Nature Breaks Down: Hume's Problematic Naturalism in Treatise I iv

Hume Studies Volume XXVI, Number 2, November 2000, pp. 225-243 Nature Breaks Down: Hume's Problematic Naturalism in Treatise I iv IRA SINGER 1. Readers of Hume, even those who call attention to the depth and variety of his skeptical excursions,1 now happily admit that Hume is, in crucial respects, a "naturalist." A naturalist is, broadly, someone who emphasizes the natural (as opposed on the one hand to the abstractly rational, and on the other hand to the supernatural) sources of our beliefs, attitudes, and practices; and Hume surely is at least this kind of naturalist. But understanding Hume's naturalism to include only this general explanatory commitment obscures as much as it reveals, I will argue, about the text of Treatise I iv, where Hume examines (and seems to fall prey to) various skeptical "systems of philosophy."2 To understand that part of the Treatise (and to understand Hume better overall), we must, I will argue, understand Hume's shifting allegiances to different kinds of naturalism.3 Space for seeing different kinds of naturalism in Hume opens up when we notice that, while naturalism in general is a neutral and descriptive enterprise, Hume's talk of nature and its role in our cognition often takes a celebratory and normative turn. For instance, when introducing his discussion of the belief in body, Hume writes that, though the skeptic cannot justify holding this belief, "[n] ature has not left this to his choice, and has doubtless esteem'd it an affair of too great importance to be trusted to our uncertain reasonings and speculations" (T 187). Here Hume does not merely announce that he will employ an empirical causal method to explain our beliefs; he suggests that nature's role in producing our belief merits our approval, for nature guides us Ira Singer is Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Hofstra University, Heger Hall Room 104, Hempstead, NY 11549-1150, USA. e-mail: phiijs@hofstra.edu 226 Ira Singer reliably with respect to important matters, while abstract reason would make us lose our way. Thus Hume goes beyond neutral naturalism to embrace what I will call strong naturalism. Strong naturalism not only celebrates the smooth functioning of our natural mechanisms of belief-formation, it also takes that smooth functioning to set the standard for beliefs. That is, according to strong naturalism we should praise beliefs formed by the smooth natural process, and criticize those formed by some other process. (Thus the strong naturalist, unlike the neutral naturalist , must find some way to distinguish between what is truly natural in the normative sense and what is "natural" merely strictly and formally—a distinction that Hume indeed famously makes on T 226, by comparing what is natural in the sense that health is natural for us, with what is natural in the same formal sense in which a "malady" is natural.) This kind of naturalist is well positioned to attack rationalism: reasoning (or anyway abstract solipsistic "rationalist" reasoning), a process that differs from the healthy natural cognitive process, is not how we do, should, or even can (durably) operate. This kind of naturalist is also positioned, or perhaps even required, to construe the alternative to rationalism wholly optimistically. No belief has to meet the impossible standards set by rationalistic reason in order to be well warranted; instead, naturalness confers warrant.4 On my view, Hume is often a strong naturalist. However, many of Hume's recent interpreters and partisans have read him as being this kind of naturalist , a philosopher bent on destroying rationalism and elaborating a wholly constructive naturalistic alternative, all of the time.5 But this exclusively strong naturalistic reading portrays a Hume who is altogether too sunny and singleminded to fit the full range of texts. There are parts of the Treatise where Hume's naturalism is troubled and troubling, precisely because the natural process of belief-formation itself operates haltingly or unreliably, with nature itself subverting its own deepest and most regular principles, or disappointing our most modest cognitive hopes.6 That is to say, whatever constructive naturalistic hopes motivate Hume at the start, there are times in his writings where on his own honest view of things nature...