Guerra-Pujol on Evidence and Belief: David Hume in the Library of Babel

F. E. Guerra-Pujol, Pontifical Catholic University of Puerto Rico; University of Central Florida, has published Evidence and Belief: David Hume in the Library of Babel. Here is the abstract.

What is the relation between evidence and belief? Is it possible to quantify this relationship? To address these questions, I will reimagine the great 18th-century religious skeptic and Enlightenment philosopher David Hume as the narrator of Jorge Luis Borges’ short story The Library of Babel. How would a bibliophile and skeptic like Hume navigate the infinite hexagons of Borges’ imaginary library? More to the point, how would this disorienting experience influence his famous argument against miracles?

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Guerra-Pujol on Adam Smith and the Balliol College Conspiracy @PUCPR1 @UCF

F. E. Guerra-Pujol, Pontifical Catholic University of Puerto Rico; University of Central Florida, has published Adam Smith and the Balliol College Conspiracy. Here is the abstract.

Did Adam Smith’s academic superiors at Balliol College, Oxford conspire to search his private rooms, and was the young scholar then reprimanded by them for the heresy of reading David Hume? Although this 18th-century conspiracy story has been retold many times, its veracity has never been corroborated. This paper thus contributes to the Adam Smith literature in three ways: by assembling in one place the original reports of the Oxford conspiracy, by showing how this oft-told Adam Smith conspiracy story has evolved over the years, and by subjecting these accounts to lawyerly scrutiny.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Klein and Matson on Mere-Liberty in David Hume @MasonEconomics

Daniel B. Klein and Erik Matson, both of George Mason University, Department of Economics, are publishing Mere-Liberty in David Hume in A Companion to David Hume (Universidad Francisco Marroquin). Here is the abstract.

What does Hume mean by liberty? Though clearly important to him, Hume never clarifies the matter explicitly. In his texts, liberty often seems to be a matter of government rules being certain, general, regular, etc., and often a matter of political form or constitution—the place of parliament or republicanism, checks to power, and so on. Many scholars have highlighted such ideas as Hume's idea of liberty. We argue that liberty in Hume bears a central meaning: liberty is a flipside of (commutative) justice. The basic injunction of (commutative) justice is to not mess with other people’s stuff. The flipside is: Others not messing with one's stuff. And it is especially in relation to government (as opposed to, say, a robber) that that flipside concept is what Hume often signifies with the word liberty. Because liberty is polysemous in Hume's writings, we call that meaning “mere-liberty.” Hume sees the achievement of high degree of mere-liberty as dependent on authority, which itself depends on contraventions of mere-liberty. We advance mere-liberty not against the other meanings, but with them, with mere-liberty central to Hume’s political outlook.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.

Sykes and Tranter on The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and Natural Law @GriffLawSchool

Robbie Sykes and Kieran Mark Tranter, both of Griffith University Law School, are publishing The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and Natural Law in the International Journal for the Semiotics of Law (2018). Here is the abstract.

In Natural Law and Natural Rights, John Finnis delves into the past, attempting to revitalise the Thomist natural law tradition cut short by opposing philosophers such as David Hume. In this article, Finnis’s efforts at revival are assessed by way of comparison with – and, indeed, contrast to – the life and art of musician David Bowie. In spite of their extravagant differences, there exist significant points of connection that allow Bowie to be used in interpreting Finnis’s natural law. Bowie’s work – for all its appeals to a Nietzschean ground zero for normative values – shares Finnis’s concern with ordering affairs in a way that will realise humanity’s great potential. In presenting enchanted worlds and evolved characters as an antidote to all that is drab and pointless, Bowie has something to tell his audience about how human beings can thrive. Likewise, natural law holds that a legal system should include certain content that guides people towards a life of ‘flourishing’. Bowie and Finnis look to the past, plundering it for inspiration and using it as fuel to boost humankind forward. The analogy of Natural Law and Natural Rights and Bowie’s magpie-like relationship to various popular music traditions ultimately reveals that natural law theory is not merely an objective and unchanging edict to be followed without question, but a legacy that is to be recreated by those who carry it into the future. Law’s instruments of critique must not forget these transformative qualities. 

Download the article from SSRN at the link.