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Evaluation of Hume's Theory of Belief
Hume writes, in his Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, that the laws of nature prescribe, to a great degree of accuracy, the “degree and direction of every motion” – to such a degree of accuracy, in fact, that “a living creature may as soon arise from the shock of two bodies, as motion, in any other degree or direction than what is actually produced by it.” However, Hume acutely observes that, as closely as we perceive two events to be linked, as certain as we can be that they will always be linked in future, cause is in fact not an a priori phenomenon. I may be certain that releasing a ball off the top of a building will result in its falling down to earth, to the extent that it seems illogical that it would not do so, but if I had never experienced the effects of gravity, or known of them indirectly, I could never argue that the ball will fall to earth of necessity. Hume’s view, arguably, was far ahead of its time, for we have since discovered that objects operate differently in different environments in the universe; and in extreme conditions the normal laws don’t apply at all. The clever distinction that Hume makes here is that, when we see an event X followed by an event Y, and we see that connection so often that we regard the two events as being constantly conjoined, we come to believe that event X causes event Y. But cause is merely a concept we create to impose order on the world. Logic and reason don’t lead us to this conclusion; we are led there instead by custom, a natural and, according to Hume, more reliable method in practice, and a method which is used widely in the animal kingdom to great efficacy. Concluding a general law that event Y always follows event X, based on experience of their constant conjunction, is an example of inductive reasoning – a process which, although is the bedrock of the majority of scientific knowledge, is nevertheless illogical, according to Hume. After all, says the philosopher, it is impossible to justify on the basis of either relations of ideas or matters of fact. If one tries to justify it on the grounds of logic and necessity (relations of ideas), the riposte is simply that there is no logical contradiction in stating that “the laws of nature will change.” Just because we have not seen them change, does not mean they can never change. An appeal to matters of fact is equally fruitless: one cannot justify inductive reasoning with reference to its success in the past, concluding that it will be just as successful in the future: for on what grounds can we say that the future will be like the past? It is not enough to say that the present was once a future, and that the present is like the past, because that relies on experience and hence is still an example of induction. Hume’s theory of belief is directly related to his idea of how the mind experiences the world. That is to say, that beliefs arise from sensory experience more directly and more contiguously than other ideas such as two-headed lions or underground skyscrapers. With these ideas, there is clearly an intermediate process in between sense experience (e.g. of the lion) and the new idea. A belief, therefore, cannot be self-consciously created; it is so inextricably connected with experience that to the believer, reality and the belief cannot be separated. This is of course despite the fact that the belief may be completely false. It is unlikely someone in their right mind would believe that two-headed lions exist, but it is possible for someone to believe that they will become a millionaire with their invention, even if they have no business acumen whatsoever, and their invention is useless. Hume contrasts this definition of belief with that of fiction: namely, an idea which is less contiguously related to the senses. A fiction may be vivid, but Hume argues that it cannot possibly be as vivid as a belief, exactly because of this lesser amount of contiguity. Because fictions require a certain amount of conscious, intellectual thought to create, they are further distanced from sense experience than beliefs, which are always coloured by the emotion of the initial experience that engendered them, and subsequently permanently linked with them. If someone strongly believes that their partner loves them, this belief was created by a series of experiences in which they thought that love was expressed, and the fact that those experiences were linked with a strong feeling of being loved. However, this idea that the difference between fictions and beliefs can be so straightforwardly delineated is very easily shattered. What of madmen or people who are afflicted mentally in some way? In the case of a schizophrenic, for instance, a fiction may be believed more readily and more vividly than what we might normally term a belief, which is often vague and abstract. Hume would argue that this is the one exception to the rule, and that the minds of those who are mentally ill operate differently to the minds of others. However, this strikes us as rather an easy way out. If Hume takes the minds of the mentally ill as exceptions, which they undoubtedly are, Hume then has a responsibility to find out how those minds work, because surely anything he learns will shed new light on how regular minds work. Once we get into these technicalities and subtle variations, we move gradually into the region of pure psychology, and here we perhaps see the limits of a philosophical speculation on mind. Philosophy is not as readily equipped to understand the mentally ill as the more scientific psychology is, because our speculation will be based on our own minds and only the external differences between them and others.
However, we do not need to be psychologists to recognise that two people can believe very different (indeed, even opposite) things about the same event. For example, two first-hand witnesses may report – genuinely – differently about the same purported crime. If they were both objective and had no ulterior motives in their testimonies, this surely shows that their beliefs did not simply arise from sensory experience, and some other factor must have affected their beliefs. It can of course be argued that this factor was indeed a previous belief inherited from another belief-forming incident, but this would then make our belief-forming faculties so complicated at any one time as to render Hume’s view rather too simplistic to get a grasp on our complex brains. In Section X of the Enquiry, Hume sets his philosophical eye on the nature of miracles. He puts forth a number of reasons why it is irrational to believe in miracles, even if miracles do have a theoretical possibility of occurring. A miracle, by definition, is an event that contradicts the laws of Nature, surely making it something worthy of investigation rather than blind belief. Hume argues that if we are to believe that an event of any kind occurred, the evidence in its favour should counterbalance the evidence against it. We have ample evidence for the existence of the laws of Nature – we see them ceaselessly in our quotidian life. If we are to believe that a miracle occurred, therefore, the evidence in its favour would have to be so strong as to outweigh that of the overwhelming empirical evidence of Nature’s laws. This, says Hume, has never in all of history been the case. Hume specifies more precisely the nature of the testimony of miracles, and why they are hardly ever trustworthy. The fact that most of us know of miracles in the first place by testimony and not by first hand experience is a point of contention. The very idea of miracles is one we hear from others first, and only if we are particularly impressionable and prone to believing them are we likely to see, or think we see, miracles ourselves. In other words, those who see miracles are not likely to be disinterested observers. Once we realise this, we can see that most (if not all) testimonies of miracles originate from exactly these “interested” observers – the miracles of Jesus were reported by his followers, and visions of Mary are reported in countries or regions that are staunchly Christian.
Hume goes on to make two further points that can be taken together, for their implications are essentially the same. Firstly, he says that humans take delight in a sense of wonder, and that this provides villains with an opportunity to manipulate. Observers who are amazed by a miracle they believe to have seen are likely to be so taken aback that they suspend any disbelief, and believe, more than anything else, for a lack of a reasonable explanation. On this basis the villains that Hume speaks of can unite whole peoples under singular banners and form religions and ideologies that may serve somehow in their favour, and not that of the people. Secondly, Hume observes that people who have held on to belief in miracles, have tended to be barbaric to some degree. Civilized people, with their more sophisticated and worldly understanding of things, are more reserved in committing to such belief. This can be backed up with the assistance of historical evidence. The peoples who converted most easily to Christianity and Islam, for example, were barbaric peoples who were greatly swayed by the many miracles that these religions claimed, whereas the great civilizations like Rome were more disposed to see religions as threatening upstarts. Whether this was because barbaric peoples simply had a less developed sense of cultural identity, or because they were somehow inclined to believe in miracles more readily, is difficult to know; Hume, though, clearly prefers the latter view. The two above points taken together suggest that Hume saw the belief in miracles as something elemental or animal, almost a need, but nevertheless a naïve view that civilization teaches us to dismiss. Whether or not it is genuinely a need is questionable, but nevertheless it can be shown that the attitudes of religious people change over time, usually from a more dogmatic understanding to a quite liberal one. After Socrates and his followers, the ancient Greeks became more inclined to disbelieve in the Olympic gods literally, and gradually to disbelieve in them altogether. The early Christians would have believed much of the Bible literally, but with scientific and politico-cultural advances such as Darwin’s Origin of Species, and the instatement of freedom of speech and belief in law, allowing opposing views to the fore with less fear of being branded heretics, modern Christians are much more likely to see the miraculous tales of the Bible as metaphor.
Lastly, Hume points out that miraculous testimonies tend to conflict with each other, especially in the cases of different religions, or different denominations within the same religion. It might be considered heretical, for instance, for a Muslim to believe that Jesus rose from the dead. By this rationale, there is no more reason for a Muslim to believe a miracle reported in the Qur’an than one reported in the Bible, except of course, allegiance to the religion. If a miracle is only to be believed by the adherents of that religion, how can those adherents claim any more proximity to the truth than others? An objective observer to these quarrels will be forced only to conclude that none of these miracles occurred, unless one can be supported with more evidence than another. Most of what Hume espouses on the matter of miracles seems now rather commonplace and not extraordinary – and even rather difficult, it would seem, to find fault with. However, Hume being the empiricist that he was, his whole theory derives from a strictly empirical angle, and views the possible existence or non-existence of miracles not as a thing in itself, but rather chooses to question where and how the belief in them originates. With this route, he excludes any possibility of miracles being rationally justifiable. This is in fact the whole thrust of his argument. Miracles may be theoretically possible, he intimates, but believers in them should not attempt to prove their existence with recourse to experience and reason, because these have shown themselves in the past to be inadequate tools for the purpose. Hume’s argument that those likely to believe in miracles have tendencies towards barbarism is perhaps the most contentious argument. Although it may be true that barbaric peoples are likely to cling on to religion with more fervour than civilized peoples, the idea that belief in miracles should be associated with them more than others is quite contentious. Friedrich Nietzsche argued, in his Birth of Tragedy, that the Socratic, “optimistic” impulse for knowledge, which believes that it will eventually uncover all the mysteries of the Universe, is also indirectly opposed to the artistic impulse, one of the cornerstones of civilization. This artistic impulse is one which, in its basest form, takes myths very seriously. That is not to say that a culture which does not question is better than one which does, but merely that there is a certain value in myth, and consequently the belief in miracles, which Hume’s arguments ignore. This appears to be the only real weakness in Hume’s theory; his connection of the miraculous with the barbarous seems to be the unconscious starting point of everything else, and rather than attempting to prove that miracles cannot happen, he opts to show that believers in them are rather simplistic, and believe simply because they would like to believe, or because they cannot find another explanation. However, this is in no way hypocritical of Hume: it is entirely consistent with his view that there are certain things, especially metaphysical ones, which it is beyond our power to know, and rather than trying to know them directly, it is better to find out what causes us to believe or disbelieve them in the first place.
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