Abstract

David Hume’s well known argument against miracles has its culmination in the so called Hume’s Maxim. According to the maxim “no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous, than the fact, which it endeavours to establish: And even in that case there is a mutual destruction of arguments, and the superior only gives us an assurance suitable to that degree of force, which remains, after deducting the inferior.” In this paper I present and give a critical assessment of the attempts at a formalization of Hume’s Maxim made by representatives of contemporary analytic philosophy. On this basis I will put forward my own formalization of Hume’s Maxim. The formal analyses carried out I employ in an assessment of Hume’s argument against miracles as it is traditionally interpreted. I also point out four circumstances that favour credibility of a miracle’s testimony. The analysis leads to a conclusion, that the formalization of Hume’s Maxim allows us to reject Hume’s argument against miracles in its traditional interpretation as invalid and leaves open, under certain conditions, a possibility of accepting a testimony of a miracle.