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The New Hume
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The “New Humeans” attribute to Hume what they call a “skeptical realist” view. A skeptical realist about some entity is realist about the entity’s existence, but agnostic about the nature or character of that thing because it is epistemically inaccessible. Hume, in the Treatise and throughout his philosophical writings, shows how the illusion that one is referring to something can naturally arise even when there is no such thing to refer to. When Cleanthes asks Demea if “the name (‘God’), without any meaning, is of such mighty importance,” the new skeptical realist can only reply, “Maybe yes, maybe no, but we will never be in a position to decide which.” Such conceptual agnosticism, something a fideist might welcome, would be dismissed by Hume.
Title: The New Hume
Description:
The “New Humeans” attribute to Hume what they call a “skeptical realist” view.
A skeptical realist about some entity is realist about the entity’s existence, but agnostic about the nature or character of that thing because it is epistemically inaccessible.
Hume, in the Treatise and throughout his philosophical writings, shows how the illusion that one is referring to something can naturally arise even when there is no such thing to refer to.
When Cleanthes asks Demea if “the name (‘God’), without any meaning, is of such mighty importance,” the new skeptical realist can only reply, “Maybe yes, maybe no, but we will never be in a position to decide which.
” Such conceptual agnosticism, something a fideist might welcome, would be dismissed by Hume.
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