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Hume Studies Volume 28, Number 2, November 2002, pp. 309-313 Book Reviews DAVID O'CONNOR. Hume on Religion. London: Routledge, 2001, Pp. xvi + 227. ISBN 0415201942, cloth, $75.00; ISBN 0415201950, paper, $15.95. This book is a commentary on the Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, Hume's most famous work in the field of religion. O'Connor is a fine expositor , commanding a clear and readable style. The Dialogues is covered in detail, so that students will gain a good sense of the structure. The weakness lies in O'Connor's attitude as it inevitably appears in his exposition. I do not mean that this is wild or eccentric. Quite the contrary, it is the one which during the last fifty years has become conventional, reflecting the empiricist tradition one associates with Ayer and Flew. For example, O'Connor hardly questions Hume's distinction between the apriori and the a posteriori, implies indeed that he puts it to devastating use, though it is now widely criticized even by philosophers otherwise sympathetic to Hume. One wonders whether students need another version, however well expressed, of views already so familiar. If their intelligences are to be sharpened, they surely need to encounter some serious criticism not simply of Hume's opponents but of Hume himself. Having that in mind, let us consider what O'Connor calls "evidentialism," an assumption he treats as lying behind Hume's thought (9). This he explains as the view that we should proportion our beliefs to the evidence. The trouble with this formulation, however, is that it is ambiguous, being platitudinous in Volume 28, Number 2, November 2002 310 Book Reviews one sense and dubious in the other. It is platitudinous that one is not entitled to ignore evidence where that is required. No one has denied it. What has been denied is that every belief requires evidence in the implied sense. The reason is that it leads to an infinite regress. If every belief requires evidence, any belief advanced as evidence itself requires evidence and so on ad infinitum. In short, no belief can ever be justified. If any belief is justified, some beliefs must be fundamental, in the sense of not resting on further evidence. It is obvious, however , that fundamental beliefs are various and sometimes conflict. Such a conflict cannot be settled by reference to other beliefs more fundamental, for there are no such beliefs. It does not follow that all reasoning is at an end. But the reasoning must be dialectical rather than foundational. One can proceed only by considering whether there are difficulties or inconsistencies in one position which are avoided in the other, or, supposing difficulties in both, which are the greater. The relevance of the above points to the philosophy of religion should be obvious. The religious and the non-religious do not hold differing beliefs within a common system. They hold different views of the world. The difference between them is itself an instance of fundamental conflict. It follows that a serious study of religion is possible only to those who can occupy in thought both a religious and a non-religious view. It is impossible for those who cannot imagine that the other side may have an answer to difficulties that arise on their own. No one can be delivered from a false system by further reasoning based on the same system but only by having the imagination to conceive how that system may appear when viewed from another. The procedure, in short, must be dialectical not foundational. That, however, is very far from the procedure we find, during the last fifty years, in the philosophy of religion. The procedure , rather, is to consider whether there are difficulties in religion and then to dismiss it when they appear substantial. It is not thought necessary to consider whether on the other side there are difficulties as great or even greater. Indeed worse; the reasoning is precisely foundational not dialectical, the foundational view being the non-religious one. In short, religion is justified only if it can be deduced from the opposing view. A classic example of this fallacious procedure may be found in Hume's "Essay on Miracles...

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