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Author: M.P. Levine
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9400922450
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 218
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Book Description
This book developed from sections of my doctoral dissertation, "The Possibility of Religious Knowledge: Causation, Coherentism and Foundationalism," Brown University, 1982. However, it actually had its beginnings much earlier when, as an undergraduate at the University of Virginia, I first read Hume's "Of Miracles" and became interested in it. (Fascinated would be too strong. ) My teacher put the following marginal comment in a paper I wrote about it: "Suppose someone told you that they had been impregnated by an angel whispering into their ear. Wouldn't you think they had gone dotty?" She had spent time in England. I thought about it. I agreed that I would not have believed such testimony, but did not think this had much to do with Hume's argument against belief in miracles. What surprised me even more was the secondary literature. I became convinced that Hume's argument was misunderstood. My main thesis is established in Part I. This explains Hume's argument against justified belief in miracles and shows how it follows from, and is intrinsically connected with, his more general metaphysics. Part II Part I. It should give the reader a more complete understanding builds on of both the structure of Hume's argument and of his crucial and questionable premises. Chapters 5 and 11 are perhaps the most technical in the book, but they are also the least necessary. They can be skipped by the reader who is only interested in Hume on miracles.
Author: M.P. Levine
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9400922450
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 218
Get Book Here
Book Description
This book developed from sections of my doctoral dissertation, "The Possibility of Religious Knowledge: Causation, Coherentism and Foundationalism," Brown University, 1982. However, it actually had its beginnings much earlier when, as an undergraduate at the University of Virginia, I first read Hume's "Of Miracles" and became interested in it. (Fascinated would be too strong. ) My teacher put the following marginal comment in a paper I wrote about it: "Suppose someone told you that they had been impregnated by an angel whispering into their ear. Wouldn't you think they had gone dotty?" She had spent time in England. I thought about it. I agreed that I would not have believed such testimony, but did not think this had much to do with Hume's argument against belief in miracles. What surprised me even more was the secondary literature. I became convinced that Hume's argument was misunderstood. My main thesis is established in Part I. This explains Hume's argument against justified belief in miracles and shows how it follows from, and is intrinsically connected with, his more general metaphysics. Part II Part I. It should give the reader a more complete understanding builds on of both the structure of Hume's argument and of his crucial and questionable premises. Chapters 5 and 11 are perhaps the most technical in the book, but they are also the least necessary. They can be skipped by the reader who is only interested in Hume on miracles.
Author: William L. Vanderburgh
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1498596940
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 207
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Book Description
David Hume’s argument against believing in miracles has attracted nearly continuous attention from philosophers and theologians since it was first published in 1748. Hume’s many commentators, however, both pro and con, have often misunderstood key aspects of Hume’s account of evidential probability and as a result have misrepresented Hume’s argument and conclusions regarding miracles in fundamental ways. This book argues that Hume’s account of probability descends from a long and laudable tradition that goes back to ancient Roman and medieval law. That account is entirely and deliberately non-mathematical. As a result, any analysis of Hume’s argument in terms of the mathematical theory of probability is doomed to failure. Recovering the knowledge of this ancient tradition of probable reasoning leads us to a correct interpretation of Hume’s argument against miracles, enables a more accurate understanding of many other episodes in the history of science and of philosophy, and may be also useful in contemporary attempts to weigh evidence in epistemically complex situations where confirmation theory and mathematical probability theory have proven to be less helpful than we would have hoped.
Author: Joseph Houston
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521415497
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 278
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Book Description
Suppose that one is presented with a report of a miracle as an exception to nature's usual course. Should one believe the report and so come to favour the idea that a god has acted miraculously? Hume argued that no reasonable person should do anything of the kind. Many religiously sceptical philosophers agree with him, and have both defended and developed his reasoning. Some theologians concur or offer other reasons why those who are believers in God should also refuse to accept accounts of miracles as accurate reportage. This book argues to the contrary. For Houston, miracle stories may contribute towards the reasonableness of belief in God, and, appropriately attested, may be accepted by believers in God. To bolster his case he examines historically and intellectually significant writings about the miraculous. And having argued for the rejection of Hume, he explores the implications of this rejection for science, history and theology.
Author: David Hume
Publisher: Standard Ebooks
ISBN:
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 182
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Book Description
A foundational text in empiricism and skepticism, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding comprehensively examines the nature of human cognition, the limits of human knowledge, and the role of reason in understanding the world. Hume argues that our understanding of the world is based on custom, habit, and experience, rather than pure reason or innate knowledge. He challenges the notions of causality, induction, and the concepts of connections between cause and effect, arguing that our understanding of these relationships is based on probability and custom. It lays the groundwork for modern philosophy, emphasizing the importance of empirical evidence and the role of human psychology in shaping our beliefs and understanding of reality. This book is part of the Standard Ebooks project, which produces free public domain ebooks.
Author: Paul Russell
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190493925
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 833
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Book Description
The Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711-1776) is widely regarded as the greatest and most significant English-speaking philosopher and often seen as having had the most influence on the way philosophy is practiced today in the West. His reputation is based not only on the quality of his philosophical thought but also on the breadth and scope of his writings, which ranged over metaphysics, epistemology, morals, politics, religion, and aesthetics. The Handbook's 38 newly commissioned chapters are divided into six parts: Central Themes; Metaphysics and Epistemology; Passion, Morality and Politics; Aesthetics, History, and Economics; Religion; Hume and the Enlightenment; and After Hume. The volume also features an introduction from editor Paul Russell and a chapter on Hume's biography.
Author: Erik J. Wielenberg
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780511354748
Category : Electronic books
Languages : en
Pages : 243
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Book Description
This book puts C. S. Lewis, David Hume, and Bertrand Russell in dialogue with one another.
Author: Matthew A. Benton
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198798709
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 356
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Book Description
Recent decades have seen a fertile period of theorizing within mainstream epistemology which has had a dramatic impact on how epistemology is done. Investigations into contextualist and pragmatic dimensions of knowledge suggest radically new ways of meeting skeptical challenges and of understanding the relation between the epistemological and practical environment. New insights from social epistemology and formal epistemology about defeat, testimony, a priority, probability, and the nature of evidence all have a potentially revolutionary effect on how we understand our epistemological place in the world. Religion is the place where such rethinking can potentially have its deepest impact and importance. Yet there has been surprisingly little infiltration of these new ideas into philosophy of religion and the epistemology of religious belief. Knowledge, Belief, and God incorporates these myriad new developments in mainstream epistemology, and extends these developments to questions and arguments in religious epistemology. The investigations proposed in this volume offer substantial new life, breadth, and sophistication to issues in the philosophy of religion and analytic theology. They pose original questions and shed new light on long-standing issues in religious epistemology; and these developments will in turn generate contributions to epistemology itself, since religious belief provides a vital testing ground for recent epistemological ideas.
Author: Colin Howson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198250371
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 272
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Book Description
This volume offers a solution to one of the central, unsolved problems of Western philosophy, that of induction. It explores the implications of Hume's argument that successful prediction tells us nothing about the truth of the predicting theory.
Author: John Earman
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199880859
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 230
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Book Description
This vital study offers a new interpretation of Hume's famous "Of Miracles," which notoriously argues against the possibility of miracles. By situating Hume's popular argument in the context of the eighteenth-century debate on miracles, Earman shows Hume's argument to be largely unoriginal and chiefly without merit where it is original. Yet Earman constructively conceives how progress can be made on the issues that Hume's essay so provocatively posed about the ability of eyewitness testimony to establish the credibility of marvelous and miraculous events.
Author: R. Douglas Geivett
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
ISBN: 0830897747
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 331
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Book Description
Can modern intellectuals believe in miracles? Editors R. Douglas Geivett and Gary R. Habermas provide a collection of essays to refute objections to the miraculous and set forth the positive case for God's action in history.
