Hume, Miracles, and Probabilities: Meeting Earman’s Challenge

The centrepiece of Earman‟s provocatively titled book Hume’s Abject Failure: The Argument against Miracles (OUP, 2000) is a probabilistic interpretation of Hume‟s famous „maxim‟ concerning the credibility of miracle reports, followed by an aggressive critique of the maxim when thus interpreted. He argues that the first part of this maxim, once its obscurity is removed, is simply trivial, while the second part is nonsensical. His subsequent discussion culminates with a forthright challenge to any would-be defender of Hume to „point to some thesis which is both philosophically interesting and which Hume has made plausible‟. My main aim here is to answer this challenge, by demonstrating a preferable interpretation of Hume‟s maxim, according to which its first half is both plausible and non-trivial, while its second half sketches a useful, albeit approximate, corollary. I conclude by contesting Earman‟s negative views on the originality and philosophical significance of Hume‟s justly famous essay. Hume, Miracles, and Probabilities: Meeting Earman’s Challenge Peter Millican, University of Leeds Hume‟s discussion concerning the credibility of miracle reports in Section X of the first Enquiry has always been controversial, with some commentators viewing it as a powerful contribution to the philosophy of religion, while others have dismissed it as uncharacteristically weak. The main focus of this disagreement has been the „a priori‟ argument of Section X Part i, 1 which culminates in Hume‟s famous „maxim‟: The plain consequence is (and it is a general maxim worthy of our attention), “That no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous, than the fact, which it endeavours to establish: And even in that case, there is a mutual destruction of arguments, and the superior only gives us an assurance suitable to that degree of force, which remains, after deducting the inferior.” (E 10.13, 115-6) 2 Hume‟s preceding argument is based very explicitly on his theory of probability, so contemporary interpreters, in attempting to assess the strength of that argument, have naturally been led to ask how this maxim can most faithfully be expressed in formal probabilistic terms. However their investigations have resulted in a number of very different formulations, which have therefore provided no firm and impartial basis from which the broader evaluative debate can be addressed. Among the various probabilistic interpretations of Hume‟s maxim, the most prominent recently – owing to the writings of John Earman – has been the one that he and I proposed independently in 1993, an interpretation which renders the maxim (or at least its first half, prior to I am very grateful to Lorne Falkenstein for his helpful comments on an early version of this paper. 1 The argument of Part i of Section X is often described as „a priori‟ because it apparently purports to set limits to the evidence that even the best possible testimony could supply for a miracle. The „a posteriori‟ arguments of Part ii, by contrast, are based on the particularities of human nature, history, and religions, such as our love of wonder, the antiquity and poor evidential basis of the most religiously significant miracle stories, and the mutual conflicts between different miraculously-founded religions. 2 Quotations from the Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding („E‟) are taken from Beauchamp‟s student edition (1999), and referenced both by paragraph number and by page number in the standard Selby-Bigge edition (1975). However for brevity, lists of multiple references are given only using the Selby-Bigge page numbers, as also in the case of the Treatise of Human Nature, where „T‟ refers to the 1978 Selby-Bigge edition.