Hume’S Skepticism Concerning Reason

The skepticism concerning induction calls into question all inferences from present and past experience to other experience. This chapter examines argument in detail later on, but for purposes it is sufficient to notice that David Hume intends his skepticism to be wholly unmitigated within its range of application. Surveying the faculties of the human mind, Hume raises skeptical doubts concerning the understanding, skeptical doubts concerning the senses, and he raises skeptical doubts concerning reason. Hume’s naturalistic conception of the mind is carried to the seat of reason. In a more famous part of the Treatise , Hume argues that causal inferences have no rational foundation; instead, they derive from a natural propensity of the mind to project past regularities into the future. The plain suggestion of this passage is that reasoning itself is another natural propensity. Presented with certain ideas, the mind is naturally led to believe that certain relations obtain among them. Hume’s naturalism runs very deep.