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Hume and Necessary Truth

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 June 2010

W. A. Suchting
W. A. Suchting
Affiliation:
University of Sydney
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Extract

There is a widespread belief, more often implied than explicitly asserted, that Hume considered all necessary propositions to be analytic.

Of course Hume did not use the analytic-synthetic distinction explicitly. This only come to the forefront with Kant; and it is Kant who is probably the main source of the above-mentioned belief. Kant ascribed to Hume the view that mathematical propositions are, in his (Kant's) terminology, analytic. If this is correct, then since mathematics was for Hume the paradigm of a body of necessary truths, it is plausible to infer that he considered necessary propositions to be one and all analytic. The absence in Hume's writings of the analytic-synthetic terminology is by no means decisive: though he did not have the terms he may well have possessed the concepts, as evidenced by his use of them.

Type
Articles
Information
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 5 , Issue 1 , June 1966 , pp. 47 - 60
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1966

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References

1 E.g. Ayer, A. J., Language, Truth and Logic (1936, 2nd ed., 1946), p. 54Google Scholar, Reichenbach, H., The Rise of Scientific Philosophy (1951), p. 86Google Scholar, Zabeeh, F., Hume, Precursor of Modern Empiricism (1960), Ch. 4Google Scholar.

2 Prolegomena, Sec. 2 (translation by P. G. Lucas, 1953, p. 21), Critique of Practical Reason, Preface ad fin (translation by T. K. Abbott, 6th ed., 1909, P. 99).

3 Of course geometry is given the same status as arithmetic and algebra only in the Enquiry Concerning the Human Understanding. For a discussion of Hume's account of geometry see Zabeeh, F., op. cit., pp. 137Google Scholar ff, and “Hume on Pure and Applied Geometry” Ratio, 6 (1964), 185Google Scholar.

4 For initial stimulus in questioning this common view of Hume, and for valuable assistance, I am indebted to Reinach, A., “Kants Auffassung des Humeschen Problems” Zeitschrift fur Philosophic und Philosophische Kritik, 141 (1911), 176Google Scholar, Pap, A., Semantics and Necessary Truth (1958), Ch. 4Google Scholar, and Atkinson, R. F., “Hume on Mathematics” Philosophical Quarterly, 10 (1960), 127CrossRefGoogle Scholar. I am also grateful to my colleague, Mr D. C. Stove, for very helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper.

5 References are to Selby-Bigge's editions of the Treatise and Enquiry.

6 Compare with the above also , Hume's treatment of “distinctions of reason”, Treatise, I.I.VIII (pp. 24 f)Google Scholar.

7 Cf. Locke's distinction between two sorts of propositions the truth of which we can know “with perfect certainty”. The first is “those trifling propositions which have a certainty in them, but … only a verbal certainty, not instructive”. The second comprises those propositions “which affirm something of another, which is a necessary consequence of its precise complex idea, but not contained in it: as that the exterior angle of all triangles is larger than either of the opposite internal angles. Which relations … making no part of the complex idea signified by the name triangle, this is a real truth, and conveys with it instructive real knowledge.” (Essay, Bk. IV, Ch. VIII, esp. Sec. 8, , Frazer's edition, Vol. II, pp. 298 f)Google Scholar.

8 Cf. Kant: “My concept of straight contains nothing of quantity, but only of quality. The concept of the shortest is wholly an addition, and cannot be derivtd, through any process of analysis, from the concept of the straight line”. (Citique of Fure Reason, B 13, Kemp Smith's translation).

9 Auguste Comte and Positivism (p. 8 of the Arbor, Ann paperback edition, University of Michigan Press, 1961)Google Scholar Mill ascribes to Comte very much the same view of cause as, it will be argued, might have been held by Hume. —For a recent expression of the above view see Warnock's, G. J. contribution to David Hume. A Symposium (ed. Pears, D., 1963), p. 58Google Scholar.

10 E.g. T, 161, 162, 166, 168, 169, 266, 403.

11 See Locke's Essay, Bk. I, Ch. VIII, esp. Sec. 13 (Frazer's edition, Vol. I, pp. 172 f), Bk. IV, Ch. Ill, Sec. 16, 25, 28 and Ch. XI, Sec. 2 (Frazer, Vol. II, pp. 205 f, 217 f, 220, 326 f).

12 In several places Hume emphasises the contrast between the “external” properties of bodies and their real nature. E.g. “we can never pretend to know body otherwise than by those external properties, which discover themselves to the senses” (T, 64). “We can never penetrate so far into the essence and construction of bodies, as to perceive the principle, on which their mutual influence depends” (T, 400). “The particular powers, by which all natural operations are performed, never appear to the senses” (E, 42).

13 See his edition of the Dialogues (2nd edition, 1947), pp. 57 ff. (Subsequent references are to this edition).

14 Dialogues, p. 191, editorial note.—It may be remarked that the passages just cited are not completely isolated. Cf. the following from Hume's earlier works. “We must certainly allow, that the cohesion of the parts of matter arises from natural and necessary principles, whatever difficulty we may find in explaining them.” (T, 401) “It's universally allowed that matter, in all its operations, is actuated by a necessary force, and that every natural effect is so precisely determined by the energy of its cause that no other effect, in such particular circumstances, could possibly have resulted from it”. (E, 82)