Cassius Circle: David Hume’s ‘Of Miracles’

[DrStakhanovite]

I bid you welcome once again to another thread from my post at the Borgesian Archives of Moral Science, located underneath the historic Brutus Rectory on the grounds of Cassius University. This is indeed a thread about David Hume, but to learn more you’ll have to shuffle over to the next post, I’m reserving the OP for a table of contents.




TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction
A Brief Orientation
PART ONE
10-1 & 10-2 (Addendum)
10-3 & 10-4
10-5 & 10-6 (digression into cause)
10-7 & 10-8 & 10-9
10-10 & Endnote 22
10-11 & 10-12
Endnote 23 & 10-3

[DrStakhanovite]

Introduction: This thread is devoted to the text called ‘Of Miracles’ written by Scottish philosopher David Hume. My intention here is to conduct a slow and methodical reading of the text ‘Of Miracles’ and engage critically with its contents. In essence you will be getting a picture of how I read and interact with philosophical texts and I cordially invite all to join me in doing so. Anyone can contribute and share their own thoughts and impressions as they see fit and I especially look forward to anyone disputing Hume’s words. The more we disagree with an author, the greater chance we have at really learning something about ourselves. This is an examination of Hume, not a defense of him.

The whole text ‘Of Miracles’ will eventually be posted to this thread. I plan on systematically quoting every paragraph of the text as I get to it, so by simply reading the thread one can read ‘Of Miracles’ in its entirety and not have to have another window open with the PDF or having a physical copy on hand.

It may be the case that nobody decides to participate, that is a state of affairs that I’m quite comfortable with. I’m doing this largely for my own edification and I already consider most of my online activity to be nothing more than me screaming into the void cathartically anyways. If you do honor me with participation, I do have three rules that I humbly request you follow.

Rule #1: Do not skip ahead of me in the text

Essentially I am asking potential participants not to spoil the continuity of the discussion and reading by bringing up portions of the text I have not yet gotten to. Please save your comments until we’ve reached that paragraph in particular. Once the paragraph has been posted, discussion can continue for as long as it needs to.

Rule #2: Please do not utilize the color value #800000

I plan on using that color in my quotation of Hume with the intention of it being a visual marker for people scrolling. I’m going to be trying some different editing strategies to help make this thread more navigable when it grows in size.

Rule #3: Please keep your contributions at least tangentially related to the topic.

I’ve selected this text because it bears directly to Mormon apologetics in general and the ‘Witnesses’ film in particular. I won’t be making very many connections to apologetics because my main focus will be on the text itself, but I heartily welcome and fully hope others will make those direct connections themselves and in any fashion of their choosing.

I have two broad designs for what comes after this thread. First, I would like to review all the major contributions of Hume to the philosophy of religion. My other design is to explore modern works in the philosophy of religion on the topic of miracles, but the entire discussion is largely theistic authors responding to Hume and atheistic authors defending Hume, thus having a thread dedicated to ‘Of Miracles’ seems prudent.

Resources: For those wanting to go down a rabbithole I’d stay away from Wikipedia when it relates to the philosophical content. The quality on that website fluctuates drastically and editing politics dominate the scene. I’ve decided to include a few links here for those who want to know more about the subject.

The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Hume, David: This is an academic resource written by active scholars that is maintained solely through volunteer efforts and donations and is not formally affiliated with any institution within Higher Education. The website focuses more on introductory material and thus assumes little to no prior knowledge of its audience. The writing employed by the authors takes into account that its readers may be reading from countries and nations that don’t have easy access to philosophical materials and for whom English may not be a primary language. This is often the best place to start learning about a topic.

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: David Hume: This is another academic resource that is fast becoming the premier reference work for the discipline. Much like the ‘Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy’ the articles are written by active scholars in the relevant fields, but are written for an audience who has a background in philosophy. Typically the entry point for using this resource are advanced undergraduate students or those beginning graduate study, but can also be accessible to anyone who really wants to understand the entries. The real treat is the bibliographies which are often extensive and authoritative as well, so the resource is an essential stopping point for research.

DavidHume.org: This is a website maintained by Peter Millican and Amyas Merivale (both at the University of Oxford). You will find almost all of David Hume’s published works here in PDF format along with a selection of published scholarship by both Millican and Merivale also in PDF format for free.

‘Hume’ by Harold W. Noonan: For those of you who would want an actual book (or Kindle!) instead of a website, I would recommend this one. It covers all the major aspects of Hume’s philosophy and brings it into contact with the contemporary scene. Will require no prior knowledge of philosophy to read and enjoy.

‘An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding’ edited by Eric Steinberg: I’m including this text here because it includes some relevant footnotes from this text that are absent from the PDF that I would like to share occasionally. It also happens to be the physical copy I own and study from (I can’t read from screens for very long). Also available on Kindle!

[DrStakhanovite]

In 2013 the philosophers Bourget and Chalmers published the results of an extensive survey called ‘What Do Philosophers Believe?’ which queried as many professional philosophers as possible about their beliefs concerning a dizzying array of philosophical issues. One of the questions put to the respondents was which nonliving philosopher does their work most identify with, which generated the following results (p.14):

Hume 139, Aristotle 118, Kant 113, Wittgenstein 73, Frege 70, Lewis 69, Russell 61, Quine 61, Davidson 49, Carnap 45, Mill 42, Rawls 42, Plato 37, Locke 35, Moore 27, Spinoza 22, Nietzsche 21, Descartes 19, Leibniz 18, Hegel 16.

Hume was the clear leader, even beating Aristotle himself! Even during his own day Hume had quite the reputation in literary circles, enjoying friendships with the likes of Benjamin Franklin, Edward Gibbon, James Boswell, and had a very close relationship with the economist Adam Smith. Hume even had a very dramatic and public falling out with the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau that was the subject of a lot of TMZ style of speculation in his day.

For good or for ill, Hume and his philosophy is firmly entrenched in the intellectual traditions of the English speaking world. Before diving into the text I thought it might be worthwhile to give people a quick snapshot of Hume’s life. While I will quote from his ‘My Own Life’, the document itself is fairly short and I encourage anyone with the interest to read it, probably a 20 minute read.


(‘Two Men Contemplating The Moon’ by Caspar David Friedrich)

David Hume was born in April 1711 to a minor noble family in Scotland, the youngest of three children. David’s father was a barrister and died when he was two years old, forcing David’s mother to raise three children by herself in their Edinburgh home. David was quick with his studies and he was singled out to study law, but it was not to be:

I passed through the ordinary course of education with success, and was seized very early with a passion for literature, which has been the ruling passion of my life, and the great source of my enjoyments. My studious disposition, my sobriety, and my industry, gave my family a notion that the law was a proper profession for me; but I found an insurmountable aversion to every thing but the pursuits of philosophy and general learning; and while they fancied I was poring upon Voet and Vinnius, Cicero and Virgil were the authors which I was secretly devouring.

David was just 11 years old when he left to study law at the University of Edinburgh and he returned home at the age of 15 without a degree and without his Christian faith. He shut himself up in the family library and spent a few years gorging himself on philosophy, poetry, and literature. Apparently he lived a kind of monastic existence, which eventually caused him to have some kind of mental health breakdown that he refers to as “the disease of the learned” in an unsent letter to a medical doctor.

There was a decision that the manner in which David had been living, cloistered in the family library, was contributing to the decline of his health. The antidote was for David to live abroad for a time to expand his horizons and so, he made his way across the English Channel to Paris. David was able to arrange room and board with the leading Freemason in all of Europe at that time, the Roman Catholic mystic and Scottish expatriate, Andrew Michael Ramsay. Sadly though, David’s stipend was too thin to sustain a life in Paris and eventually he moved to the Anjou region and settled in the sleepy town of La Flèche. While this was probably more of a backwater location than David was familiar with, the sleepy hamlet was home to a Jesuit college and library. It is known that David brought with him eight bound folios of the works of Pierre Bayle to La Flèche (a noted French skeptic from a previous generation) and it has been speculated that at the Jesuit maintained library, David encountered the Greek works of the ancient skeptic Sextus Empiricus.

What probably attracted David to La Flèche was the fact that René Descartes himself was educated there. In any case, it was La Flèche where David composed his first philosophic work ‘A Treatise of Human Nature’ (hereafter: ‘Treatise’) which David began to publish in installments on his return to Scotland. Books I and II were made public in 1739 with Book III and Appendix in 1740. The books were published anonymously and much to David’s dismay, they were not met with much fanfare:

Never literary attempt was more unfortunate than my Treatise of Human Nature. It fell dead-born from the press, without reaching such distinction, as even to excite a murmur among the zealots.

This was not entirely true, the work attracted the ire of many a Calvinist reader who scoffed at the entire project. In fact, after the publication of ‘Treatise’ David would often find himself at the center of controversy every time he applied for positions at the University of Edinburgh or University of Glasgow. When there was talk about David seeking such positions, there was the inevitable letter writing campaign that would always put an end to David being considered.

Thus David would never secure employment at a University and had to earn his keep through a variety of jobs; a librarian, aide-de-camp to a military General, Ambassador to France, etc, etc. Eventually, David revisits the ‘Treatise’ and conduct a major rewrite:

I had always entertained a notion, that my want of success in publishing the Treatise of Human Nature had proceeded more from the manner than the matter, and that I had been guilty of a very usual indiscretion, in going to the press too early. I, therefore, cast the first part of that work anew in the Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, which was published while I was at Turin.

And so in 1748 ‘An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding’ (hereafter: ‘Enquiry’) was published with David’s name attached. The book goes through ten editions, with the final edition being published a year after David died in 1777. That final edition is what I will be utilizing in this thread. The whole of ‘Enquiry’ will not be under consideration here, only section X ‘Of Miracles’.

I will be quoting from this PDF and will be citing the text according to the paragraph numbering provided. I’ve included a screenshot to help people identify the numbers:



Let’s begin!

[DrStakhanovite]

Paragraphs 10-1 & 10-2

THERE is, in Dr. Tillotson's writings, an argument against the real presence, which is as concise, and elegant, and strong as any argument can possibly be supposed against a doctrine, so little worthy of a serious refutation. It is acknowledged on all hands, says that learned prelate, that the authority, either of the scripture or of tradition, is founded merely in the testimony of the apostles, who were eye-witnesses to those miracles of our Saviour, by which he proved his divine mission. Our evidence, then, for the truth of the Christian religion is less than the evidence for the truth of our senses; because, even in the first authors of our religion, it was no greater; and it is evident it must diminish in passing from them to their disciples; nor can any one rest such confidence in their testimony, as in the immediate object of his senses. But a weaker evidence can never destroy a stronger; and therefore, were the doctrine of the real presence ever so clearly revealed in scripture, it were directly contrary to the rules of just reasoning to give our assent to it. It contradicts sense, though both the scripture and tradition, on which it is supposed to be built, carry not such evidence with them as sense; when they are considered merely as external evidences, and are not brought home to every one's breast, by the immediate operation of the Holy Spirit.

Nothing is so convenient as a decisive argument of this kind, which must at least silence the most arrogant bigotry and superstition, and free us from their impertinent solicitations. I flatter myself, that I have discovered an argument of a like nature, 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. For so long, I presume, will the accounts of miracles and prodigies be found in all history, sacred and profane.

As was briefly discussed in a previous post, the ‘Enquiry’ is a major revision of Hume’s previous work ‘Treatise’; in an interesting footnote at the beginning of this section Eric Steinhart (hereafter: ESF) mentions that this section could be a response to some Christian apologetic works that were popular during Hume’s day:

A draft of this section was extant as early as 1737; although Hume had apparently entertained the idea of including it in the ‘Treaties’, evidence suggests that he withheld it for fear of displeasing Joseph Butler, whose approval of the work he sought. The essay was first published as part of the ‘Enquiry’ and is thought by some to be a direct reply to two influential works, one by Thomas Sherlock (1678-1761), Bishop of London, ‘Tryal of the Witnesses of the Resurrection of Jesus’ (1729); the other was Zachary Pearce’s (1690-1774) ‘Miracles of Jesus Vindicated’ (1729). (Footnote #37)

If ‘Of Miracles’ is aimed at Christian apologetics works contemporary with Hume, his choice of beginning with a work by John Tillotson is an interesting strategy.

There is a second ESF that I’d like to share, but this passage contains a small error. It still gives readers an idea of who this Dr. Tillotson is:

John Tillotson (1630-1694), a Presbyterian theologian who became Archbishop of Canterbury in 1691, argued in ‘Rule of Faith’ (1676) and ‘A Doctrine Against Transubstantiation’ (1684) that transubstantiation could never be established as part of Christian doctrine. (Footnote #38)

No Archbishop of Canterbury has ever been a confessing Presbyterian, as Presbyterians do not recognize the office of Archbishop in their church polity. The good Dr. Tillotson was an Anglican (i.e. Church of England). You can read Tillotson’s ‘A Doctrine Against Transubstantiation’ online if one feels the desire to do so.

Why does Hume single out a work refuting the Romanist doctrine of transubstantiation? For the uninitiated, the Roman Catholic Church has a particular belief about the rite of the eucharist (i.e. Communion/Lord’s Supper). When a priest recites a specific prayer over the bread and wine, the Holy Spirit transforms the underlying reality of the wine and bread (often called the substance) into the actual blood and flesh of Jesus Christ, but the appearance of the bread and wine remain the same (often called the accidents). Within the Roman Catholic Church this is considered an authentic and divine miracle and it occurs every time a properly ordained priest recites the prayer over the bread and wine.

Naturally, the doctrine of transubstantiation was called into question by the earliest reformers in Europe and after the rise of various Protestant groups, became universally rejected by those outside the Roman tradition (Eastern Orthodoxy has very similar beliefs to the Roman Church). Archbishop Tillotson wrote a book that attacked the Roman Catholic doctrine from the perspective of Anglicans, a standard polemical practice maintained to this day.

So Hume begins ‘Of Miracles’ by mentioning a book by a Christian that disputes the occurrence of certain miracles believed to be occurring by Christians, to an audience that is primarily going to be people with Christian sensibilities. That is clever, in my estimation.

Hume uses Tillotson to mention “the testimony of the apostles” as his entry point into this lengthy discussion about witness testimony in relation to miracles. Considering that the majority of his readers at the time of writing this were going to be Protestants of some variety, he uses theology as a kind of cover to introduce his ideas to make them more palatable.

He doesn’t use that cover for long as Hume’s empiricism starts bleeding through, though not without warrant as he has been establishing it in the previous nine sections of this work. I do want to caution readers against reading too much into the word “empiricism” because today it is almost always associated with skepticism, the scientific method, and modern atheism, but the truth of the matter is that for the majority of our intellectual history, most empiricists were Christians. The word simply denotes an epistemological stance that human knowledge primarily comes from our experiences.

Notice though that Hume mentions that the evidentiary value of apostolic witness diminishes over time. We are being told that the temporal distance between us and ancient witnesses makes those witnesses less reliable in some sense, but I’m not sure how I feel about that. Combined with his strong assertion of a hierarchy of evidence with human senses at the top and scripture and tradition below it, there seems to be a lot to be objected to.

I’m also not sure how to take that sentence concerning the Holy Spirit operating on the hearts of people. Is he being sarcastic here? Or is this some last minute qualification to help ensure his Christian audience doesn’t throw down his book in disgust when he states that human experience Trump's scripture and tradition.

What is refreshing so far is that Hume doesn’t have that evangelistic zeal about the primacy of reason over revelation or experience over scripture and makes no predictions about a day when everyone values what he does and ignores everything else.

[Physics Guy]

I think that Hume's contemporaries on all sides would have been appalled at confusing real presence with transubstantiation. Transubstantiation was and is the hard-core Catholic form of the broader doctrine of real presence—that Christ is "really present" in the bread and wine of the Eucharist—which was and is shared by Lutherans and Anglicans, who indignantly deny the specifically Catholic version. The Lutheran and Anglican alternatives have some similar practical implications for how Christians are supposed to consider the Sacrament, though less radical than the Catholic conclusion that one should kneel to a piece of bread, but their explanations are vaguer on detail.

Of that much I'm pretty sure. I'm on shakier ground with my understanding of transubstantiation, which is based on stuff I read somewhere once, but which may be more what I thought the writer should have said than what they did say. Or it may be old hat basic stuff that every educated Catholic knows. Anyway, my impression for what it's worth of transubstantiation is that "substance" and "accident" are technical terms from medieval philosophy which do not mean what we might expect them to mean. In particular it's not really accurate to say that accidents are appearances. Appearances are usually accidents, but accidents could well also include features like chemical composition, that we certainly call substantial in ordinary modern language.

The distinction between substance and accident (as I rightly or wrongly understand it) is not between material composition and appearance. The substance of a thing (I understand) is the set of features that a thing has to have in order to be what it is. Accidents are features which it has to have in some form, but which do not need to be anything in particular in order for the thing to be itself. So for example every chair has to be made of something, but it could be made of anything and still be a chair. Wood is never the substance of a chair, in this medieval concept of "substance", and neither is aluminum. Material composition is accidental to a chair. The substance of a chair, in contrast, is its role as a movable piece of furniture which was made to be sat on. A prop or toy is not a chair even if it looks just like one.

On this understanding I have never seen anything absurd in the Catholic doctrine of the Mass. All my atoms are the same as the atoms in objects around me; what makes them my body is that they generally do what I want. On the Catholic hypothesis Christ controls every atom, I figure, so if he wants to do something special with the atoms in some bread and wine, then he can. Nobody was ever really alleging that the wine acquired haemoglobin.

Except I'm pretty sure that the Catholic Church has rarely gone out of its way to correct such impressions among pious believers. To a fair degree transubstantiation is one of those clever exercises in having one's cake and eating it too that people call Jesuitical. The Jesuits are at least good at it, though. As I understand it transubstantiation is not and never has been falsifiable by any physical test. Still less falsifiable are the vaguer Lutheran and Anglican flavours of sacramental real presence.

What this implies for Hume's Treatise, I'm not sure. Perhaps it means his beginning is not as close to mere mocking of medieval absurdities as modern readers might think. He was talking about things that had in his day received tons of air time, some of which was rabbit-holishly subtle. Still perhaps he was just mocking superstition, and any connection to the arcane Scholastic categories of substance and accident was a mere red herring that one should ignore in following Hume.

[Kishkumen]

What this implies for Hume's Treatise, I'm not sure. Perhaps it means his beginning is not as close to mere mocking of medieval absurdities as modern readers might think. He was talking about things that had in his day received tons of air time, some of which was rabbit-holishly subtle. Still perhaps he was just mocking superstition, and any connection to the arcane Scholastic categories of substance and accident was a mere red herring that one should ignore in following Hume.

Thanks for this post, PG. What I understand of the role of Greek philosophy in Christian theology is too little, but it accords with what you have written here. Looking at discussions of that thought world and how Hume is participating impresses me with how little we generally comprehend of those arguments.

[Gabriel]

download.jpeg

Sorry for the slight (apparent) derail.

I am reading your post with interest, Dr. Stak.

[dastardly stem]

I'm looking forward to this.

Notice though that Hume mentions that the evidentiary value of apostolic witness diminishes over time. We are being told that the temporal distance between us and ancient witnesses makes those witnesses less reliable in some sense, but I’m not sure how I feel about that.

If for nothing else diminishing over time is a good rule to go with since over time, we lose reliability of whether what is claimed was actually witnessed or not. For instance, it seems pretty clear any writer of the New Testament was not witness to any particular miracle that gets described there. There is no witness recording of the events.

Combined with his strong assertion of a hierarchy of evidence with human senses at the top and scripture and tradition below it, there seems to be a lot to be objected to.

Not sure I'm following. Tradition and scripture hardly seem to be evidence of the claimed miracles at all.

I’m also not sure how to take that sentence concerning the Holy Spirit operating on the hearts of people. Is he being sarcastic here? Or is this some last minute qualification to help ensure his Christian audience doesn’t throw down his book in disgust when he states that human experience Trump's scripture and tradition.

What is refreshing so far is that Hume doesn’t have that evangelistic zeal about the primacy of reason over revelation or experience over scripture and makes no predictions about a day when everyone values what he does and ignores everything else.

Yes. Good points.

when they are considered merely as external evidences, and are not brought home to every one's breast, by the immediate operation of the Holy Spirit.

I'm trying to figure out what he could mean if he's not being sarcastic. Scripture and tradition aren't brought home to everyone's breast like "sense", like the Holy Spirit does to make people feel like the change to real body and blood took place.

[Chap]

Tradition and scripture hardly seem to be evidence of the claimed miracles at all.

Hume writes as he does because in his day tradition and scripture were taken by large groups of people to be evidence that certain things, including miracles had actually occurred in the past.

All major Christian churches gave (and still give) some weight to both, but it is fair to say that the authority of the tradition safeguarded and transmitted by Christ's church was heavily stressed in the Orthodox and Catholic churches, while Protestant groups laid more stress on the value of scripture as the inerrant word of God, understanding of which was open to all believers.

[DrStakhanovite]

Paragraphs 10-3 & 10-4

Though experience be our only guide in reasoning concerning matters of fact; it must be acknowledged, that this guide is not altogether infallible, but in some cases is apt to lead us into errors. One, who in our climate, should expect better weather in any week of June than in one of December, would reason justly, and conformably to experience; but it is certain, that he may happen, in the event, to find himself mistaken. However, we may observe, that, in such a case, he would have no cause to complain of experience; because it commonly informs us beforehand of the uncertainty, by that contrariety of events, which we may learn from a diligent observation. All effects follow not with like certainty from their supposed causes. Some events are found, in all countries and all ages, to have been constantly conjoined together: Others are found to have been more variable, and sometimes to disappoint our expectations; so that, in our reasonings concerning matter of fact, there are all imaginable degrees of assurance, from the highest certainty to the lowest species of moral evidence.

A wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence. In such conclusions as are founded on an infallible experience, he expects the event with the last degree of assurance, and regards his past experience as a full proof of the future existence of that event. In other cases, he proceeds with more caution: He weighs the opposite experiments: He considers which side is supported by the greater number of experiments: To that side he inclines, with doubt and hesitation; and when at last he fixes his judgment, the evidence exceeds not what we properly call probability. All probability, then, supposes an opposition of experiments and observations, where the one side is found to overbalance the other, and to produce a degree of evidence, proportioned to the superiority. A hundred instances or experiments on one side, and fifty on another, afford a doubtful expectation of any event; though a hundred uniform experiments, with only one that is contradictory, reasonably beget a pretty strong degree of assurance. In all cases, we must balance the opposite experiments, where they are opposite, and deduct the smaller number from the greater, in order to know the exact force of the superior evidence.

Here Hume is sketching out a rough framework on how people reason. What is interesting here is that he isn’t being proscriptive in the sense that he is saying “this is how we ought to proceed when reasoning from our experiences” but instead he is talking as if this is how reasoning from experience is simply done and that we all recognize it.

Hume is actually a talented folk psychologist, for him philosophy is rarely an act of reasoning from abstract principles while sitting in an armchair. Rather, philosophy requires observation of the human subject as it interacts with the world around it. Watching human activity is as organic to philosophy as implementing Aristotelian logic to subjects and predicates. If we had read the ‘Enquiry’ in full, we’d have read where Hume denies that there is some kind of metaphysical relationship between cause and effect. For Hume, causal reasoning is just a habit of our minds that has its uses, but just because humans reason successfully in this manner doesn’t mean that the universe we inhabit must work in that manner. Years later Immanuel Kant will remark that reading Hume’s ‘Enquiry’ woke him from “a dogmatic slumber” and in Hume he will find inspiration for his “Transcendental” Deduction” and the tradition “critical philosophy” will be born. You know all that stuff we’ve been hearing about Critical Race Theory we’ve been hearing in the news? You can begin to trace its origins here in Hume and follow that trail all the way to Kimberle Crenshaw herself.

This brings me to Hume's caution and insistence on the fallibility of human reckoning. Experience isn’t always consistent nor do individual people experience things the same way. I think this is why Hume introduces the idea of probability, but I’m not entirely sure yet what Hume precisely has in mind when he uses that word. At this point in history, “probability” was being developed for finding a way to reliably win at games of chance, Thomas Bayes was one of the Presbyterian clergy who fiercely criticized Hume’s philosophy.

In any case, expect to see this kind of concern regarding fallibility to appear again when witness accounts are examined more closely.