The Role of Naturalistic Explanation in Hume's Critique of Religious Belief.

Hume;Hume"s Natural History;Natural Belief in God;Philosophy;Humanities;Philosophy

Goodnick, Elizabeth E.Pinch, Adela N. ;

University of Michigan

关键词: Hume;    Hume";    s Natural History;    Natural Belief in God;    Philosophy;    Humanities;    Philosophy;   

Others  :  https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/78738/goodnick_1.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

瑞士|英语

来源: The Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship

【 摘 要 】

Before the pioneering work of Norman Kemp Smith, most Hume scholars read him as a thoroughgoing skeptic. The dominant view today is that, for Hume, ;;natural beliefs’—paradigmatically, beliefs based on induction—are warranted in virtue of features of the psychological mechanisms that produce them; moreover, Hume would endorse a suitable naturalistic theory of warrant to sustain this position. I survey four naturalistic interpretations of Hume’s epistemology: Kemp Smith’s theory, proper-function theory, stability theory, and reliabilism. I do not argue for one of these interpretations over the others; instead, I focus on what they have in common: Hume provides a naturalistic response to any generalized skepticism.From within this broad interpretive framework, some commentators argue that Hume would extend the class of ;;natural beliefs’ to religious belief. The bulk of the evidence supporting this position is derived from the Dialogues; in particular,commentators argue that, instead of being supported by the argument from design, there is a natural propensity that causes one to form the belief in an intelligent designer upon noticing the order and regularity in the world. I argue that the evidence is insufficient to support the claim that, according to Hume, religious belief is a ;;natural belief’. I examine Hume’s Natural History, where he provides an account of the origin of religious belief, in conjunction with his epistemological observations about various belief-forming mechanisms in the Treatise. I show that, no matter which theory of naturalistic epistemology best fits Hume’s own, religious belief is not warranted naturalistically. Furthermore, I argue that on Hume’s view, polytheism, while still unwarranted, is epistemically superior to monotheism. I conclude that, for Hume, the psychological explanation of religious belief, in conjunction with the fact that religious belief cannot be warranted on the basis of any evidence or a priori or a posteriori argument, provides grounds to reject all forms of religious belief. The Natural History is best read as an important piece of a larger destructive project which has as its goal showing that religious belief is not warranted by any means—through reason or experience, by revelation, or by its naturalistic explanation.