Hume's Irregular Argument and Philo's Reversal

Abstract In the final part of Hume's Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, his skeptic Philo drops his objections to the argument from design and takes a more conciliatory position. The only serious candidate for an argument that might explain Philo's “reversal”—the articulate voice in the clouds in Part 3—is almost universally considered to be irregular. However, elsewhere Hume presents the articulate-voice argument as the paradigm of regular philosophical argument. This paper explains the difference between the regular and irregular forms of articulate-voice argument, analyzing Hume's grounds for finding it convincing enough to motivate Philo's reversal.