David Hume: On Miracles (Explained and Critiqued)
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- čas přidán 5. 08. 2024
- David Hume's argument against miracles is one of his most famous. The claim is that anyone who believes a miracle has occurred is being irrational. This argument has provoked debate amongst philosopher's regarding both how it should be interpreted, and whether he is right.
This video explores this famous argument at the level of a first year undergraduate course in philosophy. It should be helpful for both those that find philosophy interesting and philosophy students alike. I try to explain the issues involved, and then suggest what we can learn from thinking about these issues.
#DavidHume #Miracles #AbsolutePhilosophy
____Video Contents____
00:00 - Introduction
01:05 - Hume's argument against miracles - Knowledge, evidence and laws of nature
04:10 - Hume's argument against miracles - Evidence from testimony
06:27 - Hume's argument against miracles - Weighing against miracles
10:58 - Peter Millican's base rate fallacy interpretation
15:35 - R.F. Holland's redefinition of a miracle
18:20 - Richard Swinburne's defence - believe both!
21:05 - What I think
24:43 - Ending
____Channel description____
I am a graduate of Cambridge University with a PhD in Philosophy. My thesis was on the nature of truth, and I specialise in metaphysics, logic, and the history of analytic philosophy. I believe philosophy should be made accessible to the curious and philosophers have a duty to reenter the public debate on the questions of importance to our age. This channel is my attempt to do that!
On a personal level, I am a lucky husband, and proud father of two young boys that keep me very much grounded!
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____References____
Holland, R. F. (1965). The Miraculous. American Philosophical Quarterly, 2 (1), pp. 43-51.
Hume, David (1955). An enquiry concerning human understanding. In Steven M. Cahn (ed.), Exploring Philosophy: An Introductory Anthology. Oxford University Press. pp. 112.
McGrew, Timothy (2019). Miracles. In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Edward N. Zalta ed.).
Millican, Peter (1993). 'Hume's Theorem' Concerning Miracles. The Philosophical Quarterly, 43 (173), pp. 489-495.
Miracles
Swinburne, Richard (1968). Miracles. The Philosophical Quarterly, 18(73), 1968), pp. 320-328.
St Joseph of Cupertino is just such a case where levitation is very, very unlikely but the evidence he did is numerous by testimony.
Love your videos. As a physicist and educator, I would like to remind readers that the “laws of physics” are relatively simple descriptions or models of reality created to help explain what usually happens in our observable universe. Indeed these laws clearly continue to change or evolve over time as scientists try to further explain any anomalies (miracles!?).
An example that came to mind as I was listening to you :
A person going home from work violates her 10 - year pattern, to get home quicker to be on time for a dinner party. An event that the person and her significant other are holding for the first time in their eight- year relationship.
Instead of using the long route that takes her thru the safer part of town, she shortcuts thru the truly unsafe part of town, and gets a flat tire.
Another person that for seven years has walked his dog in his neighborhood, (and hasn't once strayed from that pattern)does not pay attention to the route he is walking, because he is mentally distracted from the first argument that he & his significant other have just had in their three year relationship, finds that he has strayed into the bad part of town right where the commuter has been stranded.
The dog walker sees that the commuter is being viciously and violently assaulted by a group of thugs, and acts to save the commuter via the use of his concealed carry weapon.
Could something like this be considered a " miracle " given the high improbability of these two people violating long established patterns ( one by accident ) at the same time, with the result being that one saves the life of the other?
I'd consider it a miracle given the breaking of patterns and one break being an accidental one. Maybe two accidental breaks with the flat tire, as well.....
According to Holland this would be a miracle given the appropriate posture the commuter takes to it (see that section of the video). If she credits God with involvement, she could rationally say a miracle occurred. I'd be inclined to agree that people do think of such events as miraculous. But it is a different kind of miracle (if it is) from the law violating kind Hume is arguing against.
What is unknown here is whether there are psychic connections taking place, or some larger but to science invisible causal structure at work. Given the vast evidence for the paranormal, it is not necessary to evoke miracles, just that there is much more between heaven and Earth....
I really liked your video, so thanks for that! One thing I was missing was John Earman's critique "Hume's Abject Failure". That would make a great topic, because especially in apologetics it's often being cited. All the best!
Glad you enjoyed it. I'm not that familiar with the apologetics literature. And I've not read Earman's critique. But I do think Hume's argument is poor.
@@AbsolutePhilosophy But it's poor in the sense that Hume is too restrictive and testimony could rationally be a reason to believe "miracles", right? The adagium "extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence" (a weaker variant of Hume, I guess) still applies, I'd say. Or am I wrong?
Merry X-mas and all the best! 🙃
@@AbsolutePhilosophy So, are there any ways to prove or disprove the occurence of miracles?
I think Hume's argument is a tautology if a law of nature is always true than a violation of the law is always false by definition, so if I define an miracle as violation of law of nature a miracle is simply impossibile, but do we all have perfect knowledge of all laws of nature? The problem is in the definition. We don't have a perfect knoeledge of the law of nature.
Given those definitions, yes it would be a tautology (as I mentioned in the latter part of this video). But that can't be what Hume intends to argue, as he wouldn't need to talk about evidence in such cases. And besides, as he describes in other places, his notion of a law is not of the inviolable kind. But, as I suggest, once the door is open for miracles to occur, there seems to be no reason to think the evidence will *always* weigh against them.
@@AbsolutePhilosophy I agree, I cannot judge the argument only a from a few sentences, Hume is a profound thinker and revolutionary in so many ways, I am always fascinated by his black swan argument. Curiously could a black swan be a miracle? Until the testimony of Cook in Australia all swans were supposed to be white, and then a black swan is discovered, it does not really violate the law of nature, only we were getting the law of nature wrong. Really intriguing.
The black swan example is one reason why I don’t believe we can know universal natural laws.
If I only observe white swans in the region in which I live, then I can conclude with greater certainty that all swans in my region are white then that all swans on earth are white.
-The reason for this is that we are using induction on the basis of past observations under certain conditions.
-The further away the conditions of a possible observation is from past observations, the more uncertain becomes the validity of the rule for those possible observations.
-Induction can therefore only be used to justify local regularities but can never justify universal natural laws.
-Even if we would find such a universal natural law, we would never be justified to believe that this regularity is universal.
-As such knowledge about universale natural laws is impossible.
@@pierfrancescorubini2899 yes but probabilities would say that if you see a swan it is more than likely going to be white. You’ll be right more than you were wrong with this way of thinking.
Science today shows that magic is impossible but miracles are not. Science shows God is perfectly possible, if God exists then miracles are easily explained by science. If God does not exist then "miracles" would be significantly (nearly infinitely) fewer and by chance.
Awesome explanation , hope to see weekly videos
I'd love to if I had the time. But will do my best!
Many thanks for a fantastic explanation and analysis. I've often thought that were I to go back to college in retirement I would study philosophy. After seeing a couple of your videos I think I can save that tuition money.
I've seen the Christian apologist William Lane Craig apply the Bayesian analysis to the Resurrection of Christ by arguing that it's not sufficient to consider just the probability of the Resurrection occurring; one also must consider the possibility of the later events attributed to the Resurrection occurring in the absence of the Resurrection. Sorry I'm not a good enough statistician to summarize the modified arithmetic, but in Craig's analysis the low probability of the Resurrection and the low probability of the later events occurring in the absence of the Resurrection taken together made the Resurrection more probable than not.
Granting momentarily that these later events did in fact occur and were not mere fables, and that Craig's arithmetic was correct, do you consider this line of reasoning valid?
From what you've said, Craig's reasoning seems right. Bayesians update probabilities based on further evidence. And it seems Craig is deploying the 'probability of A given B' formulae to update the probability of the miraculous event.
Excellent presentation! A few observations:
1. A common definition of miracle: "a surprising and welcome event that is not explicable by natural or scientific laws and is therefore considered to be the work of a divine agency." A problem with Hume and his imitators is that they attempt to give their ideas about what can and cannot exist a definitive status by using the ward "law" rather than saying something like "observed regularity" or "current understandings."
2. Oddly enough, it was the Catholic thinker Descartes who separated spirit from matter, and so the materialists were given license to work so long as they left "miracles" to the Church. To not understand how and why this division was set up historically is to not understand the materialist reductive dogma.
3. What counts as evidence is clearly a matter of paradigms and data selection. Seeing is believing, but a certain amount of believing is needed for any new seeing to occur.
I was rewatching this video for a book I'm writing containing Hume's argument and reread Hume. I'm still not sure wether Hume says we NEVER can thrust witness reports, as you claim in the beginning. See e.g. the hypothetical 8-day darkness with many witnesses he mentions, and Fogelin on this matter.
Btw, at 14:55, shouldn't that read 999/(999.999+999)? Not that it matters much.
Remarkably articulated and brilliantly explained.
Thanks a lot! Glad you enjoyed it.
miracle:
an event that seems inexplicable by natural or scientific laws, and accordingly, gets attributed to some supernatural or praeternatural cause. The praeternatural (or preternatural) is that which appears outside or beside (“præter”, in Latin) the natural. It is “suspended between the mundane and the miraculous”; an extremely outstanding or unusual event, thing, or accomplishment.
Various religions often attribute a phenomenon characterized as miraculous to the actions of a supernatural being (especially a deity or the Supreme Deity Himself), a magician, a miracle worker, a saint, or a religious leader. Informally, English-speakers often use the word “miracle” to characterize any beneficial event that is statistically unlikely but not contrary to the laws of nature, such as surviving a natural disaster, or simply a “wonderful” occurrence, regardless of likelihood (for instance, “the miracle of childbirth”). Some coincidences may be seen as miracles. A true miracle would, by definition, be a non-natural phenomenon, leading many writers to dismiss miracles as physically impossible (that is, requiring violation of established laws of physics within their domain of validity) or impossible to confirm by their nature (because all possible physical mechanisms can never be ruled out).
Personally, I, the author of this Holiest of Holy Scriptures, “F.I.S.H”, have experienced at least two DEFINITE miracles and a plethora of very highly-improbable coincidences. One of the miracles is described in Chapter 07. The other miracle was the turning of a silver colour to a gold colour of the links of a rosary (a chain of beads used by Roman Catholic Christians whilst praying a round of set prayers) while I was praying in the Marian chapel of my then parish church in 1994. Both events (the so-called “gift of speaking in tongues” and the miracle of the Rosary beads) are known miracles in the Roman church, so the credence one may give to the events is, arguably, greater than if they were simply “out-of-the-blue” occurrences. Furthermore, I have witnessed video footage of another well-known Roman Catholic miracle, in which the sun appears to be dancing in the sky during a Roman Catholic Mass conducted at a church in rural Philippines. The evidence that the video was authentic and unedited, seemed overwhelming to me. Obviously, I do not expect anyone to believe my claims simply because I have written them here, but those who are truly intelligent and wise will take my claims in conjunction with the entire body of this treatise, and judge for themselves whether or not I seem to be a charlatan.
So, what is the explanation for such miracles? My own understanding, according to my philosophical world-view , is that everything is ultimately “Sacchidānanda” (Eternal-Conscious-Peace) and that every event in this ephemeral universe is actually a play (“līlā”, in Sanskrit) of this spatio-temporal reality, including apparitions of figures who may seem to be god-like (such as demigods and angels) or even the Godhead Himself. This does NOT imply that every so-called miracle described in any particular religious tradition actually occurred, which is the reason why I have avoided providing any such examples - only my own experiences can be postulated as evidence and not the assertions of any other person or scripture. I cannot personally-vouch for the experience of another creature.
Interesting experiences. Thanks for sharing.
I’ll make it easy and I’m just a lowly PhD Candidate in Kantian Epistemology at Baylor University, a baptist university at that, who believe in all that “speaking in tongues” shite. You were speaking gibberish and the videos you saw were definitely faked (I’ll come back and “insert debunking” link here from my programmer colleagues) and I would love for you to answer if there are any videos of you turning the rosary 📿? I won’t even ask about speaking gibberish because I can turn on late night cable to see that from all those other people who do that. Next you’ll be claiming you can heal the sick by the “laying of hands.”
I’m sure you “experienced” whatever you thought you did. I will not deny you that but it was just your experience was all. And I can speak gibberish, excuse me, speak in tongues as well.
Allow us to see and test the rosary…but damn it’s too late night is it not?
@@Wandering_Chemist, PMS are the initials for “Premenstrual Syndrome”, which every woman (except, perhaps, Mama Maria) has at LEAST once a month, when she cannot control her moods and emotions.
And it seems from your impetuous and DISRESPECTFUL response, that you are experiencing some kind of premenstrual affliction, Slave?
@@TheVeganVicar And there it is…there’s those true colors I expected to see from anyone claiming to speak in tongues. Good sir, I salute 🫡 you and thank you for not letting me down.
You're a very intelligent person, and it makes me so sad to watch this video. Stop trying to prove the unprovable and put your focus on real stuff. I'm sure you'd solve some of the world problems if you weren't so focused on trying to prove that a god is real.
It is funny reading this considering that many of the great scientists who made important discoveries and great giants to who contributed to alleviating the problems of the world were Christian.
@@chrispowell1768 The great scientists you speak of who happened to be Christian didn't allow their Christian beliefs to interfere with their science.
what should make you "sad" is your arrogance and close mind. he wasn't trying to prove that God exist on this video, just that talking about one particularly famous argument.
@@MasonTorrey it's not that they didn't allow it to interfere with their science, in many cases they were activelly inspired by it, and there was no interference to be had because they didn't see any contradiction between their christian beliefs and their work.
@@jonathacirilo5745 Didn't see any contradiction between their Christian beliefs and the science? Example?