The Indian and the Ice: Understanding and Rejecting Hume’s Argument

Abstract

I have shown that Hume’s argument fails, but from Hume’s point of view, this victory is hollow. If, as Hume claims, miracles are logically possible, then it would follow that there need not be an absolutely uniform experience against miracles. Still, Hume could claim that nothing more than the mere logical possibility of justified belief in the credibility of testimony to the miraculous is achieved. Given Hume’s principles of reasoning about empirical matters, one never could, as a matter of fact, be justified in believing that a miracle had occurred. (It is important to see why Hume thinks this is not the case with events that are understood to be extraordinary but not genuinely miraculous. I shall discuss this shortly.) According to Hume, why — as a matter of fact — could not one justifiably believe a miracle to have occurred?