[lit-ideas] Re: Hume, Sweet Hume
- From: Robert Paul <rpaul@xxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 05 Oct 2008 23:48:11 -0700
John wrote
For those who seek absolute certainty, appealing to custom is bound to
fail. Custom is too varied to be an unfailing guide. There is, however,
Edmund Burke's observation that custom represents the accumulated
learning of the past and should not, thus, be casually discarded. The
path of moderation is to accept custom as a guide unless there are good
reasons not to.
Hume's notion of 'custom' is not that of 'It's customary (our custom),
that after dinner the men retire to the smoking room after while the
women amuse themselves,' or of 'The Malarkian's customs seem strange to
us.' He sees custom or habit as the mental force which determines us to
expect, after repeated experience of things happening in what looks to
us like an inevitable sequence, that they will continue to behave that
way. 'Force' isn't metaphorical here; Hume was trying to make good on
his claim to have discovered the principles of human nature, as Newton
had discovered the laws and principles of the natural world.
This is from the Enquiry.
(Hume imagines a person with some experience of the world, who, although
she cannot give 'an argument amounting to a demonstration' that things
will remain the same, nevertheless, seems to operate on some principle
which allows her to infer that e.g. that a certain metaphysical
contentment will follow the ingestion of 18-year-old Glenlivet, and asks
what that principle might be.]
'This principle is Custom or Habit. For wherever the repetition of any
particular act or operation produces a propensity to renew the same act
or operation, without being impelled by any reasoning or process of the
understanding, we always say, that this propensity is the effect of
Custom. By employing that word, we pretend not to have given the
ultimate reason of such a propensity. We only point out a principle of
human nature, which is universally acknowledged, and which is well known
by its effects...
'...Custom, then, is the great guide of human life. It is that principle
alone which renders our experience useful to us, and makes us expect,
for the future, a similar train of events with those which have appeared
in the past. Without the influence of custom, we should be entirely
ignorant of every matter of fact beyond what is immediately present to
the memory and senses. We should never know how to adjust means to ends,
or to employ our natural powers in the production of any effect. There
would be an end at once of all action, as well as of the chief part of
speculation.'
Robert Paul,
determined by Custom and Habit
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