In this chapter, I would like to explore a fresh perspective on Hume’s
argument against miracles by analysing his claims in light of his fellow
Scottish philosopher, Lady Mary Shepherd, who directly argues against his views
in her essay VIII ‘That Human Testimony is of Sufficient Force to Establish the
Credibility of Miracles’ in her second treatise ‘Perception of an External
Universe, Other Subjects Connected with the Doctrine of Causation’[i]
(published 1827 but possibly written much earlier). As far as I am aware,
philosophical literature has not yet specifically researched Shepherd’s
counterarguments to Hume about miracles and how they affect the plausibility of
Hume’s claims.
Shepherd’s key counterarguments[ii]
(in her essay VIII first published 1827) against Hume’s views (in EHU originally
published 1748) on miracles identify and target specific potential flaws in his
argument. One key counterargument Shepherd puts forward is that she thinks Hume
has erroneously defined what a miracle is[iii].
At the heart of their disagreement lies their contrasting views on the laws of
nature which, in addition to their different readings of scripture, impacts on
their respective definitions of a miracle. Shepherd diverges from Hume’s
various wordings of his definition of a miracle by offering her alternative
definition of a miracle as “an exception to nature’s apparent course”[iv].
By substituting violation for exception and adding the word apparent, Shepherd
has modified Hume’s definition in a significant way because this gives her an
opening for arguing, contra Hume, that the existence of miracles is plausible
and credible. One way Shepherd’s argument hits at Hume’s definition is that, as
I have shown earlier, he justifies his definition on the basis that he has
described miracles in accordance with how everyone thinks of miracles and how
they are “denominated” in society (EHU 10 footnote 1; SBN 115). However,
Shepherd questions that everyone does conceive of miracles in the way Hume describes
and she maintains that his definition is at odds with scripture. This is for
two reasons. First, Shepherd cites in a footnote that:
“The word miracle, in its derivation, signifies only a wonderful thing;
that is, something at which we wonder, because contrary to our usual
experience, or in other words, an interruption to that we conceive the course
of nature.”[v]
In this way, the etymological root of the word miracle gives support to
Shepherd’s redefinition which highlights that miracles only seem completely out
of the ordinary because they go against the grain of our understanding of how
nature functions, which we have gained through experience. So, our
understanding of nature’s workings is only based on what we are able to gather
from our senses and experience and so may not be a completely accurate
reflection of all the intricacies of nature’s full capabilities. Thus, on
Shepherd’s view, it is misleading of Hume to insist on a miracle involving a
break with the laws of nature. As I discuss in the following chapter, I find
Shepherd’s view here especially plausible because it concurs with several other
Christian philosophers and theologians.
Perhaps this is why Shepherd draws on another, related way to weaken
Hume’s chosen definition, by citing that it does not cohere with the generally
accepted view of how God acts in the world. She claims:
“…there is always understood to
be a power in some superior influence in nature, in the presiding energy of an
essential God, acting as an additional cause, equal to the alleged variety of
effects.”[vi]
Much as she says she aims this
remark at Hume’s phrase “violation of the laws of nature” (EHU 10.90; SBN 114),
I think this criticism she makes has just as much if not greater force against
Hume’s footnote (EHU 10 footnote 1; SBN 115) where he specifies God’s role
within a miracle as being a “particular volition” which causes “a transgression
of a law of nature”. In this way, Shepherd shows that Hume’s assumption, that
when God is said to act in the world He breaks the laws of nature, need not be
accepted at face value and could be rejected on religious, metaphysical grounds[vii].
This is important to Shepherd because she is keen to correct any misconceptions
surrounding miracles which may turn readers of Hume’s essay away from the
Christian faith. Shepherd notes that she would like to “examine” Hume’s account
of miracles “which had sufficient attraction in it to draw the opinion of many
from the belief of Christianity”[viii].
Furthermore, I think Shepherd could
be showing that Hume’s definition may also frame the debate in a way that
enables him to argue with more conviction than is actually warranted. Indeed, I
suggest Hume’s preference for an interruption rather than an exception
occurring within the cause of nature is problematic because it doesn’t take
into account that naturally occurring events can surprise us. So, I think
Shepherd is showing an awareness that we are more likely to hold erroneous
beliefs about unusual events if there is a general denial of natural events
being capable of exception. This can be seen when Shepherd writes:
“nature is so far from keeping up
any constant analogy in her works, that the very aversion to believe in
excepted cases to those of experience, arises from that puerile adherence to a
customary association of thought, which made the Indian Prince a child rather
than a philosopher who reasoned justly (according to Mr. Hume’s argument) when
he refused to ‘believe the first relation of frost.’ ”[ix]
In this passage, Shepherd shows
that Hume undermines his own argument with his Indian Prince example because it
could also be used to illustrate various weaknesses in his account.
One way the Indian Prince example
shows up problems in Hume’s account is that it could be argued that his
definition is a counterproductive way of thinking about miracles because it
could lead people to react like the Indian Prince, which, as we have seen,
Shepherd generally considers such an approach to be a “childish” model,
unsuitable for philosophy[x].
This is because people would become accustomed to dismissing natural events
that seem very astonishing, simply because they are completely out of their
experience and give rise to wonder. Consequently, they would be more likely to
disbelieve reports of such events altogether despite attempting to reason in a
sound manner. Thus, this approach would be detrimental to gaining knowledge of
the world and encourage ignorance, despite this being the opposite of Hume’s
intentions. I suspect Hume doesn’t think he is leaving himself open to this
possible objection because he takes the time to distinguish the freezing point
phenomenon as “extraordinary” not “miraculous” because this event will
consistently happen repeatedly under the same conditions (EHU 10.89, footnote
1; SBN 114). In this way, Hume could try to dismiss her objection by arguing
that he is merely stating that the freezing point phenomenon encountered by the
Indian Prince is only showing an instance of a natural event which is “not
conformable to” (EHU 10.89; SBN 114) our experience (EHU 10.89 footnote 1; SBN
114). Hence, this type of natural event does not amount to an instance of
something which is at odds with the laws of nature. On the contrary, what
happens at freezing point is in fact an example of a law of nature. However,
given that this argument relies on us assenting to Hume’s (EHU) definition of a
miracle as being an interruption to the course of nature, I think Shepherd
(1827) could still claim that Hume’s approach does not provide the best
explanation because it creates an unnecessary suspicion of events that strike
us as remarkable, as well as not fitting into the religious context of
miracles. Shepherd instead resolves these tensions by incorporating God into
the “one universal law” of nature by explaining His acts as constituting an
additional cause to the causes and effects Hume focuses on[xi].
This has the advantage of slotting events outside of our experience cohesively
into the overall picture of a mostly, but not invariably, uniform course of
nature. In this way, Shepherd also wishes to demystify Hume’s talk of certain
laws as constituting, on Hume’s view, “the ‘secret powers’ and capacities of
bodies and minds; the mysterious influences of distinct mases of things,
antecedent to their operation upon our senses” and “the mysterious storehouse
of unperceived nature” which gives rise to “new un-seen events” which will
“alter our experience in future”[xii].
I agree with Shepherd here that
this undermines Hume’s attempt to provide a common sense, plausible account of
the course of nature because anything that is harder to explain is
unsatisfactorily relegated to the ambiguous and unpredictable category of
strangely enigmatic events and laws. I would add that, by leaving space for the
secretive and mysterious in nature, Hume may also be undermining his aim of
combatting “all kinds of superstition and delusion” (EHU 10.86; SBN 110)
because this kind of talk and way of thinking makes people more prone to
forming superstitious habits and patterns of thought because it can give rise
to fear, uncertainty and irrational thoughts about the course of nature and its
impact on their lives. Given that this is in line with Hume’s general concerns
about superstition, this may weaken Hume’s account of miracles because despite
overtly removing a superstitious approach to nature, he is simultaneously
leaving room for a superstitious brain-pattern to form around aspects of nature
he can’t explain or may surprise us because it is the first time that a person
has observed or heard of that natural event. Hume seems to implicitly refute
the notion of God acting in the world given his rejection of miracles where God
wills an event to happen. Nevertheless, I suggest that Hume is not intending to
leave no room for God acting in the world in some way. This is because Hume
mentions in passing that:
“…it is impossible for us to know
the attributes or actions of such a Being, otherwise than from the experience
we have of his productions, in the usual course of nature.” (EHU 10.99 SBN
129).
A second way the Indian Prince
example shows up problems in Hume’s account (EHU 10) is that it illustrates the
flaws that can arise from a very empirical account of miracles which works from
experience towards a conclusion. The example leads Shepherd to argue that
Hume’s refutation of miracles includes the counterintuitive claim that nature
can be affected or changed by experience. Shepherd cites and examines the part
of Hume’s central doctrine about miracles which, according to her, makes the
“false assertion”[xiii]
that:
“…as a firm and unalterable
experience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle, from the
very nature of the fact, is as entire as any argument from experience can
possibly be imagined.” (EHU 10.90; SBN 114).
Shepherd argues that our experiences of the
external world cannot plausibly be claimed to be “created nor arranged” by
sensory perception[xiv].
Shepherd is unconvinced that sensory experience can “measure” changes in the
external world and states her view thus: “Our experience never established, nor
can ever be the measure of the laws of nature” before further arguing that
experience “never can be the measure of what alteration might take place under
certain altered circumstances exterior to the senses”[xv].
This empirical feature of Hume’s account (EHU 10), illustrated by the Indian
Prince, represents, for Shepherd, exactly where people go wrong and why she
judges her definition of a miracle as an improvement on Hume’s. Shepherd
maintains that, like the Prince, we make the error that:
“… we deem some limited
observation we make, the measure of universal fact; we draw general conclusions
from particular premises; until extended knowledge acquaints us with
exceptions, and sometimes with single and most important exceptions to
otherwise universal facts.”[xvi].
I think this passage in Shepherd
is compelling because, unlike Hume, she is taking into account the problem of
induction as illustrated by examples such as grue[xvii]
or black swan problems[xviii]
within the context of miracles. If our methodology for gaining knowledge of the
external world is based on individual experience and observation then we may
end up with more limited knowledge of universal facts, in much the same way
that we are ignorant if we assume all emeralds are green simply because this is
all we have been taught by others or have encountered for ourselves in the
world[xix].
So I think Shepherd[xx]
is right to claim that if there’s a narrow focus on and priority given to
observable experience, then apparent anomalies to uniform experience cause
unnecessary surprise and are more confusing than if we treat them as a normal
part of experience that can be legitimately examined with as much rigour as
occurrences which are in keeping with previously known laws of nature.
A related criticism Shepherd makes
is that she suggests Hume is arguing inconsistently between his miracles essay
and earlier in his Enquiry. Shepherd notices that Hume claims, amongst other
things, that nature can “change her course without a contradiction”, that we
are ignorant of nature’s ‘secret powers’, that sensory experience cannot always
tell us about “those unperceived laws which truly govern the effect in every
case” and that just because nature seems uniform, it cannot be assumed that
this will remain the case in future[xxi].
If Shepherd has represented Hume’s argument earlier in his Enquiry fairly here,
she has highlighted a direct contradiction in his views between his general
philosophical principles and his refutation of miracles. Shepherd lists her
main concerns with these two apparently contradictory passages as being that
Hume has not consistently put forward an account of what an efficient cause is
and that he therefore cannot “distinguish” his true and false propositions[xxii].
This is important because these propositions are used by Hume as premises
leading to his conclusion that “custom is cause”[xxiii].
She then notes that he “suddenly turns the tables in the essay on miracles”[xxiv]
by adding that only custom can be:
“cause, it alone can be the
reason of our belief in testimony, and of our supposing there is any necessary
connection between the custom of believing in testimony, and the reality of the
events testified”[xxv].
Hence, Shepherd is not satisfied
with the level of rigour in Hume’s argument and attempts to resolve this
tension in her essay. I interpret Shepherd[xxvi]
as implying that Hume has set up a ‘straw man fallacy’ in his essay on miracles
in order to refute their existence more conclusively than is possible. In order
to restore credibility to miracles, Shepherd reformulates Hume’s question of
whether a break in the laws of nature is possible to the question of “whether
an interruption to nature’s apparent course can take place?”[xxvii].
She then breaks this question down into the following three questions:
“First, whether the apparent
course of nature can be altered?
Secondly, whether the evidence
produced to prove such an alteration be credible?
Thirdly, if it be credible, in
what manner the miracle itself becomes evidence of any particular doctrine”[xxviii]
In answer to the first question,
Shepherd argues that the doctrine of efficient cause proves that exceptions to
the apparent course of nature are possible and that there is evidence that
unusual, “marvellous” events truly happen[xxix].
Shepherd then suggests that miracles should be seen as being on par with and
equally worthy of analysis as other events which are also unusual but are
believed to have an unknown adequate cause[xxx].
In answer to her second question, Shepherd responds by outlining her main
criteria for testimony about “marvellous events” which focuses on whether
the testifier had possible motives for making false claims and how much
“confidence” was needed under the circumstances to tell the truth[xxxi].
This coheres with her earlier “axiom” concerning testimony which states that we
place our trust in testimony which is not adversely affected by “any motive to
falsehood” or “self-interest”[xxxii].
She builds on her notion of and criteria for believable testimony when
answering her third question by arguing that, conversely, if the testimony does
not involve some sort of risk to the testifier’s “self-interest” yet advocates
a dogma then we should be more cautious about their testimony of that miracle[xxxiii].
Shepherd does not share Hume’s scepticism about how successfully we can detect
false doctrines because she maintains that falsehoods will show up in the lack
of quality of the evidence provided[xxxiv].
Nevertheless, she would not go on to advocate using miracles to settle minor
disputes within the Catholic Church, possibly because she feels that this could
descend into abusing miracles by using them as a means to win rows[xxxv].
Nevertheless, she does strongly conclude in her essay by supporting the
testimony of the Apostles with her argument that they provided that testimony
at the expense of their own interest and that she judges that it is more
plausible that the Gospel contains truth than arguments that claim it does not[xxxvi].
[i] Mary Shepherd, ‘“Essay VIII: That Human
Testimony Is Of Sufficient Force To Establish the Credibility Of Miracles.”’,
in Essays on the Perception of an External Universe and Other Subjects
Connected with the Doctrine of Causation (Piccadilly, London, United
Kingdom: John hatchard and Son., 1827), 325–45,
https://archive.org/stream/essaysonpercepti00shep/#page/n7/mode/2up.
[ii] Shepherd.
[iii] Shepherd.
[iv] Shepherd, p335.
[v] Shepherd, footnote
p335.
[vi] Shepherd, ‘“Of Miracles”’, p329.
[vii] Shepherd, ‘“Of Miracles”’.
[viii]
Shepherd, p330.
[ix] Shepherd, p328-9.
[x] Shepherd, 341.
[xi] Shepherd, p329.
[xii] Shepherd, p330-1.
[xiii]
Shepherd, p330.
[xiv] Shepherd, p330-1.
[xv] Shepherd, p330-1.
[xvi] Shepherd, p332.
[xvii]
Nelson Goodman, Fact, Fiction, and
Forecast, 2nd edition (Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA: Harvard UP, 1955).
[xviii]
N. N. Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of
the Highly Improbable, 2nd edition (London, UK: Penguin Books, 2010).
[xix] Goodman, Fact, Fiction, and Forecast.
[xx] Shepherd, ‘“Of Miracles”’.
[xxi] Shepherd, p333-5.
[xxii]
Shepherd, p333.
[xxiii]
Shepherd, p333.
[xxiv]
Shepherd, p333.
[xxv] Shepherd, p333-4.
[xxvi]
Shepherd, ‘“Of Miracles”’.
[xxvii]
Shepherd, p335.
[xxviii]
Shepherd, p336.
[xxix]
Shepherd, p336.
[xxx] Shepherd, p336.
[xxxi]
Shepherd, p337.
[xxxii]
Shepherd, p328.
[xxxiii]
Shepherd, p337-40.
[xxxiv]
Shepherd, p339.
[xxxv]
Shepherd, p339.
[xxxvi]
Shepherd, p345.
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