Philosophical Review

Hume's Skepticism in the Treatise of Human Nature by Robert J. FogelinReview by: Michael WilliamsThe Philosophical Review, Vol. 97, No. 2 (Apr., 1988), pp. 263-266Published by: Duke University Press on behalf of Philosophical ReviewStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2185270 .

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data plus tautology. True, that is not (yet) the way of Descartes. But it is the issue of the Cartesian way of ideas in 20th century positivism: an issue we can now see as foredoomed, once nature-the 'nature' of our lives and of scho- lastic tradition-is denied, whether in favour of breast-beating inwardness or of machine-adoring scientism (p. 191).

The "alienation of mind from nature"-the freeing of pure thought from the "prejudice" of the senses-is a necessary part of the acquisition of a clear and distinct apprehension of the geometrical essence of the physical universe (p. 80). The mathematization of nature, she argues, "will make us possessors of nature," leading to the "exploitation of the world" (p. 123).

The arguments in the book lead up to the final chapter, "Toward a Counter-Cartesian Beginning," which discusses J. J. Gibson's theory of perception. This theory, she believes, points the way out of the mecha- nistic, dualistic trap into which she claims Descartes has led us: Blissfully ignorant of history, twentieth-century philosophers in the Anglo-Ameri- can tradition cling to notions of sense-perception based on Descartes's "re- duction of the full-bodied perceptible world to locomotion, inspected by thought" (p. 207). Grene argues that sense-perception ought to enjoy a more privileged epistemological role: Using Descartes's example of the piece of wax, Grene argues that it is not the mind which unifies discrete perceptions of the wax into an enduring susbstance, but the continuous process of perception. Gibson's theory, she argues, can help us overcome the misleading identification of sensation with a bundle of images (p. 207). By thinking of perception as a process of living things picking up infor- mation of interest from the environment, we can "put our intellectual ac- tivities back into their place in our natures as living things" and restore meaning to the external world (pp. 208-209).

Having described what I take to be the main thread of Grene's book, I hasten to add that Descartes is rich in material on several aspects of Carte- sian thought. The topics discussed include judgment, the passions, sub- stance, and Descartes's relations with his contemporaries, including Ar- nauld, Gassendi, Hobbes, and Mersenne. This book will provide a greatly needed alternative perspective on Descartes's thought.

Lois FRANKEL

University of Colorado, Colorado Springs

The Philosophical Review, Vol. XCVII, No. 2 (April 1988)

HUME'S SKEPTICISM IN THE TREATISE OF HUMAN NATURE. By

ROBERTJ. FOGELIN. Boston, Mass., Routledge & Kegan Paul, Inc., 1985. Pp. xii, 195.

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"Naturalism," applied to Hume, denotes the thought that our beliefs, judgments and evaluations are to be explained in terms of their psycho- logical causation rather than in terms of their truth or warrant. Broadly speaking, Fogelin belongs to the school of Hume interpretation that makes this thought central to his philosophy. But, Fogelin thinks, Hume's naturalistic interpreters have tended to undervalue the skeptical side of his philosophy, no doubt because the naturalistic reading was developed in opposition to the traditional view of Hume as the purely destructive thinker who pushed empiricism to its skeptical limit. Fogelin's aim is to redress the balance by showing that Hume's skepticism and naturalism are mutually supportive. He does not, however, endorse the view that Hume thought out the skeptical consequences of empiricism. Hume did not think empiricism through, for he never even thought about it in any systema- tic way. This claim sets Fogelin apart, not just from Hume's traditional detractors, but also from those more recent admirers who have praised him as the forerunner of modern logical empiricism.

Fogelin is drawn to this controversial view because he insists, quite prop- erly, on observing a clear distinction between epistemological skepticism, which challenges the warrant for our beliefs, and conceptual skepticism, which questions their very intelligibility. If, as is commonly supposed, con- ceptual skepticism is one of Hume's main preoccupations, then the famous priniciple that all ideas must be analyzable into simple ideas di- rectly copied from simple impressions will lie at the very basis of his philosophy. But Fogelin holds that the extent of Hume's conceptual skep- ticism is "not easy to assess," and he makes a persuasive case for there being less of it than we are usually led to believe.

I share Fogelin's skepticism about the extent of Hume's conceptual skepticism. In fact, I would go farther and claim that it is difficult for Hume to allow for conceptual skepticism at all. Conceptual skepticism must rest on some version of verificationism, and verificationism is not easily combined with epistemological skepticism. Many complexities in Hume's Treatise come into focus when we realize that Hume is trying to keep conceptual skepticism under control. I would als6 claim, though I cannot argue it here, that such conceptual skepticism as we find in Hume does not rest on the well-known principle about impressions and ideas.

On the epistemological side, Fogelin distinguishes theoretical skepticism, the denial that our beliefs are warrantable, from prescriptive skepticism, the advocacy of suspension of judgment. Hume's theoretical skepticism is ab- solutely unmitigated, but his prescriptive skepticism is kept in bounds by the fact that, in virtue of the principles of the understanding Hume's science of man aims to lay bare, we have much less than total control over what we believe. But Hume does not try tojustify the mitigated skepticism he approves. Rather it is supposed to emerge naturally out of the collision

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between the tendency towards total skepticism and our irrepressible deter- mination to believe. Fogelin shows, illuminatingly, that what we have here is a special application of Hume's general willingness to apply his causal approach to the analysis of thought reflexively to his own philosophizing. I agree that the resulting attempt to produce a "natural history of philo- sophy" constitutes one of Hume's most original and least appreciated ideas.

But what of Fogelin's central claim, that Hume's skepticism and natu- ralism are mutually supportive? Here I wonder whether he hasn't some- times mistaken Hume's intention for his achievement.

The first instance of skepticism's supporting naturalism occurs in Hume's discussion of induction. Hume argues that inductive expecta- tions cannot be products of "reason" because reason deals in warrant-con- ferring inferences and there is no way to confer warrant on inductive expectations. Such expectations must therefore be traced to the causal, quasi-mechanical workings of the "imagination." Skepticism thus clears the way for naturalism.

This claim is too strong. Hume argues that inductive expectations cannot be reached by reasoning because any such reasoning would de- pend on unjustifiably assuming that nature is uniform. But to show that a certain kind of conclusion can be reached only by way of reliance on an unjustified or even unjustifiable assumption is not the same as showing that reasoning plays no role whatsoever in generating such conclusions.

More seriously, the very idea of a stark contrast between reason and nature, however central to Hume's philosophy, is not something that can be taken for granted. How, for example, does Hume know what prin- ciples inform the faculty of reason, so that he can determine in a few paragraphs that inductive expectations can only be explained naturalistic- ally? Here we must remember that Hurne's naturalism is supposed to have both an explanatory aspect, in that beliefs are to be accounted for causally, and a methodological aspect, in that all questions in the science of man are to be approached empirically. This suggests that the constraints on inductive rationality should be determined by an examination of inductive practices, in which case it is not clear how to reach the conclusion that inductive

expectations have nothing to do with "reason." It seems that the explana- tory and methodological aspects of Hume's naturalism may well come into collision.

This may not be the only tension internal to Hume's project. Although initially introduced to clear the way for the naturalistic explanation of be- lief, Hume's skeptical considerations show a definite tendency to get out of hand, particularly when Hume brings the principles of the imagination into conflict with each other or even with themselves. Doing so enables Hume to argue that skepticism is the natural outcome of philosophy, a

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conclusion he values. But it also makes it difficult for him to give any systematic explanation of why we believe the things we ordinarily do.

Hume would like to claim that all principles of belief formation, even those belonging to the imagination, lead to skepticism if pushed to the limit. However, since we only push them to the limits in our studies, the study is the only place where skepticism triumphs. In letting him get away with this claim, I think Fogelin may have misled himself by taking Hume's discussion of skepticism with regard to reason as exemplary of Hume's naturalistic strategy. In this instance, Hume's theoretical skepticism turns on a kind of infinite regress argument. This allows him to claim that the reason skeptical considerations do not undermine belief is that we are un- able to hold in mind more than a step or two in the regress. But whatever this claim is worth, Hume's skeptical arguments are not all regress argu- ments. In particular, his skepticism with regard to the senses turns on the kind of simple causal argument that is elsewhere treated as the paradig- matic generator of natural belief. Somehow, when deployed for skeptical purposes, it loses its power to convince and Hume has no good explana- tion for this. Or rather, the most promising hint he drops threatens to compromise his naturalism. For he argues that, when engaged in philo- sophical inquiry, we may be troubled by arguments we would ordinarily shrug off. But this seems more a logical than a psychological explanation, for it suggests that whether we take certain arguments seriously depends on the questions we are asking.

I think, then, that there are points where Fogelin could have pressed Hume harder. But I should not wish to end on what might sound too critical a note. I want to make it clear that this is a very good book indeed. Without ever over-simplifying, Fogelin manages to see through the often tangled text of Hume's Treatise to the heart of his arguments. He is able to combine brevity and lucidity with sensitivity to (often overlooked) textual nuances. His book is a model of philosophical commentary and one that anyone interested in either Hume or philosophical naturalism will want to read.

MICHAEL WILLIAMS

Northwestern University

The Philosophical Review, Vol. XCVII, No. 2 (April 1988)

NIETZSCHE: LIFE AS LITERATURE. By ALEXANDER NEHAMAS. Cam- bridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1985. Pp. x, 261.

If Nietzsche had not existed, he would have had to have been invented. The cultural and philosophical crises he so astutely discerned were long in

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