Q&A: Hume’s Miracles Argument
Hume’s Miracles Argument
Question
Hello Rabbi,
I read in your book, Stable and Unstable Truth, about Hume’s miracles argument.
The argument goes roughly like this:
Q: Should we believe a tradition that says miracles occurred, or not?
A: It is more reasonable to say that miracles did not occur (because miracles are something improbable — which is what I inferred from my experience) than that the tradition is telling the truth.
You are basically saying that Hume has a flaw in his argument: he is essentially using induction (his experience) and placing absolute trust in it, rather than also giving a chance to the possibility that miracles can occur, and so he remains stuck in his conservatism.
According to your approach, one should use intuition and examine each side.
So one could say that Hume actually did examine each side, and in his opinion, according to his intuition (which is influenced by his experience), it is more likely that miracles do not occur, and his confidence in tradition is low.
In fact, every person comes to this question with his own assumptions based on his experience (induction), and thus begs the question (the emptiness of the analytic).
So what exactly is novel about your method, which uses intuition? After all, that too depends on our experience, and that is exactly what Hume is doing.
Have a good week.
Answer
I made several different claims there against Hume, not just this one. But even regarding this claim, what I said to him is not exactly what you described, but rather a different argument. Hume himself argues that learning from our experience is nothing but an illusion, since the assumption that what was will be is merely ingrained in us and has no justification in itself. It follows that the laws of nature we arrived at are not claims about the world, but only a convenient way for us to describe the information we have. If so, I argued, according to his own approach I do not understand where his confidence in the laws of nature comes from, and in the claim that what deviates from them could not have happened. He is not consistent with his own approach.
As for the matter itself, of comparing intuitions: indeed, each person has to do so according to the criteria he accepts. The preferable alternative from my point of view is not necessarily the one that would be preferable from another person’s point of view.
Discussion on Answer
Indeed, except that his whole thesis is of course nonsense. According to his approach, all our experience is fit for the trash, and there is no point in choosing at all, since the result of the choice is also an illusion. After all, he accepts only what we have seen directly (and of course even that is not grounded in any way). So among hallucinations, he hallucinates that he prefers hallucination A over hallucination B. Good health to him, and pleasant hallucinating.
If we relate to the content and do not look at who said it, then ostensibly the argument is valid even according to your approach. If someone comes and makes the same argument and says that this is what he claims based on his experience, then do we have nothing to argue against him?
I already wrote this, and I will repeat it again. My claim against Hume was about a problem within his own approach. As for the claim itself, had Hume himself not been involved here, I would say that this is an existing possibility that I personally do not agree with. I explained there why I do not agree, and what conclusions arise from that regarding the progress of science and the like.
I understood the contradiction in Hume’s words.
One could say that he is doing exactly what you suggested, and simply in his opinion it is preferable to believe that the tradition is lying rather than that a miracle occurred.
After all, in both alternatives we use our experience, so true, we have no logical justification to use it, but that’s what we have, so he chooses the option that seems more reasonable to him.