Hume the vacillator : skepticism and inconstancy in the Treatise of Human Nature

This article proposes an interpretation of the Humean project according to which\ud Hume is not successful in recommitting himself to the refined reasoning necessary\ud for natural science and abstract philosophy. This reading rejects the claim that\ud Hume recommends a strong recommitment to reason at the conclusion of the first\ud book of the Treatise of Human Nature, and instead holds that what Hume\ud recommends is a life after the fashion of the "true philosophy." This amounts to a\ud kind of vacillation between reasoning abstractly and living as the vulgar do. A "true\ud philosopher??? does not unrestrictedly endorse reasoning, nor claim that all reasoning\ud is salvageable. He instead reasons until such time as an untenable contradiction is\ud put forward by his reason, at which point he retreats into the naive realism of the\ud vulgar, lay thinker. This paper chiefly objects recent readings of Hume???s intentions,\ud which highlight the role of the so-called "title principle.??? I contend that such a\ud principle is incapable of distinguishing between problematic and unproblematic\ud reasonings, and is therefore insufficient to the task of recommitting Hume to reason\ud as fully as Garrett purports. Thus, the account of epistemic vacillation is proposed to\ud explain Hume's treatment of skepticism as to reason