Hume and vital materialism

ABSTRACT

Hume was not a philosopher famed for what are sometimes called ‘ontological commitments'. Nevertheless, few contemporary scholars doubt that Hume was an atheist, and the present essay tenders the view that Hume was favourably disposed to the 'vital materialism' of post-Newtonian natural philosophers in England, Scotland and France. Both internalist arguments, collating passages from a range of Hume's works, and externalist arguments, reviewing the likely sources of his knowledge of ancient materialism and his association with his materialistic contemporaries are employed.

KEYWORDS:

• Hume
• materialism
• scepticism

ORCID

Catherine Wilson http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0760-4072

Notes

¹See for details Hall, Ideas of Life and Matter; Schofield, Mechanism and Materialism; Wolfe, ‘Endowed Molecules and Emergent Organization’; ‘Forms of materialist embodiment'.

²Descartes's natural philosophy, by contrast with his metaphysics, had nevertheless prepared some of the ground for the views of Buffon, Maupertuis, La Mettrie, and Holbach.

³Notably Bentley, Eight Sermons Preach'd. See Guerlac and Jacob, ‘Bentley, Newton, and Providence', for details.

⁴When read through the lens of early modern faculty psychology,’ Buckle (‘Hume's Sceptical Materialism’, 571) maintains, ‘Book I of the Treatise of Human Nature is revealed as a sustained argument for the adequacy of materialist explanations for mental phenomena.'

⁵Russell (Riddle of Hume's Treatise) has argued that Hume's antitheology binds the critical and naturalistic elements of his writings together seamlessly.

⁶The Epicureans’ combination of a fundamental philosophical commitment to the atomic theory of subsensible reality together with an affirmation of the exclusive truth of appearances might seem to invoke a double standard. But their position is that we have no knowledge of the invisible realm: we can only propose plausible accounts, consistent with the appearances (Wilson, Epicureanism at the Origins of Modernity, 63–70).

⁷Locke was a theist and a Christian, but he was drawn to the position that besides God, reality consists of corpuscles in various arrangements and subject to movement and that thinking or conscious experience was a power superadded by God to the brain, on analogy with the Newtonian superaddition of gravity to matter. He did not care to state his views about the powers of matter explicitly, treating corpuscularianism as only the most intelligible hypothesis’ or that ‘thought to go farthest’ in the explication of particular effects’ (E IV.3.16) and declaring ‘substance’ to be a ‘doubtful term’ (E II.23.18). In the Correspondence with Stillingfleet, he revealed a commitment to a whole hierarchy of superadded powers, vegetative and animating.

⁸‘Boyle was a great partizan of the mechanical philosophy; a theory, which, by discovering some of the secrets of nature, and allowing us to imagine the rest, is so agreeable to the natural vanity and curiosity of men … While Newton seemed to draw off the veil from some of the mysteries of nature, he shewed at the same time the imperfections of the mechanical philosophy; and thereby restored her ultimate secrets to that obscurity, in which they ever did and ever will remain’ (1775; 6: 265).

⁹Cf. ‘The Immortality of the Soul’: ‘[M]atter … and spirit are at bottom equally unknown; and we cannot determine what qualities may inhere in one or in the other’ (1987: 591).

¹⁰Cf. 1987: 598: ‘By what arguments or analogies can we prove any state of existence [i.e. immortality] which no one ever saw, and which no wise resembles any that was ever seen?’

¹¹‘[T]he imagination is apt to feign something unknown and invisible, which it supposes to continue the same under all these variations; and this unintelligible something it calls a substance, or original and first matter (1987: 598). (italics in original).

¹²Wright points out that Hume considered ‘aetherial active Matter' as a preferable hypothesis to divine fiat to explain Newtonian universal attraction. Indeed, says Wright, ‘Hume's whole argument assumes the existence of force or necessary connection in the universe' as well as the inadequacy of human reason to represent or understand ‘active matter' (Sceptical Realism of David Hume, 144).

¹³‘[The World] must therefore have its infancy, youth, manhood and old age’ (1987: 377). ‘The continual and rapid motion of matter, the violent revolutions with which every part is agitated, the changes remarked in the heavens, the plain traces as well as tradition of an universal deluge, or general convulsion of the elements; all these prove strongly the mortality of this fabric of the world, and its passage, by corruption or dissolution, from one state or order to another (1987:377). Cf. Lucretius, On the Nature of Things, V: 238–325.

¹⁴‘The original force, still remaining in activity, gives a perpetual restlessness to matter. Every possible situation is produced, and instantly destroyed … Thus the universe goes on for many ages in a continued state of chaos and disorder. But is it not possible that it may settle at last, so as not to lose its motion and active force … yet so as to preserve an uniformity of appearance … ’ (1886: II: 428). Cf. Lucretius, On the Nature of Things, 1020–30.

¹⁵‘It is in vain, therefore, to insist upon the uses of the parts in animals or vegetables, and their curious adjustment to each other. I would fain know, how an animal could subsist, unless its parts were so adjusted? Do we not find, that it immediately perishes whenever this adjustment ceases, and that its matter corrupting tries some new form? … Must [the world] not dissolve as well as the animal, and pass through new positions and situations, till in great, but finite succession, it falls at last into the present or some such order? (1886: II: 428). Cf. Lucretius, On the Nature of Things, V: 838–855.

¹⁶'If the universe bears a greater likeness to animal bodies and to vegetables, than to the works of human art, it is more probable that its cause resembles the cause of the former than that of the latter, and its origin ought rather to be ascribed to generation or vegetation than to reason or design’ (1886: II: 420). ‘A tree bestows order and organization on that tree which springs from it, without knowing the order: an animal, in the same manner, on its offspring: a bird, on its nest. And instances of this kind are even more frequent in the world, than those of order, which arise from reason and contrivance’ (1886: II: 423).

¹⁷Rule II of the Principia : ‘Examples are the cause of respiration in man, and beast, or of the falling of stones in Europe and in America, or of the light of a kitchen fire and the sun, or of the reflection of light on our the earth and the planets.’

¹⁸‘The powers of men are no more superior to their wants, considered merely in this life, than those of foxes and hares are, compared to their wants and to their period of existence’ (1987: 593).

¹⁹See Hume's forceful attack on the prevalent ‘doctrine of liberty’ and his explanation of our ‘false sensation or experience even of the liberty of indifference’ (T. 2.3. 1–2: 257–265).

²⁰Both come into the World together, and are after wards joint Partners in all the emergencies of Life: Both increase in Youth, decline in Age, are nourished with Food, enlivened with Wine, altered with Weather, refreshed with Sleep improved by Exercise fatigued with Labour, oppressed with Gluttony and Drunkenness, enervated with Sickness … ’ Natural History of Superstition, 18. The arguments here resemble those of Lucretius in De Rerum Natura III: 323–783.

²¹Lucretius refers belief in the Gods to dream images along with ignorance of natural phenomena (On the Nature of Things, V: 1161–240).

²²See Russell, Hume's Treatise and the Clarke-Collins Controversy, 95–116.

²³A chapter on miracles, the substance of which appeared later in the Enquiry, was deleted from the published edition (Mossner, The Life of David Hume, 111). ‘A Letter from a Gentleman to His Friend in Edinburgh: Containing Some Observations on a Specimen of the Principles concerning Religion and Morality, said to be maintain'd in a Book lately publish'd, intituled A Treatise of Human Nature etc.’ Edinburgh (1745). On Hume's accuser and the events surrounding his failure to get a chair in Edinburgh, see Russell 1997.

²⁴Hume's depiction of his friends as free from the taint of deism could be read as attributing and approving theism, but this seems unlikely. Diderot is said to have remarked in connection with his acquaintance with Hume 'Je vous dirai un trait de lui, mais il vous sera un peu scandaleux peut-être, car vous Anglais vous croyez un peu en Dieu; pour nous autres nous n'y croyons guères. Hume dîna avec une grande compagnie chez le Baron D'Holbach. Il était assis à côté du Baron; on parla de la religion naturelle: ‘Pour les Athées', disait Hume, ‘je ne crois pas qu'il en existe; je n'en ai jamais vu'. ‘Vous avez été un peu malheureux', répondit l'autre, ‘vous voici à table avec dix-sept pour la première fois' (1846: II: 220).

²⁵Knox-Shaw observes that ‘While Edinburgh's societies would certainly have provided a conduit for Hume's familiarity with the new life science, his European contacts could well have given him a lead over many of his compatriots in this respect.’

²⁶For a divergent view, see Israel, Radical Enlightenment.

²⁷On Kant's growing acquaintance with Hume via Hamann in the mid-1770s and the significance of Treatise 1.4.7, see Gawlick and Kreimendahl, Hume in der deutschen Aufklaerung, 189–98.

²⁸Hume's explanation-defense of female chastity in the Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, though based on biology, economics and epistemic considerations rather than on ascetic purity ideals, may have seemed ridiculous to the rather libertine philosophes.

²⁹Wilson, Interaction with the Reader. See the comments on Hume in Kant's Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics (Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, V: 358–361).