Welcome back to The Deep Dive, the show where
we take your formidable reading list, you know,
the dense articles, the complicated research,
the overwhelming philosophical texts, and distill
it into something utterly essential and hopefully
truly fascinating. Our mission today is, well,
it's a heavy one, but it's one of the most important
intellectual deep dives we can really undertake.
We are plunging into the mind of David Hume.
Hume is so often just categorized, isn't he?
An 18th century philosopher in a dusty wig. Yeah,
and that categorization sells him short by about
four major careers. Our sources confirm he was
a true polymath. a groundbreaking philosopher,
an essayist, a massive literary historian whose
works dominated for decades. And a seminal economist,
too. I mean, his ideas anticipated modern monetary
theory. Exactly. And the ripples of his work
didn't just stay within philosophy. His ideas
were so fundamentally disruptive that they forced
major pivots in intellectual history. We're talking
about a man whose skepticism literally woke Immanuel
Kant from what the German philosopher famously
dubbed his dogmatic slumbers. That's right. Hume's
approach didn't just tweak existing metaphysics,
it sought to demolish the foundations of certainty.
And that foundational skepticism, when he applied
it rigorously, went on to influence giants of
the 20th century. Oh, absolutely. From Albert
Einstein and his formulation of special relativity
to Karl Popper on the logic of scientific discovery,
right down to the founding fathers of modern
cognitive science. So our mission today is ambitious.
We're going through a comprehensive overview
of his life and works, and we're going to try
and extract the most crucial, most radical, and
sometimes surprising concepts. We want to give
you, the listener, a thorough understanding of
his massive and often contradictory impact. OK,
so to understand Hume, we have to place him in
his intellectual home first. You have to. The
thriving, dynamic hub of the Scottish Enlightenment.
This was a moment of incredible intellectual
momentum. you know, emphasizing reason, observation,
and human nature. And Hume was right in the center
of it alongside figures like Adam Smith. So what
was his big overarching philosophical goal in
this vibrant context? He had a towering ambition.
to create a naturalistic science of man. A science
of man. Yeah. He believed that for too long,
philosophy had been built on speculative metaphysics,
on innate ideas or theological presumptions.
Hume wanted to strip all that away. And ground
everything in what we can actually observe. Ground
human understanding, knowledge, and morality
entirely in psychological experience, following
the empirical tradition laid down by people like
John Locke and Francis Bacon. So if physics studies
the motion of bodies, Hume wanted to apply that
same experimental method, that same rigor, but
to the operations of the human mind. Precisely.
His commitment was threefold. You've got philosophical
empiricism. Knowledge comes from sense experience.
Right. Then you have skepticism. Yeah. A radical
doubt about the limits of our knowledge. Yeah.
And finally, metaphysical naturalism. Which is
the belief that everything that exists is part
of the natural world. No supernatural stuff.
Exactly. Rejecting supernatural intervention
as an explanation. This whole commitment, this
threefold approach, is the engine that drives
his entire philosophical system. Okay, let's
unpack the man behind this revolution. David
Holm. He later changed the spelling to Hume.
Right, because the original Scottish pronunciation,
Hume, was constantly being mispronounced by the
English. A classic problem. He was born in Edinburgh
in 1711. And what immediately strikes you from
the sources is his sheer intellectual precociousness.
He was a genuine child prodigy. He attended the
University of Edinburgh at an unusually early
age, possibly as young as 10 or 12. When the
typical age for entry was around 14. Yeah. But
despite this intellectual gift, he was pushed
into a career path he genuinely despised. That
familiar tale of family pressure. They wanted
him to study law. And he confessed to having
an insurmountable aversion to it. He wrote later
that he found the law texts, particularly Voet
and Vinius, just dry and tedious. So while his
family thought he was studying legal codes, he
was secretly locked away, devouring classical
literature and philosophy. He cited Cicero and
Virgil as his true mentors. It sounds like a
slow burn of intellectual rebellion that culminated
in a pretty spectacular personal crisis. It did.
Around age 18, he experienced what he called
a philosophical breakthrough. A moment when he
saw a new scene of thought open up before him.
He realized how he could apply the scientific
method to human nature. And this breakthrough
was so inspiring, so overwhelming, that he resolved
to dedicate the next decade solely to reading,
researching, and writing this new philosophical
system. And that intense, single -minded focus.
It led to a physical and mental collapse. It
did, and the diagnosis is fantastic. His physician
diagnosed him with the disease of the learned.
The disease of the learned. That sounds like
something out of a novel. It was a condition
often attributed to excessive study, insufficient
activity, and melancholy. This wasn't just burnout.
It was a profound physical manifestation of his
intellectual ambition. And the treatment by modern
standards sounds absolutely wild. The sources
detail the prescription. First, a course of bitters
and antihisteric pills, which sounds vaguely
medical, combined with the instruction to incorporate
a daily substantial dose of alcohol, a pint of
claret. A pint of wine every day to cure intellectual
overload. Did it work? Well, the sources say
the initial results were terrible. He developed
scurvy spots and experienced palpitations. Oh,
wow. But over time, the new regimen, the medicine,
the wine, and the enforced moderation of his
studies, it transformed him. He wrote that he
transitioned from being tall, lean, and raw boned
to becoming sturdy, robust, and healthful -like.
And this is the period that set him on the path
to becoming the heavier, you know, corpulent
man known for his love of port and cheese later
in life. That's the one. So after this intense
period, the intellectual project came to fruition.
In 1739 -40, at the age of 28, he published his
magnum opus, A Treatise of Human Nature. Yes,
and the subtitle perfectly summarizes his ambition.
being an attempt to introduce the experimental
method of reasoning into moral subjects. Moral
subjects. In his day, that meant everything from
ethics and politics to epistemology and psychology.
Pretty much everything about the human condition.
He genuinely believed this treatise would be
his Newtonian moment, the comprehensive foundation
for all future human knowledge. But the contemporary
reception was the complete opposite of what he'd
hoped for. This is a story of profound literary
disappointment. It was devastating. Today, we
view the treatise as perhaps the single most
important work in Western philosophy of the 18th
century. But at the time... At the time, Hume
lamented that it fell dead -born from the press.
He couldn't even generate a controversy, noting
it failed to cause a murmur among the zealots.
And the few reviewers who did engage with it.
They called it abstract and unintelligible. Can
you imagine... Ten years of his youth, his entire
savings devoted to this colossal work, and it's
met with silence or just scorn. What does a philosopher
do then? Well, he swallowed his pride and tried
to sell it to the public again, but under the
guise of anonymity. He published an abstract
of a book lately published. Essentially a clear,
shorter summary. A philosophical press release.
That's a great way to put it. And it focused
heavily on his core doctrine of cause and effect.
And that abstract is valuable because it gives
us a direct view into what Hume himself believed
was the most important central argument of his
entire system. Exactly. But even with the abstract,
the treatise failed to gain traction. Hume was
so stung by this rejection that he later dismissed
his debut work as juvenilia. He called it an
immature endeavor. He insisted that contemporaries
should judge him solely on his later, more polished
rewrites. The inquiry concerning human understanding
and the inquiry concerning the principles of
morals. The great irony, which is so important
for us to grasp, is that while Hume wanted us
to forget the treatise. Modern scholarly consensus
holds that his most distinct. profound and radical
ideas the true foundations of his skepticism
are found in that original sprawling text it's
the difference between the radical blueprint
and the smoothed out commercial version a perfect
analogy his early career just shows the profound
frustration that this philosophical ambition
brought him he faced constant financial struggles
and was forced to seek stable employment And
he repeatedly failed to secure the obvious path
for a brilliant academic. Twice he was derailed
from university posts. First for the chair of
pneumatics and moral philosophy at the University
of Edinburgh, and later for a philosophy chair
at the University of Glasgow. And the reason
was consistent and brutally simple. Intense public
and ecclesiastical suspicion over his alleged
atheism and his anti -religious views. His skepticism
was seen as a moral poison. So he was too radical
for academia. He had to take these highly unconventional
jobs just to make ends meet. He worked as a merchant's
assistant, served as secretary to General James
St. Clair on military and diplomatic missions.
And the sources note that this period of travel
and the good table of the general contributed
significantly to his physical transformation
and weight gain. Right. A sharp contrast with
his lean, starving student years. But his career
truly pivoted in 1752 when he landed a low paying
but crucial job. Librarian at the Advocates Library
in Edinburgh. This was the turning point. The
pay was minimal, but the access to the vast collection
of books was everything. It allowed him to pivot
his tremendous intellectual energy away from
pure, difficult philosophy and toward history.
And the result was The History of England, a
monumental success. He churned out six volumes
covering everything from Julius Caesar to the
glorious revolution of 1688. Over a million words.
It became an immediate bestseller and made him
both famous and wealthy in his lifetime. For
over 60 years, Hume was the dominant interpreter
of English history. It's a crucial detail that
the great philosophical skeptic of the age became
renowned, not for his radical philosophy, but
for a massive commercial history book. It's one
of the great ironies of his life. Okay, let's
leave the biography now and move to the architecture
of the mind itself, because this is where Hume
profoundly challenges our most basic assumptions
about reality. It all starts with his foundational
doctrine. The mind consists only of perceptions.
That's right. If he's going to build a science
of man, he needs building blocks. For Hume, the
mind is simply a collection of mental objects,
which he calls perceptions. And he immediately
divides these perceptions into two distinct categories.
Impressions and ideas. The distinction is based
on what scholars call the FLV criterion, force,
liveliness and vivacity. That helps me keep them
straight. Impressions are the forceful ones.
They are the immediate sensations and passions
we experience right now. The blinding flash of
light, the sharp pain of a paper cut, the sound
of music filling the room. The strong passion
of anger or love. They're vivid and immediate.
Exactly. Ideas, on the other hand, are the shadows
or echoes of those moments. The faint copies
of impressions. Precisely. They are what happens
when you remember the pain of the paper cut,
or you think about the color blue you just saw.
They are less lively, less forceful than the
original impression. This distinction leads directly
to one of his most powerful intellectual tools,
which he uses to dismantle abstract concepts,
the copy principle. The copy principle is fundamental
to his empiricism. It states that all ideas must
ultimately be traced back to some original, corresponding
impression. So if you claim to have an idea,
but you can't point to the impression, the sensory
input or passion from which it was copied. Hume
says that idea is meaningless or at least highly
suspicious. That seems incredibly restrictive.
If all ideas are just copies of impressions,
where does imagination come from? I mean, we
can imagine a perfectly just ruler or a winged
horse, even if we've never had the impression
of those things in reality. Right. Does Hume
leave any room for true creativity or abstraction?
Yeah. He accounts for it, but not as the creation
of genuinely new, simple ideas. He clarifies
that both impressions and ideas are further divided
into simple and complex. A simple perception
is the irreducible unit, like the color red or
a single musical note. It admits of no distinction
nor separation. A complex perception though is
a bundle of these simple components. Think of
your impression of an apple. It's a bundle of
red sensations, round sensations, sweet taste
sensations, and so on. Ah, so the imagination
only has the power to take simple ideas that
were copied from simple impressions and recombine
them. Recombine them into new complex ideas.
You can imagine a gold mountain because you have
the simple impression of gold and the simple
impression of mountain, and you stick them together.
But you can't imagine a color you've never seen
before. Precisely. And this recombination process,
he argues, is not random. It's guided by a kind
of mental mechanics, which he calls the association
of ideas. Like psychological magnets drawing
certain ideas together. A great way to think
of it. He identifies three core principles, the
first being resemblance. If you see a photograph,
the idea of that image immediately brings to
mind the idea of the original object it represents.
Because they look alike, the mind connects them.
Simple enough. The second is contiguity, meaning
closeness in space or time. Yes. If you think
about a specific room you know well, maybe your
childhood bedroom, when you think of the bed,
the idea immediately pulls up the idea of the
desk that was always right next to it. They were
contiguous in space, so the ideas are contiguous
in the mind. And then the third, the one that
causes the great philosophical earthquake, cause
and effect. This is where his scientific approach
turns into radical skepticism. Yes. When we repeatedly
observe one object or event consistently followed
by another, say, event A, striking a match, is
always followed by event B, fire, that constant
conjunction leads to an association in the mind.
And that repetition creates a habit or a custom.
And that custom, that habit, then creates an
expectation. We expect event B to follow event
A next time. That expectation is key because
it moves us into the problem of induction and
causation, which is the absolute cornerstone
of Hume's entire system. It really is. It challenges
the basis not just of philosophy, but of all
empirical science. We use induction constantly.
I mean, it's how we navigate the world. We assume
the laws of nature are stable. We assume the
sun will rise tomorrow. What exactly is the problem
with justifying it? Hume says that inductive
reasoning, predicting the future based on the
past, cannot be rationally justified. He traps
rationalists between his two recognized forms
of justified argument. Okay, let's break those
two down. First, you have demonstrative reasoning.
This is the realm of logic and mathematics. The
conclusions are necessary and certain, like 2
plus 2 is 4, or all bachelors are unmarried.
So, is the future will resemble a past a demonstrative
truth? Hume says no, because we can easily conceive,
without contradiction, of nature changing. We
can imagine the sun failing to rise tomorrow.
We can imagine fire might suddenly feel cold.
And since we can conceive of the opposite, it's
not a logical necessity. Exactly. So demonstrative
reasoning fails. That leaves probable reasoning.
So why can't we use probability? It seems like
a good bet. Because that's where the circularity
comes in. If you try to argue that the future
will resemble the past because it is done so
reliably every time in the past. Are you using
the very inductive principle you were trying
to justify? You're using induction to prove the
validity of induction. It becomes circular and
therefore fails as a rational justification.
Wow. So you're telling me everything I believe
about tomorrow, every scientific law I trust,
is essentially just a highly reliable guess.
It's not rationally justified certainty. Philosophically,
yes. Hume's conclusion is that reason cannot
bridge the gap between past experience and future
expectation. If we relied only on pure reason,
we would be paralyzed by skepticism. But we aren't
paralyzed. We operate just fine. So how? Here
is Hume's profound naturalistic solution. We
are determined to believe by custom and instinct,
not by reason. He moved the justification out
of the cold, calculating realm of logic and into
the warm, necessary realm of human nature. Which
is why he claimed, nature, by an absolute and
uncontrollable sick necessity, has determined
us to judge as well as to breathe and feel. It's
an animal faith, a psychological mechanism that
protects us from excessive caution and sterile
suspension of belief. It's a magnificent term.
But it completely reframes causation. It does.
It means we never perceive necessary connection
in external objects. When one billiard ball strikes
another and the second one moves, we do not perceive
the power or force that transfers the motion.
We only perceive the constant. conjunction the
first ball touches the second one moves that's
all so if we feel the necessity where does that
feeling come from it's an internal sensation
The necessity is a quality of perception. It's
the internal feeling of expectation born from
habit that is felt by the mind. And then we mistakenly
project that feeling onto the external world
as if the objects themselves had the power. We
mistake our internal psychological mechanism
for an external physical property. Yes. This
skepticism regarding metaphysical certainty is
the sword he uses to introduce Hume's fork. This
is his crucial filter for separating what can
be known from what should be rejected. Indeed.
Hume's fork divides all objects of human reason
and inquiry into two mutually exclusive camps.
Anything that can't fit into one of these two
camps should be treated with radical skepticism.
First, we have relations of ideas. These are
discovered purely through thought and definition,
independent of the real world. They're a priori.
This is where you find logic, algebra, geometry.
They are certain, demonstrative, and universally
true. And second, matters of fact. These are
dependent on observation, experience, and sensory
input. They're contingent on reality and are
only probable, never certain. Their opposite
is always conceivable. The sun will rise tomorrow,
as a matter of fact. 2 plus 2, 4 is a relation
of ideas. Precisely. And the power of the fork
is that any claim... particularly theological
claims about necessary existence or metaphysical
claims about substances, that purports to be
certain yet requires observational proof, it
fails the test. It's neither a relation of ideas
nor a probable matter of fact. So he uses it
as a devastating tool for clearing out intellectual
clutter and rejecting ungrounded speculation.
Okay, so if Hume used this skeptical knife to
sever the necessary link between cause and effect
in the external world, he next turned that blade
inward. He asked, what evidence do we have for
the necessary connection of our own consciousness?
And this brings us to perhaps the most personally
destabilizing of his philosophical critiques,
the illusion of the self or bundle theory. This
is profoundly radical. He denied the very idea
of a simple, unified, persistent self, the soul
or I, that supposedly endures stably beneath
all our experiences. He argued that when we introspect,
the self is merely a bundle of sensations or
a heap of perceptions. So the self isn't a thing
that has experiences. The self is the experiences
and nothing more. Precisely. It's a collection
of rapidly succeeding perceptions. thoughts,
feelings, pains, memories, connected only by
the psychological mechanisms of causation and
resemblance. Much like the links between external
objects. Exactly. The coherence of the self is
built up through memory and imagination, linking
these fleeting moments together. He describes
the inability to find this essential self in
such memorable language. He says, and this is
key to understanding his pure empiricism, I never
can catch myself at any time without a perception
and never can observe anything but the perception.
So whenever he looks inside, he finds only the
specific sensation of the moment, heat, cold,
light, shade, pain, pleasure. That's all that's
there. Wait, so if the perceptions cease, does
the self cease? Hume argues that when those perceptions
are removed, such as by sound sleep or by death,
he truly cannot be said to exist. There is no
enduring underlying simple substance, no Cartesian
eye that experiences them. It's simply the experience
that is happening. I know this is a point of
huge debates, but many scholars connect Hume's
radical reductionism here directly to the Buddhist
concept of anatta, the no -self theory. It's
a very compelling scholarly connection. Both
traditions reject the notion of a permanent essential
self or soul. Direct influence is debated, of
course. Yeah. But the global Jesuit intellectual
network of the 18th century was extensive. And
there's a strong argument that Hume could have
been exposed to summaries of Eastern philosophical
traditions during his time in France, where he
wrote the treatise. It's interesting to note,
though, that Hume himself expressed doubts about
this particular theory. Yes. In the appendix
to the treatise, he admitted he was profoundly
dissatisfied with his own account of personal
identity. He felt he couldn't satisfactorily
explain the necessary connections between the
perceptions that make up the bundle. He left
it as a knot he couldn't untie. Which suggests
his own skepticism was so powerful it even applied
to his most revolutionary ideas. So if the self
is an illusionary bundle of feelings and passions,
let's talk about those passions in relation to
action. This brings us to his startling conclusion
about practical reason and human motivation.
Hume is the great anti -rationalist when it comes
to behavior and morality. He argues that reason
is utterly inert, that passions or emotions and
desires are the sole drivers of action. He claimed
reason alone is utterly impotent when it comes
to moral judgment or producing human movement.
Which leads to the line for which he is most
famous in moral philosophy. The famous and profoundly
provocative statement. 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. That sounds extremely dramatic. What
does he mean by reason being a slave? Does reason
have no role in human decisions? It has a crucial
but subordinate role. It serves two main functions.
First, it helps us discover the causal connections
between means and ends. So if I desire outcome
Z, reason can tell me that action Y is the most
efficient way to achieve it. Right. And second,
reason helps us ascertain if an object of our
desire actually exists. But reason cannot create
the desire itself, nor can it fundamentally oppose
a passion that is already present. So if I have
a passion for eating an entire cake, reason can't
tell me not to eat the cake. Reason can only
calculate the calories and the subsequent pain,
but the decision still comes down to the battle
of your immediate passion for sweetness versus
your passion for long -term health. The ultimate
motivation is always a passion or an emotion.
And since a passion is an original existence,
reason can't directly oppose it. Only a contrary
passion can. Exactly. This radical shift is what
underpins his moral sentimentalism. If reason
is subordinate, ethics must be grounded elsewhere.
In shared human emotion or sentiment. That's
the core of sentimentalism, a view he shared
with Adam Smith. For Hume, when we call an action
good or bad, we're not making an objective statement
about the world. We're expressing a moral feeling.
And the fact that morality excites passions and
produces action proves that it can't be a conclusion
of abstract reason alone, because abstract reason
is inert. Precisely. But his greatest, most enduring
contribution to ethics isn't the sentimentalism
itself. It's the challenge he laid down. This
is absolutely foundational to modern meta -ethics.
It is. Hume observed that in almost every system
of morality and public policy he encountered,
the writer would seamlessly transition from describing
fact statements of what is the case... ...to
prescribing action statements of what ought to
be done. And he challenged the logical jump between
the two. He demanded the justification for this
inference. How, he asked, could a new relation,
the prescriptive ought... be logically deduced
from a set of descriptive is statements. He wrote
that it seems altogether inconceivable. Just
because humans are physically capable of violence,
it does not mean they ought to be violent. Right.
Just because wealth is distributed unequally,
it doesn't automatically mean it ought to be
redistributed. The implication being that the
shift from description to prescription often
hides an unstated emotional or non -rational
premise. The legacy of that insight is massive.
It deeply influenced later meta -ethical theories
like emotivism. And it remains the key challenge
to any attempt to ground morality in natural
observation. Finally, let's look at how this
highly deterministic worldview, where causes,
effects, and passions all operate predictably
meshes with our common sense notion of human
freedom. Hume was a classical compatibilist.
He was committed to reconciling free will and
determinism. He saw the entire historical debate
as a linguistic quibble, persisting for 2 ,000
years merely because of ambiguous terminology.
He believed that if we just properly define the
terms, necessity and liberty are not only compatible.
But that liberty, in the sense we care about,
actually requires necessity. Okay, that is counterintuitive.
Why does freedom require determinism? Let's start
with his definitions. He defined necessity as
simply the uniformity observable in the operations
of nature. When applied to humans, it just means
our actions proceed predictably from our motives
and character. And liberty. Liberty is a power
of acting or not acting according to the determinations
of the will. It is freedom from external constraint,
what he called the liberty of spontaneity. So,
if I freely choose to raise my arm, and the underlying
necessity means that choice proceeds from my
consistent character and motives, I can be held
responsible. Exactly. Because if our actions
were not necessitated, If they were pure, random
chance, disconnected from our motives or character,
then they couldn't possibly be considered an
expression of our will. If I act purely randomly,
I'm not free and I can't be held responsible.
Right. Freedom, for Hume, requires that actions
proceed from some cause in the character and
disposition of the person. He even weighed in
on the ancient thought puzzle known as Bearden's
Ass. The gonky supposedly dying of indecision
between two equal bales of hay. Hume rejected
the idea that a human could be paralyzed by such
a dilemma. He argued that even in a seemingly
perfect balance of motives, a human will spontaneously
act. Not based on chance. But based on a necessity
driven by the immediate motive, like self -preservation.
This spontaneous action confirms the compatibility.
The freedom is in the spontaneity, but the cause
is still necessitated by the natural function
of the will. If the treatise was a philosophical
failure, Hume's writings on religion were, for
his time, a massive public scandal. Oh yeah.
His reputation in the 18th century was dominated
by these critiques, leading the Church of Scotland
to seriously consider formal heresy charges against
him. He was a profound skeptic, often labeled
an irreligious figure or an atheist. Though Hume
himself likely preferred the term skeptic, his
arguments are still read today as powerful critiques
of both revealed and natural religion. Let's
take the natural history of religion. What was
his core thesis there? He offered a historical
and anthropological view of religion, arguing
that sophisticated monotheistic systems, Christianity,
Judaism, Islam, were not the starting point.
They evolved from simpler, more primitive polytheistic
systems. Right. And the ultimate root of all
religion, he claimed, was not divine revelation
or rational proof, but simple human psychology.
the dread of the unknown, anxiety about the future,
and fear of unpredictable natural forces. He
had a great, almost self -deprecating anecdote
that illustrated just how notorious his religious
reputation was, even among the common folk of
Edinburgh. Yes, the famous fishwife story. Hume
loved to tell how he had accidentally fallen
into a mire or bog near the city. He struggled
to get out until an old fishwife, a local vendor,
approached. And she immediately recognized him
as Hume the atheist. And refused to lend him
a hand. The sources say she eventually relented,
but only after making him declare himself a Christian
and recite the Lord's Prayer. It paints a wonderful
picture of the tension between the intellectual
elite and the public sphere during the Enlightenment.
But let's move to his most analytically influential
religious critique. The devastating argument.
against miracles this argument is brilliant because
it uses his own empirical method the reliance
on constant conjunction and experience to undermine
the very concept of miracles he starts with a
strict definition a miracle is a transgression
of a law of nature by a particular volition of
the deity given that definition how does he instruct
a wise man to evaluate testimony claiming a miracle
occurred the wise man must always balance the
evidence For Hume, the established laws of nature
-like gravity, or water boiling at 100 degrees
Celsius, are the strongest empirical evidence
we possess. Because they're codified through
constant uniform past experience. Exactly. A
miracle. being a singular transgression, directly
contradicts this constant uniform experience.
So on one side of the scale, you have the weight
of all human history and uniform experience proving
the law of nature. On the other, you have the
singular, unique testimony of the miracle claim.
Right. And the wise man, using simple probability,
must always deduct the smaller number of conflicting
observations from the greater number of uniform
observations. So he concludes that the probability
that the testimony is mistaken, fabricated, or
the witness is deceived is always greater than
the probability that a universally established
law of nature has been broken. Always. He used
the famous example of the Indian prince to illustrate
this point. The prince, living in a hot climate,
is told by travelers that in far -off lands,
water becomes so hard it can support a man. And
he refuses to believe it. Hume argues the prince
reasoned justly, based on his own vast, uniform
past experience, that water is always fluid.
For the prince, the testimony of frozen water
was contrary to everything he knew. And Hume
argued that if the miracle were real, it would
either have to be repeatable. in which case it
would cease to be a transgression and become
a new law of nature. Or it could never be rational
to believe it occurred based on testimony alone.
He piled on other points too, noting the issue
of contradictory evidence. Miracles reported
by one religion inherently argue against the
divine authority of all others. He also pointed
out the historical correlation. Miracles seem
to happen mostly in ignorant and barbarous nations.
suggesting a strong link between intellectual
sophistication and rational skepticism. Moving
from revealed religion to natural religion, Hume
is also credited, alongside Darwin, with doing
the most to undermine the teleological or design
argument for God's existence. The argument that
the universe, with its obvious complexity, must
have been designed by an intelligent creator,
much like a watch implies a watchmaker. And Hume's
critique, again, is purely epistemological. It's
based on his own principles. Causation, remember,
relies on constant conjunction. We observe conjunctions
watch and watchmaker, house and builder, and
we make an inference. But the universe is a singular
and unparalleled effect. Right. We have no experience
of other universes being created, botched, or
maintained. We have no external experience to
compare this effect to, and thus no basis to
infer its cause or designer. And he took the
critique further, suggesting that if we must
infer a cause, we can't assume perfection. Through
his skeptical character, Philo, in the dialogues
concerning natural religion. Hume suggested that
if we infer a designer based solely on the evidence
of the world, we can only infer a cause proportional
to the observed effect. And what do we observe?
A world full of pain, error, and inefficiency.
So Phyla suggested that perhaps the universe
was merely one of many worlds botched and bungled
by an incompetent designer, a stupid mechanic.
That's a highly modern, even pre -evolutionary
idea. It is. The idea that design could arise
through trial and error over a long time, rather
than a single perfect act of creation, is often
cited as anticipating aspects of natural selection.
Before we get to the challenging parts of his
legacy, let's briefly expand on the two other
colossal careers Hume pursued, historian and
economist. His career as a historian made him
a celebrity. The history of England was revolutionary
because it broadened the scope of historical
narrative beyond just kings and parliaments.
He incorporated discussions of literature, science,
and the customs of the people. And he used history
to illustrate philosophical lessons. Absolutely.
He used his historical work to champion the gradual
rise of liberty in England and, conversely, to
highlight the destructive effects of what he
called fanaticism, referring primarily to religious
zealotry. And his goal was often to teach moderation
and tolerance by showing the historical consequences
of dogmatism. Right. And then you have his immediate
practical success as an economist. His political
discourses were a massive and immediate hit,
the only work he considered an unqualified success
upon first publication. And he laid the groundwork
for classical economics alongside Adam Smith.
For example, he argued that private property
is not justified by a natural right, but by scarcity
and utility. It's necessary because human beings
are selfish and resources are finite. He also
anticipated aspects of modern monetary theory.
He argued against the idea that a country needs
a specific, quantifiable, nominal amount of money
to thrive. He demonstrated that if a country
doubles its money supply, prices will simply
adjust and the true wealth, the real output and
labor remains the same. And this essay, Of the
Balance of Trade, was so analytically sophisticated
that Paul Krugman called it the first true economic
model. As we conclude this deep dive, we must
address the difficult and crucial details surrounding
Hume's direct involvement with institutions of
slavery and his published writings on race. This
is a critical area, especially given recent historical
research. We have documentation of his direct,
if secondary, involvement in the slave trade.
In 1766, while serving as secretary to the British
embassy in Paris, Hume communicated a business
proposal to his patron, Lord Hertford. And this
proposal involved acquiring a half share of slave
plantations located in Grenada. Yes, an island
recently ceded to Britain. The sources indicate
that Hume was acting as a messenger, but the
content of his letter goes beyond simple secretarial
conveyance. How does the tone of his communication
complicate his involvement? He vouched strongly
for the partners involved, Sir George Colebrooke
and John Stuart, describing them as men of substance
and character. And more significantly, he described
the deal to acquire the plantation, which held
42 enslaved people by 1767, as much more advantageous
than a previous offer. Exactly. That endorsement
suggests more than just passive transmission
of information. And there is also his own financial
history recorded at Coutts Bank. That's another
key detail. The ledger records show that Hume
lent 400 pounds, a very substantial sum at the
time, to John Stewart, one of the partners, shortly
before this plantation proposal was made. The
loan was later repaid with commercial interest.
And this historical evidence has naturally generated
an intense scholarly debate. There are varying
interpretations. Scholars like Peter Hutton and
David Ashton argue that the letter shows Hume
was merely conveying information. And that the
evidence doesn't definitively prove he had a
direct pecuniary interest in the plantation itself.
They maintain he was acting as a high level intermediary.
But other scholars argue that his role was more
active than passive. Right. Interpretations like
those put forth by Danielle Charette and others
argue that by explicitly vouching for the partner's
integrity and calling the venture advantageous,
Hume was actively encouraging the purchase. And
putting his reputation behind the profitability
of a slaveholding enterprise. Which, they argue,
shows a measure of personal hypocrisy when measured
against the Enlightenment ideals he promoted.
The sources also compel us to address the specific,
notorious footnote he added to his essay of national
characters in 1753. This footnote contains Hume's
most explicitly prejudicial speculation regarding
race. He stated that he was apt to suspect the
Negroes and in general all other species of men
to be naturally inferior to the whites. And he
attempted to ground this suspicion empirically,
citing the lack of a civilized nation or any
individual eminent either in action or speculation
of non -white complexion. And his dismissal of
counter evidence was particularly harsh. When
confronted with reports of a learned black individual
in Jamaica, he dismissed it entirely. admired
for very slender accomplishments, like a parrot
who speaks a few words plainly. We should note,
the footnote was later amended, but the core
sentiment remained deeply problematic. In a posthumous
addition, the footnote was amended to restrict
the declaration of inferiority solely to people
of African descent. Regardless of the amendment,
the content is acknowledged by scholars as being
especially shocking and deeply puzzling within
the context of his otherwise rigorous philosophical
method. And the consequences of this legacy are
felt in the present day. Absolutely. The tension
between his philosophical greatness and his documented
racist writings in connection to slavery led
to public action. In September 2020, following
student protests, the University of Edinburgh
renamed the David Hume Tower to 40 George Square.
A direct acknowledgment of the difficulty of
honoring a figure whose works contain such profound
and damaging prejudicial speculation. David Hume's
genius is undeniable. I mean, his willingness
to subject every facet of human experience to
the most rigorous empirical skepticism makes
him a towering figure. But as we've explored,
that genius is complicated. It is. But when we
look purely at the architecture of his ideas,
his influence is unmatched in shifting the direction
of Western thought. He didn't just challenge
old systems. He provided the methodological template
for new ones. We opened by mentioning his influence
on Immanuel Kant. Let's clarify that specific
connection for the listener. Hume's attack on
necessary connection, his argument that causation
is custom, not logical certainty, forced Kant
to fundamentally reexamine the limits of pure
reason. Kant realized that if Hume was right,
that objective science itself was impossible.
So Kant's entire philosophical project in the
Critique of Cure Reason was an attempt to save
science from Hume's skepticism. To find a middle
ground between Hume's radical skepticism and
dogmatic rationalism, yes. And his influence
stretches far into the 20th century, inspiring
scientists who rarely cite Enlightenment philosophers.
Think about Albert Einstein. He specifically
cited Hume's positivism, the rejection of unseen
underlying metaphysical concepts, as a key inspiration
when formulating the theory of special relativity.
He relied on the Humean premise that we should
only trust what can be empirically observed.
Not abstract, unproven concepts. We also mentioned
Karl Popper. Popper explicitly credited Hume's
profound analysis of the problem of induction
with helping him reformulate his philosophy of
science. Popper argued that science doesn't operate
by confirming generalizations, but by trying
to falsify them. A direct response to Hume's
demonstration that induction cannot be rationally
justified. And in the realm of the mind, Hume
is often treated as a foundational text. Jerry
Fodor, a major figure in cognitive science, famously
described the treatise of human nature as the
founding document of cognitive science. Hume's
system of impressions, ideas, and the principles
of association laid the groundwork for understanding
the mind as a system of interconnected perceptions
and mechanisms. His life ended as it was lived,
with clear -eyed skepticism. James Boswell, the
famous biographer, visited Hume shortly before
his death from abdominal cancer and recorded
that Hume remained entirely composed. Stating
sincerely that the idea of life after death was
a most unreasonable fancy. But even facing the
end, he maintained his sense of humor. Adam Smith
recounted Hume's final amusing speculation involving
Charon, the mythical ferryman. Hume imagined
asking Charon for just a small delay, a few more
years, so he could live long enough to witness
the downfall of some of the prevailing systems
of superstition, which he believed was imminent.
To which Charon, the eternal ferryman, replied,
You loitering rogue, that will not happen these
many hundred years. Get into the boat this instant.
A perfect blend of wit and uncompromising philosophical
skepticism. It captures the essence of the man.
And that skepticism brings us back to his most
crucial practical lesson. Hume showed us that
we navigate the fundamental uncertainties of
the world, not through pure, infallible reason,
but through the indispensable, reliable mechanism
of custom and habit. So here's the final provocative
thought we leave with you. Hume's work demonstrated
that our most reliable mechanisms for navigating
the world are psychological and habitual, not
purely rational. What current beliefs in your
professional decisions, your personal principles,
or your daily routines do you rely on purely
out of custom and habit that might not stand
up to the rigorous, uncompromising skepticism
of Hume's fork? Is it a causal link you assume
is necessary? Is it an ought you derive unquestioningly
from an is? Think about that the next time you
assume anything. Thank you for joining us for
this extensive deep dive into the complex and
revolutionary mind of David Hume. We'll see you
next time for the next deep dive.