Hume and the Problem of Miracles: A Solution

✍ Scribed by Michael P. Levine (auth.)

• Publisher: Springer Netherlands
• Year: 1989
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 217
• Series: Philosophical Studies Series 41
• Edition: 1
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

This book developed from sections of my doctoral dissertation, "The Possibility of Religious Knowledge: Causation, Coherentism and Foundationalism," Brown University, 1982. However, it actually had its beginnings much earlier when, as an undergraduate at the University of Virginia, I first read Hume's "Of Miracles" and became interested in it. (Fascinated would be too strong. ) My teacher put the following marginal comment in a paper I wrote about it: "Suppose someone told you that they had been impregnated by an angel whispering into their ear. Wouldn't you think they had gone dotty?" She had spent time in England. I thought about it. I agreed that I would not have believed such testimony, but did not think this had much to do with Hume's argument against belief in miracles. What surprised me even more was the secondary literature. I became convinced that Hume's argument was misunderstood. My main thesis is established in Part I. This explains Hume's argument against justified belief in miracles and shows how it follows from, and is intrinsically connected with, his more general metaphysics. Part II Part I. It should give the reader a more complete understanding builds on of both the structure of Hume's argument and of his crucial and questionable premises. Chapters 5 and 11 are perhaps the most technical in the book, but they are also the least necessary. They can be skipped by the reader who is only interested in Hume on miracles.

✦ Table of Contents

Front Matter....Pages i-viii
Front Matter....Pages 1-4
Hume’s Account of a Posteriori Reasoning....Pages 5-12
Miracles and Reasoning Based on Experience....Pages 13-22
The Indian and the Ice: Understanding and Rejecting Hume’s Argument....Pages 23-36
A Better but Less Interesting Humean Argument....Pages 37-52
Miracles and the Logical Entailment Analysis of Causation....Pages 53-64
Are Miracles Violations of Laws of Nature?....Pages 65-74
Back Matter....Pages 75-86
Front Matter....Pages 87-91
What is Involved in Knowing That a Miracle Has Occurred....Pages 93-102
Hume’s Account of Tillotson and the Alleged “Argument of a Like Nature”....Pages 103-122
Testimony and Sensory Evidence: Reasons for Belief in Miracles?....Pages 123-132
Tillotson’s Argument: Its Application of Justified Belief in Miracles....Pages 133-151
Conclusion: Miracles and Contemporary Epistemology....Pages 152-188
Back Matter....Pages 189-200
Back Matter....Pages 201-212

✦ Subjects

Epistemology; Philosophy