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.38Anxious not to lend support in any way to the forces of superstition, Hume completes his work by expressing his conclusion in the most negative terms possible.He will go no further than a God who is the source of order in the universe and who bears, perhaps, some remote analogy to human intelligence.On the other hand, if the proposition is thus confined:If it affords no inference that affects human life, or can be the source of any action or forbearance: And if the analogy, imperfect as it is, can be carried no further than to the human intelligence; and cannot be transferred with any appearance of probability, to the other qualities of the mind: If this really be the case, what can the most inquisitive, contemplative, and religious man do more than give a plainphilosophical assent to the proposition, as often as it occurs; and believe that the arguments, on which it is established, exceed the objections which lie against it?391309CONCLUSIONOn the empiricist view, we reason on the basis of beliefs which are justified by sense exper ience.On the naturalist, we can justify beliefs by sense experience only because we already have beliefs and, consequently, there is more in our beliefs than sense experience can explain or justify.The empiricist, at his most extreme, holds that the natural world falls entirely within the categories of chance and blind causation and that the source of knowledge is therefore entirely in ourselves.The naturalist, by contrast, holds that our knowledge presupposes an intelligible order, not of our own making, which is common to nature and ourselves.In the eighteenth century, empiricism was the dominant philosophy in Britain.At the beginning of the nineteenth century, it was some form of naturalism which flourished.Hume’s philosophy was of decisive importance in producing the change.For it seemed evident, however he was interpreted, that he had revealed the bankruptcy of eighteenth-century empiricism.Whether or not he was a sceptic, he had shown that our fundamental beliefs cannot be explained in empiricist terms.Consequently, our ability to know the world through sense experience was no longer seen as the solution to the problem of knowledge.It was itself a problem.The question was: how is it possible to know the world through sense experience? Kant and the Scottish naturalists ar r ived independently at similar solutions.Sense experience is unintelligible except within categories or forms of belief which in the empiricist sense are a priori.Unless we are already adjusted to know the world, we cannot know it through sense experience.At the beginning of the nineteenth century, this view was dominant both in Britain and on the continent.A change occurred in the middle of the nineteenth century.In Britain this was due to the influence of J.S.Mill.1 Mill had inherited from his father a version of eighteenth-century empiricism.He took the philosophy of Kant and of the Scottish naturalists to be a form of obscurantist intuitionism which in political and social affairs assisted the party of reaction.The interpretation was entirely dubious.For example, Kant and William Hamilton, the leader of the Scottish school, were both liberals and no one has shown that their 131CONCLUSIONliberalism was incompatible with their philosophy.Nevertheless, Mill thought their philosophy reactionary and, both in his book on logic and in his study of William.Hamilton’s philosophy, he took it upon himself, in the name of empiricism, to launch an attack on the whole school.The works exerted an enormous influence and Mill’s attack was generally thought to be successful.As a result, empiricism, once again, became the dominant philosophy in Britain.It has remained so until the present day.There has been only one exceptional period.Towards the end of the nineteenth century, T.H.Green argued, with considerable power, that it was Mill who was the real reactionary.For, in effect, he had taken philosophy back to the eighteenth century, reinstating views which had been undermined by Hume and comprehensively refuted by his successors.But Green’s influence was brief.In the present century, Russell adopted a philosophy comparable with Mill’s, and his successors, A.J.Ayer and the logical positivists, adopted a form of empiricism even more extreme than that of the eighteenth century.Moreover, although empiricism in a form that extreme has been abandoned, it has been replaced by varieties of scientific naturalism which have very much more in common with empiricism than with the naturalism of the Scottish school.2A study of the conflict in Hume’s philosophy between empiricism and naturalism is therefore of interest not simply in its own right but also because of the light it throws on the history of philosophy.It prefigures the conflict between the two views which occurred during the succeeding century.What I have argued, in effect, is that Kant, Hamilton and Green were correct and that the triumph of empiricism has proved a misfortune for philosophy.For Hume’s philosophy does indeed show the bankruptcy of empiricism.Wherever he reasons consistently with his empiricist assumptions, he finds himself involved in insoluble problems.Wherever he rises above those problems, he reasons consistently with the principles of Scottish naturalism.This is as true of the Dialogues as of the Treatise [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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.38Anxious not to lend support in any way to the forces of superstition, Hume completes his work by expressing his conclusion in the most negative terms possible.He will go no further than a God who is the source of order in the universe and who bears, perhaps, some remote analogy to human intelligence.On the other hand, if the proposition is thus confined:If it affords no inference that affects human life, or can be the source of any action or forbearance: And if the analogy, imperfect as it is, can be carried no further than to the human intelligence; and cannot be transferred with any appearance of probability, to the other qualities of the mind: If this really be the case, what can the most inquisitive, contemplative, and religious man do more than give a plainphilosophical assent to the proposition, as often as it occurs; and believe that the arguments, on which it is established, exceed the objections which lie against it?391309CONCLUSIONOn the empiricist view, we reason on the basis of beliefs which are justified by sense exper ience.On the naturalist, we can justify beliefs by sense experience only because we already have beliefs and, consequently, there is more in our beliefs than sense experience can explain or justify.The empiricist, at his most extreme, holds that the natural world falls entirely within the categories of chance and blind causation and that the source of knowledge is therefore entirely in ourselves.The naturalist, by contrast, holds that our knowledge presupposes an intelligible order, not of our own making, which is common to nature and ourselves.In the eighteenth century, empiricism was the dominant philosophy in Britain.At the beginning of the nineteenth century, it was some form of naturalism which flourished.Hume’s philosophy was of decisive importance in producing the change.For it seemed evident, however he was interpreted, that he had revealed the bankruptcy of eighteenth-century empiricism.Whether or not he was a sceptic, he had shown that our fundamental beliefs cannot be explained in empiricist terms.Consequently, our ability to know the world through sense experience was no longer seen as the solution to the problem of knowledge.It was itself a problem.The question was: how is it possible to know the world through sense experience? Kant and the Scottish naturalists ar r ived independently at similar solutions.Sense experience is unintelligible except within categories or forms of belief which in the empiricist sense are a priori.Unless we are already adjusted to know the world, we cannot know it through sense experience.At the beginning of the nineteenth century, this view was dominant both in Britain and on the continent.A change occurred in the middle of the nineteenth century.In Britain this was due to the influence of J.S.Mill.1 Mill had inherited from his father a version of eighteenth-century empiricism.He took the philosophy of Kant and of the Scottish naturalists to be a form of obscurantist intuitionism which in political and social affairs assisted the party of reaction.The interpretation was entirely dubious.For example, Kant and William Hamilton, the leader of the Scottish school, were both liberals and no one has shown that their 131CONCLUSIONliberalism was incompatible with their philosophy.Nevertheless, Mill thought their philosophy reactionary and, both in his book on logic and in his study of William.Hamilton’s philosophy, he took it upon himself, in the name of empiricism, to launch an attack on the whole school.The works exerted an enormous influence and Mill’s attack was generally thought to be successful.As a result, empiricism, once again, became the dominant philosophy in Britain.It has remained so until the present day.There has been only one exceptional period.Towards the end of the nineteenth century, T.H.Green argued, with considerable power, that it was Mill who was the real reactionary.For, in effect, he had taken philosophy back to the eighteenth century, reinstating views which had been undermined by Hume and comprehensively refuted by his successors.But Green’s influence was brief.In the present century, Russell adopted a philosophy comparable with Mill’s, and his successors, A.J.Ayer and the logical positivists, adopted a form of empiricism even more extreme than that of the eighteenth century.Moreover, although empiricism in a form that extreme has been abandoned, it has been replaced by varieties of scientific naturalism which have very much more in common with empiricism than with the naturalism of the Scottish school.2A study of the conflict in Hume’s philosophy between empiricism and naturalism is therefore of interest not simply in its own right but also because of the light it throws on the history of philosophy.It prefigures the conflict between the two views which occurred during the succeeding century.What I have argued, in effect, is that Kant, Hamilton and Green were correct and that the triumph of empiricism has proved a misfortune for philosophy.For Hume’s philosophy does indeed show the bankruptcy of empiricism.Wherever he reasons consistently with his empiricist assumptions, he finds himself involved in insoluble problems.Wherever he rises above those problems, he reasons consistently with the principles of Scottish naturalism.This is as true of the Dialogues as of the Treatise [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]