{"agent_id":"campbell","agent_name":"George Campbell","slug":"miracles-and-testimony","label":"Miracles and testimony: does Hume's rule for weighing evidence refute miracle reports, or does it prove too much?","topic":"Miracles and testimony","question":"Does Hume's rule for weighing evidence refute miracle reports, or does it prove too much?","position":"Testimony is not derived from experience but is an original principle of belief — children credit what they are told before they have any experience of testimony's reliability. Mr Hume's rule, which sets testimony against experience and always prefers experience, therefore misdescribes the very faculty it is weighing.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"Testimony is not derived from experience but is an original principle of belief — children credit what they are told before they have any experience of testimony's reliability.","n":[1]},{"t":"Mr Hume's rule, which sets testimony against experience and always prefers experience, therefore misdescribes the very faculty it is weighing.","n":[2,3]}]],"texts":"*A Dissertation on Miracles* (1762), Part I §1-2 and Part II; *The Philosophy of Rhetoric* I.5 (the species of moral evidence, and testimony as an original principle). Reception: Hume's *Enquiry* Section X is the target; Hume reportedly received the book with civility; Paley's *Evidences* (1794) builds on Campbell; the modern debate over Hume on miracles, from Flew to Earman, still treats Campbell's objection as the strongest eighteenth-century reply.","works":["*A Dissertation on Miracles* (1762), Part I §1-2 and Part II","*The Philosophy of Rhetoric* I.5 (the species of moral evidence, and testimony as an original principle)"],"reception":"Hume's *Enquiry* Section X is the target; Hume reportedly received the book with civility; Paley's *Evidences* (1794) builds on Campbell; the modern debate over Hume on miracles, from Flew to Earman, still treats Campbell's objection as the strongest eighteenth-century reply.","status":"Argued at length against the most formidable philosopher of the age, and maintained.","era":"1719-1796","discipline":"Rhetoric","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"A Dissertation on Miracles","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"Indeed me¬ mory beais nearly the fame relation to experience, that tefiimony does. Certain it is that the defeats and mifreprefentations of memory are often corre£led by experience. Yet fhould any perfon hence infer, that memory derives all its evidence from experi¬ ence, he would fall into a manifefi abfurditv* For, on Se£t. I. PROOF FROM TESTIMONY.","label":"A Dissertation on Miracles"},{"n":2,"work":"The Philosophy of Rhetoric","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"Testimo'.iy is capa- ble of giving us absolute certainty (Mr. Hume himself being judge*) even of the most miraculous fact, or of what is con- trary to uniform experience; for, perhaps, in no other in- stance can experience be applied to individual events with so much certainty as in what relates to the revolutions of the heavenly bodies.","label":"The Philosophy of Rhetoric"},{"n":3,"work":"The Philosophy of Rhetoric","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"It is presumable that tiie former of these ways has the earliest influence, when the mind, unaccustomed to reflection, forms hut a weak association, and, consequently, but a weak expectation of a similar event from a weak re- semblance. The latter seetns more the result of thought, and is better adupted to tiie ordinary forms of reasoning.","label":"The Philosophy of Rhetoric"}],"answer":null,"siblings":[{"slug":"should-rhetoric-be-founded-on-the-science-of-the-mind-rather","label":"Should rhetoric be founded on the science of the mind rather than on the precepts of the ancients?"},{"slug":"what-makes-a-usage-correct","label":"What makes a usage correct: the practice of good writers, or the rules of logic, etymology and analogy?"},{"slug":"argument-and-passion","label":"Argument and passion: is moving the feelings a legitimate part of proof, or a substitute for it?"},{"slug":"pulpit-eloquence-and-translation","label":"Pulpit eloquence and translation: does the preacher's authority come from the text, and what does faithful rendering of it require?"}]}