The Scottish Philosopher David Hume (1711-1776):

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The Scottish Philosopher David Hume (1711-1776)

• An Introduction into the ethical theory of David
  Hume.
• If you want truth look to science or mathematics
  ethics is ultimately based on our feelings
  Natural moral sentiments is where moral
  decision-making is grounded.

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Consider the following quote

• Tis not contrary to reason to prefer the
  destruction of the whole world to the scratching
  of my finger.
• A Treatise on Human Reason, edited by L.A.
  Selby-Rigge (Oxford Clarendon Press, 1988), 416.

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Consider the following quote

• Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the
  passions, and can never pretend to any other
  office to serve and obey them.
• A Treatise on Human Reason, edited by L.A.
  Selby-Rigge (Oxford Clarendon Press, 1988), 416.

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Consider the following quote

• Take any action allowed to be vicious willful
  murder, for instance. Examine it in all its
  lights and see if you can find that matter of
  fact, or real existence, which you call vice.
  You never can find it, till you turn your
  affection into your own breast, and find a
  sentiment of disapprobation, which arises in you,
  towards this action. Here is a matter of fact
  but it is the object of feeling, not of reason.
  It lies in your self, not in the object. So that
  which you pronounce any action or character to be
  vicious, you mean nothing, but that from the
  constitution of your nature you have a feeling or
  sentiment of blame from the contemplation of it.
• A Treatise of Human Nature, Everymans
  Library (New York E.P. Dutton, 1956) 2177.

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Consider the following quote

• When we run over libraries, persuaded of these
  principles what havoc must we make? If we take
  in our hand any volume-of divinity or school
  metaphysics, for instance-let us ask, Does it
  contain any abstract reasoning concerning
  quantity or number? No. Does it contain any
  experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact
  and existence? No. Commit it then to the
  flames, for it can contain nothing but sophistry
  literalism and illusion.
• Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding,
  12.3.173.

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I. Major Tenets

• (1) Reason alone cannot be a motive to the will,
  but rather is the slave of the passions In
  other words, reason alone cannot motivate to
  action the impulse to act itself must come from
  moral sentiments.
• (2) Morals are not derived from reason they are
  derived from the experience of people.
• (3) Morals are generated from moral sentiments
  feelings of approbation (approval, esteem,
  praise) disapprobation (disapproval,, blame)
  felt by spectators who consider a character
  trait or action

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I. Major Tenets

• (4) While some virtues and vices are natural,
  others, including justice, are artificial.
• (5) The human psychological makeup of man is
  similar. Therefore, moral judgments will tend
  to be similar.
• (6) Since morals will tend to be similar,
  moralities may be conceived in terms of social
  utility

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I. Major Tenets

• (7) Humes ethics comes out of the worldview of
  empiricism only matters of fact are those
  discernible by the senses.
• (8) Moral facts do not exist rules of morality
  are not derived from reason.
• (9) Vice and virtue are perceptions in the mind
  and that is all that is needed to regulate moral
  behavior.
• (10) Moral distinctions are constituted by their
  pleasantness and usefulness (he did not
  synthesize how the relate to each other).

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II. Overview of Significant Points

• 1. Primacy of feelings over reason as a guide to
  ethics
• 2. Hum was profoundly influenced by Newtonian
  scientific revolution
• 3. Empirical science nor science can offer us
  ethical truths only genuine knowledge comes from
  pure mathematics or empirical science. It is not
  because reason is flawed, but because basic
  ethical preferences are generated from feelings
  passions
• 4. Factual knowledge arises exclusively from the
  data supplied by the senses and is extended in
  usefulness by means of inferences based on a
  belief in cause-and-effect relations.

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II. Overview

• 5. Feelings cannot provide an objective
  foundation for ethics In fact, feelings are not
  subject to reason.
• 6. Hume attacks the idea of a necessary
  metaphysical connection between cause and
  effect.
• 7. The basis of moral assertion is sourced in
  feelings of approval (pleasure) or disapproval
  (pain or uneasiness).
• 8. Hume is a compatibilist regarding free-will
  and Newtonian determinism (he is a strict
  empiricist).

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II. Overview

• 9. Hume agrees with the moral sense theorists
  such as Shaftesbury and Hutcheson (moral sense)
  and Butler (conscience) that all requirements to
  pursue goodness and avoid evil as consequent upon
  human nature, which is so structured that a
  particular feature of our consciousness (whether
  moral sense or conscience) evaluates the rest.
• 10.Because we are the kinds of creatures we are,
  with the dispositions for pain and pleasure, the
  kinds of familial and friendly interdependence
  that make up our life together, and our approvals
  and disapprovals of these, Hume believes we can
  escape radical relativism, generate natural and
  artificial virtues are socially agreeable.

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II. Overview

• Natural and Artificial Virtues
• Artificial virtues are dependent upon social
  structures (justice fidelity to promises,
  chastity, modesty, duties to sovereign states)
• Natural virtues originate in nature and are more
  universal (compassion, generosity, gratitude,
  friendship, fidelity, charity, benevolence,
  clemency, equity, prudence, etc).

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On Justice

• On Justice
• It is natural for justice to arise, but we will
  come together and establish conventions of
  justice.

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II. Overview

• 11. This view of moral grounding in moral
  sense, emotions, or passional nature is
  contrary to rationalists like Locke, Hobbes, and
  Clarke, who believed that good and evil were
  discovered by reason.
• 12. Locke, Hobbes, and Clarke believed, in some
  moods, that moral standards or requirements are
  requirements of reason.

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II. Overview

• 13. Hume takes an intermediate view regarding
  whether morality is conventional (Hobbes) or
  natural (Locke). Hume thinks natural impulses
  of humanity and dispositions to approve cannot
  entirely account for our virtue of justice a
  correct analysis of that requires the thesis
  that mankind, an inventive species, has
  cooperatively constructed rules of property and
  promise.

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II. Overview

• 14. Hume disagrees with Hobbes regarding the
  following
• a. Necessary psychological Egoism
• b. Necessary violent view of a state of nature
  whereby without an organized state all is in a
  war against all

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II. Overview

• 15. Hume disagrees with Locke (and Rawls) about
  the idea of humanity being involved in a highly
  cooperative domain of law- governing citizens for
  the following reasons
• a It is a hypothetical condition in which we
  would care for our friends and cooperate with
  them
• b. Self-interest and preference for friends
  over strangers would make any wider
  cooperation impossible.
• One of the central themes of Humes political
  philosophy is that we are both fundamentally
  loving and selfish.

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II. Overview

• 16. Turning from reason to sentiment Hume
  believes that has avoided radical relativism or
  mere subjectivism.
• a. Since people have the same psychological
  makeup, their moral responses will be similar.
• b. If provided the same data, people will tend
  to respond similarly. That does mean that all
  people will agree about the moral worth of an
  action.
• c. Ethical disagreements generally stem not from
  differences in our passional nature or
  feelings but from (a) misunderstandings
  regarding circumstantial evidence or from (b)
  incomplete analyses.

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II. Overview

• 17. Study of individual assessments reveal that
  socially useful acts are approved while those
  which are socially detrimental are disapproved.
• 18. Since we judge acts generally by their
  conformity to social utility (rather than by
  immediate, personal preferences), impartiality
  will tend to prevail in moral judgments.

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II. Overview

• 18. Conjoined events do not prove they are
  causally connected any more than there is a
  causal connection between the rooster crowing
  and the sun rising. All one can do is
  extrapolate based on oft-repeated occurrences.
  He does not deny the principle of causality he
  denies the basis on which some people try to
  prove causality.
• 19. All objections of human inquiry are relations
  of ideas (mathematics definitions) or matters of
  fact (everything known through one or more of the
  senses).

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II. Overview

• 20. Laws of nature are habits formed in our minds
  on what has occurred in the past and the
  expectation of similar experiences will occur in
  the future.

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The Nature of Moral Judgment3 Textual
Interpretations

• 1. Non-propositional View a moral evaluation
  does not express any proposition or state any
  fact. Either it gives vent to a feeling, or it is
  itself a feeling. (A more refined form of this
  interpretation allows that moral evaluations have
  some propositional content, but claims that for
  Hume their essential feature, as evaluations, is
  non-propositional).

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The Nature of Moral Judgment3 Textual
Interpretations

• 2. Description of the Feelings of the Spectator
  Hume is describing the feelings of the
  spectator, or the feelings a spectator would have
  were she to contemplate the trait or action from
  the common point of view.

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The Nature of Moral Judgment3 Textual
Interpretations

• 3. Dispositional interpretation Evaluated trait
  or action is so constituted as to cause feelings
  of approval or disapproval in a (suitably
  characterized) spectator. On the dispositional
  view, in saying some trait is good we attribute
  to the trait the dispositional property of being
  such as to elicit approval.

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IV. Moral Sentiments

• 1. Moral sentiments are emotions which possess
  unique phenomenological quality, and special set
  of causes.
• 2. Moral Sentiments are caused by contemplating
  the person or action.
• 3. Moral sentiments tend to be clarified or
  brought into focus by social utility which is a
  common moral sentiments or similar responses
  (collectively).

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IV. Moral Sentiments

• Moral sentiments are the sort of pleasure
  uneasiness which are associated with 4 passions
• 1. Pride
• 2. humility
• 3. Love
• 4. Hatred.
• Some argue that pleasure and pain cause these 4
  passions others believe these 4 passions make up
  the pleasure or pain.
• Thus, when we feel moral approval we tend to
  love or esteem, and when we approve a trait of
  our own we are proud of it.

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IV. Moral Sentiments

• Because we share a similar psychological makeup,
  thus share common moral sentiments, we are able
  to generate or invent artificial virtues because
  we find them to be pleasant and not painful
  (e.g.,)
• 1. Justice with respect to property,
• 2. Allegiance to government,
• 3. The laws of nations,
• 4. Modesty, and
• 5. Good manners), which (Hume argues) are
  inventions contrived solely for the interest of
  society.

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IV. Sentiments Sympathy and Benevolence.

• Sympathy is not seen as a mental capacity in the
  Inquiry as it is in the State of Nature (as a
  mirror to yourself).
• Rather he replaces sympathy with a general
  benevolence in Inquiry. We care about our
  species of such but not as a mental capacity.
• Example, in Human Treatise, he states, there is
  no such passion in human minds, as the love of
  mankind, merely as such, independent of personal
  qualities, of service, or of relation to ourseit
  Tis true, there is no human, and indeed no
  sensible, creature, whose happiness or misery
  does not, in some measure, affect us when brought
  near to us and represented in lively colours
  (pg. 13).
• But in Inquiry he doesnt talk about a mental
  capacity as a mirror to yourself but we have a
  benevolence which is part of our species.

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V. Kant vs. Hume

• 1. Similarity Hume and Kant recognized the
  difference between pure reason (understanding)
  from practical reason (work of the will). In
  other words, they both recognized an important
  difference between judgments of facts and
  judgments of value.
• 2. Difference Kant was a rationalist in his
  conception of morals Hume was an empiricist. A
  rationalist derives principles of morality from
  metaphysical assumptions. Stated differently,
  Kant grounds his morality in rationalism and Hume
  on natural moral sentiments.
• 3. Difference According to Kant, no matter how
  unpleasant the command makes you feel, you are
  obligated to fulfill it.

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VI. Kant vs. Bentham and Mill on utility

• Jeremy Bentham argued that the standard of
  goodness in the greatest amount of happiness for
  the greatest number of persons is intrinsically
  valuable.
• 1 While Hume and Bentham agree that happiness is
  good, Hume does not admit that it is the only
  thing that is good. Human beings are complex
  organisms, and their total welfare includes more
  than the satisfaction of the one need for
  happiness.
• 2. Mill recognizes the cultural, intellectual,
  and spiritual pleasures are of greater value
  than mere physical pleasure. While Hume will
  agree that we are complex humans, he would reject
  Mills finite godism and would reject his
  utilitarianism because he grounds morality not
  in utility but in moral sentiments which all
  humans share.

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VII. Hume on Justice

• 1. The purposes of justice can be realized only
  by adapting the methods that are used to the
  particular situation that is involved.
• a. Justice is a relative virtue in contrast to a
  deontological version of justice, one that is
  not influenced by the situational setting.
• b. He believes our human understanding of
  justice does vary from one time to another and
  that the application of the principles of
  justice will vary with the circumstances under
  which they are applied.
• c. Hume implies that there is an unchanging
  element in justice The purpose is always that
  of meeting the needs of society.

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VII. Hume on Justice

• As justice evidently tends to promote public
  utility and to support civil society, the
  sentiment of justice is either derived from our
  reflecting on that tendency, or like hunger,
  thirst, and other appetites, resentment, love of
  life, attachment to offspring, and other
  passions, arises from a simple original instinct
  in the human breast, which nature has implanted
  for like salutary purposes.
• An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of
  Morals, (Chicago Open Court, 1966), 35.

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VII. Hume on Justice

• 2. Justice is dynamic
• a. Justice is expressed in laws and customs
  which are generated when the need arises for
  them.
• b. The nature of justice varies in view of
  situational setting (illust. Sexual morality may
  vary depending upon setting).

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VII. Hume on Justice

• 3. In view of his appendix on justice in An
  Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals that
  there are certain principles which may be
  recognized that can advance justice
• A. Avoid giving special privileges to some but
  not others
• B. Take into account the long-range interests of
  others rather than immediate satisfactions
  personal and immediate needs may need to be
  sacrificed in order to achieve the well-being of
  society.
• C. Seek to meet the needs of society as a whole.

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VII. Hume on Justice

• 4. On Distributive Justice
• Justice exists for meeting the needs of society
• Justice will be stated in general rules of
  conduct but particular situations and other
  factors may arise whereby the needs and meeting
  those needs will mean change (e.g., war).
• Distributing justice is quite impossible to meet
  every need.
• Justice is for the purpose of distributing goods
  in an equitable manner there is no exact formula
  for doing this that will meet the needs of every
  situations that comes about.
• Neither extreme wealth or poverty are in the best
  interests of others.
• Believes in a moderate view of property rights.
• Justice is a relative virtue nothing remains
  constant about the nature of justice.
• In dire circumstances, scarce resources, there is
  no justice and no benevolence.
• Because of our human nature we have limited
  benevolent and limited justice.

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VIII. Hume on Altruism and Selfishness

• 1. Altruism and selfishness are not necessarily
  opposed to one another.
• 2. We possess a humanitarian sentiment which
  naturally approves of what is beneficial and
  useful to society.
• 3. Since we share a common morality derived from
  our nature, principles of morality are not
  derived from self-love alone.
• 4. What gains the admiration and respect of
  others is by acting upon the pleasing moral
  sentiments that fellow-humans share this is
  virtuous and meritorious.
• Human nature includes both selfish and unselfish
  sentiments.
• Human nature is selfish to some extent.
• Human nature also has the capacity to act beyond
  ones selfishness.
• We can feel the pain of others and their
  misfortune.
• Selfishness can over shadow good intentions but
  does necessarily have to.

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IX. In Summary

• About Hume's ethics we have a moral sentiment
  or feeling of approval or disapproval
  (approbation or disapprobation) about actions
  that we find pleasing or agreeable. We find
  actions agreeable (and thus approve of them) not
  because of the utility of such actions but
  because we naturally have an inclination to
  approve of what we are attracted to. In thinking
  about the pleasures or pains of other people, we
  (along with all other normal human beings) are
  attracted to what arouses in us natural
  sentiments of humanity and benevolence. Such
  sentiments are not derived from self-love but
  from a sense of identifying with other human
  beings. That sense of fellow-feeling, not the
  perception of the utility of actions, is the
  basis on which we feel moral obligation. Of
  course, promoting social utility is in our own
  self-interest, but acting for the sake of
  promoting our own self-interest is not a good
  enough reason for acting in a moral way Dr.
  Steve Daniel

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X. Advantages that have been offered on this view

• 1. Some will appreciate the fact that it removes
  metaphysical mysteries from realm of ethics
  because it grounds morality in moral sentiments
  which all humans share.
• 2. Pleasure and pain are important considerations
  in ethical judgments.
• 3. It attempts to balance both selfishness and
  altruism.
• 4. It seems to avoid pure egoism, utilitarianism,
  and radical relativism.

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XI Objections Raised against Hume

• 1. Hume reduces ethics to a matter of taste
  (e.g., A.J. Ayer C.L. Stevenson), relativism,
  and subjectivism.
• Hume replies since people have the same
  psychological makeup, moral responses will be
  comparable. To be sure, this doesnt mean
  everyone will agree about but if provided the
  same data, they will generally tend to respond
  similarly
• a. Common Nature
• b. Same Data
• Similar response.
• Ethical differences stem not from differences in
  our feelings or passional nature but from
  misunderstandings about the actual circumstances
  surrounding a given act or from incomplete
  analyses of the consequences accruing from the
  act.

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XI. Objections

• 2. Those who embrace objectivist feelings will
  reject Humes account of subjectivist feelings.
  Some believe feelings can be a source of
  objective truths of ethics. Consider Blaise
  Pascals famous statement
• The heart has its reasons that the reason know
  not
• For those who embrace objective feelings they
  would argue that while feelings may not be an
  infallible guide to ethics, feelings are not
  distractions on the path to ethical truth.
  Rather, feelings can be a source of ethical
  insight.
• Do you agree? Can ethical feelings be
  objectively true or are they more like tastes?

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XI. Objections

• 3. Moral sentiments cannot provide an adequate
  basis for moral obligations (e.g., justice).
• Humes response It is obligatory, for example,
  to be justbut the reason we adopt the concept of
  justice and guide our actions in conformity to it
  is because it comes from the moral sentiments we
  all share.
• Hume doesnt deny a specific instance of
  injustice could be more beneficial to society
  than its corresponding instance of justice in
  some odd case, but by conforming ourselves to the
  moral sentiments of justice, humanity can be
  served.
• Response Still justice is not absolute, fixed
  upon absolutes it is sourced in moral sentiments
  that can change (justice becomes somewhat
  relative even if it is not radical relativism).

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XI. Objections

• 4. Borrowing the notion of social utility to find
  a way to maintain social order is using reason.
  Social utility is powerful enough to incite
  action to actually do the good.
• Hume would respond by saying that the source of
  utility is not reason but moral sentiment that
  we naturally share we identify with other beings
  on that sense of fellow feelings. Thus, it is
  not from social utility but moral sentiments
  that ground our morality. Secondly, reasons of
  social utility is not powerful enough to incite
  action it is the moral sentiments of feelings
  of approval or disapproval that motivates action,
  not the perception of social utility.
• 5. Humes skepticism is self-defeating because he
  did not suspend moral judgments regarding God,
  miracles, and metaphysics.

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XI. Objections

• 6. Metaphysical problem According to Hume,
  meaningful propositions are empirical. But this
  is self-defeating, for the statement that only
  analytic or empirical propositions are
  meaningful is not itself an analytic statement.
  If one allows that such statements are
  meaningful, then why cannot metaphysical
  statements be meaningful? Stated differently, to
  say there is no metaphysics is itself a
  metaphysical statement, namely that you know that
  metaphysics doesnt exist.
• 7. Causality can be experienced internally. I am
  the cause of this sentence I am typing, and I
  experience that fact. Everyone experiences their
  own thoughts and actions.

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XI. Objections

• 8. Fundamentally it fails to explain what is
  wrong with a wrong action because it is solely
  based on human experience. Reason only reveals
  matters of fact.
• a. Good in the moral sense of the term is reduced
  to feelings or moral sentiments.
• b. Evil in the moral sense of the term is reduced
  to feelings or moral sentiments.
• 1. Humes response is that there is no other way
  to judge morality. Moreover, we are naturally
  constituted in such a way that there is present
  in us a sense of humanity which always
  approves of that which promotes human welfare and
  is useful in society because we all share it.

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XI. Objections

• 9. Hume is subject to the postmodern critique
  that are our emotions are not a product of
  moral sentiments. Rather, we are morally
  scripted by our sub-culture. How does Hume know
  that our moral sentiments are natural and not
  socially inscribed values?
• 10. Doesnt the idea that we all share a similar
  constitution of moral sentiments beg the
  question that we are designed by God (e.g.,
  Thomas Reid)?