The Skeptic David Hume

John Locke

Attempts to answer fundamental epistemological questions gave rise to the two major orientations of modern philosophy. The first, as we learned in Chapter 9, is rationalism. The other is known as empiricism, from the Greek root empeiria, meaning "experience." Empiricists believe that all ideas can be traced back to sense data. Abstractions and complex beliefs are said to be combinations and mental alterations of original impressions and perceptions, as when, for example, we imagine a man with a horse's head. Empiricists believe that reason is unable to provide knowledge of reality; such knowledge can only be derived from experience. The strictest empiricists believe that even mathematical and logical principles are derived from experience. A potent form of empiricism emerged with the advent of modern philosophy. Because its three founding philosophers were all British, it has come to be called British empiricism. The earliest of the three British empiricists, John Locke (1632-1704), was disturbed by the confusion and uncertainty surrounding seventeenth-century philosophy and theology. Like Descartes, he was troubled by Scholastic philosophy (Chapter 8), which he had encountered as a student at Oxford. He was especially critical of its emphasis on formal disputations and debates, which he said were "invented for wrangling and ostentation, rather than to discover the truth." Locke's An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, published in 1690, established the groundwork for empiricism as it is generally understood today. John Locke Educated as a physician, Locke was aware of the great changes and progress being generated by science. Trained to rely on his own powers of perception, he pointed out that as a physician, you cannot "wait until you have reached mathematical certainty about the correct treatment" before helping a patient. You have to observe and act based on what you perceive. You must turn to the facts. In the winter of 1670, Locke had a series of philosophical discussions concerning morality and religion with some friends. It wasn't long before the friends found themselves confused and puzzled. Their inability to reach clearly right or wrong answers—in the way a chemist or baker often can—had a profound effect on Locke. He realized he had to take a step back and examine the nature and limits of knowledge before trying to sort out the truth or falsity of specific ideas: After we had awhile puzzled ourselves, without coming any nearer a resolution of those doubts which perplexed us, it came into my thoughts that we took a wrong course; and that before we set ourselves upon inquiries of that nature, it was necessary to examine my own abilities, and see what objects our understanding were, or were not, fitted to deal with. Without some clear idea of the ultimate source of knowledge in a given area, we have little hope for resolving philosophical agreements. If you have ever been involved in a nearly endless and unsettled disagreement over social, moral, political, or religious issues at some casual gathering, you know what Locke experienced. Each person seems to have an unstated set of rules and assumptions regarding what is obviously true and what is ridiculous, which sources of information are reliable and which are not. Without a clearly stated and agreed-upon set of basic principles, such discussions often amount to nothing more than each person repeatedly affirming a set of favored beliefs and denouncing all others. Locke's solution was to study the origins of our ideas to better understand the nature and process of acquiring knowledge. He hoped he could thereby find a way to settle difficult issues. Although his philosophy contains its own inconsistencies, Locke initiated an emphasis on logical rigor and analytic precision that would shake the foundations of many of our most cherished beliefs. He began by calling for philosophers to refocus their attention "outward," on experience.

Chapter Introduction

A friend of mine once told me that her third cousin could move objects by psychokinesis—that is, by mind power. She insisted that she had seen him send ashtrays and glasses across a room, without touching them or leaving his chair, merely by concentrating very deeply. I was intrigued, because I had known this woman for years, and she seemed intelligent and sane to me—yet I had never seen such a phenomenon for myself. I asked to be allowed to witness this amazing feat but was told that, sadly, this remarkable individual had died some years before. This did not surprise me, and I may have been too blunt in saying so. "You don't believe me, do you?" my friend said, obviously annoyed with me. "You never believe anything! You're too skeptical." The New Testament story of the disciple Thomas's refusal to believe that Jesus had returned from the dead until he had examined Jesus for himself—rather than taking the claim on faith—is the source of the expression "Don't be a Doubting Thomas." Suppose, instead, that Thomas were thought of as skeptical, careful, scientific Thomas? Pepe Ramirez/Shutterstock.com A skeptic is a person who demands clear, observable, undoubtable evidence—based on experience—before accepting any knowledge claim as true. The word skepticism (from the Greek skeptesthai, "to consider or examine") refers to both a school of philosophy and a general attitude. Originally, a skeptic was a special kind of doubter, one who withheld judgment while waiting for better evidence. Sextus Empiricus (c. 200) even devised a skeptical grammar, which ends every proposition with "so it seems to me at the moment." There are variations of skepticism, progressing from total doubt about everything to temporary or particular doubt invoked just for the process of analysis—what Descartes called "methodic doubt" (Chapter 9). My friend's reaction was common: She took my demand for firsthand evidence personally. That is, she interpreted it as an attack on her integrity. She would have preferred that I accept her claim as true simply because we were friends. I have reacted to requests for evidence the same way myself. Yet if we are seriously interested in the pursuit of truth in general, or in the truth of a specific claim, we must demand more than the personal testimony of others, no matter how sincerely they may give it or how much we may care for them. Philosophical Query Have you ever been angry or insulted when someone pressed you for evidence? Or has anyone ever gotten angry with you for asking for evidence? Why do you suppose that is? Is it rude to ask "How do you know that?" or "Can you prove that?" when people make claims about important, or even not so important, things? Analyze this question and see if you can justify not asking for evidence. Standards of evidence vary with conditions. The more important the issue is, the stricter our standards must be. And the more important the issue is, the greater is our obligation to demand evidence. Expertise and training—as well as time, interest, and ability—also matter when we are justifying our beliefs. Ideally, we should accept as true only what we can verify for ourselves. Often, however, we must rely on the testimony of qualified experts, but this differs considerably from relying on unverified testimony. My friend was not qualified to determine the genuineness of psychic experience. Accepting her claim at face value would have been unreasonable; it would require discounting my own experience without ever having seen the phenomenon for myself or having read about incontrovertible, repeatable, carefully controlled cases of similar powers. Yet consider how rarely we demand good evidence for beliefs and knowledge claims. We buy so-called health foods on the recommendation of neighbors and fellow students. Political candidates make claims about education, the environment, even moral values. Automobile manufacturers make claims for the reliability and safety of their vehicles. Political action groups make claims concerning abortion racial prejudice, toxic effects, crime rates, drugs, and other hot-button topics. How often have you asked for verification of such claims? When a salesperson makes claims about this refrigerator or that smart phone, do you ask for unbiased supporting data? If you do, how do you, a nonexpert, determine its validity? All these issues involve knowledge claims. In technical language, they are epistemological issues. The study of the theory of knowledge, epistemology, is the branch of philosophy concerned with the origins, quality, nature, and reliability of knowledge. Beginning with Descartes, Western philosophy has been dominated by epistemological issues. Philosophical Query Who is a qualified expert in areas such as psychic phenomena, miracles, nutrition, or philosophy? What is the relationship between the reports of experts and your own experience? When the two conflict, which should you trust? Why? How do you know?

The Limits of Ethics

As we have seen, reason has played a dominant role in Western philosophy. Plato argued that reason's function is to rule the appetites and emotions. The Stoics attempted to control their passions through reason. Descartes attempted to replace the authority of the church with the authority of reason. Descartes was not alone in his vision of reason as the ground of all knowledge, including moral knowledge. The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are sometimes characterized as the Age of Reason. Attempts to ground morals in reason continue in the present. Hume, in contrast, challenged the role of reason in morality in an unprecedented way and achieved results similar to his critiques of theology and metaphysics. Hume insisted that morality is grounded in sentiment, not reason. His devastating attack on any "metaphysic of morals" has had an enormous influence on modern and postmodern conceptions of morality, value judgments, and the possibility of moral knowledge. Immanuel Kant (Chapter 11) would ultimately refer to Hume's work as a "scandal in philosophy." In his Treatise of Human Nature, Hume asserts that "reason alone" can never provide a motive for any action: Nothing is more usual in philosophy, and even in common life, than to talk of the combat of passion and reason, to give the preference to reason, and to assert that men are only so far virtuous as they conform themselves to its dictates. Every rational creature, 'tis said, is oblig'd to regulate his actions by reason; and if any other motive or principle challenge the direction of his conduct, he ought to oppose it, 'till it be entirely subdu'd, or at least brought to a conformity with this common principle. On this method of thinking the greatest part of moral philosophy, ancient and modern, seems to be founded; nor is there an ampler field, as well for metaphysical arguments, as popular declamations, than this suppos'd pre-eminence of reason above passion. ... In order to shew the fallacy of all this philosophy, I shall endeavour to prove first, that reason alone can never be a motive to any action of the will; and secondly, that it can never oppose passion in the direction of the will. Hume did not deny that reason plays a role in making moral judgments. Rather, he argued that reason's role is secondary to the role of moral feelings or sentiments, because reason can never provide ultimate ends: It appears evident that the ultimate ends of human actions can never . . . be accounted for by reason, but recommend themselves entirely to the sentiments and affections of mankind, without any dependence on the intellectual faculties. Ask a man why he uses exercise; he will answer, because he desires to keep his health. If you then enquire, why he desires health, he will readily reply, because sickness is painful. If you push your enquiries farther, and desire a reason why he hates pain, it is impossible that he can ever give any. This is an ultimate end, and is never referred to any other object. Consider the ongoing controversy surrounding gay marriage. To what extent do you think the persistence and intensity of this matter involves moral "sentiment"? Take a close, thoughtful look at the happy couple in this photograph and reflect on the extent to which feelings influence our moral values. According to Hume, what we call "virtues" are traits of character that we find agreeable, and what we call "moral judgments" are matters of taste, feeling, or "sentiment." If there is more to morality than sentiment and taste, what is it? If Hume is right, what is the best way to approach moral disagreements? Douglas J. Soccio According to Hume, although reason has a useful role to play in moral discernment, moral judgments themselves ultimately rest on "some internal sense or feeling which nature has made universal in the whole species." Reason helps us clarify experience. It helps us identify facts. It does not, however, evaluate them: "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."

Summary of Main Points

A skeptic is a person who demands clear, observable, undoubtable evidence based on experience before accepting any claim as true. Empiricism is the belief that all knowledge is ultimately derived from the senses (experience). Empiricists believe that all ideas can be traced to sense data. There are no innate ideas. At birth the mind is a clean slate, or tabula rasa. John Locke claimed that all ideas are copies of the things that caused the basic sensations on which they rest. Today, Locke's copy theory is known as the correspondence theory of truth, and according to this theory, an idea is true if whatever it refers to actually exists. The copy theory generates what is called the egocentric predicament: If all knowledge comes in the form of my own ideas, how can I verify the existence of anything external to them? Locke distinguished between primary qualities and secondary qualities. Primary qualities are sensible qualities that exist independently of any perceiver. Secondary qualities are qualities whose existence depends on a perceiver. Although he rejected Descartes's rationalism and theory of innate ideas, Locke accepted a Cartesian type of dualism, in which mind and matter are viewed as different kinds of substances. Locke's successor, George Berkeley, rejected the correspondence theory, pointing out that there is no fixed "thing" to copy; we know only perceptions. Berkeley's formula is esse est percipi: To be is to be perceived. This view is known as idealism or immaterialism. Berkeley shied away from the logical consequences of immaterialism and posited the existence of a universal perceiver (God) to account for the existence of the external world and regularity of nature. David Hume rejected metaphysical speculation as meaningless and irrelevant to the lives of ordinary people. He asserted that no metaphysical issue was ever clearly and thoroughly settled. Hume modified Locke's theory of ideas by distinguishing between two kinds of perceptions: ideas and impressions. All ideas can be traced to the impressions on which they are based. All ideas are derived from experience. Hume established an empirical criterion of meaning: All meaningful ideas can be traced to sense experience (impressions). Beliefs that cannot be traced to sense experience are technically not ideas at all; they are meaningless utterances. Strict application of the empirical criterion of meaning led Hume to skeptical conclusions regarding some of our most fundamental beliefs. Hume thought that imagination, rather than reason or experience, accounts for the persistence of our belief in the independent existence of an external world and that imagination ultimately overrides reason. Hume argued that the self is only a bundle of impressions and that identity is a mental act, not a property of things. Therefore, personal immortality is a meaningless concept. He also argued that cause and effect are products of imagination and that the argument from motion and the ontological argument are meaningless. According to Hume, the argument from design fails because human experience cannot provide sufficient evidence of order on earth, much less order in the universe. Hume denied the possibility of rationalistic ethics and claims that all moral judgments are based on sentiments. Building on an analysis of the emotional acumen that women have had to develop over centuries in their historical roles as caretakers and household managers, the contemporary feminist philosopher Alison Jaggar notes that traditional, male-dominated Western epistemology has ignored emotions as sources of knowledge or treated them as hindrances. She argues that if we don't care about something, we trivialize or ignore it. Emotions focus our attention on what matters and help us care enough to observe, study, and understand. Jaggar proposes a more inclusive theory of knowledge, one that respects both reason and emotional acuity as necessary sources of knowledge.

Experience Is the Origin of All Ideas

According to Locke, all ideas originate in sensation and reflection. Specifically, he says we can think about things only after we have experienced them. In other words, all ideas originate from sense data. For example, no one born blind can ever have an idea of color, according to this theory. Those of us who are sighted "abstract" the idea of color from specific sense data by reflecting on, say, red, green, yellow, and blue circles. In doing so, we note that they have two common qualities, circularity and color. Our blind friend can trace their shape and thus acquire sensations of circularity, but color, which is only perceived through sight, will remain unknown. As part of his empirical inquiry into the nature of human understanding, Locke attempted to explain and classify different kinds of ideas and the ways we arrange sense data from simple into increasingly complex and abstract ideas. He insisted that all ideas are copies of the things that caused the basic sensations on which they rest. Ideas are less intense copies, or images, of sensations. Your idea of a baseball, for example, is a copy of the set of sensations and impressions you have received from seeing and handling actual baseballs. If your idea of a baseball includes the shape of a cube, it is a poor copy. It does not correspond to reality. This position is known as the copy theory or representation theory or correspondence theory of truth, a term attributed to contemporary philosopher Bertrand Russell. The correspondence theory of truth is a truth test that holds that an idea (or belief or thought) is true if whatever it refers to actually exists. In other words, an idea is defined as true if it corresponds to a fact. The procedure for checking the truth of an idea is called confirmation or verification (see Chapter 17). Favored by empiricists, the correspondence theory of truth is in direct contrast with the coherence theory of truth favored by rationalists (see Chapter 9) and differs from the other major truth theory, the pragmatic theory of truth (see Chapter 15). Locke said that it is as irrational to believe that we can see with other people's eyes as it is to think that we can know things with other people's understandings. DEA PICTURE LIBRARY/Getty Images

Locke's Dualism

Although Locke rejected Descartes's theory of innate ideas, he did agree with Descartes that "something substantial" underlies and holds together the sensible qualities of experience (color, taste, size, shape, location, sound, motion, and such). This substantial something is substance, a complex idea according to Locke: The mind being, as I have declared, furnished with a great number of simple ideas, conveyed in by the senses as they are found in exterior things, or by reflection on its own operations, takes notice also that a certain number of these simple ideas go constantly together; which being presumed to belong to one thing, and words being suited to common apprehensions . . . are called, so united in one subject, by one name; which, by inadvertency, we are apt afterward to talk of and consider as one simple idea, which indeed is a complication of many ideas together: because . . . not imagining how these simple ideas can subsist by themselves, we accustom ourselves to suppose some substratum wherein they do subsist, and from which they do result, which therefore we call substance. The world of explanations and reasons is not the world of existence. — Jean-Paul Sartre Locke proceeds to argue that we have only an obscure idea of substance "in general" He claims that upon analysis, we have no clear, distinct idea of substance itself but only a notion of "such qualities which are capable of producing simple ideas in us." Locke says that if pressed to explain "what is the subject wherein colour or weight inheres," all we can offer is "the supposed, but unknown, support of those qualities we find existing, which we imagine cannot subsist . . . without something to support them." Having affirmed the general idea of substance, Locke next inquires into kinds of substances. He reports that observation and experience reveal that certain sorts of simple ideas seem to cluster together. From these clusters of simple ideas, we form ideas of "a man, horse, gold, water," and so on. According to Locke, although philosophers might have trouble describing it, our everyday experiences confirm the existence of substance: I appeal to every one's own experience. It is the ordinary qualities observable in iron, or a diamond, put together, that make the true complex idea of those substances, which a smith or a jeweler commonly knows better than a philosopher; who, whatever substantial forms he may talk of, has no other idea of those substances, than what is framed by a collection of those ideas which are found in them. According to Locke, the substance that holds "extended things" together, things known through sensible qualities, is matter. Locke claims that upon reflection, the "same thing happens concerning the operations of the mind, viz. thinking, reasoning, fearing, &c." That is, we identify a "thinking substance": . . . some other substance, which we call spirit; whereby . . . supposing a substance wherein thinking, knowing, doubting, and a power of moving, &c., do subsist, we have as clear a notion of the substance of spirit, as we have of body; the one being supposed to be (without knowing what it is) the substratum to those simple ideas we have from without; and the other supposed (with a like ignorance of what it is) to be the substratum to those operations we experiment in ourselves within. Thus, Locke affirms the existence of two substances: matter and mind. So, although Locke rejected Descartes's rationalism and theory of innate ideas, he accepted a Cartesian-type of dualism, in which mind and matter are viewed as different kinds of substance.

The Self

As we have seen, Descartes based modern philosophy on the thinking thing, the self. What could be more certain than the existence of my self? But what exactly does the word self refer to? Applying his empirical criterion of meaning, Hume argues that we do not have any idea of self as it is commonly understood: Where is "the self" located? Where is the mind? Is there any empirical evidence for their existence? © Istockphoto.com/Steve Cole For from what impression cou'd this idea be deriv'd? This question 'tis impossible to answer without a manifest contradiction and absurdity; and 'tis a question, which necessarily must be answer'd, if we wou'd have the idea of self pass for clear and intelligible. But self or person is not any one impression, but that to which our several impressions and ideas are suppos'd to have a reference. If any impression gives rise to the idea of self, that impression must continue invariably the same, thro' the whole course of our lives; since self is suppos'd to exist after that manner. But there is no impression constant and invariable. Pain and pleasure, grief and joy, passions and sensations succeed each other, and never all exist at the same time. It cannot, therefore, be from any of these impressions, or from any other, that the idea of self is deriv'd; and consequently there is no such idea. If we have no specific impression of self, then what are we? Hume gives one of the most intriguing, yet elusive, answers in modern philosophy: For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe any thing but the perception. When my perceptions are remov'd for any time, as by sound sleep; so long am I insensible of myself, and may truly be said not to exist. And were all my perceptions remov'd by death, and cou'd I neither think, nor feel, nor see, nor love, nor hate after the dissolution of my body, I shou'd be entirely annihilated, nor do I conceive what is farther requisite to make me a perfect non-entity. If any one upon serious and unprejudic'd reflexion, thinks he has a different notion of himself, I must confess I can reason no longer with him. All I can allow him is, that he may be in the right as well as I, and that we are essentially different in this particular. He may, perhaps, perceive something simple and continu'd, which he calls himself; tho' I am certain there is no such principle in me. But setting aside some metaphysicians of this kind, I may venture to affirm of the rest of mankind, that they are nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement. In such passages, Hume sounds very much like a Buddhist or Hindu. He has dissolved the self into a flickering series of perceptions with no underlying, constant thing to unite them. What has come to be known as Hume's bundle theory of the self is difficult for most of us to accept. Yet Hume's position is more consistent than are some that are more comforting and popular. Philosophical Query Where and what are "you" in the midst of some exciting experience that totally absorbs your consciousness? That is, what happens to your self when you are not aware of it? What exactly are you aware of when you are self-conscious? A "self," or sweaty palms, an uncomfortable desk, or a boring lecture?

Rejection of Egoism

By asserting that moral judgments are disinterested, Hume rejected egoism. (See Chapters 3, 4, 11, 12, 16, and 17 for more about the relationship of self-interest to morality.) In his forceful attack, he refers to egoism as "a principle . . . supposed to prevail among many." Hume characterizes egoism as the belief that . . . all benevolence is mere hypocrisy, friendship a cheat, public spirit a farce, fidelity a snare to procure trust and confidence, and that while all of us, at bottom, pursue only our private interest, we wear these fair disguises, in order to put others off their guard, and expose them the more to our wiles and machinations. Hume argues that egoism is utterly inadequate as an account of real life. A clear look at the facts makes it plain that we have other motives than these. He rejects egoism as factually inaccurate and overly simplistic, warning that the love of such contrived simplicity "has been the source of much false reasoning in philosophy." He says: The most obvious objection to the selfish hypothesis is that, as it is contrary to common feeling and our most unprejudiced notions, there is required the highest stretch of philosophy to establish so extraordinary a paradox. To the most careless observer there appear to be such dispositions as benevolence and generosity; such affections as love, friendship, compassion, gratitude. Even an act performed out of love is supposed to be "unegoistic"? But you blockheads! — Friedrich Nietzsche Hume's attack on egoism is withering in its clarity and appeal to everyday experience. He rejects and ridicules the complications implicit in the belief that our real motives are always some form of narrow self-interest. Consider, Hume suggests, feelings of grief. Which is more absurd: to assume that all feelings of grief over the deaths of our loved ones are really disguised self-interest or to accept them as we experience them? Are we, Hume asks, ready to believe that our loving pets are really motivated solely by self-interest? Obviously not. The most cursory glance at our actual experiences with animals shows that conditioning (or even instinct) does not adequately describe all acts of animal loyalty and affection. Does this mean that animals can express disinterested benevolence but human beings cannot? Hume thought such an idea was preposterous. According to Hume, pure self-love is another of the fictions that results from rationalistic thinking that loses touch with actual experience because it is not based on empirical facts. When we take our actual experience into account, self-love is not an adequate explanation of human motivation: Where is the difficulty in conceiving, that . . . from the original frame of our temper, we may feel a desire of another's happiness or good, which by means of that affection, becomes our own good, and is afterwards pursued, from the combined motives of benevolence and self-enjoyments? Who sees not that vengeance, from the force alone of passion, may be so eagerly pursued, as to make us knowingly neglect every consideration of ease, interest, or safety; and, like some vindictive animals, infuse our very souls into the wounds we give an enemy; and what a malignant philosophy it must be, that will not allow to humanity and friendship the same privileges which are indisputably granted to the darker passions of enmity and resentment.

David Hume: The Scottish Skeptic

David Hume (1711-1776) stands out in the history of ideas for the fearless consistency of his reasoning. I am aware of few other philosophers who so relentlessly and thoroughly follow the premises and principles on which his or her philosophy rests to such chilling and disturbing conclusions. Many great thinkers ultimately shied away from the logical conclusions of their ideas for personal, social, or religious reasons. Hume refused to do so. So powerful is his analysis that it effectively destroyed many important philosophies that went before it and much of the philosophy, science, and commonsense beliefs that follow it. Ironically, the wielder of perhaps the sharpest philosophical ax was one of the sweetest, most accessible figures in Western philosophy. Hume was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, and raised by his mother under a strict Presbyterian regimen. He attended three-hour morning services, went back for an hour in the afternoon, and joined in family prayers every evening. His father died the year after he was born, leaving his son a small income. Hume enrolled in the University of Edinburgh when he was twelve years old but, after three years, dropped out without a degree, planning to devote himself to philosophy and literature. A short time later, Hume admitted he had lost the faith of his childhood, writing that once he read Locke and other philosophers, he never again "entertained any belief in religion." Upon the whole, I have always considered [David Hume], both in his lifetime and since his death, as approaching as nearly to the idea of a perfectly wise and virtuous man as perhaps the nature of human frailty will permit. — Adam Smith The small income his father left allowed him only the barest existence, and Hume's family tried to persuade him to do something more practical and profitable than just study literature and philosophy. He studied law from 1726 to 1729, but the experience was so unpleasant that he had a breakdown and for a time lost interest in everything. In his own words, "The law appeared nauseous to me." Hume moved to London "to make a very feeble trial for entering into a more active scene of life" though he must have had a somewhat active social life in Scotland, for on March 5 and again on June 25 of 1734 he was accused of being the father of Agnes Galbraith's child. Hume escaped censure by the church because he was out of Scotland, but poor Agnes was required to wear sackcloth in front of the congregation and be put on public display in the pillory for three consecutive Sundays. Meanwhile, Hume was working for a merchant in Bristol, but "in a few months I found that scene totally unsuitable to me." He moved to France, where living expenses were lower, finally settling near Descartes's old college at La Flèche. There the Jesuits allowed him full access to their first-rate library. Already his skeptical, questioning mind and discomfort in the face of any authority not supported by clear evidence stood out. One of the Jesuits described Hume as "too full of himself . . . his spirit more lively than solid, his imagination more luminous than profound, his heart too dissipated with material objects and spiritual self-idolatry to pierce into the sacred recesses of divine truths."

George Berkeley

George Berkeley (1685-1753) was an Anglican bishop who posed one of the most quoted and least understood questions in the history of ideas: Does a tree falling in the forest make a sound if no one is there to hear it? Berkeley's answer is no, and it is based on a clear sense of the predicament Locke's empiricism generated. No sooner do we depart from sense and instinct to follow . . . reason . . . but . . . we are insensibly drawn into uncouth paradoxes, difficulties, and inconsistencies, which multiply and grow upon us as we advance in speculation; till at length, having wandered through many intricate mazes, we find ourselves just where we were, or, which is worse, sit down in a forlorn Scepticism. — George Berkeley From a commonsense point of view, it may seem absurd to deny the existence of a material world, but Berkeley pointed out that on closer examination, it makes more sense to deny the existence of matter than it does to affirm it. Don't pass over this point too quickly. Taking empiricism a logical step further than Locke, Berkeley argues that the material world does not exist. Only ideas exist, and ideas are mental states, not material objects. This makes Berkeley an idealism or immaterialist. The idea of matter existing without mental properties is self-contradictory, for there is no way to conceive of what an unperceived, unexperienced existence would consist of. We can conceive of things only in terms of the perceptions (ideas) we have of them. Berkeley challenged Locke's copy theory of truth by pointing out that the so-called objects Locke thought our ideas correspond to lack any fixed nature. They are constantly changing. There is no "thing" to copy, Berkeley said, only a cluster of constantly changing perceptions: [Some hold that] real things, it is plain, have a fixed and real nature, which remains the same notwithstanding any change in our senses or in the posture and motion of our bodies; which indeed may affect the ideas in our minds, but it were absurd to think they had the same effect on things existing without the mind. . . . How then is it possible that things perpetually fleeting and variable as our ideas should be copies or images of anything fixed and constant? Or, in other words, since all sensible qualities, as figure, size, color, etc., that is, our ideas, are continually changing upon every alteration in the distance, medium, or instruments of sensation—how can any determinate, material objects be properly represented or painted forth by several distinct things each of which is so different from and unlike the rest? Or, if you say it resembles some one only of our ideas, how shall we be able to distinguish the true copy from all the false ones? According to Berkeley, all the qualities we assign to material objects are relative to the perceiver, what Locke called "secondary" qualities. For example, the coffee I am drinking is hot or cold depending on my perception of it. It is absurd to ask if it is really hot or cold. But, you might point out, it has an objective temperature, say 120° Fahrenheit—only, however, when someone measures it, that is, only when someone perceives a thermometer registering 120° Fahrenheit. Even so, you're probably tempted to respond, it does have a certain temperature, regardless of whether someone is aware of it. Does it? What kind of temperature is it if no one anywhere is aware of it? And how can we ever—in fact or in theory—verify the existence of a thing's temperature when no one is aware of it? If there is an "objective, real" temperature, we will never know it. We can know things only in terms of some perception of them through the senses, or as ideas perceived by the mind. And this being so, Berkeley argued, we know only perceptions—not things-in-themselves, only things as perceived. What difference does it make to insist that things exist independently of perceptions? If they do, we have no awareness of them, and they have no effect on us, so they are of no importance to us. When they do affect us, we perceive them. Thus, if no one or no thing were around to perceive the famous tree falling all alone in the forest, it would be absurd to say that it made a sound. In Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous, written in 1713, Berkeley points out that there is no difference between sound as perceived by us and sound as it is in itself. We may define sound in terms of what is perceived: sensations, atmospheric disturbances, decibels, waves, marks on a graph, or whatever, but in all cases sound remains something that is perceived: Philonous: It should follow then, that, according to you, real sounds may . . . never [be] heard. Hylas: Look you, Philonous, you may, if you please, make a jest of my opinion, but that will not alter the truth of things . . . sounds too have no real being without the mind. Berkeley takes the radical—but logically correct—step of concluding that this is true of everything. We know things only as different kinds of ideas about them. Berkeleian ideas imply consciousness, perception. It is self-contradictory to discuss ideas we do not know we have. Philosophical Query Think about the notion of mind as contrasted to the brain and brain states. It seems clear that our behavior, moods, and even thoughts can be influenced by factors we are unaware of. These might include fatigue, hunger, the effects of medication, allergies, neurological disorders, and so on. Could we also have ideas, motives, and emotions we are unaware of? That is, could we have an unconscious mind? It is equally absurd to posit an independent, external reality, for if it exists, we cannot have anything to do with it. If we accept Locke's starting point that all knowledge derives from experience, Berkeley reasons, we must conclude that all knowledge is limited to ideas, because we experience things only as ideas. So-called material or physical states are perceptions, mental acts. Pain is a perception; sweet and sour are perceptions; the moon is a perception; my own body is known to me only as a series of perceptions. Esse est percipi : To be is to be perceived. As Descartes pointed out, there can be no doubt about my existence while I am aware of it: To think is to exist. Berkeley adds that to exist is to be thought about; nothing, not even an unthinking thing, can exist unless something perceives it: The table I write on I say exists; that is, I see and feel it: and if I were out of my study should say it existed; meaning thereby that if I was in my study I might perceive it, or that some other spirit actually does perceive it. ... This is all that I can understand by these and the like expressions. For as to what is said of the absolute existence of unthinking things [matter], without any relation to their being perceived, that to me is perfectly unintelligible. Their esse is percipi; nor is it possible they should have any existence out of the minds or thinking things which perceive them. Had Berkeley continued working out the logical consequences of his position, he would have had to accept a disturbing picture of reality: Only particular, immediate perceptions can be known to exist. Berkeley stopped short of the skeptical conclusions implied by his premises. He introduced God as a guarantee that he had a continuing self, that he existed during deepest sleep, and that there was indeed an external world, safely encapsulated in the never-resting, all-perceiving mind of God. His successor, David Hume, did not stop but pursued skeptical logic to unsettling consequences.

The Limits of Theology

Given his radical view of cause and effect, it is not surprising that Hume rejected all efforts to use causality to prove the existence of God. The cosmological argument and the argument from motion (Chapter 8) were meaningless for him. The ontological argument (Chapter 9) was meaningless as well, because the very qualities ascribed to God—perfection, omniscience, omnipotence, and so forth—do not correspond to specific impressions. They are empty noises. Besides rejecting these arguments, Hume wrote perhaps the most devastating and complete critique of the argument from design, also known as the teleological argument (see Thomas Aquinas's fifth way in Chapter 8). After taking the briefest look at this compelling bit of logical analysis, we can understand why Hume withheld publication of his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion during his lifetime. Recall that the core of the argument from design is the belief that all about us we see evidence of God's handiwork. We perceive order and harmony and beauty throughout the universe. We sense divine purpose in a beautiful sunset or an ocean breeze; we feel God's presence in the miracle of childbirth or the renewing of the seasons. But as Hume points out, that's not the whole picture: "This is not . . . what we expect from infinite power, infinite wisdom, infinite goodness," Hume declares. "Look round this universe. What an immense profusion of beings . . . hostile and destructive to each other . . . contemptible or odious to the spectator! The whole presents nothing but the idea of a blind nature . . . pouring forth from her lap, without discernment or parental care, her maimed and abortive children." © Istockphoto.com/Marcin Pawinski But were this world ever so perfect a production, it must still remain uncertain, whether all the excellences of the work can justly be ascribed to the workman. If we survey a ship, what an exalted idea must we form of the ingenuity of the carpenter, who framed so complicated, useful, and beautiful a machine? And what surprise must we feel, when we find him a stupid mechanic, who imitated others, and copied an art, which, through a long succession of ages, after multiplied trials, mistakes, corrections, deliberations, and controversies, had gradually been improving? Many worlds might have been botched and bungled, throughout an eternity, ere this system was struck out: Much labor lost: Many fruitless trials made: And a slow, but continued improvement carried on during infinite ages in the art of world-making. ... Did I show you a house or palace, where there was not one apartment convenient or agreeable; where the windows, doors, fires, passages, stairs, and the whole economy of the building were the source of noise, confusion, fatigue, darkness, and extremes of heat and cold; you would certainly blame the contrivance, without any farther examination. ... If you find many inconveniences and deformities in the building, you will always, without entering into any detail, condemn the architect. There is even less reason to infer the existence of a good God once one takes a thorough, objective look at life: Christianity does not—and cannot—explain how a God who is infinitely powerful and infinitely loving came to create a universe which turned out to be not very good. — Arnold Toynbee But allowing you, what never will be believed; at least, what you never possibly can prove, that animal, or at least human happiness, in this life, exceeds its misery; you have yet done nothing: For this is not, by any means, what we expect from infinite power, infinite wisdom, infinite goodness. Why is there any misery at all in this world? Not by chance surely. From some cause then. Is it from the intention of the Deity? But he is perfectly benevolent. Is it contrary to his intention? But he is almighty. Nothing can shake the solidity of this reasoning, so short, so clear, so decisive. ... Look round this universe. What an immense profusion of beings, animated and organized, sensible and active! You admire the prodigious variety and fecundity. But inspect a little more narrowly these living existences, the only beings worth regarding. How hostile and destructive to each other! How insufficient all of them for their own happiness! How contemptible or odious to the spectator! The whole presents nothing but the idea of a blind nature, impregnated by a great vivifying principle, and pouring forth from her lap, without discernment or parental care, her maimed and abortive children. I said that I could not imagine being an atheist any time before 1859, when Darwin's Origin of Species was published. "What about Hume?" replied the philosopher. "How did Hume explain the organized complexity of the living world?" I asked. "He didn't," said the philosopher. "Why does it need any special explanation?" — Richard Dawkins Based solely on our observations of human experience, we find insufficient evidence to assume the existence of a good, all-wise, all-powerful God. Imagine what kind of argument Hume could have made had he known of the Holocaust or Darfur. At this point in the dialogue, Hume has the person representing orthodox belief object, asking, "What data have you for such extraordinary conclusions?" Hume makes his most important and devastating point: This is the topic on which I have all along insisted. I have still asserted that we have no data to establish any system of cosmogony [theory of the origins of the universe]. Our experience, so imperfect in itself, and so limited both in extent and duration, can afford us no probable conjecture concerning the whole of things. Strictly speaking, our own little corner of the universe is too small to permit useful generalizations about the whole. To conclude yea or nay about God's existence and nature is beyond the limits of both reason and experience. In a note added to the Dialogues just before his death, Hume stated that "the cause or causes of order in the universe probably bear some remote analogy to human intelligence." But he insisted that this analogy does not suggest that God exists, at least not the God of Judeo-Christian-Islamic religions. For Deeper Consideration When he died, there was a commonly held belief that David Hume was an atheist. Why did so many people believe that he was an atheist (a notion that is still widely held by those who know only a smattering of his philosophy)? What did he assert that might lead to such a conclusion? If Hume wasn't an atheist, what position did he hold in regard to God's existence and nature? In what sense might Hume's position be even more troubling to a theist than atheism?

Moral Sentiments

Hume believed that the task before him was a "question of fact, not of abstract science" and that success was possible only by "following the experimental method, and deducing general maxims from a comparison of particular instances." Using the fact-value distinction, he attempted a reformation of moral philosophy, announcing that it was time to "reject every system of ethics, however subtle or ingenious, which is not founded on fact and observation." Hume's efforts did, indeed, launch a revolution in moral philosophy. He helped establish a method of "ordinary language analysis" that became especially influential in the early part of the twentieth century and whose influence is still significant. (See Chapter 17.) Notice how the empirical criterion of meaning affects Hume's language analysis in the following passage. Also note the role he gives reason: The very nature of language guides us almost infallibly in forming a judgment of [matters of Personal Merit]; and as every tongue possesses one set of words which are taken in a good sense, and another in the opposite, the least acquaintance with the idiom suffices, without any reasoning, to direct us in collecting and arranging the estimable or blamable qualities of [people]. The only object of reasoning is to discover the circumstances on both sides, which are common to these qualities; to observe that particular in which the estimable qualities agree on one hand, and the blamable on the other; and thence to reach the foundation of ethics, and find those universal principles, from which all censure or approbation is ultimately derived. In all cases of moral judgment, what we call virtues are the traits that we, in fact, find agreeable. The feeling of agreeableness is what makes them virtues to us. We do not find them agreeable because they are virtues. We call them virtues because we find them agreeable. That's an important distinction. We sometimes lose sight of the fundamental nature of all value judgments because we use different terms to distinguish among variations of experience. Put another way, different pleasures are like different flavors; all the good flavors are pleasing, yet we call some sweet, some sour, some chocolate, some lime, some fruity, some salty. Similarly, all unpleasant sentiments are alike, yet we call some disgusting, some ugly, some evil, some bad, some cowardly, and so forth. What, then, is unique to that "peculiar kind" of sentiment that Hume calls moral? Hume says that moral sentiment is a disinterested reaction to character (motive). Moral virtue is disinterested approbation (liking or approval) of character or motive. Moral vice is disinterested disapprobation (disliking or disapproval) of character or motive. According to Hume, careful language analysis reveals that, as a matter of fact, moral judgments are disinterested judgments of character.

The Facts, Just the Facts

Hume's analysis of moral judgments resembles his analysis of causality. Recall that, according to Hume, we do not actually perceive "necessary connection" but, rather, associate the feeling of necessity with certain related events (events constantly conjoined). Moral judgments are like causal judgments: They are mental associations or projections, not perceptions of facts. When we like a certain quality, we call it a virtue or label it "good" or "right." When we dislike something, we call it a vice or label it "wrong" or "bad." These evaluations are not derived from reason but from experience. It is "just a fact" that a certain combination of conditions produces cold or heat; likewise, it is "just a fact" that we associate some experiences with good feelings (these are desired) and some with bad feelings (these are disliked). In other words, through experience, we learn to associate certain facts with positive sentiments (being good or desired) and other facts with negative sentiments (being bad or disliked). The facts themselves are value neutral. In the important and influential Part I of Book III of his Treatise, Hume makes a crucial distinction between facts and values (evaluations of facts). According to Hume, facts themselves are valueless. Moral judgments (like all other evaluations) are not judgments of facts but reports of moral sentiments or feelings. Hume's fact-value distinction has exerted tremendous influence on all moral philosophy since. In the Treatise he says: But can there be any difficulty in proving, that vice and virtue are not matters of fact, whose existence we can infer by reason? Take any action allow'd to be vicious: Willful murder, for instance. Examine it in all lights, and see if you can find the matter of fact, or real existence, which you call vice. In whichever way you take it, you find only certain passions, motives, volitions and thoughts. There is no matter of fact in the case. The vice entirely escapes you, as long as you consider the object. You can never find it, till you turn your reflexion into your own breast, and find a sentiment of disapprobation, which arise in you towards this action. Here is a matter of fact; but 'tis the object of feeling, not of reason. It lies in yourself, not in the object. So that when you pronounce any action or character to be vicious, you mean nothing, but that from the constitution of your nature you have a feeling or sentiment of blame from the contemplation of it. Vice and virtue, therefore, may be compar'd to sounds, colours, heat and cold, which according to modern philosophy, are not qualities in objects, but perceptions in the mind. To fully grasp what Hume is saying, it helps to distinguish between descriptive language and normative language. Descriptive language—as the name suggests—is devoid of all subjective, evaluative characterizations. Using Hume's example of "willful murder" we might expect to find descriptive language in a police report: "Dean Fetters shot J. Scott Vargas in the chest six times. Vargas fell to the floor. He lost three quarts of blood and died at 6:15 p.m." and so on. No matter how precise and elaborate a purely factual description of the circumstance is, it will contain no moral judgments. Indeed, the moral judgment of murder is like the legal judgment of murder. Although we base both judgments on our beliefs about the facts, murder (in either the moral or legal sense) is an interpretation of the facts—not a description or observation. No one sees murder. We see Fetters shoot Vargas. We do not see murder. In a court of law, we decide murder (or not). In the moral case, we react subjectively to the facts and feel murder (or not). Moral judgments, according to Hume, are like judgments about art or food—matters of moral taste or sentiment.

Hume's Skeptical Empiricism

Hume's philosophy rests on the rejection of overly abstract, obscure, bloated speculations. Hume found most metaphysical speculation irrelevant to the lives of ordinary people. It was poorly worded, unclear, and based on unverified assumptions; it was also, he observed, never-ending. No metaphysical issue was ever clearly and thoroughly settled. For each theory about the soul or nature or reality, there were opposing theories and modifications, apparently infinite in number. One has no knowledge of the sun but only of an eye that sees a sun, and no knowledge of the earth but only of a hand that feels an earth. — Arthur Schopenhauer Hume thought such "abstruse speculation" was useful only to individuals with some theological motive, who, "being unable to defend [their views] on fair grounds, raise these entangling brambles to cover and protect their weaknesses." The only way to rid ourselves of these pointless excursions, he claimed, is to inquire seriously and thoroughly into the nature of human understanding, "and show, from an exact analysis of its powers and capacity, that it is by no means fitted for such remote and abstruse subjects." In other words, Hume continued the "epistemological turn" moving further away from metaphysics than Locke and Berkeley had. Although he said we must "cultivate true metaphysics with some care in order to destroy the false," Hume moved modern philosophy firmly into the realm of epistemology: Accurate and just reasoning is the only catholic remedy, fitted for all persons and all dispositions; and is alone able to subvert that abstruse philosophy and metaphysical jargon, which, being mixed up with popular superstition, renders it in a manner impenetrable to careless reasoners, and gives it the air of science and wisdom.

Personal Immortality

If we cannot speak clearly about the self, what happens to the common belief that the self (or the soul) survives after bodily death? The sceptic wishes, from considerations of humanity, to do all he can with the arguments at his disposal to cure the self-conceit and rashness of the dogmatists. — Sextus Empiricus Hume says, in his straightforward fashion, that there can be no persistent identity for us. We speak of "the oak tree" in the backyard, but, in fact, each time we see it, "the oak tree" is different. It may have a different number of leaves, and certainly it has changed in some ways, even when we cannot discern these changes. Any change in a thing changes its identity. In what sense can a two-hundred-pound man who has been married twice and fathered children be the same person who was once a fifty-pound third-grader? In what sense are you the same person who began reading this book? Your mind—or brain—has different ideas. Your body has different cells. As Heraclitus noted, "We cannot step twice into the same river, for the water into which we first stepped has flowed on." In other words, identity is not a property of things but a mental act. Our minds confer identity on things; we do not perceive it. A self is merely a habitual way of discussing certain perceptions: The whole of this doctrine leads us to a conclusion, which is of great importance in the present affair, viz. that all the nice and subtile questions concerning personal identity can never possibly be decided, and are to be regarded rather as grammatical than as philosophical difficulties. ... We have no just standard, by which we can decide any dispute concerning the time, when [things] acquire or lose a title to the name of identity. All the disputes concerning the identity of connected objects are merely verbal, except so far as the relation of parts gives rise to some fiction or imaginary principle of union, as we have already observ'd. Strictly speaking, Hume is correct. We do not perceive identity. Yet something gives order and continuity to our experiences, and Hume does not deny that. Rather, he insists on clearer, more precise talking, reasoning, and thinking about this and other important matters. In the process, Hume challenges the limits of reason and, perhaps, of knowledge.

Impressions and Ideas

In An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Hume set out to modify Locke's theory of ideas in a way that removed any metaphysical residue. He began by pointing out the very obvious difference between, say, the painful perception of excessive heat or the pleasure of comforting warmth and the memory of such perceptions. There is also, he noted, a difference between anticipating a perception in the imagination and actually perceiving it. He says, "The most lively thought is still inferior to the dullest sensation." This kind of distinction also applies to "mental perceptions," such as anger and hate. Hume thought Locke was correct in claiming that thought is a "faithful mirror, and copies objects truly." But he reminds us not to overlook a vital fact: The copies are always duller and fainter than the original perceptions on which they are based. Hume proposes that we distinguish "ideas" from "impressions": Here therefore we may divide all perceptions of the mind into two classes or species, which are distinguished by their different degrees of force and vivacity. The less forcible and lively are commonly denominated Thoughts or Ideas. The other species wants a name in our language, and most others. ... Let us, therefore, use a little freedom, and call them Impressions; employing that word in a sense somewhat different from the usual. By the term impression, then, I mean all our more lively perceptions, when we hear, or see, or feel, or love, or hate, or desire, or will. And impressions are distinguished from ideas, which are the less lively perceptions, of which we are conscious, when we reflect on any of those sensations or movements above mentioned. More careful analysis of ideas, no matter how fanciful, creative, or original, reveals that "all this creative power of the mind amounts to no more than the faculty of compounding, transposing, augmenting, or diminishing the materials afforded us by the senses and experience." In other words, all ideas can be traced to impressions and, thus, are derived from experience, even if they become so abstracted and diluted that they no longer resemble any identifiable impressions. If you doubt this, Hume says the only way to refute him is to produce an idea not derived from impressions or from combining and altering the ideas that impressions generate. Modifying Locke's copy theory of ideas, Hume developed an empirical test of meaning: When we entertain, therefore, any suspicion that a philosophical term is employed without any meaning or idea (as is a bit too frequent), we need to enquire, from what impression is that supposed idea derived? And if it be impossible to assign any, this will serve to confirm our suspicion. By bringing ideas into so clear a light we may reasonably hope to remove all dispute, which may arise, concerning their nature and reality. The empirical criterion of meaning holds that all meaningful ideas can be traced to sense experience (impressions). Beliefs that cannot be reduced to sense experience are technically not "ideas" at all: They are meaningless utterances.

Locke's Rejection of Innate Ideas

In Chapter 9, we learned that Descartes, as a rationalist, believed in a special class of ideas known as a priori or innate ideas. So-called innate ideas are truths that are not derived from observation or experience; they are characterized as being certain, deductive, universally true, and independent of all experience. Examples of innate ideas include mathematical equivalences, such as and deductive principles of reason, such as "Every event has a cause" and "All triangles contain 180°." In the Meditations, Descartes based a major part of his case for the certainty of reason—as well as for general reliability of the senses and knowledge of the existence of an external world—on the clarity and distinctness of "the innate idea of God" (see Chapter 9). But if Locke's view proves to be the correct one, Descartes's entire project collapses. Whereas Descartes's prototype of reason was modeled after mathematical (deductive) reasoning, Locke's model was fashioned from his experiences as a physician. In Locke's estimation, Cartesian-style speculation (abstract thinking modeled after geometric method) can at best "amuse our understanding with fine and useless speculations." It cannot, however, adequately deal with concrete problems. When used for more than amusement, Cartesian-type reasoning is dangerous because it distracts "our inquiries from the true and advantageous knowledge of things." All that can result from such "idle speculation," suggests Locke, is "to enlarge the art of talking and perhaps [lay] a foundation for endless disputes." It cannot provide useful knowledge, the way, say, Isaac Newton's new scientific reasoning could. Locke accused the rationalists of labeling their pet ideas "innate" in order to convince others to accept them secondhand, without question: We may as rationally hope to see with other men's eyes, as to know by other men's understandings. So much as we ourselves consider and comprehend of truth and reason, so much we possess of real and true knowledge. The floating of other men's opinions in our brains, makes us not one jot the more knowing, though they happen to be true. When men have found some general propositions that could not be doubted of as soon as understood, it was, I know, a short and easy way to conclude them innate. This being once received, it eased the lazy from the pains of search, and stopped the inquiry of the doubtful concerning all that was once styled innate. And it was of no small advantage to those who affected to be masters and teachers, to make this the principle of principles,—that principles must not be questioned. . . . [This] put their followers upon . . . [a] posture of blind credulity. From Locke's point of view, Descartes's attempt to introduce a method of inquiry that would free us from the dogmatic shackles of Scholasticism merely results in another dogmatism—a rationalistic one. Locke argued that without appealing to the ultimate test of experience, reason has no "ground," or standard, for distinguishing truth from fantasy. Modifying a characterization used by some rationalistic philosophers, who compared the mind to a pantry well stocked with "innate ideas," Locke suggested that the mind is better compared to an empty pantry, waiting to be stocked by experience. But Locke's most famous comparison was to describe the mind at birth as a completely blank tablet, or clean slate, a tabula rasa , to use the Latin equivalent: All ideas come from sensations or reflection—Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas:—How comes it to be furnished? . . . Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge? To this I answer, in one word, from EXPERIENCE. In that all our knowledge is founded; and from that it ultimately derives itself.

The Limits of Reason

In a sense, Hume stops at the first part of Berkeley's position: The mind has never anything present to it but the perceptions, and cannot possibly reach any experience of their connexion with objects. The supposition of such a connexion . . . is, therefore, without any foundation in reasoning. We have no way of empirically establishing the independent existence of an external world, or of what many of us mean by "reality." We can only know our own perceptions, ideas, and experiences: As several impressions appear exterior to the body, we suppose them also exterior to ourselves. The paper, on which I write at present, is beyond my hand. The table is beyond the paper. The walls of the chamber beyond the table. And in casting my eye towards the window, I perceive a great extent of fields and buildings beyond my chamber. From all this it may be infer'd, that no other faculty is requir'd, besides the senses, to convince us of the external existence of body. But to prevent this inference, we need only weigh the three following considerations. First, That, properly speaking, 'tis not our body we perceive, when we regard our limbs and members, but certain impressions, which enter by the sense; so that in ascribing a real and corporeal existence to these impressions, or to their objects, is an act of the mind as difficult to explain, as that which we examine at present. Secondly, Sounds and tastes, and smells, tho' commonly regarded by the mind as continu'd independent qualities, appear not to have any existence in extension, and consequently cannot appear to the senses as situated externally to the body. ... Thirdly, Even our sight informs us not of distance or outness (so to speak) immediately and without certain reasoning and experience, as is acknowledg'd by the most rational philosophers. If, as Hume thought, there is no rational evidence whatsoever for belief in an external reality, then why is the notion so popular? Hume suggests that the imagination accounts for the universal notion of the independent existence of an external world. It is the nature of the imagination to complete and fill in gaps between perceptions. If we regularly experience very much the same perceptions—say, of the oak tree in the yard or our own face—we overlook the gaps between different perceptions. Hume says we "feign," or fabricate, continuity. I assume that because my face looks "the same" this morning as yesterday morning, it has existed continuously all night (and at other times) when I had no perception of it. It is easier to indulge in abstract thought than it is to exist. — Søren Kierkegaard Further, our experiences tend to occur with a kind of pattern or regularity, which Hume refers to as coherence. That is, when I turn my head to the left, my view in the mirror is a particular perception. When I tilt forward, I have a completely different perception, and so on. When I turn around and use a hand mirror to examine the thinning hair on the back of my head, I have yet another perception. What I never have is an impression of my whole head—and neither do you have an impression of my whole head. No one does. But because my various views always follow a pattern, my imagination feigns, or fabricates, an idea of my whole head. According to Hume, this process explains our belief in an external world. This "natural quality" of the mind is much more powerful than logical reasoning; it always reasserts itself after being challenged on logical grounds: There is a great difference betwixt such opinions as we form after a calm and profound reflection, and such as we embrace by a kind of instinct or natural impulse, on account of their suitableness and conformity to the mind. If these opinions become contrary, 'tis not difficult to foresee which of them will have the advantage. As long as our attention is bent upon the subject, the philosophical and study'd principle may prevail; but the moment we relax our thoughts, nature will display herself, and draw us back to our former opinion. ... If Hume is correct, nature and reason are adversaries: "Nature is obstinate, and will not quit the field, however strongly attack'd by reason; and at the same time reason is so clear in the point, that there is no possibility of disguising her." A completely nonrational life would be barely human, however. Even the most primitive, nontechnical, "natural" cultures depend on reason. What Hume suggests is a kind of fluctuating balance between reason and nature, or between logic and emotion. His skepticism indicates that a completely rational view of reality is not possible, or at least not for more than brief, concentrated periods. It suggests that reason, the great ideal of so many philosophers, is, in fact, the slave of emotions, shaped by psychology and biology. Philosophical Query Have you been able to take Hume's strictest claims seriously? That is, have you seriously considered the possibility that we lack knowledge of the external world? Discuss some factors that make taking this idea seriously so difficult. Can you spot any errors in Hume's reasoning?

Primary and Secondary Qualities

In addition to distinguishing between two kinds of substance, Locke distinguished between two kinds of qualities. Primary qualities are sensible qualities that exist independently of any perceiver. Shape, size, location, and motion are examples of primary qualities. Secondary qualities are qualities whose existence depends on a perceiver. Examples of secondary qualities include color, sound, taste, and texture. Thus, we can say that primary qualities are objective properties of things; they exist in the object. Secondary qualities depend on—"exist in"—a knowing or perceiving subject; thus, they are said to be subjective properties. We have seen the importance of this basic objective-subjective distinction many times. It is at the heart of the quarrels between the Sophists and Plato, as well as the earliest efforts of philosophers to identify reality and to distinguish it from appearance. Locke's distinction between primary qualities (located in independently existing material objects) and secondary qualities (located in subjective mental acts and perceptions) is important because so much is riding on it. If primary qualities do not exist, then what of the possibility of objective knowledge? What can we know of the existence of an independent reality? In other words, some real distinction between primary and secondary qualities seems necessary for confirmation of the "world of common sense." The "world of common sense" is simply a term for the widely held view that an objective world exists independently of our perceptions and that it exists "out there" and not simply as a figment of our imaginations or mental construct.

Locke's Egocentric Predicament

Locke holds a position known as epistemological dualism, the view that knowing contains two distinct aspects: the knower and the known. Given the basic empiricist premise that all knowledge comes from our own ideas, which in turn are based on our own sensations and perceptions, epistemological dualism presents us with a fundamental problem: If all knowledge comes in the form of my own ideas based on sense data, how can I verify the existence of anything external to the sensations that constitute sense data? That is, won't the very process of verification take place within the realm of my own ideas? This problem has been termed Locke's egocentric predicament because Locke's copy theory seems to put us in the egocentric position of being able to know only a world of our own mental construction, a self-limited world. Indeed, if there is no external world, can there be any mind other than my own? How could I know? How could I distinguish another mind from my own if I only know my own subjective perceptions? "If Physics Is to Be Believed" We think that the grass is green, the stones are hard, and the snow is cold. But physics assures us that the greenness of the grass, the hardness of the stones, and the coldness of snow are not the greenness, hardness, and coldness that we know in our own experience, but something very different. The observer, when he seems to himself to be observing a stone, is really, if physics is to be believed, observing the effects of the stone upon himself. Bertrand Russell, Our Knowledge of the External World as a Field for the Scientific Method in Philosophy (Chicago: Open Court, 1915). And if, as Locke suggests, all true ideas are based on sense data that correspond to something else, how can we ever verify the objective, independent existence of an external reality? How can we ever apply Locke's own standards of verification to his notion of primary qualities? At this point, it seems as if all I can know are my own perceptions (secondary qualities). As soon as I am aware of them, I have labeled and organized them. That is, even if external objects exist, the process of perceiving sense data is a process of becoming aware of my ideas. I don't ever seem to be able to actually experience things-in-themselves. If, as Locke claims, my ideas are "messages" from my senses, how can I—or anyone else—verify that the messages come from independently existing things? Locke himself asks, "How shall the mind, when it perceives nothing but its own ideas, know that they agree with things themselves?" Suppose that a [plain] man meets a modern philosopher, and wants to be informed what smell in plants is. The philosopher tells him that there is no smell in plants, nor in anything but the mind; that it is impossible there can be smell but in a mind; and that all this hath been demonstrated by modern philosophy. The plain man will, no doubt, be apt to think him merry. — Thomas Reid Locke tries to avoid the egocentric predicament by asserting that we "somehow know" that mental and physical substances—and an objective external reality—exist. We just don't have a clear idea of the difference between minds and bodies or other aspects of ultimate reality: Sensation convinces us that there are solid extended substances [matter and bodies]; and reflection that there are thinking ones [minds, souls]; experience assures us of the existence of such beings; and that one has the power to move body by impulse, the other by thought; this we cannot have any doubt of. Experience, I say, every moment furnishes us with clear ideas both of one and of the other. But beyond these ideas, as received from their proper sources, our faculties will not reach. In other words, Locke holds on to both a commonsense view of reality and his copy theory of truth, even though he cannot verify either by appealing to the copy theory. In spite of his major differences with Descartes, Locke draws surprisingly similar conclusions for similar reasons. Both Locke and Descartes shied away from pursuing the logical consequences of their basic premises. Descartes was able to establish the momentary certainty of the cogito but had difficulty moving beyond his own mind when he attempted to provide a certain foundation for the external world and God's existence. Locke was able to demonstrate the importance of experience as an element of knowledge and show that many of our ideas are based on sensation and experience. He was also able to show the inadequacy of pure reason as a foundation for all knowledge. But, like Descartes, Locke was unable to move from direct knowledge of his own ideas to direct knowledge of external reality. Pursued to its logical conclusion, Locke's empiricism does seem to end in the egocentric predicament. If it does, not only are we denied knowledge of an external, independent reality, but we are also denied the possibility of knowing God, for what simple sensations and experiences can there be on which the idea of God rests? Locke chose, in the end, to affirm certain beliefs at the expense of philosophical consistency. The second of the British empiricists tried to be more consistent. Philosophical Query Reflect on the claim that ideas are copies of sensations by considering these ideas: love, God, perfection, wisdom. Can you identify the precise sensations to which they correspond?

Commentary

Scepticism is . . . a form of belief. Dogma cannot be abandoned; it can only be revised in view of some more elementary dogma which it has not yet occurred to the sceptic to doubt; and he may be right in every point of his criticism, except in fancying that his criticism is radical and that he is altogether a sceptic. — George Santayana In the end, Hume compared full-blown skepticism to doubting the existence of an external reality, pointing out that the issue cannot be settled logically and rationally. No one can actually live as a skeptic: To whatever length anyone may push his speculative principles of scepticism, he must act . . . and live, and converse like other men. ... It is impossible for him to persevere in total scepticism, or make it appear in his conduct for a few hours. Having reasoned carefully and thoroughly, without shying away from what he discovered, no matter how alien to common sense or established knowledge and custom, no matter how foreign to his heart's desire, the great archetype of the skeptic expresses a timeless lament in his own fashion: Where am I, or what? From what causes do I derive my existence, and to what condition shall I return? Whose favour shall I court, and whose anger must I dread? What beings surround me? and on whom have I influence, or who have influence on me? I am confounded with all these questions, and begin to fancy myself in the most deplorable condition imaginable, inviron'd with the deepest darkness, and utterly depriv'd of the use of every member and faculty. Most fortunately it happens, that since reason is incapable of dispelling these clouds, nature herself suffices to that purpose, and cures me of this philosophical melancholy and delirium. ... I dine, I play a game of backgammon, I converse, and am merry with my friends; and when after three or four hours' amusement, I wou'd return to these speculations, they appear so cold, and strain'd and ridiculous, that I cannot find in my heart to enter them any farther. What, then, is the point of these difficult and frustrating skeptical inquiries if, in the end, not even Hume takes them seriously? Ah, but he does take them seriously. Using careful observation and analysis, Hume raises important points about both the limits of reason and the needs of the human heart. Hume exposes cloudy and meaningless language and bogus theorizing. He shows clearly the ultimate inadequacy of rational and empirical efforts to prove God's existence or infer His nature. In Hume's own time, a great scientific revolution had already established the force and usefulness of the scientific method. His analysis of cause and effect, as he acknowledges, does not destroy science but, rather, modifies a bit of what some see as its arrogance. Neither science nor theology can explain the ultimate origins of life or the ultimate nature of reality. Hume has shown us how little we actually know of the most important and most common aspects of existence: self, personal identity, cause and effect, reality, the external world, the universe, and God. Read correctly, I think, Hume reveals that the power of logic and reason are, nevertheless, not all-powerful. He also shows that many of the great theological and metaphysical beliefs to which so many are devoted are barely intelligible. In other words, Hume teaches us that neither the scientist nor the philosopher nor the priest has the method and the answer to timeless questions. Hume reminds us that there is no absolute certainty in life, only enough uniformity to live reasonably well, if we are lucky. He also shows that belief without reason is often meaningless but that a life based solely on reason is not possible. We live and act on what George Santayana calls animal faith: a force within us that trusts something in spite of the limits of our experience and reason. Hume, the archetypal skeptic, suggests that a person will always be more than philosophy, religion, or science can hope to know: It seems, then, that nature has pointed out a mixed kind of life as the most suitable to the human race, and secretly admonished them to allow none of these biases to draw too much, so as to incapacitate them for any other occupations and entertainments. Indulge your passion for science, says she, but let your science be human, and such as may have a direct reference to action and society. Abstruse thought and profound researches I prohibit, and will severely punish, by the pensive melancholy which they introduce, by the endless uncertainty in which they involve you, and by the cold reception which your pretended discoveries shall meet with, when communicated. Be a philosopher; but amidst all your philosophy, be still a [human being].

The Limits of Science

Scientific reasoning rests on a pattern of inductive reasoning, which results in generalized rules or principles. Simplistically, induction reasons from the particular to the general, or from "some" to "all." Scientific principles are never based on experience with all things of a certain kind. Newton did not have to observe the behavior of all bodies to conclude that they are subject to gravity. He based his conclusion on the behavior of just some bodies. Scientists assume that such inferences are reliable because they identify causal patterns. In Hume's time, cause and effect were defined in terms of a necessary connection. That is, A was said to cause B if the occurrence of A always and without exception was followed by the occurrence of B. But if Hume's epistemology is correct, how can we perceive the actual connection, the causal relationship? Strictly speaking, all we actually observe is A followed by B. We observe constant conjunction. That is, a perception of A is always (or so far) followed by a perception of B. But that is a temporal sequence, not a necessary connection. If Hume is correct, there is no empirical evidence for the existence of cause and effect: We have sought in vain for an idea of power or necessary connexion in all the sources from which we could suppose it to be derived. It appears that, in single instances of the operation of bodies, we never can, by our utmost scrutiny, discover anything but one event following another, without being able to comprehend any force or power by which the cause operates, or any connexion between it and its supposed effect. The same difficulty occurs in contemplating the operations of mind on body—where we observe the motion of the latter to follow upon the volition of the former, but are not able to observe or conceive the tie which binds together the motion and volition, or the energy by which the mind produces this effect. The authority of the will over its own faculties and ideas is not a whit more comprehensible: So that, upon the whole, there appears not, throughout all nature, any one instance of connexion which is conceivable by us. All events seem entirely loose and separate. One event follows another; but we can never observe any tie between them. They seem conjoined, but never connected. And as we can have no idea of any thing which [is not based on an impression], the necessary conclusion seems to be that we have no idea of connexion or power at all, and that these words are absolutely without any meaning, when employed either in philosophical reasonings or common life. It follows from this definition of cause, that night is the cause of day, and day the cause of night. For no two things have more constantly followed each other since the beginning of the world. — Thomas Reid What do we observe that we call cause and effect? Hume answers that we observe a series of recognizable impressions and that we come to expect the first part of the series to be followed by the second part. When we are correct, we assume that the connection is causal. But we cannot observe that one event must follow the other. All we know is that one event happens to follow another. We may have observed this pattern countless times, but that does not logically justify inferring any sort of necessity. In other words, the mind creates the ideas of causality and necessity; we do not observe them. The best we can do is take for granted that the future will resemble the past: There is no way to prove that it must. We are psychologically constructed so that we have no choice but to believe in cause and effect. And for the most part, our inferences regarding the predictability and uniformity of experience have been borne out. But, Hume cautions, we should not forget that the real origin of science lies in the operation of the human mind. We believe in an independent, external reality because we cannot help it.

The Skeptical Masterpiece

The Jesuits were correct in one aspect of their assessment of Hume, for they recognized a mind given to no allegiance but its own experiences, interpreted in an unforgiving rational light. While in France, Hume had what contemporary philosopher Richard Watson calls a "skeptical crisis." In six weeks he gained sixty pounds, and he remained a "fat, jolly fellow for the rest of his life." He also completed the first two books of his powerful and disturbing Treatise of Human Nature. The refutation of skepticism is the whole business of philosophy. — Rush Rhees In 1737, Hume returned to England, hoping to publish the Treatise and immediately ran into objections from publishers. In December 1737 he wrote, "I am at present castrating my work, that is, cutting out its noble parts, . . . endeavoring it shall give as little offense as possible." Hume found most resistance to his analysis of miracles. He agreed to remove the most offensive passages but did not destroy them. In this censored form, the two-volume Treatise was published anonymously in January 1739. Hume received fifty pounds and twelve copies as his total payment. At the age of twenty-seven, he had written one of the major works of modern philosophy. In the Treatise, Hume makes compelling arguments against materialism, the possibility of a spiritual, supernatural reality, and personal immortality—this in the watered-down version! Pushing beyond Locke and Berkeley, Hume argued that neither matter nor mind exists. (A standing joke at the time referred to Berkeley and Hume with the slogan "No matter; never mind.") Even in Hume's time being overweight was subject to scorn. But as the philosopher Richard Watson notes in his delightful book The Philosopher's Diet, "Hume was a wonderful man. He and Benjamin Franklin used to have grand times together in Paris, eating and drinking and playing whist, and pulling bluestocking ladies down to sit on their fat laps." David Hume (1711-76) 1766 (oil on canvas), Ramsay, Allan (1713-84)/Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh, Scotland/The Bridgeman Art Library International The uncensored version of the Treatise does not stop there. Hume ultimately reduces reason to the "slave of the passions" and alters the conventional picture of the nature of science by denying cause and effect as they are generally understood. Thus Hume challenged established religious beliefs, moral judgments, reason and rationalism, earlier forms of empiricism, and the certainty of science. He denied the existence of a "fixed self," the possibility of personal immortality, and the possibility of miracles. It would not be surprising if such a book provoked a great storm of controversy. Ultimately, Hume's book did just that, but not among the general public and not right away. The second, uncensored, edition of the Treatise was not published until after Hume's death.

Emotions Are Also Reasons

To nonphilosophers, Hume's refusal to ignore moral and other sentiments may seem trivially obvious. After all, what moderately aware person doesn't realize that people are not, cannot, and should not be, pure reasoning machines? But before we succumb to easy, historically naive cynicism in this regard, let us keep in mind why modern philosophers were so interested in objectivity and rationality. The search for objective rules of reason that apply to everyone was part of a major cultural shift away from a medieval, faith-based, God-centered worldview toward a modern, science-based worldview. The hope was to find a universal way to settle epistemological disagreements buttressed by more than customs, or feelings, or the strength of our convictions. Without some universal, objective standards and methods, how, the early modern philosophers wondered, can we move beyond mere belief? How can we transcend the perpetual discord grounded in mere subjective preferences? Encouraged by early scientific discoveries and wary of the sorts of perpetual faith-based conflicts that plagued medieval thinkers, modern philosophers focused on the advantages promised by the development of an impartial—objective and universal—epistemology. In their search for epistemological neutrality, modern philosophers tended to ignore—when they did not outright reject—emotions and sentiments as important sources of knowledge and insight. But as we have already seen, the most well-intentioned human endeavors to correct one imbalance risk generating an opposing imbalance. In this instance, a narrow focus on rationality and objectivity tended to discount or overlook other important factors at play in the search for knowledge. (See Susan Bordo's comments regarding Cartesian dualism in Chapter 9 and Carol Gilligan's characterization of the different voice in philosophy in Chapter 18.) Today, a substantial body of cross-disciplinary work challenges the exclusive status of the rationalistic model of detached, objective knowing. We've seen some of these challenges already. In succeeding chapters we will encounter a new intensity in the way certain questions are raised by existentialist and postmodern critiques of the pursuit of pure rationality and objectivity (Chapters 14-18): Can knowledge be divorced from social conditions? Is there only one correct way of thinking? To what extent, if any, are personal detachment and objectivity possible? What, if any, contributions do emotions make to knowledge? Perhaps most intriguing: Are personal detachment and objectivity desirable? [A] man, being just as hungry as he is thirsty, and placed between food and drink, must necessarily remain where he is and starve to death. — Aristotle In contrast to a one-size-fits-all exclusive epistemology, "nontraditional" (more on this in Chapter 18) contemporary philosophers answer these questions with an inclusive model of thinking that does not reject logical reasoning and objectivity. Rather, the inclusive model of knowing complements and balances logical reasoning and objectivity—humanizes them—by including life experience, subjective responses, and empathy as necessary sources of knowledge. As the term suggests, an inclusive model of knowing resists the depersonalized, disembodied language that Susan Bordo associates with the "masculinization" of epistemology and metaphysics (Chapter 9). Rather than treat epistemology as a purely cognitive or historical exercise, feminist philosophers expect philosophy to make a difference in people's lives, individually and by way of social action. The contemporary philosopher Alison Jaggar reminds us that emotions are vital aspects of anyone's picture of reality because they influence what we notice or ignore, and, thus, add value (degrees of interest and importance) to experience. According to Jaggar, emotions select, direct, and even help define what we acknowledge as observations and experiences. If we don't care about something, we tend to trivialize it. We may even not notice or remember it. In a sense, then, without some emotional interest, without caring, we can fail to experience all of our experiences. Yet, Jaggar notes, more often than not, traditional Western philosophy has viewed emotion as inferior to reason and often treated emotions as subversive hindrances to knowledge. The facts are otherwise, Jaggar suggests. There is no gap between emotion and knowledge: Should two courses be judged equal, then the will cannot break the deadlock. All it can do is suspend judgment until circumstances change, and the right course of action isclear. — Jean Buridan From Plato until the present, with a few notable exceptions, reason rather than emotion has been regarded as the indispensable faculty for acquiring knowledge. ... Empirical [objective] testability became accepted as the hallmark of natural science; this, in turn, was viewed as the paradigm of genuine knowledge. ... Because values and emotions had been identified as variable and idiosyncratic, [the objective standard of knowing] stipulated that trustworthy knowledge could be established only by methods that neutralized the values and emotions of individual [thinkers]. Jaggar points out that traditional, supposedly impersonal epistemology has given short shrift to the emotional acumen women have developed over centuries due to their socially assigned roles as caretakers and household managers. She suggests that these roles require a specially refined emotional acumen that consists of an intuitive ability to recognize, assess, and empathize with the unspoken or overlooked pain of others. Jaggar also raises the possibility that oppressed people may have an especially clearer understanding of life because oppression provides a strong motive for paying attention, for observing, for finding out what is wrong. This does not mean, however, that emotional acumen is just a "women's issue." Emotional acumen is a human issue because it helps each of us more accurately and fairly manage the social, legal, and political aspects of our lives. According to Jaggar, emotional sensitivity is often anyone's "first indication that something is wrong with the way alleged facts have been constructed, with the accepted understanding of how things are," eloquently reminding us that: Emotion is necessary for human survival. Emotions prompt us to act appropriately, to approach some people and situations and to avoid others, to caress or cuddle, fight or flee. In other words, we need not just reason (rationality) but reasons (motives, desires) to live. We need emotions to survive. We need to care about things to see them clearly—without becoming so entangled in what we're looking at that we distort it. That's why knowledge is social as well as rational or scientific. If there is a caution here, it is to avoid the error that the early modern rationalists made in the direction of exclusivity, the error of over-esteeming inclusivity. We want to resist deifying or demonizing one way of knowing or one kind of knower at the expense of others. Just as the goal of pure objectivity may be a fantasy, as Susan Bordo described modern Cartesian epistemology in Chapter 9, so too, the notion that our particular personal experiences, intuitions, and emotional responses are somehow privileged may be another kind of fantasy. We don't want to deify either reason or emotion in the abstract. Like David Hume, Alison Jaggar resists this error and calls on us all, women and men, to live the kind of life that expands our interests and our concerns, a life of the mind and reason, certainly, but also a life of the heart.

An Honest Man

Unable to earn his living as a writer, Hume applied for a professorship at the University of Edinburgh but was rejected. He took a somewhat humiliating job as the tutor of a young nobleman, who shortly went insane. Hume was ultimately dismissed and had to sue for his salary. He eventually secured a position as secretary to a general who was on a mission to Turin, Italy. Hume, having apparently gained more weight, began wearing a scarlet uniform. His appearance unsettled the young Earl of Charlemont, who wrote as follows: "His face was broad and fat, his mouth wide, and without any other expression than that of imbecility. ... The corpulence of his whole person was far better fitted to communicate the idea of a turtle-eating alderman than that of a refined philosopher." Hume returned to London in 1748 and published An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. In 1749 he went back to Edinburgh and in 1751 published An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals. These works reach the same conclusions as the Treatise but in a softer tone. The softer tone was not to last, for in about 1751 Hume wrote the most devastating, direct, and irreverent of his works, the Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. In it Hume mounts an unrelenting attack on the argument from design (see Chapter 8) and other attempts to demonstrate the existence of or understand the nature of God. At the urging of friends, Hume withheld the Dialogues from publication. They were finally published in 1779, three years after his death. Hume wearied of the heated discussion his philosophical reasonings provoked and turned to politics and history. He finally achieved some success as an author with Political Discourses (1751) and Essays on Various Subjects (1753). The theory of economics discussed in the Essays was substantial enough to influence the great economist Adam Smith. In 1752, Hume was elected keeper of the library for the Faculty of Advocates in Edinburgh. The pay was low, but Hume was delighted with the job because it gave him control of thirty thousand volumes. Taking advantage of this opportunity, he researched and wrote History of England. He was a competent enough historian that Edward Gibbon, the author of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776), cited him as an influence. Hume published his History in six volumes, in reverse order, beginning with the years 1603-1649 and ending with the period from Julius Caesar to Henry VII in 1485. His attitudes toward Parliament and Bonnie Prince Charlie were unorthodox, and the controversy aroused by the first volume was so intense that Hume grew depressed and planned to move back to France. But France and England were at war, and the second volume was nearly done. So Hume revised the first volume and continued with the others. By the publication of the sixth volume, Hume's popularity as a writer had soared. James Boswell referred to him as "the greatest writer in Britain," and Voltaire said Hume's work was "perhaps the best history ever written in any language." (Today, hardly anyone reads Hume's History of England, but no truly educated person fails to read something of Hume's philosophy.) In spite of his success, Hume remained troubled by the unrelenting attacks from ecclesiastical and other sources. Relief arrived in the form of an appointment as deputy secretary to the Earl of Hertford, ambassador to France. Hertford also arranged that Hume should receive a pension of two hundred pounds for life. As a philosophical critic Hume has few peers. No one has challenged more sharply rationalism's central thesis that matters of fact can be known without recourse to experience; nor has anyone revealed more clearly the severe problems raised by insisting that all factual claims be empirically verified. — John W. Lenz Hume's writing was more popular in France than in England, and by the time he returned to France he was almost a cult figure. The aristocracy loved him (the ladies most of all), and he loved them (the ladies most of all). The Earl of Hertford found that Hume was more popular and respected than the earl was. Once, at a party, an envious French intellectual made fun of Hume's weight, quoting the Gospel verse "And the word was made flesh." One of Hume's many lady admirers quickly countered, "And the word was made lovable." After Britain appointed a new ambassador to France in 1765, Hume worked for a time as undersecretary at the Foreign Office in London. He retired to Edinburgh in 1769, being, in his own words, "very opulent (for I possessed a revenue of £1,000 a year), healthy, and though somewhat stricken in years, with the prospect of enjoying long my ease, and of seeing the increase of my reputation." Hume's home (on, fittingly, St. David Street) became an intellectual salon for Scottish celebrities, including Adam Smith. Hume was a friendly, supportive, encouraging mentor, despite the rigor and iconoclasm of his intellect. He remained a popular guest, even if he occasionally broke a host's chair. He once proposed a tax on obesity but thought its passage unlikely because it might put the church in danger, and he blessed Julius Caesar for preferring fat men. Part of Hume's charm came from his personal modesty. These days celebrities and television "personalities" in their teens think nothing of writing a two- or three-hundred-page autobiography, yet one of the finest minds ever to have written considered it sufficient to pen an eight-page one—and then only shortly before he died. In it he wrote: In the spring of 1775 I was struck with a disorder in my bowels, which at first gave me no alarm, but has since, as I apprehend it, become mortal and incurable. I now reckon upon a speedy dissolution. I have suffered very little pain from my disorder; and what is more strange, have, notwithstanding the great decline of my person, never suffered a moment's abatement of my spirits; insomuch that were I to name the period of my life which I should most choose to pass over again, I might be tempted to point to this later period. I possess the same ardor as ever in my study, and the same gaiety in company. I consider, besides, that a man of sixty-five, by dying, cuts off only a few years of infirmities. In 1775, Hume lost seventy pounds due to his illness. In 1776, he was prepared to die "as fast as my enemies, if I have any, could wish, and as easily and cheerfully as my best friends could desire." Even in his last hours, Hume was not spared the attentions of the devout. James Boswell was troubled that the agnostic Hume, whom many erroneously believed to be an atheist, could be so cheerful in the face of death. But Hume did not deny the existence of God, a position known as atheism; rather, he adopted the agnostic view that we do not know enough to assert or deny the existence of God. Happiness in the face of death was thought to be a virtue of the devout believer, not the skeptical agnostic. Unrelenting even at the end, Boswell asked the dying Hume if he did now finally believe in an afterlife. Hume answered, "It is a most unreasonable fancy that we should exist forever." Asked if he didn't at least think the possibility of another plane of existence was desirable, the dying skeptic answered, "Not at all; it is a very gloomy thought." A small parade of women visited Hume, begging him to believe, but he distracted them with humor. David Hume died free of much pain on August 25, 1776. The story goes that a large crowd attended his burial, despite heavy rain. Someone was heard to say, "He was an atheist." "No matter," a voice answered from the crowd. "He was an honest man."