Mechanisms for Hume's Skepticism

Abstract

What happens to a mind that embraces skepticism? On familiar classical and contemporary accounts, it suspends judgment about the matters skepticism calls into question. For Hume, such suspension can occur only temporarily. He claims that skepticism's more enduring effect is weaker: it lowers the vivacity of, and thus our confidence in, beliefs, typically leaving commonplace ones intact. Hume's associationism offers at least two explanatory mechanisms for this effect, one doxastic and one emotional. In the doxastic mechanism, causal reasoning about our failures in reasoning decreases the vivacity of beliefs formed through reasoning. In the emotional mechanism, appreciating our cognitive failures diminishes certain passions, and with them the vivacity of beliefs otherwise augmented by those passions, especially pride. Understanding these mechanisms not only resolves exegetical puzzles about Hume's apparently flippant attitudes toward skepticism, but also provides a psychologically rich picture of how minds might self-correct without exaggeration.