A History of Ideas: Hume on Miracles

BBC

A History of Ideas: Hume on Miracles

Cognitive and TED collaboration

Aidan Turner on Hume and Miracles

Ray Laurence

Was it a miracle when Leicester City won the Premier League title? Not according to philosopher David Hume. He felt that a miracle had to break an established law of Nature, otherwise it was simply an extraordinary event. So, Leicester City’s achievement (while extremely unlikely) wasn’t a miracle. And if people claim to have seen something truly miraculous, can we believe them? Again, Hume felt that as eye witnesses can both be fallible and have either conscious or unconscious motivations for wanting the miracle to be true, we should always think twice before believing them.  

Want to hear more on this topic?

Here’s the whole episode from A History of Ideas – Lawyer Harry Potter on eyewitness testimony.

Project scrapbook

You may also like these
A History of Ideas: George Berkeley On 'Esse Est Percipi' ('To Be Is To Be Perceived')
A History of Ideas: George Berkeley On 'Esse Est Percipi' ('To Be Is To Be Perceived')

Is there such a thing as matter? Not according to the Immaterialist philosopher Bishop George Berkeley.

A History of Ideas: Hume on Miracles
A History of Ideas: Hume on Miracles

Was it a miracle when Leicester City won the Premier League title? Not according to philosopher David Hume.

A History of Ideas: Wittgenstein’s Beetle In A Box Analogy
A History of Ideas: Wittgenstein’s Beetle In A Box Analogy

Can we ever know another person’s pain? Or even what their experience of the colour green might be? For Ludwig Wittgenstein, the answer to this question cut to the very heart of ‘meaning’.

A History of Ideas: Karl Popper On Falsification
A History of Ideas: Karl Popper On Falsification

According to philosopher Karl Popper, scientists don’t set out to provetheir theories, but to disprove them by testing them to destruction.

Andrew Park

Cart (0)