hume's natural history of perception - p.j.e. kail
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Hume's Natural History of PerceptionPJE Kail aa University of Edinburgh,
Online Publication Date: 01 August 2005To cite this Article: Kail, PJE (2005) 'Hume's Natural History of Perception', BritishJournal for the History of Philosophy, 13:3, 503 - 519To link to this article: DOI: 10.1080/09608780500157254URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09608780500157254
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ARTICLE
HUME’S NATURAL HISTORY OF PERCEPTION
P. J. E. Kail
In this paper I compare Hume’s account of the causes of our belief in bodyin T 1.4.2 ‘Of scepticism with regard to the senses’ (SWRS)1 with his accountof the causes of religious belief in the Natural History of Religion (NHR)2. Ishow quite how striking and extensive the parallels are between these texts.3
This is not to say that Hume thinks that the belief in body and religiousbelief have exactly the same status or that there are no disanalogies to befound. I gesture toward a key one at the end of this paper, which bears on anold exegetical issue of whether religious belief is ‘natural’. Nevertheless theparallels are so extensive that they are worth dwelling upon.
SWRS is a text variously described as ‘tortuous’4, ‘extremely difficult’5
and ‘perplexing’.6 A second aspect of this paper is an interpretation of onepuzzling feature of this notorious text in light of the comparison with theNHR. Near the beginning of SWRS Hume writes:
We may well ask, What causes induce us to believe in the existence of body? but‘tis in vain to ask,Whether there be body or not? That is a point, which we musttake for granted in all our reasonings.
(T 1.4.2.1; SBN: 187)
1Quotations from the Treatise are from A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. by Norton and Norton
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), and citations will follow the (recent) convention of
book, part, section and paragraph numbers, followed by page references to the Selby-Bigge/
Nidditch edition (A Treatise of Human Nature ed. by L. A. Selby-Bigge, revised by P. H.
Nidditch (2nd edn, Oxford: Clarendon, 1978)).2The Natural History of Religion, in David Hume: Principal Writings on Religion including
Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion and The Natural History of Religion, ed. by J. C. A
Gaskin (Oxford: Oxford World Classics, 1993). I have included the section numbers in
references as well as page numbers. The NHR was first published as one of the Four
Dissertations of 1757.3Robert Fogelin entitles chapter 7 of his (1985) ‘The Natural History of Philosophy’ and argues
that much of book 1 part 4 of the Treatise should be read as a natural history of philosophical
doctrines, understood as a study of their psychological causes. He does not notice the parallels
between SWRS and the NHR. Nor does Keith Yandell (Yandell: 1990) who nevertheless traces
some parallels with the styles of explanation in the NHR and those of the Treatise.4Penelhum (1975: 62)5Bennett (1971: 313)6Fogelin (1985: 64)
British Journal for the History of Philosophy 13(3) 2005: 503 – 519
British Journal for the History of PhilosophyISSN 0960-8788 print/ISSN 1469-3526 online ª 2005 BSHP
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals DOI: 10.1080/09608780500157254
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This suggests that the belief’s grip on the mind is immune from reflection.But near the end of the section he says:
I began this subject with premising, that we ought to have an implicit faith in
our senses, and that this wou’d be the conclusion, I shou’d draw from thewhole of my reasoning. But to be ingenuous, I feel myself at present of a quitecontrary sentiment, and am more inclin’d to repose no faith at all in my senses,
or rather imagination, than place in it such an implicit confidence. . .What thencan we look for from this confusion of groundless and extraordinary opinionsbut error and falshood? And how can we justify to ourselves any belief we
repose in them?
(T 1.4.2.56; SBN: 217–18)
I argue that a related reversal of confidence (which I shall call‘destabilization’) can be found in the NHR, and that this offers a perspectivefrom which to approach SWRS. The NHR opens with this claim:
As every enquiry, which regards religion, is of the utmost importance, thereare two questions in particular, which challenge our attention, to wit, thatconcerning its foundation in reason, and that concerning its origin in human
nature. Happily, the first question, which is the most important, admits of themost obvious, at least, the clearest solution. The whole frame of naturebespeaks an intelligent author; and no rational inquirer can, after serious
reflection, suspend his belief a moment with regard to the primary principles ofgenuine Theism and Religion.
(NHR Introduction: 134, my emphasis)
Towards the endhewrites: ‘Thewhole is a riddle, anænigma, an inexplicablemystery. Doubt, uncertainty, suspence of judgment appear the only result ofour most accurate scrutiny, concerning this subject’ (NHR XV: 185).
I will argue that the reference of ‘this subject’ can only be understood tobe religious belief itself and not its causes. If this is right, then, like SWRS,Hume’s account of the causes of the belief destabilizes and, furthermore, wecan give a common cause of this destablization.
Before we turn to the details of this and the other parallels between theNHR and SWRS, here is a point-by-point outline of the comparison:
(a) Each text offers an explanation of a more primitive or ‘vulgar’7 formof belief, polytheism and the vulgar view of perception, constructedfrom what Hume takes to be minimal and independently intelligiblematerials.
7My use of ‘vulgar’ is a not intended to correspond precisely to Hume’s use of the term in
religious topics. Vulgar religion comprehends beliefs that are sustained by both hope
(enthusiasm) and fear (superstition), and the NHR only deals with this second kind of ‘vulgar’
religion. Furthermore when such passions are operative monotheism can also be vulgar. The
sense of ‘vulgar’ in my discussion is that of the earlier form of belief, and is guided by the SWRS
sense of the term.
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(b) Both explanations advert to relatively encapsulated psychologicaldispositions, whose manifestations remove psychological discomfort.
(c) Both vulgar beliefs are shown by minimal reflection to be false.(d) Each belief transmutes itself into a more sophisticated version, indirect
realism and monotheism respectively.(e) Both sophisticated beliefs are not the causal upshot of reason or
argument,8 but instead of the psychological causes responsible for thevulgar versions.
(f) Both sophisticated beliefs have a more tenuous hold on thepsychology of the thinker than their vulgar counterparts.
(g) Both sophisticated beliefs are ‘monstrous’ and ‘absurd’, while theprimitive beliefs are instead ‘natural’ and merely false.
(h) Both texts open with a statement to the effect that suspension of beliefin the respective area is impossible but end in what appears to be areversal of that claim.
We now turn to the details of these points of comparison.
THE EXPLANATION OF THE VULGAR BELIEFS
Webeginwith theNHRaccount of the causes of the religious belief. TheNHRis a subtle and complex text, a curious admixture of psychology, anthropology,historical scholarship, with occasional – and uncharacteristic – moments ofinvective.9Oneof its themes is thecorrosive effects ofmuchof religiousbeliefonmorality on society. I shall not discuss that here.The text’s ostensible concern isto trace the origin of the ‘belief of intelligent, invisible power’ (NHR: 134) inhuman nature, distinguishing this topic from that of its ‘foundation in reason’(NHR: 134). Hume’s theory differs from previous deistical10 accounts of theorigin of religious belief in two major ways. First, polytheism was the first ororiginal religion, not monotheism. Second, the belief of ‘intelligent, invisiblepower’wasnot theproductof reason.Previouswriters in thedeist traditionhadsuggested that religious belief had originally emerged through reasoning on thepurposeful structure of the world, and that the original religion wasmonotheistic. Deist natural histories then sought to explain how from thisstate of perfect clarity competing dogma, factionalism and polytheismemerged. But to follow the deists, suggests Hume, is to think that whenhumans ‘were ignorant and barbarous, they discovered the truth: But fell into
8A different proposition from saying that reasoning is a necessary condition for the belief being
in place: see below.9For other discussions, see Falkenstein (2003), Malherbe (1995), Webb (1991), Yandell (1976)
and (1990: Pt I, chap. 2), and my ‘Understanding Hume’s Natural History of Religion’.10Representative texts include Herbert of Cherbury’s The Antient Religion of the Gentiles (1705);
John Toland’s Letters to Serena (1704); Matthew Tindal’s Christianity as Old as the Creation
(1730). For discussion, see, for example, Harrison (1990) and Rivers (2000: 52ff).
HUME’S NATURAL HISTORY OF PERCEPTION 505
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error, as soonas theyacquired learningandpoliteness’ (NHRI: 135).11 Instead,Hume conjectures, there was no Miltonian paradise wherein Adam had theleisure to wonder at the regularity of the universe and infer a designer. Earlyhumans have more pressing concerns such as from where the next meal mightcome and when the drought will end, and resolving these practical concerns issometimes literally a matter of life and death. Success depends on predictingandmanipulating of nature, but early humans are ignorant of the causes of thenatural events upon which they pin their hopes and fears. These circumstancesmake for a psychologically intolerable situation. The passions ‘are kept inperpetual alarm by an anxious expectation of. . .events’ (NHR III: 140), and
We hang in perpetual suspence between life and death, health and sickness,
plenty and want; which are distributed amongst the human species by secretand unknown causes, whose operation is oft unexpected, and alwaysunaccountable. These unknown causes, then, become the constant object of
our hope and fear.
(NHR III: 140, italics original)
In their anxiety early thinkers seek an idea of the unknown causes that arethe objects of their hopes and fears, and the imagination offers the idea offinite, powerful, invisible agents controlling natural events. The source ofthis idea is a standing, and independently established, disposition toanthropomorphize. There is a
universal tendency among mankind to conceive all beings like themselves, andto transfer to every object, those qualities, with which they are familiarly
acquainted, and of which they are intimately conscious. We find human facesin the moon, armies in the clouds; and by a natural propensity, if not correctedby experience and reflection, ascribe malice or good-will to every thing, thathurts or pleases us.
(NHR III: 141)12
11Hume does not, as is often supposed, try to justify these claims on the basis of the historical
record. His opponents think that the historical record does not go as far back as the beginnings
of religion. Instead his account is supposed to offer a theoretically superior account of the origins
of the belief. See Malherbe (1995) and my ‘Understanding Hume’s Natural History of Religion’.12See also Hume’s letter to Gilbert Elliot of Minto, 10 March 1751. The tendency is noted in the
Treatise, and invoked to explain the ‘fictions’ of ‘antient philosophy’. There is:
a very remarkable inclination in human nature, to bestow on external objects the same emotions,
which it observes in itself; and to find every where those ideas, which are most present to it. This
inclination, ‘tis true, is supress’d by a little reflection, and only takes place in children, poets, and the
antient philosophers. It appears in children, by their desire of beating the stones, which hurt them: In
poets, by their readiness to personify every thing: And in the antient philosophers, by these fictions of
sympathy and antipathy. We must pardon children, because of their age; poets, because they profess
to follow implicitly the suggestions of their fancy: But what excuse shall we find to justify our
philosophers in so signal a weakness?
(T 1.4.3.11; SBN: 224–5)
That polytheism and the errors of ‘antient philosophers’ have the same root in this disposition is
made explicit in the NHR.
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It is important to understand that the causation of the belief is an instanceof what David Pears has called ‘motivated irrationality’.13 Humean thinkersdo not come by the belief because they think it to be the epistemically bestexplanation.14 Instead, passions operate on the mind in such a way as tofixate the belief because the belief offers a relief from the anxiety generatedby a combination of ignorance of the causes of natural event and thethinker’s powerlessness in the face of them. The belief is formed because itpalliates the anxiety, not because it is the epistemically best thing to believe.The causes of the events of upon which their lives depend, the ‘constantobject[s] of their hopes and fears’ are unknown, unpredictable and notsubject to control. The belief that those causes are human-like offers afamiliar model with which to conceive the unknown causes, making naturalevents explicable, and, furthermore, it promises a degree of control. Thegods, being like humans, are open to flattery, bribery and persuasion, and sothe anxiety generated by the combination of hope, fear and ignorance isremoved, or at least palliated, by the formation of the polytheistic belief. Weseek ‘recourse to every method of appeasing those secret intelligent powers,on whom our misfortune is supposed entirely to depend’ (NHR III: 143).15
Let us now turn to Hume’s account of the origins of the vulgar perceptualbelief. The parallel here is that Hume appeals to the manifestation of astanding disposition of the imagination in response to an anxiety generatedby dissonance. The belief to be explained has two key components: first, theobjects of perceptual experience continue to exist unperceived and secondthe objects of perceptual experience are (spatially) distinct from ourexperience of them. The perceptual relation is that of direct acquaintancewith perceptual objects: when Hume says ‘the vulgar confound perceptionsand objects, and attribute a distinct continu’d existence to the very thingsthey feel and see’ (T 1.4.2.14; SBN 193), he means that the objects withwhich the vulgar are directly acquainted are taken by them to be continuousand distinct. He thinks neither the senses nor reason can be the source of thebelief, and instead looks to the imagination. He turns to examine whatfeatures of perceptions enter into the genesis of this belief and his eye fallsfirst on how the vulgar come to think that perceptions continue to exist whennot experienced. We do not conceive all perceptions to so exist – we do notthink pains continue to exist unperceived – so what features are common toperceptions that get treated as such? Hume suggests what he calls constancy
13Pears (1984) For further discussion of the role of motivated irrationality in Hume’s
philosophy, see the relevant sections of my Projection and Realism in Hume and my
‘Understanding Hume’s Natural History of Religion’.14Something like this can be found in Herdt (1997: 172ff).15 As the causes, which bestow happiness or misery, are, in general very little known and very uncertain,
our anxious concern endeavours to attain a determinate idea of them; and finds no better expedient
than to represent them as intelligent voluntary agents like ourselves; only somewhat superior in
power and wisdom.
(NHR V: 152)
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(T 1.4.2.18 et sq; SBN: 194ff) a phenomenological feature, approximatelythat of qualitative indistinguishability. Perceptions can be interrupted (forexample, by briefly closing my eyes), but remain phenomenologicallyindistinguishable on either side of the interruption.
Such constancy is rare. Even after a brief interruption, the new set ofperceptions is not qualitatively identical to the previous set, and the longerthe interruption, the more likely the greater the qualitative difference. I thinkthe fire I left blazing in my study is the same object as the dimming embers Isee on my return, but there is no perceptual constancy. To accommodatethis, Hume suggests I know enough about general regularities for me torecognise a kind of coherence between the two sets of perceptions, so that Ican integrate these perceptual changes. The fire may have changed from itsblazing state into dim embers, but ‘I am accustom’d in other instances to seea like alteration produc’d in a like time, whether I am present or absent, nearor remote’ (T 1.4.2.19; SBN: 195).
Constancy and coherence operate on the imagination and he turns toexamine ‘after what manner these qualities give rise’ to the belief (T 1.4.2.20;SBN: 195). It cannot be the result of reasoning upon the properties since forHume probable reasoning requires observed conjunctions of cause andeffect, and we cannot observe the continuity of perceptions. The beliefcannot be ‘the direct and natural effect of the constant repetition andconnexion [i.e. probable reason], but must arise from the co-operation ofsome other principles’ (T 1.4.2.21; SBN: 198). What is co-opted is the‘simple supposition’ of the continued existence of the objects of perception, asupposition that greatly increases the coherence and constancy of theperceptions (T 1.4.2.22; SBN: 198). This supposition allows the belief-forming mechanism to over-extend itself ‘like a galley put in motion by theoars, carries on its course without any new impulse’ (T 1.4.2.22; SBN: 198).In effect we are back at square one: coherence presupposes the ‘simplesupposition’ of the continued existence of perceptions in order to pull itsweight in determining our beliefs about external objects, and continuitytakes us back to constancy.16
Constancy is qualitative identity through interruption. But the objects ofconstancy are perceptions, and so the qualitatively identical objects oneither side of an interruption are not numerically identical. It is here thatHume introduces a standing disposition, analogous to the disposition toanthropomorphize. This is an independently identifiable disposition toascribe numerical identity to what are really numerically distinct, butresembling, objects.17 Resembling perceptions trigger the manifestation of
16Barry Stroud (1977: 100) says constancy is the important relation and ‘‘‘coherence’’ plays only
a supplementary role’ in Hume’s account. Constancy ‘is what is responsible for getting the belief
in the continued and distinct existence of objects in the first place’ (ibid.). See also Pears (1990:
184ff).17‘We shall afterwards see many instances of this tendency’ (T 1.4.2.35; SBN: 204).
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that disposition, producing the tendency to believe that two differentperceptions on either side of an interruption are experiences of a numericallyidentical object. This disposition is not sufficient to explain the belief: itexerts a pull on the mind, but does not quite fool it. We still realize that thenumerically different, but resembling objects, are different, and thisproduces a Humean ‘contradiction’. We are pulled to believe thatresembling perceptions are identical, but aware that they are not.18 Thereis a ‘perplexity arising from this contradiction [which] produces apropension to unite these broken appearances by the fiction of a continu’dexistence’ (T 1.4.2.36; SBN: 205), a psychological discomfort, and, in orderto remove it, the thinker yields to the false belief that resembling perceptionsare identical by ‘feigning’ the continued existence of sensible objects:
Nothing is more certain from experience, than that any contradiction either tothe sentiments or passions gives a sensible uneasiness, whether it proceeds from
without or from within; from the opposition of external objects, or from thecombat of internal principles. On the contrary, whatever strikes in with thenatural propensities, and either externally forwards their satisfaction, or
internally concurs with their movements, is sure to give a sensible pleasure.Now there being here an opposition betwixt the notion of the identity ofresembling perceptions, and the interruption of their appearance, the mind
must be uneasy in that situation, and will naturally seek relief from theuneasiness. Since the uneasiness arises from the opposition of two contraryprinciples, it must look for relief by sacrificing the one to the other.
(T 1.4.2.37; SBN: 205–6, my emphasis)
Just like the polytheistic belief, a disposition is manifested in response to apsychological uneasiness and is sustained because it rids the thinker of thisuneasiness by supposing that our perceptions continue to exist throughoutour interrupted experience of them.
FROM THE VULGAR TO THE SOPHISTICATED
We have parallels (a) and (b). In this section we discuss parallels (c), (d) and(e). When polytheists ‘discover, by a little reflection, that the course ofnature is regular and uniform, their whole faith totters, and falls to ruin’(NHR VI: 154), and as for the vulgar perceptual belief, ‘very little reflectionand philosophy is sufficient to make us perceive the fallacy of that opinion’(T 1.4.2.44; SBN: 210). This gives parallel (c). Both beliefs transmutethemselves into sophisticated versions, the doctrine of double existence andmonotheism. The vulgar and sophisticated beliefs share the same ‘core
18‘But as the interruption of the appearance seems contrary to the identity, and naturally leads
us to regard these resembling perceptions as different from each other, we here find ourselves at
a loss how to reconcile such opposite opinions’ (T 1.4.2.36; SBN: 205).
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content’, differently expressed. In the perceptual belief the continued anddistinct existence of objects becomes the belief of the continued and distinctexistence of resembling causes of perceptions. In the religious case we havethe ‘belief of invisible intelligent power’ changed from many such powers toa single power. This gives us parallel (d). The causes of the sophisticatedbeliefs are the same kinds of irrational cause responsible for the vulgarversions, and Hume does not think such beliefs are the causal upshot ofprobable reason (parallel (e)). There is, however, a disanalogy between thetwo cases here that should be noted. In the case of the external world belief,it seems that reasoned reflection – but not much of it – is a necessarycondition for arriving at the sophisticated belief, whereas the move frompolytheism to monotheism does not require thinkers to reject polytheismbefore arriving at monotheism. But this does not mean that we reason to thedoctrine of double existence. Hume thinks that reason operating alonewould merely show the vulgar belief to be false: it would not suggest orrecommend the doctrine of double existence.19
Beginning his discussion of monotheism, Hume writes:
whoever thinks that it [monotheism] has owed its success to the prevalent forceof those invincible reasons, on which it is undoubtedly founded, would showhimself little acquainted with the ignorance and stupidity of the people, andtheir incurable prejudices in favour of their particular superstitions.
(NHR VI: 153)
Instead, the belief has the following explanation. The pantheon ismodelled on human social order, where one god is picked out as the princeor supreme magistrate. This god becomes the central target for the hopesand fears of the believers, and the more extreme the fear, the higher thedegree of flattery. That means conceiving of the relevant god as increasinglypowerful, knowing, intelligent, benevolent, etc. The end point of this processis conceiving of a being infinitely powerful, all knowing, and perfectlybenevolent. At this point, Hume tells us that believers:
coincide, by chance, with the principles of reason and true philosophy; thoughthey are guided to that notion, not by reason, of which they are in greatmeasure incapable, but by the adulation and fears of the most vulgar
superstition.
(NHR VI: 155)
We shall come back to this chance coincidence, but, clearly, whateverjustification might accrue to the belief through reason, the belief’s causationis not reason. It is the anxieties of the vulgar mind that are in the drivingseat.
19‘Again, were we fully convin’d, that our perceptions are dependent, and interrupted, and
different, we shoul’d be as little inclin’d to embrace the opinion of a double existence’ (T
1.4.2.52; SBN: 215–16).
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The sophisticated perceptual belief also owes itself to the vulgar cast ofmind. Reason is necessary to acquire the belief, in the sense of showing thefalsity of the vulgar version, but according to Hume, if we operated byreason alone, we would simply rest content with that conclusion. Instead,further psychological pressures biases the mind to produce the sophisticatedversion. That belief is a philosopher’s belief that construes the perceptualrelation as follows: in virtue of our direct awareness of, or acquaintancewith, perceptions, we are, in the case of veridical experience, indirectly awareof objects other than perceptions, in a manner similar to being directlyaware of an image on a TV screen and indirectly aware of the events andobjects thereby represented. The direct objects of awareness – perceptions –resemble in re objects that continue to exist unperceived. The resemblancerelation between perceptions and the external objects is supposed to secure agenuine notion of representation, and allow for the possibility of belief in aworld external to our private experience. We can acknowledge the mind-dependence of our experience without losing contact with the worldaltogether.
The belief is neither the product of reason nor of the senses. Ex hypothesi,we are not directly acquainted with the external objects supposed toresemble our perceptions, and so the belief cannot arise from the sensesnarrowly conceived. To reason to a conclusion, meanwhile, requires anexperienced conjunction of objects, but ex hypothesi we do not experiencethe external object.20 Philosophers do not arrive at their perceptual belief byreason because they cannot. Instead, they are aware of the falsity of thevulgar system, but are still in its grip, psychologically speaking. We haveanother ‘contradiction’, generating an anxiety that the formation of a beliefpalliates:
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 nopossibility of disguising her. Not being able to reconcile these two enemies, weendeavour to set ourselves at ease as much as possible, by successively granting
to each whatever it demands, and by feigning a double existence, where eachmay find something, that has all the conditions it desires.
(T 1.4.2.52; SBN: 215)
20 The only conclusion we can draw from the existence of one thing to that of another, is by means of
the relation of cause and effect, which shows, that there is a connexion betwixt them, and that the
existence of one is dependent on that of the other. The idea of this relation is deriv’d from past
experience, by which we find, that two beings are constantly conjoin’d together, and are always
present at once to the mind. But as no beings are ever present to the mind but perceptions; it follows
that we may observe a conjunction or a relation of cause and effect betwixt different perceptions, but
can never observe it betwixt perceptions and objects.
(T 1.4.2.47; SBN: 212)
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THE TENUOUS HOLD OF THE ABSURD AND MONSTROUS
Hume thinks that the sophisticated versions of the beliefs have a moretenuous psychological hold on the mind of the thinker than the vulgarversions (parallel (f)). The perceptual belief is a sop to the worries of thestudy: by its means ‘we can humour our reason for a moment, when itbecomes troublesome and sollicitous’ (T 1.4.2.53; SBN: 216). Outside thestudy we ‘easily return to our vulgar and natural notions’ and we fall backon ‘those exploded opinions’. This has partly to do with the ‘abstractness’of the belief: ‘I cannot forbear concluding, that from the very abstractnessand difficulty [of the view] that ‘tis an improper subject for the fancy towork upon’ (T 1.4.2.48; SBN: 213). A similar point applies to thepsychology of monotheism. Of monotheism he writes that such ‘refinedideas, being somewhat disproportioned to vulgar comprehension, remainnot long in their original purity; but require to be supported by the notionof inferior mediators or subordinate agents, which interpose betweenmankind and their supreme deity’ (NHR VIII: 159). These become the‘chief objects of devotion’, engendering a ‘continual flux and reflux ofpolytheism and theism’. Although these ‘objects’ are more easily under-stood by the vulgar, the natural propensity to elevation pushes them againin the direction of pure theism. There is an oscillation, or flux and reflux,between vulgar polytheism and theism. The easiness of the conceptioninclines one’s imagination in one direction, the propensity to elevationpulls in the other.
Both sophisticated beliefs are thought to attract absurdity and involve‘monstrosity’. This gives us parallel (g). Polytheism contains no ‘monstrousabsurdity’ (NHR XI: 165) and is a system that is ‘so natural’ (NHR XI:165). Of the vulgar perceptual belief, Hume writes that ‘tho’ this opinionbe false’, it is ‘most natural of any, and has alone any primaryrecommendation to the fancy’ (T 1.4.2.48; SBN: 213), whereas thephilosophical view is a ‘monstrous off-spring’ (T 1.4.2.52; SBN: 215),‘loaded with. . . absurdity’ (T 1.4.2.56; SBN: 218). The vulgar versions ofthe belief are coherent but false. The sophisticated versions involve orattract some further absurdity that makes such views worse than merefalsity.
NHR XI, entitled ‘Comparison of these religions [polytheism withmonotheism] with regard to reason or absurdity’, argues that monotheismattracts an absurdity not found in polytheism. Monotheism per se is notabsurd; the absurdity is due to the fact ‘philosophy is apt to incorporateitself with such a system of theology’ (NHR XI: 165). Philosophy becomesthe handmaiden of theology and is exploited – in the bad sense of the word –to produce a complex and incoherent intellectual edifice. Monotheismattracts doctrines like transubstantiation, the trinity, and other ‘scholastic’doctrines. Like the deists, Hume believes such absurdities promote thepower of the priests:
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If. . .theology went not beyond reason and common sense, her doctrines wouldappear too easy and familiar. Amazement must of necessity be raised: Mysteryaffected: Darkness and obscurity sought after: And a foundation of merit
afforded to the devout votaries, who desire an opportunity of subduing theirrebellious reason, by the belief of the most unintelligible sophisms.
(NHR XI: 166)
Such absurdity is strictly detachable from monotheism, leaving acoherent, if minimal, content. What of the absurdity of the doctrine ofdouble existence? Hume writes that that view is:
over-and-above loaded with this absurdity, that it at once denies andestablishes the vulgar supposition. Philosophers deny our resemblingperceptions to be identically the same, and uninterrupted; and yet have sogreat a propensity to believe them such, that they arbitrarily invent a new set
of perceptions, to which they attribute these qualities. I say, a new set ofperceptions: For we may well suppose in general, but ‘tis impossible for usdistinctly to conceive, objects to be in their nature any thing but exactly the
same with perceptions.
(T 1.4.2.56; SBN: 218)
There are two ways to understand this, one making the absurdity externalto the content of the supposition and so detachable from it, the other findingthe absurdity in the very content of the supposition and so not detachable.This second account places the absurdity in the very supposition ofsomething that is not a perception but nevertheless resembles a perception:since we can only conceive of perceptions then the philosophers indirectobjects cannot even be conceived. The first account of the absurdity places itnot in the supposition of a resemblance but in the ‘arbitrary invention’ of anew set of objects that are like perceptions. I will not try to decide this issuehere, though it is an important one.21 All that is important for our concernsis that Hume thinks that the sophisticated versions of beliefs attract orinvolve an absurdity that the vulgar versions do not.
AWARENESS AND DESTABILIZATION
Both accounts destabilize the beliefs they explain. That is the parallel (h).More accurately, acknowledgment that such accounts are the bestexplanations of the belief destabilizes that belief. We approach how suchaccounts destabilize and what destabilization is by looking at the NHR.
The final paragraph of the NHR is as follows:
The whole is a riddle, an ænigma, an inexplicable mystery. Doubt, uncertainty,suspence of judgment appear the only result of our most accurate scrutiny,
21See my Projection and Realism in Hume.
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concerning this subject. But such is the frailty of human reason, and such theirresistible contagion of opinion, that even this deliberate doubt could scarcelybe upheld; did we not enlarge our view, and opposing one species of
superstition to another, set them a quarrelling; while we ourselves, during theirfury and contention, happily make our escape, into the calm, though obscure,regions of philosophy.
(NHR XV: 185)
The ‘deliberate doubt’ Hume speaks of here cannot be doubt concerninghis own causal explanation of the belief of invisible intelligent power. If itwere, we could scarcely make sense of the claim that the doubt is threatenedby the irresistible contagion of opinion. Instead, ‘this subject’ must refer tothe explanadum of the NHR, the ‘belief of intelligent invisible power’. Sincethis content is common to both polytheism and monotheism, then ‘suspenceof judgment’ must apply to both forms of the belief. Reflections on thecauses of belief recommend a suspense of judgment regarding any belief ofinvisible intelligent power.
This may seem odd, since Hume states in a number of places in theNHR that genuine theism is ‘founded on argument’ which makes itdifficult to see how he can claim that suspense of judgement is the onlyresult of his investigation. But there is no inconsistency here. Hume isfocusing on the investigation of the causes of the belief and theinvestigation into these recommends suspense of judgement. In this senseHume’s account is destabilizing: acknowledging that the best account ofthe causes is how Hume describes it and in the absence of any otherconsiderations in favour of it, gives us a reason to suspend belief untilfurther considerations in favour of the belief can be found. To restabilizethe belief some other ground needs to be offered, and Hume alludes to theidea of such a belief being ‘founded on argument’. But, crucially, no suchargument is given in the NHR: instead we are told that there is one, butthat is not something that Hume’s readers can take at face value. In effectHume’s recommendation to escape into the ‘the calm, though obscure,regions of philosophy’ is an invitation to consider the philosophicalarguments for the belief. To destabilize is not to refute a view: it is ratherto make one aware that justification for that belief is required.
Acknowledgement that the best explanation of the belief is Hume’s leadsto a suspense of judgement. But why? What is it about the causes,acknowledgement of which, would bring about such a suspense ofjudgement? One thought is that the explanation makes the existence of adeity superfluous, so, in the absence of some further argument in favour ofthe belief, we ought to suspend it. But I do not think this will do.
Hume writes:
The universal propensity to believe in invisible, intelligent power, if not anoriginal instinct, being at least a general attendant of human nature, may beconsidered as a kind of mark or stamp, which the divine workman has set
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upon his work; and nothing surely can more dignify mankind, than to be thusselected from all other parts of creation, and to bear the image or impressionof the universal Creator.
(NHR XV: 184)
Hume alludes here to a version of the ‘argument from commonconsent’. Prior to Hume the widespread assent to the existence ofintelligent invisible power was taken to lend the belief evidential support:the best explanation of the assent makes appeal to God as its cause. Nowthat our assent is amenable to naturalistic causes need not itself underminethis argument, properly understood. Instead the defender could say thatthe widespread propensity to assent to such a proposition is an inevitable,if not original, part of human nature and that itself requires anexplanation, and take that to require God as its best explanation.Whereas a stronger version of the argument from common consent wouldappeal to supernatural causes to explain the extent, a naturalistic accountof the assent – together with the fact of it – need neither destabilize thebelief nor the argument from common consent.22 Nothing in what we haveso far said stands in conflict with that view and Hume himself throughoutthe NHR acknowledges that there is near universal assent to the belief ofinvisible intelligent power.
What is crucial is the kind of cause that Hume identifies, namely theforms of motivated irrationality that are productive of the belief. Thepoint is that kind of causes that Hume identifies are irrational causes andinvite epistemic censure. We can understand why someone forms a beliefto relieve themselves of an anxiety (that is, there is a motivation to do so)but we also recognize that the agent is being epistemically irrational in theformation of the belief. Hume says all ‘doctrines are to be suspected whichare favoured by our passions’,23 and I think we should take this hisrecognition that holding such beliefs involve a biasing of our evidenceprocessing mechanisms, of ignoring what would otherwise be salientevidence to the contrary, or giving other evidence undue weight and thelike. If these are the causes of the belief, then the fact of consent needs anexplanation that would normally warrant a condemnation of that belief.We would reject any such belief as stemming from what we take to be anunreliable source and suspend our judgement until further grounds can befound. So the defender of consent is now faced with an explanation of thecauses that would normally lead to a condemnation of that belief. Withoutresorting to some ad hoc measures, the defender must recognize thatbeliefs with those kinds of origin are deeply suspicious. Instead of thecauses bearing ‘the image or impression of the universal Creator’, you willbe ‘scarcely persuaded’ that religious principles are ‘are anything but sick
22For further discussion, see my ‘Understanding Hume’s Natural History of Religion’.23‘Of the immortality of the soul’ in David Hume: Essays, Moral, Political and Literary, ed. by
Eugene F. Miller (Indianapolis: 1985), 598.
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men’s dreams: Or perhaps will regard them more as the playsomewhimsies of monkies in human shape, than serious, positive, dogmaticalasserverations of a being, who dignifies himself with the name of rational’(NHR XV: 184).
One last thing before we turn to the perceptual belief. I have talkedabout the causes of belief, without distinguishing between aetiologicalcauses (those which produce the belief) and sustaining causes (those whichkeep you believing). I have also not distinguished between beliefs as apsychological state and the more nebulous sense of a cluster of socialcommitments (Christian belief). Hume sometimes treats belief as apersonal psychological matter and takes hope and fear to be that whatsustains belief. But none of this is necessary to destabilize. For you mightclaim that your own belief does not owe itself to your fear or hope: youwere simply brought up with it, and the belief is sustained by one’s friendsand community. But nothing in Hume’s destabilizing account needs toassume that everyone now needs to have such beliefs sustained by fear orhope. His interest is in where the original notion of ‘intelligent invisiblepower’ came from, and trace that back to motivated irrationality shouldhave knock-on effects for present believers. For saying that they acquirethe belief through upbringing opens up the question of where one’s parentsacquired the belief, and so on.
In the light of this, let us turn to the SWRS. The destabilizing character ofSWRS has not been ignored by commentators: David Owen tells us that‘Hume finally realizes that, as he is trying to explain why we believesomething, that is at best, not supported by reason, the status of belief isproblematic’, because the belief’s causation involves some ‘gross illusion’and ‘absurdity’.24 We become aware that the belief’s causation involvesillusions and absurd beliefs. Similarly, Don Garrett implies Hume’s changeof tone is through his realization that belief owes its provenance to some‘trivial qualities of the imagination’.25 This seems correct as far as it goes,but what is interesting is that our comparison of the NHR with SWRSprovides a vantage point from which to identify quite what the culprit is inthe belief’s causation. For what is common to both texts, besides the changeof tone, is that the explanations are instances of motivated irrationality, asystemic biasing of the subject’s cognitive mechanisms in an effort to removea psychological discomfort: the causes of the belief are the passions, andsuch causes are not merely those which bestow no justification on the beliefbut are also grounds for censure. What is important to emphasize is thatsuch causes are not merely non-rational but irrational: one’s passionsinterfere with one’s cognitive mechanisms so as to make one blind or ignoreother judgements (resembling perceptions are not numerically identical,perceptions do not continue to existence unperceived). The belief rests not
24(1999: 210).25(1997: 214–15).
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merely on a failure to process evidence correctly but a motivated blindnessto one’s other judgments.26
NATURAL BELIEFS
Our examination of the causes of beliefs in both the continued and distinctexistence of objects and the belief of invisible intelligent power has suggestedthat Hume’s causal accounts of each are closely parallel and that theaetiological causes of each are not merely non-rational but irrational. Thisraises an old question in a new way. Is religious belief a ‘natural belief’?27
Our close examination of the causes of the respective beliefs has shown themto be in many ways similar. But it does not seem that, since causes ofreligious belief are similar to those that cause the external world belief, theformer belief has some natural authority in the way that external objectbeliefs are commonly supposed to have. Instead, the comparison suggeststhat the motivated irrationality clearly present in the causes of religiousbelief carries over to the external world case. The irony is that the debate hasseemed to assume that the external world belief had some authority from itsstatus as natural belief, and the question was whether religious belief couldderive a similar authority. Yet now they both appear to be irrational.
But this is premature: we need to distinguish, as we did earlier, betweenthe aetiological causes of the belief and the sustaining causes. Nothing inSWRS suggests that what keeps the belief in place is the same irrationalcause that brought it about, and nothing in the NHR prevents us frommaking that distinction. The question that the destabilizing accounts bringto consciousness is what further grounds are available to justify beliefs thatare sourced in irrational causes, rather than showing that those beliefs areincapable of justification. Hume writes:
I cou’d wish that Cleanthes’ Argument [from design] coud be so analys’d, as tobe render’d quite formal and regular. The Propensity of the Mind towards it,
26This last point raises an overall question about Hume’s intentions in SWRS. Some see his
sceptical swoon as in some ways at odds with his ‘science of the mind’. What Hume is really up
to in SWRS is a cognitive-psychological explanation of certain sort. Hume’s ‘science of the
mind’ includes an interest in ‘[describing] introspectively inaccessible psychological mechan-
isms. . .[and] not epistemological [issues] in the traditional sense’, and giving an account of our
‘construction’ of the external world at the ‘sub-personal level’ (Weller 2001: 276). Hume’s
science of the mind involves, in embryo, mechanisms that are ‘sub-doxastic’, and ‘modular’
(Biro 1993: 45). These are all concepts that do not apply to beliefs or epistemic agents but at a
level of psychology below them. Hume, however, has an unfortunate tendency to conflate these
causal issues with epistemic ones (Weller 2001: 278). I suspect that Hume’s account is
deliberately destabilizing not merely the result of his failure to make distinctions that he could
have made. Obviously, I cannot discuss this in depth here.27Key discussions of this issue, originally deriving from Kemp Smith, include Butler (1960),
Gaskin (1974) and (1988) and McCormick (1993).
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unless that propensity were as strong & universal as that to believe in ourSenses & Experience, will still, I am afraid, be esteem’d a suspiciousFoundation. Tis here I wish for your Assistance. We must endeavour to
prove that this Propensity is somewhat different from our Inclination to findour own Figures in the Clouds, our Face in the Moon, our Passions &Sentiments even in inanimate Matter. Such an Inclination may, & ought to be
controul’d, & can never be a legitimate Ground of Assent.28
My account of the aetiological causes of these beliefs makes them bothvery similar and irrational but does not foreclose on the distinction implicitin this passage.29 Let me end by noting but not commenting upon a furtherdifference in the SWRS and the NHR. At the end of SWRS Humerecommends ‘carelessness and in-attention’ as the palliative to the ‘intensivereflection’ of this subject, a move away from philosophy, whereas in theNHR the recommendation is to escape to philosophy to maintain thesuspense of judgement. It would be fascinating to try to understand whatlies behind this difference.30
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF SECONDARY LITERATURE
Bennett, J. (1971) Locke, Berkeley, Hume: Central Themes, Oxford:Clarendon Press.
Biro, J. (1993) ‘Hume’s New Science of the Mind’, in The CambridgeCompanion to Hume, ed. by D. F. Norton, Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press.
Butler, R. (1960) ‘Natural Belief and the Enigma of Hume’, Archiv fur dieGeschichte der Philosophie 42: 73–100.
Falkenstein, L. (2003) ‘Hume’s Project in ‘‘The Natural History ofReligion’’, Religious Studies 39: 1–21.
Fogelin, R. (1985) Hume’s Skepticism in the Treatise of Human Nature,London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Garrett, D. (1997) Cognition and Commitment in Hume’s Philosophy, NewYork: Oxford University Press.
Gaskin, J. C. A. (1974) ‘God, Hume and Natural Belief’, Philosophy 49:281–94.
28Letter to Gilbert Elliot, 10 March 1751, reprinted in Gaskin’s 1993 Oxford Edition of the
Dialogues and Natural History of Religion, 26–8.29For thoughts of my own on this, see my Projection and Realism in Hume.30Earlier versions of this paper were read at Stirling, Aberdeen and St. Andrews Universities
and I am grateful for the useful comments of those audiences. John P. Wright and the
anonymous referee for this journal helped to improve this paper quite considerably and I am
indebted to both. Thanks, of a different sort, to A. Flintoff, P. F. B. Edmund, and S. M. S.
Pearsall.
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——— (1988) Hume’s Philosophy of Religion 2nd edn, Basingstoke:MacMillan.
Harrison, P. (1990) ‘Religion’ and the Religions in the English Enlightenment,Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Herdt, J. (1997) Religion and Faction in Hume’s Moral Philosophy,Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kail, P. (forthcoming) Projection and Realism in Hume, Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press.
——— ‘Understanding Hume’s Natural History of Religion’, m/s.Malherbe, M. (1995) ‘Hume’s Natural History of Religion’, Hume Studies
21: 255–74.McCormick, M. (1993) ‘Hume on Natural Belief and Original Principles’,
Hume Studies 19: 103–16.Pears, D. (1984) Motivated Irrationality, Oxford: Clarendon Press.——— (1990) Hume’s System: An Examination of Book I of his Treatise,
Oxford: Oxford University Press.Penelhum, T. (1975) Hume, London and Basingstoke: Macmillan.Owen, D. (1999) Hume’s Reason, Oxford: Oxford University Press.Rivers, I. (2000) Reason, Grace and Sentiment: A Study of the Language of
Religion and Ethics in England, 1660–1780, vol. 2, Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.
Stroud, B. (1977) Hume, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.Webb, M. (1991) ‘The Argument of the Natural History’, Hume Studies 17:
141–60.Weller, C. (2001) ‘Why Hume is a Direct Realist’, Archiv fur die Geschichte
der Philosophie 83: 258–85.Yandell, K. (1976) ‘Hume on Religious Belief’, in Hume: A Re-Evaluation,
ed. by D. Livingston and J. King, New York: Fordham UniversityPress.
——— (1990) Hume’s Inexplicable Mystery, Philadelphia: Temple Uni-versity Press.
University of Edinburgh
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