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Stability and Justification in Hume's Treatise (Paperback)
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Stability and Justification in Hume's Treatise (Paperback)
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David Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature is famous for its extreme
skepticism. Louis Loeb argues that Hume's destructive conclusions
have in fact obscured a constructive stage that Hume abandons
prematurely.
Working within a philosophical tradition that values tranquillity,
Hume favors an epistemology that links justification with settled
belief. Hume appeals to psychological stability to support his own
epistemological assessments, both favorable regarding causal
inference, and unfavorable regarding imaginative propensities. The
theory's success in explaining Hume's epistemic distinctions gives
way to pessimism, since Hume contends that reflection on beliefs is
deeply destabilizing. So much the worse, Hume concludes, for
placing a premium on reflection. Hume endorses and defends the
position that stable beliefs of unreflective persons are justified,
though they would not survive reflection. At the same time, Hume
relishes the paradox that unreflective beliefs enjoy a preferred
epistemic status and strains to establish it. Loeb introduces a
series of amendments to the Treatise that secures a more positive
result for justified belief while maintaining Hume's fundamental
principles.
In his review of Hume's applications of his epistemology, Loeb
uncovers a stratum of psychological doctrine beyond associationism,
a theory of conditions in which beliefs are felt to conflict and of
the resolution of this uneasiness or dissonance. This theory of
mental conflict is also essential to Hume's strategy for
integrating empiricism about meaning with his naturalism. However,
Hume fails to provide a general account of the conditions in which
conflicting beliefs lead to persisting instability, sohis theory is
incomplete.
Loeb explores Hume's concern with stability in reference to his
discussions of belief, education, the probability of causes,
unphilosophical probability, the belief in body, sympathy and moral
judgment, and the passions, among other topics.
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