Hume's Systematic Skepticism

Daniel Flage
James Madison University

The paper examines the relationship between knowledge and belief in Hume's philosophy. It is argued that belief is not essential for Humean knowledge, that, at best, holding a belief that P is an occasion for obtaining knowledge, since many beliefs are purely verbal beliefs. Focusing on Hume's discussion of the principle of the uniformity of nature, it is argued that Hume's notions of proof and probability are non-evidentiary, although, take in conjunction with his discussion of contrariety, his discussion provides the basis for a theory of rational belief: the rationality of a belief is always relative to a system of which the belief is a part. The paper concludes with a discussion of the relationship between Humean skepticism and Hume's psychological theory of belief-formation. It is argued that Hume could be nothing more than a mitigated skeptic, but that Hume must remain skeptical regarding the mitigated nature of his skepticism.