e. Premise: It is highly conducive to the interests of the community that each individual should enjoy a liberty perfectly unlimited of expressing his sentiments.

Conclusion: Thus, to every man unbounded freedom of speech must always be, on the whole, advantageous to the state

3. The text box below contains a well-known argument from David Hume’s Enquiry regarding testimonial justification.

[W]e may observe, that there is no species of reasoning more common, more useful, and even necessary to human life, than that which is derived from the testimony of men, and the reports of eye-witnesses and spectators. This species of reasoning, perhaps, one may deny to be founded on the relation of cause and effect. I shall not dispute about a word. It will be sufficient to observe, that our assurance in any argument of this kind is derived from no other principle than our observation of the veracity of human testimony, and of the usual conformity of facts to the reports of witnesses. It being a general maxim, that no objects have any discoverable connexion together, and that all the inferences, which we can draw from one to another, are founded merely on our experience of their constant and regular conjunction; it is evident, that we ought not to make an exception to this maxim in favour of human testimony, whose connexion with any event seems, in itself, as little necessary as any other.

Hume, D., An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (Hackett, 1977), p. 74

a)Standardize the argument (hint: it consists of one premise and a conclusion)

b)Hume’s argument above, that testimony is justified on the basis of inductive inference, constituted the generally accepted account of testimonial justification until the 1970s when it was famously observed that the argument potentially commits the fallacy of circularity. Explain how Hume’s argument is circular.