Again: Hume on Miracles

Again: Hume on Miracles Joseph Ellin At the risk of casting shadows where luminaries of scholarship have failed to throw enough light, I would like to add a note to the debate between Fogelin (1990) and Flew (1990) about what Hume was trying to show in the chapter on miracles (An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, sec. 10). Fogelin posits, and Flew with reservations acknowledges, a "traditional interpretation" consisting oftwo theses: TI.1 Hume did not put forward ana priori argument intended to show that miracles are not possible. TI.2 Hume did put forward an a priori argument intended to show that testimony, however strong, could never make it reasonable to believe that a miracle had occurred. (Fogelin 1990, 81) The disagreement between Fogelin and Flew could not be more complete: FogeUn thinks TLl is false and TI.2 true; Flew thinks TI.l is true and TI.2 false. Nonetheless, I disagree with both of them: I defend both theses of TI, and shall give a different (better) reason for each. FogeUn argues against TI.l by citing "clear texts ... that go dead against it" (1990, 81). These are three sentences from the last but one paragraph of part 1: Amiracle is a violation ofthe laws ofnature; and as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very nature ofthe fact, is as entire as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined. ... There must ... be a uniform experience against every miraculous event, otherwise the event would not merit that appellation. And as a uniform experience amounts to a proof, there ishere a directand fullproof, from the nature ofthe fact, against the existence of any miracle; nor can such a proofbe destroyed, or the miracle rendered credible, butbyan opposite proof, which is superior.1 From these passages Fogelin constructs an argument, which I shall reconstruct as follows: Volume XLX Number 1 203 JOSEPH ELLIN 1.The proof against any miracle is direct and full unless destroyed by an opposite, superior, proof. 2.Since the proof against any miracle is as entire as any argument from experience can be imagined, there can be no opposite superior proof. Therefore: 3.The proofagainst any miracle is direct and full. FogeUn comments: "the strong claim in the second premise that the proof against a miracle is as entire as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined cancels the possibility left open in the first premise that there might be an opposite proof, which is superior. The conclusion then follows at once" (1990, 83). This argument is certainly sound; is it Hume's? Is it a priori? Does it show that miracles are not possible? Flew argues that it is not Hume's: "Proofs against proofs are no proofs" (1990, 142). Because a "proof" is a conclusive argument, there cannotbe proofs which are opposite but superior to other proofs; hence Hume's term "proof" needs some qualification: Hume means "what would in ordinary circumstances be accounted a proof, yet in the present case may conceivably not be" (Flew 1990, 144). One support for Flew is that when Hume in the previous paragraph supposes "that the testimony [for the miracle] considered apart and in itself, amounts to an entire proof " (E 114), he invokes a double standard, distinguishing the kind of evidence which, in the ordinary case, would be taken as proof, from what shouldbe so regarded in the case ofan alleged miracle (if one hundred witnesses testify that Lazarus got up from his bed and danced, this would ordinarily be taken to be proof; but not if he had died first). But though Flew has the better ofit with regard to the word "proof," 2 he hasn't made out his case against Fogelin, for it is not the word "proof" but the terms "direct and full" and "entire" that seem to carry the burden of Fogelin's reconstructed argument. Hume's distinction is between proof tout court, which means roughly a good enough case, and proof "full" or "entire," which perhaps does mean conclusive demonstration. We could roughly put this reconstruction as follows: If you had a 'conclusive proof ofany miracle, well and good...