Understanding Hume’s sceptical assent

This talk examines aspects of sceptical assent in Hume, including its relation to forms of sceptical assent in Pyrrhonian and Academic scepticism.

 

I first describe a number of common features which emerge from my analysis of sceptical assent in Pyrrhonian, radical Academic and Humean scepticism. These features include: the presence of two kinds of assent, involving two standpoints or perspectives; the practical nature of sceptical assent; the presence of a kind of “passivity” in sceptical assent, and the contextuality of sceptical assent.

 

I next examine how features of Hume’s sceptical assent explain Hume’s proposed restriction on enquiry to “common life and to such subjects as fall under daily practice and experience.” Essentially, I argue that Hume’s restriction of enquiry to common life is an instance of the restriction on enquiry on which Hume’s sceptical assent depends.

 

I then discuss the relationship between two levels of reflection in Hume: on the one hand, “common reflection”, reflection deployed in both common-life and empirical science, and on the other hand, profound reflection, which leads to the suspension of assent. I argue that there is no “bright-line” demarcation between the two kinds of reflection.

 

I next analyse the relationship between Hume’s scepticism and the Pyrrhonian and Academic varieties, and argue that Hume's scepticism is much closer to Pyrrhonism than to the scepticism of an Academic like Cicero.

 

Finally, I discuss how the notion of sceptical assent in Hume addresses the “integration problem”, that is, the problem of how to reconcile Hume’s radical scepticism with his science of human nature. I argue that the notion of sceptical assent addresses the integration problem by combining the reflective perspective (which leads to sceptical outcomes) with the acquiescent perspective, in which Hume acquiesces in how things strike him. Sceptical assent captures the distinctive way in which Hume combines the sceptical results of his profound reflections with his believing and reasoning in common life and empirical science, Hume can be seen as both a genuine sceptic and an empirical scientist of human nature, but, importantly, a sceptical empirical scientist.