Peter Millican

Over the centuries, many different arguments have been used to support the belief in God. These range from the abstruse and theoretical, such as Anselm’s famous Ontological Argument, to the relatively downto-earth and practical, such as Pascal’s Wager; but nearly all of them share a common weakness on which I intend to focus. I shall claim that the theistic arguments typically take for granted that in order to establish the existence of God they have only to establish the existence of a Supreme Being. They thus presuppose that for the office of Lord of the Universe, God as traditionally understood by Christians is the only candidate worth considering, and as a result they give insufficient attention to the nature of the Supreme Being whose existence they supposedly prove.

The Christian tradition has always taken a generally negative view of abortion, but the moral basis and perceived implications of this negative view have varied greatly. In the early Church abortion and contraception were often seen as broadly equivalent, both involving interference with the natural reproductive process (and an association with sexual immorality which even led some to see contraception as the more sinful of the two). But the tendency to conflate abortion with contraception, and even on similar grounds with male masturbation, declined in the face of the biological discovery of the mother's role as more than just an incubator for the male "seed" - with the recognition of conception as a distinct and crucial event, abortion became generally seen as morally far more serious than contraception, potentially involving threat to an innocent life and therefore, arguably, equivalent to homicide. When seen as homicide, abortion has naturally been subject to an almost total prohibition, the only generally agreed exception being where it is necessary to save the mother's life. Within the Roman Catholic communion, moreover, even this exception has tended to be countenanced only when sanctioned by the doctrine of double effect - where the abortion is not directly intended, but is only a foreseen but unintended consequence of a surgical intervention whose primary intention is to save the mother's life (e.g. the removal of a cancerous uterus or of a fallopian tube containing an ectopic pregnancy).

The word ‘induction’ is derived from Cicero’s ‘inductio’, itself a translation of Aristotle’s ‘epagôgê’. In its traditional sense this denotes the inference of general laws from particular instances, but within modern philosophy it has usually been understood in a related but broader sense, covering any non-demonstrative reasoning that is founded on experience. As such it encompasses reasoning from observed to unobserved, both inference of general laws and of further particular instances, but it excludes those cases of reasoning in which the conclusion is logically implied by the premises, such as induction by complete enumeration.

David Hume has traditionally been assumed to be a soft determinist or compatibilist, at least in the ‘reconciling project’ that he presents in Section 8 of the first Enquiry, entitled ‘Of liberty and necessity.’ Indeed, in encyclopedias and textbooks of Philosophy he is standardly taken to be one of the paradigm compatibilists, rivalled in significance only by Hobbes within the tradition passed down through Locke, Mill, Schlick and Ayer to recent writers such as Dennett and Frankfurt. Many Hume scholars also concur in viewing him as a determinist, for example Norman Kemp Smith, Barry Stroud, A. J. Ayer, Paul Russell Don Garrett, Terence Penelhum, George Botterill, John Bricke, and John Wright. My main purpose in this paper will be to provide the evidence to substantiate this traditional interpretation, which has hitherto been widely assumed rather than defended. In the absence of such a defence, the consensus has been left open to challenge, most notably in a recent paper and a subsequent book by James Harris, who boldly claims that Hume ‘does not subscribe to determinism of any kind, whether Hobbesian or merely nomological.’

Anselm's Ontological Argument fails, but not for any of the various reasons commonly adduced. In particular, its failure has nothing to do with violating deep Kantian principles by treating ‘exists’ as a predicate or making reference to ‘Meinongian’ entities. Its one fatal flaw, so far from being metaphysically deep, is in fact logically shallow, deriving from a subtle scope ambiguity in Anselm's key phrase. If we avoid this ambiguity, and the indeterminacy of reference to which it gives rise, then his argument is blocked even if his supposed Meinongian extravagances are permitted. Moreover it is blocked in a way which is straightforward and compelling (by contrast with the Kantian objections), and which generalizes easily to other versions of the Ontological Argument. A significant moral follows. Fear of Anselm's argument has been hugely influential in motivating ontological fastidiousness and widespread reluctance to countenance talk of potentially non-existing entities. But if this paper is correct, then the Ontological Argument cannot properly provide any such motivation. Some of the most influential contributions to ontology, from Kant to Russell and beyond, rest on a mistake.

Over a period of more than twenty years, Sybil Wolfram gave lectures at Oxford University on Philosophical Logic, a major component of most of the undergraduate degree programmes. She herself had been introduced to the subject by Peter Strawson, and saw herself as working very much within the Strawsonian tradition. Central to this tradition, which began with Strawson's seminal attack on Russell's theory of descriptions in ‘On Referring' (1950), is the distinction between a sentence and what is said by a sentence − Strawson initially called the latter a use of a sentence, and sometimes a proposition , but his most frequent term for what is said , which Wolfram consistently adopts, is the statement expressed.1 The force of the distinction is clearly illustrated in ‘On Referring', which uses it to undermine the common assumption that any sentence must be either true, or false, or meaningless. Russell had argued on this basis that a sentence such as ‘The King of France is bald' (which is clearly neither true nor meaningless) must be false, but Strawson points out that if we distinguish between the sentence itself and the statement that it expresses (on some occasion of use), we can quite easily combine the admission that the sentence is meaningful − for it can in appropriate circumstances be used to express true and false statements − with the claim that nevertheless if the circumstances are ‘inappropriate' (in particular, when there is no current King of France), the sentence can fail to express a statement that is either true or false. On this picture, therefore, it is sentences that are meaningful, but statements that are the primary bearers of truth.

In October 1775, David Hume wrote to his printer William Strahan, requesting that an ‘Advertisement’ should be attached to remaining copies of the second volume of his Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects. This volume contained his two Enquiries, the Dissertation on the Passions, and The Natural History of Religion, and the Advertisement states that these works should ‘alone be regarded as containing his philosophical sentiments and principles’ (E 2). In the covering letter, Hume comments that this ‘is a compleat Answer to Dr Reid and to that bigotted silly Fellow, Beattie.’ (HL ii. 301). My aim here is to try to throw light on what Hume might have meant by this comment, and to assess to what extent it might have been justified.

This is just one typical example of a class of arguments which are sometimes used to attack those (such as the author of this article) who presume to criticise philosophers with different views, or from different cultures, by "dogmatically" appealing to the principles of logic. There is, as we shall see, something very odd about this sort of argument, but it does have a certain superficial plausibility, and also an air of moral virtue through its spirit of generous open-mindedness. Who are we to criticise Plato, Descartes and the rest, for failing to live up to our limited Modern Western Logic? Our criticisms must be simply the result of narrow-minded bigotry, which prevents us from seeing that all standards are relative, and that the pretended "objectivity" of our logic is no more than a manifestation of our supreme cultural arrogance.

The overall aim of this thesis is to understand Hume’s famous argument concerning induction, and to appraise its success in establishing its conclusion. The thesis accordingly falls into two main parts, the first being concerned with analysis and interpretation of the argument itself, and the second with investigation of possible responses to it. Naturally the argument’s interpretation strongly constrains the range of possible replies, and indeed the results of Part I indicate that the only kind of strategy which stands much prospect of defeating Hume’s argument is one based on a priori probabilistic reasoning – hence the overwhelming majority of Part II is devoted to a thorough investigation of this approach.

I’d like to start by thanking all those who’ve played a part in making this conference such a success, including all the readers who helped us decide which papers to include, Jane (McIntyre) who chaired the Reading Committee, and especially Tony (Pitson), who organized the splendid local arrangements here in Stirling. Compared to Jane and Tony, I’ve had it relatively easy. Though I proposed, back at Lancaster in 1989, that this year’s conference should be mainly focused on the first Enquiry on its 250th anniversary, and originally planned to host it in Leeds, the last few years have been so horrendously busy and stressful for me that I would have found it very hard to cope as local organizer. Even without these strains, I would not have succeeded in doing things in Tony’s calm, efficient manner.

Hume has traditionally been understood as an inductive sceptic with positivist tendencies, reducing causation to regular succession and anticipating the modern distinctions between analytic and synthetic, deduction and induction. The dominant fashion in recent Hume scholarship is to reject all this, replacing the ‘Old Hume’ with various New alternatives. Here I aim to counter four of these revisionist readings, presenting instead a broadly traditional interpretation but with important nuances, based especially on Hume’s later works. He asked that we should treat these— notably the first Enquiry—as his authoritative philosophical statements, and with good reason

The ‘New Hume’ interpretation, which sees Hume as a realist about ‘thick’ Causal powers, has been largely motivated by his evident commitment to causal language and causal science. In this, however, it is fundamentally misguided, failing to recognise how Hume exploits his anti-realist conclusions about (upper-case) Causation precisely to support (lower-case) causal science. When critically examined, none of the standard New Humean arguments — familiar from the work of Wright, Craig, Strawson, Buckle, Kail, and others — retains any significant force against the plain evidence of Hume's; texts. But the most devastating objection comes from Hume's own applications of his analysis of causation, to the questions of ‘the immateriality of the soul’ and ‘liberty and necessity’. These show that the New Hume interpretation has misunderstood the entire purpose of his ‘Chief Argument’, and presented him as advocating some of the very positions he is arguing most strongly against

Since all inductive inference is equally The main aim of the two definitions of Since all inductive inference is equally The main aim of the two definitions of irrational, there is no consistent basis for irrational, there is no consistent basis for causation is to clarify the meaning of the causation is to clarify the meaning of the drawing any demarcation between drawing any demarcation between concept of concept of “ “necessity necessity” ”, in accordance with , in accordance with scientific prediction and superstition. scientific prediction and superstition.

Is Hume, or is he not, a realist about what Galen Strawson calls “Causation” (with a capital “C”) and Simon Blackburn calls “thick connexions”, that is, necessary connexions between events that go beyond functional relations of regular succession? With this “New Hume” debate now in its third decade, one might feel entitled to wonder whether there is any determinate answer to be had. Both sides have found plenty of Humean quotations to throw at their opponents, passages which taken in isolation might appear to settle the question in their favour. At the same time, both sides have been able to construct plausible accounts of why their opponents’ favoured quotations lack the force that they initially appear to have, and some of these accounts have been not only plausible but philosophically illuminating, unearthing subtle complexities in Hume’s thought which promise – whatever the eventual outcome of the debate – to leave Hume scholarship much richer than had the debate never arisen. This might suggest that the appropriate response is to give up the quest for a definitive answer, to see partial truth on both sides, and to acknowledge that Hume’s thought contains an unresolved tension, with strains both of realism and antirealism about Causation.1 But such a reaction, though natural, would I believe be premature, for two related reasons, concerning respectively the importance to Hume of his theory of causation, and its intimate – but sometimes under-explored – relationships with other aspects of his thought.