ability assessment? What is the really basic sort of information for such a case? Well,
Hume sometimes suggests that probability assignments should in some way be based on
experience. That is not an entirely unattractive suggestion. Let us try it.
It seems clear that Hume thought that the probability of (J) was very low, to say the least.
So we can ask whether there is some experience that Hume had that would justify the
assignment of a low probability to that proposition. But we need not make this a purely
historical question. For we can also ask whether we have some experience that would
justify a low assignment of probability to it.
It is easy to imagine that some people might indeed have some experience that would be
relevant to a probability assignment for (J). Some contemporaries of Jesus, living in the
same place, and so on, might have seen Jesus alive a few days after the crucifixion (or at
least someone who looked just like Jesus and who acted just like Jesus). Such people
would have a good reason, based on their experience, for assigning a high probability to
(J). Or, if we prefer, we can imagine some contemporaries who saw the corpse of Jesus
(or at least of someone who looked just like Jesus) decaying in the tomb two weeks after
the crucifixion. If there were people who had that experience, then they would have good
reason for assigning a very low probability to (J).
Hume, of course, could not have had either of these experiences. After all, he lived
seventeen hundred years after Jesus, and over a thousand miles away. Whatever it was
that happened to Jesus, resurrection or not, it seems unlikely that Hume could have
observed it. The same thing is true about us: we also live too late and too far away. There
may have been some people who were in the right place and time to observe something
that was directly relevant to the probability of (J). But we are not such people and Hume
was not either.
Perhaps, however, there are experiences that could have an indirect bearing on the
probability of (J), experiences that Hume might have or that we might have. These
experiences would have a direct bearing on the probability of some other proposition that
had a special relation to (J). Hume indeed says some things that suggest that he is
thinking of some such proposition. He says, “It is a miracle that a dead man should come
to life; because that has never been observed in any age or country. There must, therefore,
be a uniform experience against every miraculous event.” And towards the end of the
essay Hume refers to “the absolute impossibility” of miraculous events. Hume, therefore,
seems to believe the following proposition:
(N) No one has ever risen from the dead.
This proposition is not directly about Jesus, nor about any other particular person. Unlike
(J), it does not name anyone. It is a generalization. However, this proposition is related to
(J) in an important way. If (N) is true, then (J) is false.
end p.318
That is, if no one has ever risen from the dead, then Jesus did not rise from the dead. And
it also seems plausible to think that if (N) is probable, then it is also probable that (J) is
false. (N), therefore, seems to put a probability cap on (J). If the probability of (N) is
above 0.5, then the probability of (J) must be lower than 0.5. So, if Hume assigns a high
probability to (N) we can expect him to assign a low probability to (J). I suspect that this
is, in fact, what Hume did.