According to Husserl, Hume’s empirical method was deeply flawed—like all empiricists, Hume did not, and could not adequately justify his method, much less his findings. Instead, Hume gives us a “circular” and “irrational” “psychological explanation” of “mediate judgments of fact,” i.e. of inductive inferences. Yet Husserl was certain that he could justify both his own method and his own findings with an appeal to the phenomenological, pre-theoretical, pre-naturalistic “epoché”. However, whether or not Husserl’s notion of an epoché is justified, or (...) even viable, is not our focus here. Rather, our issue is with Hume, particularly: How could Hume have responded? In this paper, I show that in Book I of the Treatise, Hume did—however implicitly—appeal to a “pre-theoretical” notion of belief, which meets Husserl’s demands for a pre-theoretical grounding, i.e. a justificatory grounding. And so, his method is, at least in this respect, justified. But this belief is by no means “prenaturalistic.” Rather, it is a function of empirical data. In particular, it is a product of the “constant and coherent” impressions that seem to naturally obtain of experience. As a result, Hume’s method, which, in agreement with Husserl, we may characterize as psychology, does admit of a certain degree of regularity, but an empirical regularity. And according to Hume, contra Husserl’s complaints, this is the best that we can hope for; regularity will have to suffice, not certainty. However, it must be noted up front that this justification is implicit—Hume is not nearly as forthright as he could have been. Thus, making his position more explicit is the task of this paper. I am not presenting my own position, where I offer my own arguments. Instead, I present textual evidence, contextualized with ample explication. It is my hope that by doing so, Hume may more effectively make his case. (shrink)

This paper presents a new account of Hume’s “probability of causes”. There are two main results attained in this investigation. The first, and perhaps the most significant, is that Hume developed – albeit informally – an essentially sound system of probabilistic inductive logic that turns out to be a powerful forerunner of Carnap’s systems. The Humean set of principles include, along with rules that turn out to be new for us, well known Carnapian principles, such as the axioms of semiregularity, (...) symmetry with respect to individuals (exchangeability), predictive irrelevance and positive instantial relevance. The second result is that Hume developed an original conception of probability, which is subjective in character, although it differs from contemporary personalistic views because it includes constraints that are additional to simple consistency and do not vary between different persons. The final section is a response to Gower’s thesis, by which Hume’s probability of causes is essentially non-Bayesian in character. It is argued that, on closer examination, Gower’s reading of the relevant passages is untenable and that, on the contrary, they are in accordance with the Bayesian reconstruction presented in this paper. (shrink)

The problem of induction and the problem of Cartesian/brain-in-the-vat skepticism have much in common. Both are instances of a general problem of defeasible justification . I use the term "defeasible justification" to refer to a relation between a piece of evidence.

This paper explores early Australasian philosophy in some detail. Two approaches have dominated Western philosophy in Australia: idealism and materialism. Idealism was prevalent between the 1880s and the 1930s, but dissipated thereafter. Idealism in Australia often reflected Kantian themes, but it also reflected the revival of interest in Hegel through the work of ‘absolute idealists’ such as T. H. Green, F. H. Bradley, and Henry Jones. A number of the early New Zealand philosophers were also educated in the idealist tradition (...) and were influential in their communities, but produced relatively little. In Australia, materialism gained prominence through the work of John Anderson, who arrived in Australia in 1927, and continues to be influential. John Anderson had been a student of Henry Jones, who might therefore be said to have influenced both main strands of Australian philosophical thought. (shrink)