Hume's Abject Failure

"[T]his is a very good book that one could easily miss. It will be of great interest to Human Scholars, no doubt, but to many others as well. For nonhistorians, there is a window into the religious disputes of that day (e.g., whether miracles should be understood in an ontic or epistemic sense). For philosophers of religion, there are opening moves in the debate on divine action (viz., whether God 'violates' the laws of nature)...the book is surprisingly readable...[E]arman makes the best case yet that Hume's view of inductive inference was naive, even compared to hi contemporaries. His use of the probability calculus gives this point unmatched precision. Perhaps the most important aspect of this book is that John Earman wrote it...He is...one of the very best philosophers of science in the world."--Philosophia Christi "[T]his is a very good book that one could easily miss. It will be of great interest to Human Scholars, no doubt, but to many others as well. For nonhistorians, there is a window into the religious disputes of that day (e.g., whether miracles should be understood in an ontic or epistemic sense). For philosophers of religion, there are opening moves in the debate on divine action (viz., whether God 'violates' the laws of nature)...the book is surprisingly readable...[E]arman makes the best case yet that Hume's view of inductive inference was naive, even compared to hi contemporaries. His use of the probability calculus gives this point unmatched precision. Perhaps the most important aspect of this book is that John Earman wrote it...He is...one of the very best philosophers of science in the world."--Philosophia Christi