Hume's Abject Failure

Hume's Abject Failure PDF Author: John Earman
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199880859
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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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.

Hume's Abject Failure

Hume's Abject Failure PDF Author: John Earman
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199880859
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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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.

Hume's Abject Failure

Hume's Abject Failure PDF Author: John Earman
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 9780195127386
Category : Electronic books
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
Divided into two parts, part one contains a critique of Hume's argument against miricles, and part two consists of primary source material that provides the context for understanding Hume's contribution to the miracles debate.

Hume, Holism, and Miracles

Hume, Holism, and Miracles PDF Author: David Johnson
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501731300
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 120

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Book Description
David Johnson seeks to overthrow one of the widely accepted tenets of Anglo-American philosophy—that of the success of the Humean case against the rational credibility of reports of miracles. In a manner unattempted in any other single work, he meticulously examines all the main variants of Humean reasoning on the topic of miracles: Hume's own argument and its reconstructions by John Stuart Mill, J. L. Mackie, Antony Flew, Jordan Howard Sobel, and others.Hume's view, set forth in his essay "Of Miracles," has been widely thought to be correct. Johnson reviews Hume's thesis with clarity and elegance and considers the arguments of some of the most prominent defenders of Hume's case against miracles. According to Johnson, the Humean argument on this topic is entirely without merit, its purported cogency being simply a philosophical myth.

A Defense of Hume on Miracles

A Defense of Hume on Miracles PDF Author: Robert J. Fogelin
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400825776
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 116

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Book Description
Since its publication in the mid-eighteenth century, Hume's discussion of miracles has been the target of severe and often ill-tempered attacks. In this book, one of our leading historians of philosophy offers a systematic response to these attacks. Arguing that these criticisms have--from the very start--rested on misreadings, Robert Fogelin begins by providing a narrative of the way Hume's argument actually unfolds. What Hume's critics (and even some of his defenders) have failed to see is that Hume's primary argument depends on fixing the appropriate standards of evaluating testimony presented on behalf of a miracle. Given the definition of a miracle, Hume quite reasonably argues that the standards for evaluating such testimony must be extremely high. Hume then argues that, as a matter of fact, no testimony on behalf of a religious miracle has even come close to meeting the appropriate standards for acceptance. Fogelin illustrates that Hume's critics have consistently misunderstood the structure of this argument--and have saddled Hume with perfectly awful arguments not found in the text. He responds first to some early critics of Hume's argument and then to two recent critics, David Johnson and John Earman. Fogelin's goal, however, is not to "bash the bashers," but rather to show that Hume's treatment of miracles has a coherence, depth, and power that makes it still the best work on the subject.

Hume's Abject Failure

Hume's Abject Failure PDF Author: John Earman
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780199869190
Category : Miracles
Languages : en
Pages : 217

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Book Description
Divided into two parts, part one contains a critique of Hume's argument against miricles, and part two consists of primary source material that provides the context for understanding Hume's contribution to the miracles debate.

Hume's Problem

Hume's Problem PDF 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.

An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals

An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals PDF Author: David Hume
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Conduct of life
Languages : en
Pages : 202

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Book Description


David Hume on Miracles, Evidence, and Probability

David Hume on Miracles, Evidence, and Probability PDF 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.

Some Mistakes of Moses

Some Mistakes of Moses PDF Author: Robert Green Ingersoll
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Bible
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description


Hume's Abject Failure

Hume's Abject Failure PDF Author: John Earman
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780198029311
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 232

Get Book

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.