Hume’s book on religion is symptomatic of this kind of tone-deafness. It’s a delight to read, yet it doesn’t for a second address what the ‘religious appeal’ is at all. But this manner of addressing ‘religion’ in this blog only applies to Christianity with its preoccupation with making ‘propositional claims’ about issues pertaining to faith. This academic persiflage is inapplicable to the many other religions of the world that not only do not indulge in propositional claims, but actively discourage their usefulness fully as much as any atheist would. We study Christian claims about the existence of God in our college classes, but no other religion makes such ‘propositional’ claims other than Christianity. It is simply one of the peculiarities of Christianity that led it to become ‘theological,’ which all the other religions of the world easily avoided becoming. The Hasidic tales are great fun, but they make no propositional claims, nor are they founded on any theology.

I suppose it’s understandable to wish that people were other than they are, but it shouldn’t take too much ‘reason’ to come to terms with the elemental impotence of such desires. To persist in quixotic desires hardly seems more ‘rational’ than thinking God is reserving special rewards for people offering earnest obsequious gestures.

By my reading, Byrnes views the problem itself (once grasped) as a part of the corpus of human knowledge. I don’t think he was talking about any purported solutions. That is to say, when we recognize the difficulty that Hume is talking about, and understand its implications, that realization is able to shake us to our epistemic core. Or at least, it shook me in pretty much that way, and Byrnes seems to have had the same experience. He calls it “revelatory”, which might be an objectionable use of language, but I suppose to be honest it isn’t very far off from my reaction.

By being aware of the problem as a problem, we really do seem to have gained something. But you might disagree, by saying it is a pseudo-problem, and that Hume has really only led us down the garden path by distracting us with it. At that point, though, you’re not criticizing Byrnes’s reading of Hume, rather you’re criticizing Hume himself. And of course for the sake of charity you can go on to add that it is easy to read Hume as providing solutions when (at least qua philosopher) he really hasn’t.

Surely Hume was no fan of the priests. But Byrnes does not seem to be saying that. Rather, he used Hume’s discovery of the problem of induction as an example to make his own point on principle. We might disagree with the point he is making, and Hume might disagree with it, but still it’s fair to do as far as it goes.

I don’t mean to be hectoring about this. Just my two cents.

What you are saying makes sense, but it would involve a misreading of Hume. Hume said we had no reason to believe the sun will rise tomorrow. There is no evidence, according to Hume.

He reads Hume to suggest that because we don’t have proof that the sun will rise tomorrow and yet we believe it we shouldn’t be so quick to criticise religion because the way of thinking isn’t actually that different. But while we certainly don’t have proof of the future event of tomorrow’s sunrise we do have good reason to believe it will happen based on past evidence within a system which has proved consistent and logical, which is why it is so crucially different from religious belief; this doesn’t have such evidence or even a rational methodology that would make sense of it.

I’m not quite sure I understand what your problem with my post is. I don’t understand how a “problem” could be part of the “corpus of human knowledge”. Do you mean the solution to the problem of induction is part of that corpus?

As far as I can tell, Hume did not think science could solve the problem of induction. He seems to think it is a philosophical issue. But that would not make Byrnes’s comment benign. The fact that the problem of induction is a philosophical issue doesn’t entail that it is also theological. Hume was no fan of theology despite his worries about inductive inference.

The problem with Byrne’s argument is that he thinks quibbles about how best to understand induction somehow leads us to take seriously wildly improbable metaphysical speculations.

Hume’s solution to the problem was clearly inadequate. A customary or habitual cognitive process would not, by that fact alone, qualify as knowledge. Some habits of mind may produce knowledge but only if they satisfy justification conditions.

The point of my post was to point out that today there are perfectly good Humean-inspired accounts of science that do not lead to skepticism; and, furthermore, we needn’t accept Hume’s premises thus avoiding the problem altogether.

Byrnes is impressed by the power of Hume’s problem of induction, which as a problem he takes to be a part of the corpus of human knowledge despite itself not being scientifically grounded.

Either the problem of induction is a non-scientifically grounded part of the corpus of human knowledge in Hume’s view, or it isn’t.

On the one hand, if it is, then Byrnes’s comment is benign.

On the other hand, if you want to show that Byrnes has a sophomoric understanding of Hume, then do the work to show that. Say, “the problem of induction is not itself as significant to the corpus of human knowledge as the purported ‘solution’ of custom or habit”. And then say, perhaps, “the ‘solution’ of custom or habit is not a solution at all that we might think of as a part of the corpus of human knowledge, as it indicates that Hume was a skeptic — and far from being a part of the corpus of knowledge, the problem of induction shows the limits of it”. Or *something*.

From the quotation, he suggests that there are non-empirical forms of knowledge other than revealed truth. He might actually agree that revealed truth is an unreliable form of justification. Calling it truth might even be an oxymoron. But what is important here is whether or not there are non-empirical forms of knowledge that is used by religion.

I suppose it is true that religion uses some kind of reflective equilibrium/coherence, but we want more than that. I’m not sure exactly what he is referring to, but some philosophers (rationalists) will certainly agree that there are non-empirical forms of knowledge. However, I would agree that it isn’t clear that religion tends to do so.

There are intellectual parts of every major religion, but I don’t know a whole lot about them, so I am not sure if they have anything interesting to say. Most philosophers act like they don’t have anything interesting to say, so that is prima facie evidence that religions tend not to produce good philosophical literature at this time.

If there is any interesting form of justification withing religion, it might be a kind of pragmatic justification. People argue that religion brings them comfort. Dawkins is not impressed with this answer, but the fact is that a theory will be more useful if it is true. (I don’t know if comfort indicates the relevant kind of usefulness, and a lot of argument would be required to know for sure.)