the non-sequitur, false cause and effect (post hoc ergo propter hoc), bandwagoning (everyone says so), the "false dilemma" or "either-or fallacy" in which the situation is oversimplified, "card-stacking" or selective use of facts, and "false analogy". Another common device is the "false generalization", an abstraction of the argument that shifts discussion to platitudes where the facts of the matter are lost. There are many, many more tricks to divert attention from careful exploration of a subject.^[2]

Fallacies can generally be classified as informal (premises fail to support the proposed conclusion, but the argument is structured properly) or formal (logical structure is flawed).

Material fallacies[link]

The taxonomy of material fallacies is based on that of Aristotle's body structure Organon (Sophistici elenchi). This taxonomy is as follows:

[edit] Fallacy of accident or sweeping generalization

• Fallacy of accident or sweeping generalization: a generalization that disregards exceptions.
  • Example

    Argument: Cutting people is a crime. Surgeons cut people, therefore, surgeons are criminals.

    Problem: Cutting people is not a crime in certain situations.

    Argument: It is illegal for a stranger to enter someone's home uninvited. Firefighters enter people's homes uninvited, therefore firefighters are breaking the law.

    Problem: The exception does not break nor define the rule; a dicto simpliciter ad dictum secundum quid (where an accountable exception is ignored).^{[clarification needed]}

[edit] Converse fallacy of accident or hasty generalization

• Converse fallacy of accident or hasty generalization: argues from a special case to a general rule.
  • Example

    Argument: Every person I've met has ten fingers, therefore, all people have ten fingers.

    Problem: Those who have been met are not a representative subset of the entire set.

  • Also called reverse accident, destroying the exception, a dicto secundum quid ad dictum simpliciter

[edit] Irrelevant conclusion

• Irrelevant conclusion: diverts attention away from a fact in dispute rather than addressing it directly.
  • Example

    Argument: Billy believes that pigs can fly, therefore pigs can fly.

    Problem: Billy can be wrong. (In particular this is an appeal to authority.)

  • Special cases:
    • purely personal considerations (argumentum ad hominem),
    • popular sentiment (argumentum ad populum—appeal to the majority; appeal to loyalty.),
    • fear (argumentum ad baculum),
    • conventional propriety (argumentum ad verecundiam—appeal to authority)
    • to arouse pity for getting one's conclusion accepted (argumentum ad misericordiam)
    • forwarding the proposition under dispute without any certain proof (argumentum ad ignorantiam)
    • assuming a perceived defect in the origin of a claim discredits the claim itself (genetic fallacy)
  • Also called Ignoratio Elenchi, a "red herring"

[edit] Affirming the consequent/Denying the antecedent

• Affirming the consequent and Denying the antecedent: draws a conclusion from premises that do not support that conclusion by confusing necessary and sufficient conditions.
  • Affirming the consequent Example:

    Argument: If people have the flu, they cough. Torres is coughing. Therefore, Torres has the flu.

    Problem: Other things, such as asthma, can cause someone to cough. The argument treats having the flu as a necessary condition of coughing; in fact, having the flu is a sufficient condition of coughing, but it is not necessary to have the flu for one to cough.

    Argument: If it rains, the ground gets wet. The ground is wet, therefore it rained.

    Problem: There are other ways by which the ground could get wet (e.g. someone spilled water).

• Denying the antecedent Example

  • Argument: If it is raining outside, it must be cloudy. It is not raining outside. Therefore, it is not cloudy.

    Problem: Rain is a sufficient condition of cloudiness, but cloudy conditions do not necessarily produce rain.

[edit] Begging the question

• Begging the question: demonstrates a conclusion by means of premises that assume that conclusion.
  • Example

    Argument: Aspirin users are at risk of becoming dependent on the drug, because aspirin is an addictive substance.

    Problem: The premise and the conclusion have the same meaning. If one has already accepted the premise, there is no need to reason to the conclusion. Obviously the premise is not logically irrelevant to the conclusion, for if the premise is true the conclusion must also be true. It is, however, logically irrelevant in proving the conclusion.

  • Also called Petitio Principii, or assuming the answer. Begging the question does not preclude the possibility that the statement is incorrect, and it is not sufficient proof in and of itself.
  • A related fallacy is Circulus in Probando, arguing in a circle, or circular reasoning. This is when two (or more) conclusions are used as premises to support each other, but unless one accepts one of them as true at the outset, there is no reason to accept the conclusions.

[edit] Fallacy of false cause

• Fallacy of false cause or non sequitur: incorrectly assumes one thing is the cause of another. Non Sequitur is Latin for "It does not follow."
  • Example

    Argument: I hear the rain falling outside my window; therefore, the sun is not shining.

    Problem: The conclusion is false because the sun can shine while it is raining.

  • Special cases
    • post hoc ergo propter hoc: believing that temporal succession implies a causal relation.
      • Example

        Argument: It rained just before the car broke down. The rain caused the car to break down.

        Problem: There may be no connection between the two events. Two events co-occurring is not an indication of causation.

    • cum hoc ergo propter hoc: believing that correlation implies a causal relation.
      • Example

        Argument: More cows die in the summer months. More ice cream is consumed in summer months. Therefore, the consumption of ice cream in the summer months is killing cows.

        Problem: No premise suggests the ice cream consumption is causing the deaths. The deaths and consumption could be unrelated, or something else could be causing both, such as summer heat.

        Also called causation versus correlation.

[edit] Fallacy of many questions

• Fallacy of many questions or loaded question: groups more than one question in the form of a single question.
  • Example

    Argument: Have you stopped beating your wife?

    Problem: A yes or no answer will still be an admission of guilt to beating your wife at some point. (See also Mu.)

  • Also called Plurium Interrogationum and other terms

[edit] Straw man

• Straw man: A straw man argument is an informal fallacy based on misrepresenting an opponent's position so as to more easily refute it.^[3]
  • Example

    Person A: Sunny days are good.

    Person B: If all days were sunny, we'd never have rain, and without rain, we'd have famine and death. Therefore, you are wrong.

    Problem: B has misrepresented A's claim by falsely suggesting that A claimed that only sunny days are good, and then B refuted the misrepresented version of the claim, rather than refuting A's original assertion.

Verbal fallacies[link]

Verbal fallacies are those in which a conclusion is obtained by improper or ambiguous use of words. They are generally classified as follows.

Magisterial fallacy (Engineer's Resolve)[link]

• "Wherein we think and speak as if our outsider status and lengthy education have given us the authority of a high-court judge to decide what is true." (p. 320)^[4]

[edit] Equivocation

• Equivocation consists in employing the same word in two or more senses, e.g. in a syllogism, the middle term being used in one sense in the major and another in the minor premise, so that in fact there are four not three terms. Often this happens when the two meanings are similar despite being distinctly different.

Example Argument: All heavy things have a great mass; Jim has a "heavy heart"; therefore Jim's heart has a great mass.

Problem: Heavy describes more than just weight. (Jim is sad.)

Connotation fallacies[link]

• Connotation fallacies occur when a dysphemistic word is substituted for the speaker's actual quote and used to discredit the argument. It is a form of attribution fallacy.

[edit] Apophasis and argument by innuendo

• Argument by innuendo involves implicitly suggesting a conclusion without stating it outright. For example, a job reference that says a former employee "was never caught taking money from the cash box" In this example the overly specific nature of the innuendo implies that the employee was a thief, even though it does not make (or justify) a direct statement of accusation.^[5]

[edit] Amphiboly

• Amphiboly is the result of ambiguity of grammatical structure.

Example: The position of the adverb "only" in a sentence starting with "He only said that" results in a sentence in which it is uncertain as to which of the other three words the speaker is intending to modify with the adverb.

[edit] Fallacy of composition

• Fallacy of composition "From each to all". Arguing from some property of constituent parts, to the conclusion that the composite item has that property. This can be acceptable (i.e., not a fallacy) with certain arguments such as spatial arguments (e.g. "all the parts of the car are in the garage, therefore the car is in the garage").

Example Argument: All the musicians in a band (constituent parts) are highly skilled, therefore the band itself (composite item) is highly skilled.

Problem: The band members may be skilled musicians but may lack the ability to function properly as a group.

[edit] Division

• Division, the converse of the preceding, arguing from a property of the whole, to each constituent part.

Example Argument: "The university (the whole) is 700 years old, therefore, all the staff (each part) are 700 years old".

Problem: Each and every person currently on staff is younger than 700 years. The university continues to exist even when, one by one, each and every person on the original staff leaves and is replaced by a younger person. See Theseus' Ship paradox.

Example Argument: "This liquid is part of a nutritious breakfast therefore the liquid is nutritious."

Problem: Simply because the breakfast taken as a whole is nutritious does not necessarily mean that each part of that breakfast is nutritious (unless the definition of a nutritious breakfast requires all parts to be nutritious).

[edit] Proof by verbosity

• Proof by verbosity, sometimes colloquially referred to as argumentum verbosum - a rhetorical technique that tries to persuade by overwhelming those considering an argument with such a volume of material that the argument sounds plausible, superficially appears to be well-researched, and it is so laborious to untangle and check supporting facts that the argument might be allowed to slide by unchallenged.

Accent[link]

• Accent, which occurs only in speaking and consists of emphasizing the wrong word in a sentence. e.g., "He is a fairly good pianist", according to the emphasis on the words, may imply praise of a beginner's progress or insult of an expert pianist.

• "He is a fairly good pianist." This argument places emphasis on the fact that "He", as opposed to anyone else, is a fairly good pianist.
• "He is a fairly good pianist." This is an assertion that he "is" a good pianist, as opposed to a poor one.
• "He is a fairly good pianist." The emphasis on "a" makes this an assertion that while he is a good pianist, there are other good pianists as well.
• "He is a fairly good pianist." This is an assertion that his ability as a pianist is fair, perhaps in need of improvement.
• "He is a fairly good pianist." This is an assertion that he is most certainly a good pianist, perhaps even impressively so.
• "He is a fairly good pianist." This is isolating his ability as only being good in the field of musical instruments, namely, the piano, and possibly excludes the idea that he is good at anything else.
• "I killed my wife?" in response to a police officer asking if he killed his wife. In court, the police officer states his reply to his question was "I killed my wife." This use of accent is demonstrated in the courtroom comedy My Cousin Vinnie.

Figure of Speech[link]

• Figure of Speech, the confusion between the metaphorical or figurative use of a word or phrase and the ordinary or literal use of a word or phrase.

Example: The sailor was at home on the sea.

Problem: The expression 'to be at home' does not literally mean that one's domicile is in that location.

This can happen in conjunction with Equivocation, whereby word or phrase is used literally in one part of an argument but figuratively in another part of the argument.

Example: John lives on a house-boat on the sea. He feels at home on his house-boat. Therefore he is like a sailor because he is at home on the sea.

[edit] Fallacy of misplaced concreteness

• Fallacy of misplaced concreteness, identified by Whitehead in his discussion of metaphysics, this refers to the reification of concepts which exist only in discussion.

Example 1[link]

Timmy argues:

1. Billy is a good tennis player.
2. Therefore, Billy is 'good', that is to say a morally good person.

Here the problem is that the word good has different meanings, which is to say that it is an ambiguous word. In the premise, Timmy says that Billy is good at some particular activity, in this case tennis. In the conclusion, Timmy states that Billy is a morally good person. These are clearly two different senses of the word "good". The premise might be true but the conclusion can still be false: Billy might be the best tennis player in the world but a rotten person morally. However, it is not legitimate to infer he is a bad person on the ground there has been a fallacious argument on the part of Timmy. Nothing concerning Billy's moral qualities is to be inferred from the premise. Appropriately, since it plays on an ambiguity, this sort of fallacy is called the fallacy of equivocation, that is, equating two incompatible terms or claims.

Example 2[link]

One posits the argument:

1. Nothing is better than eternal happiness.
2. Eating a sandwich is better than nothing.
3. Therefore, eating a sandwich is better than eternal happiness.

This argument has the appearance of an inference that applies transitivity of the two-placed relation is better than, which in this critique we grant is a valid property. The argument is an example of syntactic ambiguity. In fact, the first premise semantically does not predicate an attribute of the subject, as would for instance the assertion

Nothing is better than eternal happiness.

In fact it is semantically equivalent to the following universal quantification:

Everything fails to be better than eternal happiness.

So instantiating this fact with eating a sandwich, it logically follows that

Eating a sandwich fails to be better than eternal happiness.

Note that the premise A sandwich is better than nothing does not provide anything to this argument. This fact really means something such as

Eating a sandwich is better than eating nothing at all.

Thus this is a fallacy of equivocation.

Deductive fallacy[link]

In philosophy, the term logical fallacy properly refers to a formal fallacy: a flaw in the structure of a deductive argument which renders the argument invalid.

However, it is often used more generally in informal discourse to mean an argument which is problematic for any reason, and thus encompasses informal fallacies as well as formal fallacies.

The presence of a formal fallacy in a deductive argument does not imply anything about the argument's premises or its conclusion (see fallacy fallacy). Both may actually be true, or even more probable as a result of the argument (e.g., appeal to authority), but the deductive argument is still invalid because the conclusion does not follow from the premises in the manner described. By extension, an argument can contain a formal fallacy even if the argument is not a deductive one; for instance an inductive argument that incorrectly applies principles of probability or causality can be said to commit a formal fallacy.

Formalisms and frameworks used to understand fallacies[link]

A different approach to understanding and classifying fallacies is provided by argumentation theory; see for instance the van Eemeren, Grootendorst.^[6] In this approach, an argument is regarded as an interactive protocol between individuals which attempts to resolve a disagreement. The protocol is regulated by certain rules of interaction, and violations of these rules are fallacies. Many of the fallacies in the list above are best understood as being fallacies in this sense.

Other systems of classification[link]

Of other classifications of fallacies in general the most famous are those of Francis Bacon and J. S. Mill. Bacon (Novum Organum, Aph. 33, 38 sqq.) divided fallacies into four Idola (Idols, i.e. False Appearances), which summarize the various kinds of mistakes to which the human intellect is prone. With these should be compared the Offendicula of Roger Bacon, contained in the Opus maius, pt. i. J. S. Mill discussed the subject in book v. of his Logic, and Jeremy Bentham's Book of Fallacies (1824) contains valuable remarks. See Rd. Whateley's Logic, bk. v.; A. de Morgan, Formal Logic (1847) ; A. Sidgwick, Fallacies (1883) and other textbooks.

See also[link]

Attacking Faulty Reasoning Cognitive distortion Evidence List of cognitive biases Mathematical fallacy

List of fallacies List of paradoxes Sophistry Straight and Crooked Thinking Truth

Logic portal Thinking portal Psychology portal

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• C. L. Hamblin, Fallacies, Methuen London, 1970. reprinted by Vale Press in 1998 as ISBN 0-916475-24-7.
• Douglas N. Walton, Informal logic: A handbook for critical argumentation. Cambridge University Press, 1989.
• Hans V. Hansen; Robert C. Pinto (1995). Fallacies: classical and contemporary readings. Penn State Press. ISBN 978-0-271-01417-3. 
• John Woods (2004). The death of argument: fallacies in agent based reasoning. Springer. ISBN 978-1-4020-2663-8. 
• Frans van Eemeren; Bart Garssen; Bert Meuffels (2009). Fallacies and Judgments of Reasonableness: Empirical Research Concerning the Pragma-Dialectical Discussion. Springer. ISBN 978-90-481-2613-2. 

Historical texts

• Aristotle, On Sophistical Refutations, De Sophistici Elenchi. library.adelaide.edu.au
• William of Ockham, Summa of Logic (ca. 1323) Part III.4.
• John Buridan, Summulae de dialectica Book VII.
• Francis Bacon, the doctrine of the idols in Novum Organum Scientiarum, Aphorisms concerning The Interpretation of Nature and the Kingdom of Man, XXIIIff. fly.hiwaay.net
• Arthur Schopenhauer, The Art of Controversy | Die Kunst, Recht zu behalten - The Art Of Controversy (bilingual), (also known as "Schopenhauers 38 stratagems"). gutenberg.net
• John Stuart Mill, A System of Logic - Raciocinative and Inductive. Book 5, Chapter 7, Fallacies of Confusion. la.utexas.edu

External links[link]

Look up fallacy in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Infographic poster of enumeration of logical fallacies
• SEP entry on informal logic has a section on fallacy theory
• Appeal to Authority Appeal to Authority Logical Fallacy
• FallacyFiles.org contains categorization of fallacies with examples.
• 42 informal logical fallacies explained by Dr. Michael C. Labossiere (including examples), nizkor.org
• Humbug! The skeptic’s field guide to spotting fallacies in thinking – textbook on fallacies. scribd.com
• List of fallacies with clear examples, infidels.org
• Interactive Syllogistic Machine A web based syllogistic machine for exploring fallacies, figures, and modes of syllogisms.
• Logical Fallacies and the Art of Debate, csun.edu
• LogicalFallacies.Info
• An Informal Fallacy Primer, acontrario.org
• Stephen Downes Guide to the Logical Fallacies, onegoodmove.org
• "Love is a Fallacy", a short story written by Max Shulman. WebCitation archive.

David Hume

David Hume
Born	(1711-05-07)7 May 1711 Edinburgh, Scotland
Died	25 August 1776(1776-08-25) (aged 65) Edinburgh, Scotland
Era	18th-century philosophy
Region	Western Philosophy
School	Scottish Enlightenment; Naturalism, Skepticism, Empiricism, Utilitarianism, Classical liberalism
Main interests	Epistemology, Metaphysics, Philosophy of Mind, Ethics, Political Philosophy, Aesthetics, Philosophy of Religion, Classical Economics
Notable ideas	Problem of causation, Bundle theory, Induction, Association of ideas, Is–ought problem, Utility, Science of man
Influenced by Locke, Descartes, Berkeley, Hobbes, Hutcheson, Newton, Pascal, Leibniz, Epicurus, Cicero, Malebranche, Earl of Shaftesbury, Sextus Empiricus, Pyrrho, Pierre Bayle
Influenced Adam Smith, Adam Ferguson, Henry Home, Thomas Reid, Dugald Stewart, Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, Immanuel Kant, Jeremy Bentham, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, Arthur Schopenhauer, African Spir, Auguste Comte, John Stuart Mill, Baron d'Holbach, Johannes Nikolaus Tetens, Charles Darwin, Thomas Huxley, Thomas Robert Malthus, William James, Johann Georg Hamann, Alexius Meinong, Edmund Husserl, Bertrand Russell, Ernest Mach, Albert Einstein, Karl Popper, A. J. Ayer, J. L. Mackie, Noam Chomsky, Simon Blackburn, David Kellogg Lewis, W.V.O. Quine, John Searle, Daniel Dennett, Jerry Fodor, Kenneth Binmore, Gilles Deleuze

David Hume (7 May [O.S. 26 April] 1711 – 25 August 1776) was a Scottish philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist, known especially for his philosophical empiricism and scepticism. He was one of the most important figures in the history of Western philosophy and the Scottish Enlightenment.^[1] Hume is often grouped with John Locke, George Berkeley, and a handful of others as a British Empiricist.^[2]

Beginning with his A Treatise of Human Nature (1739), Hume strove to create a total naturalistic "science of man" that examined the psychological basis of human nature. In stark opposition to the rationalists who preceded him, most notably Descartes, he concluded that desire rather than reason governed human behaviour, saying: "Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions."^[3] A prominent figure in the sceptical philosophical tradition and a strong empiricist, he argued against the existence of innate ideas, concluding instead that humans have knowledge only of things they directly experience. Thus he divides perceptions between strong and lively "impressions" or direct sensations and fainter "ideas", which are copied from impressions. He developed the position that mental behaviour is governed by "custom"; our use of induction, for example, is justified only by our idea of the "constant conjunction" of causes and effects. Without direct impressions of a metaphysical "self", he concluded that humans have no actual conception of the self, only of a bundle of sensations associated with the self.

Hume advocated a compatibilist theory of free will that proved extremely influential on subsequent moral philosophy. He was also a sentimentalist who held that ethics are based on feelings rather than abstract moral principles. Hume also examined the normative is–ought problem. He held notoriously ambiguous views of Christianity,^[4] but famously challenged the argument from design in his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1777).

Kant credited Hume with waking him up from his "dogmatic slumbers" and Hume has proved extremely influential on subsequent philosophy, especially on utilitarianism, logical positivism, William James, philosophy of science, early analytic philosophy, cognitive philosophy, and other movements and thinkers. The philosopher Jerry Fodor proclaimed Hume's Treatise "the founding document of cognitive science".^[5] Also famous as a prose stylist,^[6] Hume pioneered the essay as a literary genre and engaged with contemporary intellectual luminaries such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Adam Smith (who acknowledged Hume's influence on his economics and political philosophy), James Boswell, Joseph Butler, and Thomas Reid.

Life[link]

David Hume, originally David Home, son of Joseph Home of Chirnside, advocate, and Katherine Falconer, was born on 26 April 1711 (Old Style) in a tenement on the north side of the Lawnmarket in Edinburgh. He changed his name in 1734 because the English had difficulty pronouncing 'Home' in the Scottish manner. Throughout his life Hume, who never married, spent time occasionally at his family home at Ninewells by Chirnside, Berwickshire.

Education[link]

An engraving of Hume from his The History of England Vol. I (1754)

Hume attended the University of Edinburgh at the unusually early age of twelve (possibly as young as ten) at a time when fourteen was normal. At first he considered a career in law, but came to have, in his words, "an insurmountable aversion to everything but the pursuits of Philosophy and general Learning; and while [my family] fanceyed I was poring over Voet and Vinnius, Cicero and Virgil were the Authors which I was secretly devouring."^[7] He had little respect for the professors of his time, telling a friend in 1735, "there is nothing to be learnt from a Professor, which is not to be met with in Books."^[8]

Hume made a philosophical discovery that opened up to him "...a new Scene of Thought," which inspired him "...to throw up every other Pleasure or Business to apply entirely to it."^[9] He did not recount what this "Scene" was, and commentators have offered a variety of speculations.^[10] Due to this inspiration, Hume set out to spend a minimum of ten years reading and writing. He came to the verge of nervous breakdown, after which he decided to have a more active life to better continue his learning.^[11]

Career[link]

As Hume's options lay between a travelling tutorship and a stool in a merchant's office, he chose the latter. In 1734, after a few months occupied with commerce in Bristol, he went to La Flèche in Anjou, France. There he had frequent discourse with the Jesuits of the College of La Flèche. As he had spent most of his savings during his four years there while writing A Treatise of Human Nature,^[11] he resolved "to make a very rigid frugality supply my deficiency of fortune, to maintain unimpaired my independency, and to regard every object as contemptible except the improvements of my talents in literature".^[12] He completed the Treatise at the age of 26.

Although many scholars today consider the Treatise to be Hume's most important work and one of the most important books in Western philosophy, the critics in Great Britain at the time did not agree, describing it as "abstract and unintelligible".^[13] Despite the disappointment, Hume later wrote, "Being naturally of a cheerful and sanguine temper, I soon recovered from the blow and prosecuted with great ardour my studies in the country".^[12] There, he wrote the Abstract^[14] Without revealing his authorship, he aimed to make his larger work more intelligible.

After the publication of Essays Moral and Political in 1744, Hume applied for the Chair of Pneumatics and Moral Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh. However, the position was given to William Cleghorn, after Edinburgh ministers petitioned the town council not to appoint Hume because he was seen as an atheist.^[15]

During the 1745 Jacobite Rebellion, Hume tutored the Marquis of Annandale (1720–92), who was officially described as a "lunatic".^[16] This engagement ended in disarray after about a year. But it was then that Hume started his great historical work The History of England, which took fifteen years and ran over a million words, to be published in six volumes in the period between 1754 and 1762, while also involved with the Canongate Theatre. In this context, he associated with Lord Monboddo and other Scottish Enlightenment luminaries in Edinburgh. From 1746, Hume served for three years as Secretary to Lieutenant-General St Clair, and wrote Philosophical Essays Concerning Human Understanding, later published as An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. The Enquiry proved little more successful than the Treatise.

Hume was charged with heresy, but he was defended by his young clerical friends, who argued that—as an atheist—he was outside the Church's jurisdiction. Despite his acquittal, Hume failed to gain the Chair of Philosophy at the University of Glasgow.

It was after returning to Edinburgh in 1752, as he wrote in My Own Life, that "the Faculty of Advocates chose me their Librarian, an office from which I received little or no emolument, but which gave me the command of a large library".^[17] This resource enabled him to continue historical research for The History of England.

Hume achieved great literary fame as a historian. His enormous The History of England, tracing events from the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Revolution of 1688, was a best-seller in its day. In it, Hume presented political person as a creature of habit, with a disposition to submit quietly to established government unless confronted by uncertain circumstances. In his view, only religious difference could deflect people from their everyday lives to think about political matters.

Hume's volume of Political Discourses (published by Kincaid & Donaldson, 1752)^[18] was the only work he considered successful on first publication.^[19]

Religion[link]

Tomb of David Hume in Edinburgh

Hume wrote a great deal on religion. The question of what were Hume's personal views on religion is a difficult one.^[20] The Church of Scotland seriously considered bringing charges of infidelity against him.^[21]

In works such as On Superstition and Enthusiasm, Hume specifically seems to support the standard religious views of his time and place. This still meant that he could be very critical of the Catholic Church, referring to it with the standard Protestant epithets and descriptions of it as superstition and idolatry^[22] as well as dismissing what his compatriots saw as uncivilised beliefs.^[23] He also considered extreme Protestant sects, which he called enthusiasts, to be corrupters of religion.^[24] Yet he also put forward arguments that suggested that polytheism had much to commend it in preference to monotheism.^[25]

It is likely that Hume was sceptical both about religious belief (at least as demanded by the religious organisations of his time) and of the complete atheism promoted by such contemporaries as Baron d'Holbach. Paul Russell suggests that perhaps Hume's position is best characterised by the term "irreligion".^[26] O'Connor (2001, p19) writes that Hume "did not believe in the God of standard theism. ... but he did not rule out all concepts of deity". Also, "ambiguity suited his purposes, and this creates difficulty in definitively pinning down his final position on religion". When asked if he was an atheist, Hume would say he did not have enough faith to believe there was no god.

The perception of Hume as an atheist with an axe to grind is an oversimplification and contrasts his views on extremist positioning. Hanvelt dubs Hume as an Aristotelian in his view that rhetoric is a form of ethical studies, which ultimately make it political.^[27]

Later life[link]

From 1763 to 1765, Hume was Secretary to Lord Hertford in Paris. He met and later fell out with Jean-Jacques Rousseau. He wrote of his Paris life, "I really wish often for the plain roughness of The Poker Club of Edinburgh ... to correct and qualify so much lusciousness".^[28] For a year from 1767, Hume held the appointment of Under Secretary of State for the Northern Department. In 1768, he settled in Edinburgh; he lived from 1771 until his death in 1776 at the south-west corner of St. Andrew's Square, in Edinburgh's New Town, at what is now 21 Saint David Street. (A popular story, consistent with some historical evidence,^[29] suggests the street was named after Hume.)

James Boswell saw Hume a few weeks before his death (which was from some form of abdominal cancer). Hume told him he sincerely believed it a "most unreasonable fancy" that there might be life after death.^[30] This meeting was dramatized in semi-fictional form for the BBC by Michael Ignatieff as Dialogue in the Dark. Hume asked that he be interred in a "simple roman tomb"; in his will he requests that it be inscribed only with his name and the year of his birth and death, "leaving it to Posterity to add the Rest."^[31] It stands, as he wished it, on the south-western slope of Calton Hill, in the Old Calton Cemetery.

Hume's "Science of man"[link]

A statue of Hume by Alexander Stoddart on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh

In the introduction to A Treatise of Human Nature, Hume writes "'Tis evident, that all the sciences have a relation, more or less, to human nature ... Even Mathematics, Natural Philosophy, and Natural Religion, are in some measure dependent on the science of Man". Also, "the science of man is the only solid foundation for the other sciences", and the method for this science assumes "experience and observation" as the foundations of a logical argument.^[32] Because "Hume's plan is to extend to philosophy in general the methodological limitations of Newtonian physics",^[33] Hume is characterised as an empiricist.

Until recently, Hume was seen as a forerunner of the logical positivist movement; a form of anti-metaphysical empiricism. According to the logical positivists, unless a statement could be verified by experience, or else was true or false by definition (i.e. either tautological or contradictory), then it was meaningless (this is a summary statement of their verification principle). Hume, on this view, was a proto-positivist, who, in his philosophical writings, attempted to demonstrate how ordinary propositions about objects, causal relations, the self, and so on, are semantically equivalent to propositions about one's experiences.^[34]

Many commentators have since rejected this understanding of Humean empiricism, stressing an epistemological, rather than a semantic reading of his project.^[35] According to this view, Hume's empiricism consisted in the idea that it is our knowledge, and not our ability to conceive, that is restricted to what can be experienced. To be sure, Hume thought that we can form beliefs about that which extends beyond any possible experience, through the operation of faculties such as custom and the imagination, but he was skeptical about claims to knowledge on this basis.

Induction[link]

Few philosophers are as associated with induction as David Hume; but Hume himself rarely used the term and when he did, he used it to support a point he was arguing.^[36] He gave no indication that he saw any problem with induction.^[37] Induction became associated with Hume only in the early twentieth century; John Maynard Keynes may have been the first to draw the connection.^[38] The connection is now standard, but is based on what current scholars mean by "induction", not how Hume used the term in his writings.

The cornerstone of Hume's epistemology is the so-called Problem of Induction. This may be the area of Hume's thought where his scepticism about human powers of reason is most pronounced.^[39] Understanding the problem of induction is central to grasping Hume's philosophical system.

The problem concerns the explanation of how we are able to make inductive inferences. Inductive inference is reasoning from the observed behaviour of objects to their behaviour when unobserved; as Hume says, it is a question of how things behave when they go "beyond the present testimony of the senses, and the records of our memory".^[40] Hume notices that we tend to believe that things behave in a regular manner; i.e., that patterns in the behaviour of objects will persist into the future, and throughout the unobserved present. This persistence of regularities is sometimes called Uniformitarianism or the Principle of the Uniformity of Nature.

Hume's argument is that we cannot rationally justify the claim that nature will continue to be uniform, as justification comes in only two varieties, and both of these are inadequate. The two sorts are: (1) demonstrative reasoning, and (2) probable reasoning.^[41] With regard to (1), Hume argues that the uniformity principle cannot be demonstrated, as it is "consistent and conceivable" that nature might stop being regular.^[42] Turning to (2), Hume argues that we cannot hold that nature will continue to be uniform because it has been in the past, as this is using the very sort of reasoning (induction) that is under question: it would be circular reasoning.^[43] Thus no form of justification will rationally warrant our inductive inferences.

Hume's solution to this problem is to argue that, rather than reason, natural instinct explains the human ability to make inductive inferences. He asserts that "Nature, by an absolute and uncontroulable [sic] necessity has determin'd us to judge as well as to breathe and feel". Although many modern commentators have demurred from Hume's solution,^[44] some have notably concurred with it, seeing his analysis of our epistemic predicament as a major contribution to the theory of knowledge. For example, the Oxford philosopher John D. Kenyon writes:

Reason might manage to raise a doubt about the truth of a conclusion of natural inductive inference just for a moment in the study, but the forces of nature will soon overcome that artificial skepticism, and the sheer agreeableness of animal faith will protect us from excessive caution and sterile suspension of belief.^[45]

Causation[link]

The notion of causation is closely linked to the problem of induction. According to Hume, we reason inductively by associating constantly conjoined events, and it is the mental act of association that is the basis of our concept of causation. There are three main interpretations of Hume's theory of causation represented in the literature: (1) the logical positivist; (2) the skeptical realist; and (3) the quasi-realist.

The logical positivist interpretation is that Hume analyses causal propositions, such as "A caused B", in terms of regularities in perception: "A caused B" is equivalent to "Whenever A-type events happen, B-type ones follow", where "whenever" refers to all possible perceptions.^[46]

power and necessity... are... qualities of perceptions, not of objects... felt by the soul and not perceived externally in bodies^[47]

This view is rejected by sceptical realists, who argue that Hume thought that causation amounts to more than just the regular succession of events.^[35] When two events are causally conjoined, a necessary connection underpins the conjunction:

Shall we rest contented with these two relations of contiguity and succession, as affording a complete idea of causation? By no means ... there is a necessary connexion to be taken into consideration.^[48]

Hume held that we have no perceptual access to the necessary connection, hence skepticism, but we are naturally compelled to believe in its objective existence, ergo realism. He thus concluded that there are no necessary connections, only constant conjunctions.^[49]

Referring to the Law of Causality, Hume wrote, "I never asserted so absurd a proposition as that something could arise without a cause."^[50]

It has been argued that, whilst Hume did not think causation is reducible to pure regularity, he was not a fully fledged realist either: Simon Blackburn calls this a quasi-realist reading.^[51] On this view, talk about causal necessity is an expression of a functional change in the human mind, whereby certain events are predicted or anticipated on the basis of prior experience. The expression of causal necessity is a "projection" of the functional change onto the objects involved in the causal connection: in Hume's words, "nothing is more usual than to apply to external bodies every internal sensation which they occasion.^[52]

The self[link]

According to the standard interpretation of Hume on personal identity, he was a Bundle Theorist, who held that the self is nothing but a bundle of experiences ("perceptions") linked by the relations of causation and resemblance; or, more accurately, that the empirically warranted idea of the self is just the idea of such a bundle. This view is forwarded by, for example, positivist interpreters, who saw Hume as suggesting that terms such as "self", "person", or "mind" referred to collections of "sense-contents".^[53] A modern-day version of the bundle theory of the mind has been advanced by Derek Parfit in his Reasons and Persons (1986).

However, some philosophers have criticised the bundle-theory interpretation of Hume on personal identity. They argue that distinct selves can have perceptions that stand in relations of similarity and causality with one another. Thus perceptions must already come parcelled into distinct "bundles" before they can be associated according to the relations of similarity and causality: in other words, the mind must already possess a unity that cannot be generated, or constituted, by these relations alone. Since the bundle-theory interpretation portrays Hume as answering an ontological question, philosophers who see Hume as not very concerned with such questions have queried whether the view is really Hume's,^[54] or "only a decoy".^[55] Instead, it is suggested, Hume might have been answering an epistemological question, about the causal origin of our concept of the self. In the Appendix to the Treatise, Hume declares himself dissatisfied with his account of the self in Book 1 of the Treatise, and the question of why he is dissatisfied has received a number of different answers.

Another interpretation of Hume's view of the self has been argued for by James Giles.^[56] According to this view, Hume is not arguing for a bundle theory, which is a form of reductionism, but rather for an eliminative view of the self. That is, rather than reducing the self to a bundle of perceptions, Hume is rejecting the idea of the self altogether. On this interpretation Hume is proposing a 'No-Self Theory' and thus has much in common with Buddhist thought.^[57] Alison Gopnik has argued that Hume was in a position to learn about Buddhist thought during his time in France in the 1730s.^[58]

Practical reason[link]

Hume's anti-rationalism informed much of his theory of belief and knowledge, in his treatment of the notions of induction, causation, and the external world. But it was not confined to this sphere, and permeated just as strongly his theories of motivation, action, and morality. In a famous sentence in the Treatise, Hume circumscribes reason's role in the production of action:

Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.^[59]

It has been suggested that this position can be lucidly brought out through the metaphor of "direction of fit": beliefs—the paradigmatic products of reason—are propositional attitudes that aim to have their content fit the world; conversely, desires—or what Hume calls passions, or sentiments—are states that aim to fit the world to their contents.^[60] Though a metaphor, it has been argued that this intuitive way of understanding Hume's theory that desires are necessary for motivation "captures something quite deep in our thought about their nature".^[61]

Hume's anti-rationalism has been very influential, and defended in contemporary philosophy of action by neo-Humeans such as Michael Smith^[61] and Simon Blackburn.^[62] The major opponents of the Humean view are cognitivists about what it is to act for a reason, such as John McDowell,^[63] and Kantians, such as Christine Korsgaard.^[64]

Ethics[link]

Hume's views on human motivation and action formed the cornerstone of his ethical theory: he conceived moral or ethical sentiments to be intrinsically motivating, or the providers of reasons for action. Given that one cannot be motivated by reason alone, requiring the input of the passions, Hume argued that reason cannot be behind morality.

Morals excite passions, and produce or prevent actions. Reason itself is utterly impotent in this particular. The rules of morality, therefore, are not conclusions of our reason.^[65]

Hume's sentimentalism about morality was shared by his close friend Adam Smith,^[66] and Hume and Smith were mutually influenced by the moral reflections of Francis Hutcheson.^[67]

Hume's theory of ethics has been influential in modern day ethical theory, helping to inspire various forms of emotivism,^[68][69] error theory^[70] and ethical expressivism and non-cognitivism^[71] and Alan Gibbard.^[72]

Free will, determinism, and responsibility[link]

Hume, along with Thomas Hobbes, is cited as a classical compatibilist about the notions of freedom and determinism.^[73] The thesis of compatibilism seeks to reconcile human freedom with the mechanist belief that human beings are part of a deterministic universe, whose happenings are governed by the laws of physics.

Hume argued that the dispute about the compatibility of freedom and determinism has been kept afloat by ambiguous terminology:

From this circumstance alone, that a controversy has been long kept on foot... we may presume, that there is some ambiguity in the expression.^[74]

Hume defines the concepts of "necessity" and "liberty" as follows:

Necessity: "the uniformity, observable in the operations of nature; where similar objects are constantly conjoined together..".^[75]

Liberty: "a power of acting or not acting, according to the determinations of the will..".^[76]

Hume then argues that, according to these definitions, not only are the two compatible, but Liberty requires Necessity. For if our actions were not necessitated in the above sense, they would "...have so little in connexion with motives, inclinations and circumstances, that one does not follow with a certain degree of uniformity from the other." But if our actions are not thus hooked up to the will, then our actions can never be free: they would be matters of "chance; which is universally allowed not to exist".^[76]

Moreover, Hume goes on to argue that in order to be held morally responsible, it is required that our behaviour be caused, i.e. necessitated, for

Actions are, by their very nature, temporary and perishing; and where they proceed not from some cause in the character and disposition of the person who performed them, they can neither redound to his honour, if good; nor infamy, if evil^[77]

This argument has inspired modern day commentators.^[78] However, it has been argued that the issue of whether or not we hold one another morally responsible does not ultimately depend on the truth or falsity of a metaphysical thesis such as determinism, for our so holding one another is a non-rational human sentiment that is not predicated on such theses. For this influential argument, which is still made in a Humean vein, see P. F. Strawson's essay, Freedom and Resentment.^[79]

Problem of miracles[link]

In his discussion of miracles in An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding (Section 10) Hume defines a miracle as "a transgression of a law of nature by a particular volition of the Deity, or by the interposition of some invisible agent". Given that Hume argues that it is impossible to deduce the existence of a Deity from the existence of the world (for he says that causes cannot be determined from effects), miracles (including prophecy) are the only possible support he would conceivably allow for theistic religions.

Hume discusses everyday belief as often resulted from probability, where we believe an event that has occurred most often as being most likely, but that we also subtract the weighting of the less common event from that of the more common event. In the context of miracles, this means that a miraculous event should be labelled a miracle only where it would be even more unbelievable (by principles of probability) for it not to be. Hume mostly discusses miracles as testimony, of which he writes that when a person reports a miraculous event we [need to] balance our belief in their veracity against our belief that such events do not occur. Following this rule, only where it is considered, as a result of experience, less likely that the testimony is false than that a miracle occur should we believe in miracles.

Although Hume leaves open the possibility for miracles to occur and be reported, he offers various arguments against this ever having happened in history:^[80]

• People often lie, and they have good reasons to lie about miracles occurring either because they believe they are doing so for the benefit of their religion or because of the fame that results.
• People by nature enjoy relating miracles they have heard without caring for their veracity and thus miracles are easily transmitted even where false.
• Hume notes that miracles seem to occur mostly in "ignorant" and "barbarous" nations and times, and the reason they don't occur in the "civilized" societies is such societies aren't awed by what they know to be natural events.
• The miracles of each religion argue against all other religions and their miracles, and so even if a proportion of all reported miracles across the world fit Hume's requirement for belief, the miracles of each religion make the other less likely.

Despite all this Hume observes that belief in miracles is popular, and that "The gazing populace receive greedily, without examination, whatever soothes superstition and promotes wonder".^[81]

Critics have argued that Hume's position assumes the character of miracles and natural laws prior to any specific examination of miracle claims, and thus it amounts to a subtle form of begging the question. They have also noted that it requires an appeal to inductive inference, as none have observed every part of nature or examined every possible miracle claim (e.g., those yet future to the observer), which in Hume's philosophy was especially problematic.

Hume's main argument concerning miracles is the following. Miracles by definition are singular events that differ from the established Laws of Nature. The Laws of Nature are codified as a result of past experiences. Therefore a miracle is a violation of all prior experience. However the probability that something has occurred in contradiction of all past experience should always be judged to be less than the probability that either my senses have deceived me or the person recounting the miraculous occurrence is lying or mistaken, all of which I have past experience of. For Hume, this refusal to grant credence does not guarantee correctness – he offers the example of an Indian Prince, who having grown up in a hot country refuses to believe that water has frozen. By Hume's lights this refusal is not wrong and the Prince is thinking correctly; it is presumably only when he has had extensive experience of the freezing of water that he has warrant to believe that the event could occur. So for Hume, either the miraculous event will become a recurrent event or else it will never be rational to believe it occurred. The connection to religious belief is left inexplicit throughout, save for the close of his discussion wherein Hume notes the reliance of Christianity upon testimony of miraculous occurrences and makes an ironic^[82][83] remark that anyone who "is moved by faith to assent" to revealed testimony "is aware of a continued miracle in his own person, which subverts all principles of his understanding, and gives him a determination to believe what is most contrary to custom and experience."

Design argument[link]

One of the oldest and most popular arguments for the existence of God is the design argument: that order and "purpose" in the world bespeaks a divine origin. Hume argued that for the design argument to be feasible, it must be true that order and purpose are observed only when they result from design. But order is often observed to result from presumably mindless processes like the generation of snowflakes and crystals. Design can account for only a tiny part of our experience of order.

Political theory[link]