The Subtle Skepticism of Hume
By: Andrew Thornebrooke
Tags: Education, Philosophy, History, Life, Thornebrooke

The Subtle Skepticism of Hume

The case for living with ignorance

Portrait of Hume by Allan Ramsay

Andrew Thornebrooke

In David Hume’s twelfth and final book within the Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Hume finally solidifies his understanding of skepticism’s essential qualities and proper implementation.

In an attempt to observe just how far skepticism may be pushed within the realm of human understanding, Hume observes two types of skepticism: The Cartesian antecedent, and the experimental consequent.

The former, antecedent skepticism, when taken to its extreme, forces the skeptic to admit to an unprovable first principle which, even if it were to exist, could not reasonably allow for an adequate leap to any other cause or principle. The latter, consequent skepticism, when taken to the extreme, disables us from being able to relate anything perceived through our flawed senses to our lived experience.

Both skeptic methods are, as such, disregarded by Hume in their extreme forms, which inevitably lead to what Hume would consider the wicked denial of all things. Both are welcomed, however, in a more controlled and moderate method.

As to the antecedent, Hume claims that when used appropriately, it can help to preserve the “…proper impartiality in our judgments and weaning our mind from all those prejudices which we may have imbibed from education or rash opinion.” Consequent skepticism, on the other hand, may be appropriately used to correct the fallibility of the senses, and thus allow for a greater exactitude in our studies and experiments, trimming away at the potential for error.

On the whole, Hume rejects outright the uses of any radicalized Pyrrhonian skepticism, while pushing the need for a moderated and deliberate skepticism with which to better our understanding, as well as our lived experience.

Hume’s powerful closing statement, that any work containing something other than the abstract reasoning of quantity and number or the experimental studies of existence and matters of fact, should be burned, is a sentiment imbued with conviction and meaning. Its significance is, perhaps, best understood in the context of Hume’s own hope for philosophy: That it should be to the greater influence and good of society.

For Hume, no Pyrrhonian anecdotes, nor sayings, nor philosophies, no matter how amusing nor captivating, can hold to a standard compatible with lived human existence. As he remarks:

Nature is always too strong for principle.

At its core, the final sentiment of the Enquiry is one of a desire for purpose in the process of creating knowledge, and of disdain for those methods and theories which would encumber humanity with meaningless speculation until the point of intellectual arrest.

Against this fear of intellectual and societal immobility, Hume, soon after exhorting the abstractions of number and quantity as the proper subjects of scientific inquiry, wrote that:

Beauty, whether moral or natural, is felt more properly than perceived.

It is this paradox, that of the inexplicable instinct joined together with the ever-striving intellect, that seems to underscore the whole of Hume’s work. Indeed, when understanding Hume’s purpose in writing on the superlative importance of skepticism, one is struck with the constant struggle of balance. Balance between instinct and reason, naivety and cynicism, existence and nothingness.

Concepts of absolute Pyrrhonism and absolute acceptance of the world as it is, are nothing more than allegories for the state of knowledge between everything and nothing.

In this, there is in Hume a certain humor and, for lack of a better word, duality. Reason and instinct, Hume asserted, are both methods contrary to one another, but both of which exist within the human experience regardless. That’s all well and good, but what, exactly, is the point of all this paradox?

One is reminded of Hume’s anecdotes on body language and how it could reveal if a person was lying. In this clever little piece, he postulated that eye-contact ¬could indicate an individual was lying. Lack of eye-contact, as well, could indicate a lie. Confidence as well as hesitance could, in fact, indicate that an individual was telling a fib.

The point of the body language is just the same as the point of the paradox. It could be one thing, or the other, or both. Which, of course, is no different than saying that we cannot be sure which it is.

This, my friends, is skepticism.

And it is was surely this that was on Hume’s mind when he penned such a tome of paradoxes. Skepticism exists for Hume so that we might capture that ethereal Socratic wisdom, and know that we do not know, but also know that it is our condition to act in spite of our ignorance.

In closing, it is perhaps prudent to remember Hume’s own words on the only value of excessive skepticism, being:

…to show the whimsical condition of mankind, who must act and reason and believe, though they are not able, by their most diligent inquiry, to satisfy themselves concerning the foundation of these operations or to remove the objections which may be raised against them.

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