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Articles

Necessary Illusions

Roger Caldwell on nature’s little white lies.

Hume, in a famous passage, confesses himself at a loss as to how to overcome certain sceptical challenges he has set up. The solution he finds is, in effect, to turn back from philosophy to life. His own nature, he says, is itself such that “it cures me of this philosophical delirium.” After a game of backgammon and socializing with his friends, his speculations “appear so cold, and strain’d and ridiculous, that I cannot find it in my heart to enter into them any further.”

What he is saying, in effect, is that, even if his sceptical conclusions prove unanswerable – and many have found them to be so – in practice we will continue to live our lives regardless of them.

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