Hume's Final Verdict on Skepticism: Evidence and the Correction of Skeptical Doubts in the First _Enquiry_

Although a great deal has been written about Hume’s epistemic skepticism in A Treatise of Human Nature, it is An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding that contains his final comprehensive treatment of the topic, and it is this treatment that his later references to skepticism most closely echo. In Section 12 of the Enquiry, Hume surveys ten skeptical arguments directed against the veracity of one or another species of “evidence”: the evidence of the senses, the evidence of demonstrative (i.e., “abstract”) reasoning, and the evidence of non-demonstrative (i.e., “moral”) reasoning. Many have interpreted the Hume of the Enquiry as a radical epistemic skeptic because, after surveying these arguments, he concludes that some of them (namely, the more “philosophical” and “profound” among them) can have no other tendency than to show the whimsical condition of mankind, who must act and reason and believe; though they are not able, by their most diligent enquiry, to satisfy themselves concerning the foundation of these operations, or to remove the objections, which may be raised against them. (EHU 12.23) Yet although he in no way retracts this description, it does not constitute his final overall judgment on skepticism in the Enquiry. Instead, he immediately goes on to begin the third and final part of Section 12 as follows: There is, indeed, a more mitigated scepticism or ACADEMICAL philosophy, which may be both durable and useful, and which may, in part, be the result of this PYRRHONISM, or excessive scepticism, when its undistinguished doubts are, in some measure, corrected by common sense and reflection. (EHU 12.24; see also DNR 1.11) He then goes on to close the book by classifying many “proper objects of science and enquiry.” (EHU 12.26–29) This passage raises at least four pressing interpretive questions. These are: Q1. In what respect or respects is Pyrrhonian skepticism excessive? Q2. How are Pyrrhonian skeptical doubts undistinguished? Q3. In what measure do common sense and reflection correct Pyrrhonian skeptical doubts to produce mitigated skepticism? Q4. Why is the mitigated skepticism that results in part from Pyrrhonism a correction of its doubts? In order to answer these questions, it is necessary first to understand a number of theses that Hume accepts about four key phenomena he invokes in Enquiry 12: evidence, correction, skepticism, and common sense and reflection. The first four sections of the essay explain the meaning and grounds of these theses, noting along the way a number of respects in which the Enquiry’s treatment of skepticism differs from—and is often superior to—that of the Treatise. The fifth section deploys these theses to answer the four pressing questions about Hume’s final verdict on skepticism. The final section concludes that Hume is a mitigated epistemic skeptic but not a radical epistemic skeptic in the Enquiry, for he holds that many of our beliefs have a very considerable degree of objective evidence.