Humphry Clinker (4 page)

Philo's principle target, however, is the possibility of
deriving
the moral attributes of God from the nature of the world. When Cleanthes presented the design argument, we were invited to ‘look round the world', and to infer divine intelligence and design from its order and purpose. Here, where the attribute of divine benevolence is in question, Hume brilliantly balances Cleanthes' speech with Philo's:

Scepticism was a classical Greek philosophical method, taking various forms over a long period, from around 300
BC
to about AD 220. At the end of this period, the aims and methods of the sceptics were summarized by Sextus Empiricus in
Outlines of Pyrrhonism.
This work appeared in translation towards the end of the sixteenth century, and from that time scepticism played a major role in the development of philosophy. Pyrrhonism, which takes its name from Pyrrho of Elis (c. 360—275
BC
), was the most extreme form of scepticism; Hume sometimes calls it ‘total scepticism'. Another source of knowledge of classical scepticism was Cicero's
Academica
, written in or after 45
BC
. The Academy was the school of philosophy founded by Plato. Some considerable time after his death, scepticism was introduced and developed by successive heads of the school. Originally the scepticism of the Academy was total, but in time a more dogmatic position emerged, partly through the influence of the rival school of Stoicism. (Sceptics and Stoics are compared in
Part I
of the
Dialogues.)
One of those responsible for this was Philo, with whom Cicero studied scepticism when Philo was in Rome. Later, more full-blooded Pyrrhonism was revived, outside the Academy, and it is this later revival that is represented in the writings of Sextus Empiricus.

Just how Pyrrhonian and Academic scepticism differed is a matter of scholarship. But Cicero certainly suggests a difference,
and Hume, from his study of Cicero, learned to use the terms ‘Pyrrhonian' and ‘Academic' to mark a distinction. Sceptical reflections often begin with the observation that the search for truth is frustrated by the disagreements found amongst men. Experts so often tell us different things; and even in common life we find that people's perceptions differ radically. When we are tossed about in the sea of conflicting opinions, the sceptic offers an escape to tranquillity of mind, by leading us to suspend our assent from any judgement. He does this, according to Sextus, by arguing both for and against any thesis in such a way that the issue seems undecidable. Faced with a balance between
pro
and
con
, the wise man does not commit himself either way.

Now Cicero implies that the Academic sceptics went so far towards committing themselves as to deny that knowledge can be achieved. (Sextus criticizes this as dogmatic.) And they were attacked by the Stoics, by the argument that if knowledge is impossible, then so is action. If we cannot know anything, we cannot know what to do. In response, the Academics formulated a notion of ‘probability'. (The term in this context translates Cicero's
‘probabile'
, which in turn translates the original Greek expression.) The idea was that, although we have no sure criterion by which to sort truth from error, yet some things strike us as plausible or convincing, and, without committing ourselves to thinking that they are true, we can direct our actions by them. Probability is all we need, in practical terms.

Hume endorses this general position, and uses it to criticize the total scepticism of the Pyrrhonians. But his basis for the position is his own, and not anything he found in Cicero. It is to be found in his theory, already mentioned, that reason is a kind of natural instinct. On the one hand, this is a sceptical position. Hume denies that we can provide any antecedent justification for reasoning as we do from causes and effects. And, since that is so, we have no grounds for assuming that the conclusions we reach must be true. On the other hand, we do find ourselves, so to speak, persuaded by such inferences. Since it is our nature to reason as we do, there is no alternative. Hume's view here is much stronger than the classical sceptics. He is arguing that we cannot but think and
reason as we do, not just that it is a practical policy to guide action by what seems probable. And, consequently, the idea of total scepticism, a total suspense of judgement, is a fantasy. There could be no such person as a total sceptic:

When Hume speaks of nature in these terms, he is taking a positive view of the convictions we find ourselves to have. But it is as much part of his complex theory of human nature that many beliefs arise in us which are not merely not known to be true, but positively absurd or harmful. In the
Treatise
he tries to separate the strong, irresistible and beneficial convictions which experience generates in the mind of the sceptical wise man (that fire burns, for example) from the fanciful, avoidable and often harmful notions that clutter the minds of the vulgar. Part of his theory is that powerful emotions often underlie the latter. We have seen that this diagnosis is important in his account of the origins of superstition and enthusiasm in religion.

The wise, who are enlightened by Hume's theory of human nature, know themselves better than do the vulgar. They can form general, reflective rules, based on the theory, by which to guard against the fictions of a lively imagination. In fact, it is the very process of reflection which diminishes the initial credibility of the ideas presented to us by emotion and imagination. So it would seem that the more reflective we are in our mental life, the better. But there is a twist in this. If we were to attempt to govern our beliefs entirely by reflective, general principles, we would end up without any beliefs at all – precisely the Pyrrhonian desideratum. For, as the sceptics showed, general principles of logic and methodology can always be set against one another so as to pull us in opposite directions. Hume's most considered view is that the beliefs of the wise man will be a vector of experience and reflection.

When Hume says that reason, in the sense of the capacity to
infer effects from causes and vice versa, is an instinct, he goes on to offer an account of how it operates. Very roughly, he thinks that we initially believe the evidence of our senses and memory, which give us vivid and forceful impressions. When we have had experience of the constant conjunction of two phenomena, such as fire and heat, the ideas of these become associated in the mind by a kind of conditioning. Hume calls this ‘habit' or ‘custom'. Then, whenever we have an impression of one of these phenomena, as when we see fire, the idea which is habitually associated with it, such as heat, immediately enters our consciousness. We see the child put her hand in the fire, and at once think that she will be burned. The belief we have in the evidence of our senses, which Hume identifies with the vividness and force of our perceptions, is transferred to the associated idea, and we believe that too. We do not merely think that she will be burned, we believe that she will. So belief itself turns out to be a naturally produced psychological state, which consists essentially in a kind of feeling: ideas which are the contents of belief
feel
strong, forceful and vivid.

It is because all this happens, he thinks, naturally and inevitably in everyday cases, like the example of the fire, that the Pyrrhonian idea that we might always suspend our assent, and have no beliefs at all, is absurd. This general position about how far it is possible to maintain a sceptical suspense of judgement is laid out at the beginning of the
Dialogues
, in the discussion between Cleanthes and Philo in
Part I
. But, very much in line with Hume's view, Philo claims that a sceptical suspense is possible where we are considering only abstract, reflective arguments. In those circumstances, the sceptic can always argue against the thesis being considered, so producing a weakening of conviction to balance the persuasive force of the original argument. If the topic is one on which we have no strong impulse to hold one view rather than another which results inevitably and unreflectively from past experience, then the dialectic of arguments for and against will lead to suspense of judgement:

Philo intends to show that in natural theology, our arguments do run wide of common life. But he is prepared to find himself convinced by very ‘refined' and ‘abstract' reasoning in, say, Newton's writings. Cleanthes therefore tries to show that religious belief can be supported by arguments of just the same kind as are used in science; hence the design argument. Philo's attacks are aimed at showing that the logic of the argument is
not
of the same type. Already by the end of
Part VIII
, he has achieved this aim. But at a number of places, and very clearly in
Part XII
, he accepts that it is, nevertheless, very natural to believe that the world is the creation of ‘a first intelligent author'. What the sceptical technique does is to undermine the claim of the natural theologian that this natural assumption – what Cleanthes calls ‘the religious hypothesis' – can be proved by reasoning of a kind employed in science, namely, analogical reasoning from effects to causes.