Hume's Abject Failure: The Argument Against Miracles

by John Earman

Overview

This vital study offers a new interpretation of Hume's famous "Of Miracles," which notoriously argues against the possibility of miracles. By situating Hume's popular argument in the context of the 18th century debate on miracles, Earman shows Hume's argument to be largely unoriginal and chiefly without merit where it is original. Yet Earman constructively conceives how progress can be made on the issues that Hume's essay so provocatively posed about the ability of eyewitness testimony to establish the credibility of marvelous and miraculous events.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780195127379
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	11/23/2000
Pages:	232
Sales rank:	862,386
Product dimensions:	6.36(w) x 9.38(h) x 0.79(d)
Lexile:	1430L (what's this?)

About the Author

University of Pittsburgh

Editorial Reviews

"[T]his is a very good book that one could easily miss. It will be of great interest to Human Scholars, no doubt, but to many others as well. For nonhistorians, there is a window into the religious disputes of that day (e.g., whether miracles should be understood in an ontic or epistemic sense). For philosophers of religion, there are opening moves in the debate on divine action (viz., whether God 'violates' the laws of nature)...the book is surprisingly readable...[E]arman makes the best case yet that Hume's view of inductive inference was naive, even compared to hi contemporaries. His use of the probability calculus gives this point unmatched precision. Perhaps the most important aspect of this book is that John Earman wrote it...He is...one of the very best philosophers of science in the world."—Philosophia Christi

From the Publisher