My reading of Hume’s epistemology is similar to three other recent operation-based accounts. On Loeb’s stability-based account, a belief is epistemologically justified if and
only if it is produced by a mechanism that tends to produce stable beliefs.111 On Tim Black’s determinacy account,
S is epistemically justified in assenting to an idea, o, which is not an element of the first system of realities [sensory and memory beliefs], just in case, upon the appearance of some element, i, of the first system the mind’s movement from i to o feels determined by a relation that feels unchangeable.112
On Schmitt’s reliability account, a belief is justified if it is produced by an operation which tends to produce true beliefs.113 All three of these commentators agree with me that, in view of Treatise 1.4.4.1, Hume’s approved belief-producing mechanisms are permanent, irresistible, and universal.114
One reason why my operations-based account differs from theirs at the level of detail is that I take Treatise 1.4.4.1-2 as a controlling textual starting point. Loeb, Black, and Schmitt downplay the significance of this passage because, as Loeb puts it, Hume does not here explain “which features are fundamental to his account of justification.”115 They all assign this passage and the operational criteria of permanence, irresistibility, and universality a peripheral significance. They take texts in Part 3 of Book 1 as their starting points for expositing Hume’s theory of epistemic justification.116 Then when they come
111 Loeb, Stability, 12-13.
112 Tim Black, “Hume’s Epistemic Naturalism in the Treatise,” Hume Studies 37(2), 2011, 215. 113 Schmitt, Hume’s Epistemology, 22-23.
114 Loeb, Stability, 154-162, especially 157; Black, “Hume’s Epistemic Naturalism,” 223; Schmitt, Hume’s Epistemology, 286.
115 Loeb, Stability, 157; cf. Black, “Hume’s Epistemic Naturalism,” 223; Schmitt, Hume’s Epistemology,
287.
116 Loeb and Black both launch from their interpretations of Treatise 1.3.9. Loeb, Stability, 60-65; Black,
“Hume’s Epistemic Naturalism,” 213-216. Schmitt builds his case more broadly from Part 3 of Book 1. Schmitt, Hume’s Epistemology, 39-243.
to Treatise 1.4.4.1, they do the best they can to reconcile it with the theories they have constructed on the basis of other texts.
I think that the operational criteria of Treatise 1.4.4.1 fully coheres with the epistemic judgments Hume makes in Part 3 of Book 1, as I argue at further length in Chapter 2. But although Part 3 obviously precedes Treatise 1.4.4.1-2, the latter text is the clearest, most general, and most systematic statement of what the philosophers approve of, and hence of Hume’s epistemic norms. These virtues make it a superior textual starting point for the discussion of Hume’s epistemology. It should not merely be reconciled with an epistemic concept derived from other texts. Another reason to prefer this textual starting point to others is that it explicitly invokes the “the philosophers,” which, I have argued, is the terminological key to Hume’s epistemology. These alternative accounts do not give any special attention to “philosophy” and “the philosophers.”
Furthermore, it seems anachronistic to insist, with Loeb, that we begin our exposition of Hume’s epistemology by finding a fundamental definition of epistemic justification, rather than starting with the particular philosophical norms which he explicitly states. Like Loeb, Schmitt, and Black, I have tentatively put forward my own account of Hume’s definitional concept of philosophical justification (the philosophers approve of processes most likely to lead to truth), and have suggested that it is compatible with the norms of Treatise 1.4.4.1. But I give the philosophical norms of Treatise 1.4.4.1- 2 much more basic significance than the definitional concept I teased out of Treatise 2.3.10. In fact, the definitional concept of epistemic (philosophical) justification plays little role in my project, because it plays no role in Hume’s development of his
epistemology and skepticism in Book 1 of the Treatise. (It emerges at the end of Book II, “Of the Passions”). For better or worse, in Book I, Hume lays down philosophical norms without telling us what makes them the correct philosophical norms.
Loeb, Black, and Schmitt all take up the issue of whether Hume has a naturalized epistemology.117 Consider the definition of epistemic naturalism offered by Black:
“Epistemic naturalism…is the view that there are cases in which we are justified in holding a belief and cases in which we are not so justified, and that we can distinguish cases of one sort from cases of the other with reference to non-normative facts about the mechanisms that produce our beliefs.”118 By my lights, permanence, irresistibility, and universality are non-normative facts about belief-producing mechanisms. However, the notion of “defeat” as I am using it and as Hume employs it is a normative epistemic notion. To say that belief A defeats belief B does not necessarily mean that
psychologically, we will abandon belief B and adopt belief A (although we might). Defeat simply means that we ought, from the epistemic point of view, to abandon B for A. I doubt that Hume has the resources to give a naturalistic account of epistemic defeat, but for my purposes, I can afford to leave the question open.
Schmitt’s reliability reading of Hume’s epistemology raises a question for my account which is of intrinsic importance anyway: What is the relationship between
117 Loeb and Black answer that Hume does have a naturalized epistemology. Loeb, Stability, 21; Black,
“Hume’s Epistemic Naturalism,” 211-242; Schmitt’s view is more qualified. He recognizes that epistemic defeat is “not clearly a natural property.” Hume’s Epistemology, 166. He agrees that (other than the no- defeater requirement) Hume does identify epistemic justification with a natural property. Ibid. However, he argues that Hume’s epistemology is different than contemporary naturalized epistemologies because Hume denies the autonomy of psychology from epistemology.
118 Black, “Hume’s Epistemic Naturalism,” 211. Black cites Loeb, who writes “Naturalism, or a naturalistic
theory of justification, taken in this sense discriminates among beliefs with respect to their justifiedness, with reference to non-epistemic facts (and more generally non-normative facts) about the beliefs or the mechanisms that produce them.” Loeb, Stability, 21.
justification, truth, and reliability?119 Note in the first place that the permanence, universality, and irresistibility of cognitive mechanisms do not entail that they are truth- conducive or reliable. Hume is consistently diffident about the reliability of our faculties, even when they function according to the norms of philosophy. He opens the Treatise by saying that “if truth be at all within the reach of human capacity, ‘tis certain it must lie very deep and abstruse” (T Intro 3). He closes Book 1 by remarking that “we might hope to establish a system or set of opinions, which if not true (for that, perhaps, is too much to be hop’d for) might at least be satisfactory to the human mind, and might stand the test of the most critical examination” (T 1.4.7.14). Following epistemic norms is necessary (though perhaps not sufficient) for arriving at the truth. Even if truth is out of reach, epistemic norms (“the test of the most critical examination”) are still readily available. So I take it that reliability or truth-conduciveness is not necessary for epistemic justification, for Hume. I have suggested that philosophy provides the most likely route to truth, but this does not entail the reliabilist claim that following philosophy is likely to lead to truth. Philosophy may be the best candidate available for getting at truth, but that does not mean it is a good or successful candidate.
The non-necessity of reliability for epistemic justification emerges in another way. As I will show in more detail later, Hume argues in Treatise 1.4.1 that all of the deliverances of reason face undermining defeaters; any positive degree of confidence in inferences is epistemologically unjustified. In Treatise 1.4.2, he argues that belief in body faces a rebutting defeater: we are epistemologically justified in believing that no enduring mind-independent objects exist. Ordinarily, when we see that the deliverances of a certain
119 Schmitt argues for a reliabilist Hume in his Hume’s Epistemology. The following remarks hardly
constitute a thorough engagement with his whole position but indicate where and I why I part ways with a reliabilist reading.
belief-producing process usually face defeat, we form a second-order corrective general rule against that propensity. Typically, these general rules are causally efficacious: the targeted propensities “may easily be subverted” (T 1.4.4.1). But in the case of reason and belief in body, the propensities continue to function permanently, universally, and
irresistibly, even after we clearly see that all of their deliverances face defeat. If we do form corrective general rules against them, the rules are ineffective. The propensities are still therefore narrowly natural and elicit the approval of the philosophers. The products of these propensities are defeasibly justified, even though belief in body faces epistemic defeat. In short, although the propensity to believe in body is unreliable, it still produces defeasibly justified (ultimately defeated) beliefs. Reliability is simply not necessary for epistemic justification.
But even if the products of these propensities are not defeasibly justified,
reliabilism can provide no explanation for why not. Reliabilism says that a propositional attitude is justified if and only if it is the product of a process that produces more true beliefs than not. But banning these propensities does not maximize true beliefs. It eliminates virtually all beliefs. Rejecting the propensities that produce core beliefs is neither reliable nor unreliable. It simply leaves us as global agnostics without any beliefs. So whether Hume continues to regard our core beliefs as defeasibly justified though ultimately unjustified, or whether he regards them as not even defeasibly justified, reliabilism cannot explain their epistemic status. I conclude that Hume is no reliabilist.120
120 This is not to say of course that considerations of reliability play no role whatsoever in his epistemology.
They do. For example, when we form a general rule against a propensity, we typically believe that it is unreliable.
1.4 Conclusion
Hume’s concept of philosophy as constituted by doxastic norms gives us the key to discerning his general epistemic principles as well as individual epistemic judgments. Hume, along with “the philosophers,” approves of those narrowly natural principles of the imagination which are permanent, irresistible, and universal. The deliverances of these propensities are defeasibly justified. They may or may not be psychologically corrigible. In the following chapters, I explain how Hume’s corrective general rules account for the difference between broadly and narrowly natural belief-forming mechanisms. I then apply his epistemology to his discussion of our core beliefs.