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Interpreting Hume on miracles

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 April 2009

ROBERT A. LARMER
ROBERT A. LARMER
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada E3B 5A3 e-mail: rlarmer@unb.ca
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Abstract

Contemporary commentators on Hume's essay, ‘Of miracles’ have increasingly tended to argue that Hume never intended to suggest that testimonial evidence must always be insufficient to justify belief in a miracle. This is in marked contrast to earlier commentators who interpreted Hume as intending to demonstrate that testimonial evidence is incapable in principle of ever establishing rational belief in a miracle. In this article I argue that this traditional interpretation is the correct one.

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Articles
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Religious Studies , Volume 45 , Issue 3 , September 2009 , pp. 325 - 338
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Copyright © 2009 Cambridge University Press

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References

Notes

1. Antony Flew Hume's Philosophy of Belief (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1961).

2. Robert J. Fogelin A Defense of Hume on Miracles (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003), 2.

3. Ibid., 62.

4. John Earman Hume's Abject Failure (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 21–22.

5. George C. Campbell A Dissertation on Miracles (Edinburgh: Kincaid and Bell, 1762), 7–8.

6. Broad, C. D. ‘Hume's theory of the credibility of miracles’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 17 (1916–1917), 80.Google Scholar

7. David Hume An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Antony Flew (ed.) (La Salle IL: Open Court Publishing, 1988). All in-text references are to this work.

8. Slupik, Chris, in his article ‘A new interpretation of Hume's “Of Miracles”’, Religious Studies, 31 (1995), 517–536, 528CrossRefGoogle Scholar, makes much of the fact ‘that a proof, in Hume's sense of the term, can have a false conclusion: it is possible, and it sometimes happens, that one has a proof of a statement, and then one discovers a stronger proof for its negation, in which case the stronger proof “destroys” the weaker proof’. Granting this, however, does not support Slupik's claim that Hume intended to allow the possibility of establishing a miracle on the basis of testimony. Hume is explicit that the proof against a miracle is a direct and full proof, based on ‘firm and unalterable experience’ that ‘is as entire as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined’ and cannot be overcome except by ‘an opposite proof, which is superior’ (Hume, Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, 148). To establish his claim, Slupik needs to show how such an opposite superior proof is possible, but he never does this. His citation of Hume's eight days of darkness depends upon the questionable assumption that Hume regards such an event as a genuine miracle rather than a ‘marvel’. Even if it were to be granted that Hume proposed this as an example of a miracle that should be accepted, it does not explain how Hume could consistently say this given his earlier remarks

9. Flew Hume's Philosophy of Belief, 171.

10. Fogelin, Robert J. ‘What Hume actually said about miracles’, Hume Studies, 16 (1990), 84.Google Scholar

11. Ibid.

12. Idem Defense of Hume on Miracles, 62.

13. Slupik ‘New interpretation of Hume's “Of Miracles”’, 519.

14. J.C.A. Gaskin Hume's Philosophy of Belief (London: Macmillan, 1978), 122.

15. Ibid., 115.

16. Ibid., 120.

17. Ibid.

18. Note that Hume speaks of the argument not of arguments, which suggests that he has the argument of Part I in mind, rather than the four arguments of Part II; R. M. Burns The Great Debate on Miracles (London: Associated University Presses, 1981), 140. Further, in a letter to George Campbell, Hume writes that his argument ‘very much gravelled’ his Jesuit companion'; David Hume Letters of David Hume, J. Y. T. Greig (ed.), (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1932), I, 361. This suggests that Hume regarded the argument of Part I as simple in structure; not needing support by supplementary arguments, and as decisive; destroying at one blow any argument from miracles

19. Burns Great Debate on Miracles, 157.

20. Critics such as Fogelin and Slupik typically suggest that if Hume viewed himself as providing an ‘in principle’ argument against the possibility of miracles, he would not have made remarks concerning the degree and quality of evidence supporting miracles. This is scarcely evident, however. For example, many critics who view the intelligent design movement as in principle unscientific, nevertheless make claims concerning the degree and quality of the evidence cited by intelligent design advocates. There seems no reason to think that Hume would not do likewise as regards the issue of miracle.

21. Regarding Hume's citing of the Jansenist miracles, Slupik makes the claim that on Hume's view the only justification for accepting testimony is a positive record of past experience: testimony in the relevant circumstances – unique historical event, unreplicable, beyond the known power of human beings or unassisted natural causes, not publicly verifiable, made the basis of a new religion, sect, or doctrine – has a terrible record. It is therefore irrational to accept testimony in those circumstances. Since the Jansenist witnesses testified in those circumstances, it is irrational to accept their testimony; Slupik ‘New interpretation of Hume's “Of Miracles”’, 535. This, however, is to ignore Hume's explicit remark that the Jansenist miracles are to be rejected on the basis that they are either absolutely impossible or cannot be regarded as genuinely miraculous. It is noteworthy that, in citing Hume's remarks concerning the Jansenist miracles, Slupik omits this key part of the passage.

22. Fogelin Defense of Hume on Miracles, 31.

23. Burns Great Debate on Miracles, 156.

24. Ibid., 149.

25. Flew Hume's Philosophy of Belief, 200.

26. Fogelin Defense of Hume on Miracles 31.

27. I am indebted to an anonymous referee for pointing out this possible reading.

28. I do not mean to claim that Hume is treating probability and assessment of testimonial evidence properly, only that this was his view. As John Earman has argued in Hume's Abject Failure, Hume's treatment of probability and testimonial evidence is open to criticism.

29. Fogelin and Slupik, for example, make no mention of this evidence.

30. David Hume New Letters of David Hume, R. Klibansky and E. Mossner (eds), (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1954), 2–3.

31. Hume Letters of David Hume, I, 361.

32. Burns Great Debate on Miracles, 140.

33. Ibid., 133.

34. Hume Letters of David Hume, I, 361.

35. Burns Great Debate on Miracles, 140, 154–158.

36. Ibid., 155, 158.

37. Thomas Sherlock The Trial of the Witnesses of the Resurrection of Jesus, 1st edn (London, 1729), 8th edn (London, 1736), 62.

38. Philip Skelton, Opiomaches or Deism Revealed (London, 1749), II, 15.

39. E. A. Mossner The Life of David Hume, 2nd edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), 232.

40. Gaskin Hume's Philosophy of Belief, 115.

41. Ibid., 113.

42. Ibid., 120.

43. I am indebted to the perceptive critical comments of an anonymous referee for this journal.