David Hume – 1711-1776
- be careful of reason, for when you apply any deduction, any conclusion is only as strong as it's original premise
- just about any incident is justifiable if you accept a certain starting premise, and by using reason alone, arrive at that incident as a conclusion
- Tacit consent – if you don't like it, leave
- but a solitary life in the state of nature is much less than civil society
- and what about when they are unable to leave?
- reason does not show morality, it shows logicality
- should we not be worried when our only barometer of good is reason: remember,
False can imply false, and the implication will still remain true - “Reason is the slave of the passions”
- passions – all the feeling, emotional part of us
- Hume worries if we base our choice on reason alone, then we run into the problem that a good syllogism is persuasive
- what motivates: hunger, thirst
- reason helps us discern how
- Hume's moral system is influenced by his views about human nature
- human nature: fairly independent, roughly equal, fairly rational
- too much emphasis on reason → miss an important aspect of human nature
- we are feeling, sentimental beings
- it is rational for beings like this, when the state of nature has gone ary, to consent and form some civil society
- any rational being would consent (this is hypothetical, part of social contract theories)
- rational + passionate
- sentiments – 1. approval
2. approbation/disapproval - reason is instrumental in morality as a calculating faculty
- reason has no moral value
- reason provides insight, it allows us to understand the good
- Plato: we apprehend the good through reason
- our rationality is what distinguishes us from other creatures
- for hume, reason is a mental instrument: reason calculates, reason compares, reason concludes, reason infers
- but reason does not provide any content or substance
- reason is the mental faculty that compares ideas or experiences
- reason combines ideas
- some Hume history: Hume was an empiricist – the best approach to understand is through experience
- experience is the fundamental validation for all truth claims
- if anything is asserted as a matter of truth, it has to be traceable rationally to some experience with the world
- Locke was an empiricist as well
- both men believe the human mind begins a blank slate, upon which experience writes itself
- there is no a priori content
- experience provides content for the mind
- experience is not simply sensory experience, it includes feeling-emotion
- also – what we cannot trace back to experience, we have no grounds for asserting as truth
- did a work on causation
- a strictly empirical analysis on causation
- the central piece of causation is necessity
- 'show me the necessity'
- in reference to necessity: causation
- we are using past events to make judgments about future events, and these involve necessity
- for hume: we cannot say anything will happen unless it does: the future cannot be inferenced in such a way that creates a necessity
- basically: we can't predict the future without making reference to the past
- constant conjunction – one thing seems to follow another thing
- where, in the act of punting a puppy, is there a wrong?
- What does wrong look like?
- Is there a little spark?
- We have to have the proper tools to perceive things
- you can't hear light
- you can't taste color
- reason lacks content – it has got nothing to derive, it is a tool but provides no premises
- the moral content is not in reason
- these sentiments are our measure for right and wrong
- morality is about feeling, passion
- morality is about this feeling to approve/disapproves
- when I observe this, I have this feeling of disapproval, and this feeling of disapproval attached to an event is wrong
- “reason is slave of the passions”
- passions motivate
- pleasure and pain are powerful motivators for action
- in choking a person:
- disengaging from choking is motivated by an imagination of approval if that action were taken
- so ethics is always future oriented
- morality looking backwards allows me to make a judgment in the future
- science is interested in the past to better understand what may happen in the future
- morality is prescriptive
- so morality looks like this: given a predictive should (based on past experience), we can put forth a prescriptive moral should
- the basis for moral judgments are moral sentiments
- these sentiments are part of human nature, natural
- every ethical theory thus far has tried to anchor their picture of morality in something about human beings
- Plato – natural rationality, soul as being ration, we are able to comprehend the good through this capacity for reason
- Aristotle – in our rational nature, but more so as our telos, our end as an excellent human being, a rational social being; there is a natural end that all human beings strive for
- Locke – consent is the act of a free, rational self-interested being agreeing to the terms, consenting is morally significant because it is anchored in a view of equal creation of all human beings
- Hume: the human being is a feeling being
- our most important capacity is not that for reason, but the capacity for sympathy (fellow-feeling – Adam Smith)
- human ability to feel with someone, empathy, to feel for or with another person, whether friend or stranger
- reason does not move a person to action
- in the moment of action, reason is not the operative capacity
- this anchors morality in human nature
- Hume is not constructing a speculative argument
- Hume is an empiricist
- conception of human nature is not a priori
- Hume draws on evidence
- generally humans have like responses
- relativism:
- Consider X
I have an approving response to X
X is right to do
→ I ought to do x
- ethical subjectivism:
- I ought to do what I feel is right→ whatever I feel is right is what I ought to do
- I feel X is right
- → therefore I ought to do X
- the origin of society is in family, so what we learn from family supports all the rest that could be learned from society
- car crash example in class...
- all that can be said, as an empiricist:
- generally, people have like responses
- therefore, it might be inappropriate to judge those who are incapable of reason
- Locke: one must be of age to reason about right and wrong
- Hume: one must be able to get the feeling of right and wrong
- sympathy and sentiments can be cultured – can be refined, developed; especially through experience
- how can you say something is true or false if it is about a feeling?
- this implies a final, certain answer
- for Hume, one cannot ever say something is morally true, certain, absolute, because there may be a circumstance in the future that shows it to be false
- Hume's virtues
- consent not the important factor
- some include: humane, good-natured, beneficence, benevolence, generous, friendly, grateful, merciful
- all these virtues are rooted in sympathy
- these are natural virtues – features of character which are beneficial to self or other, are pleasing to self
- as one stifles sensitivity one loses these virtues
- Artificial/Social Virtues
- not derived from sympathy
- rather, it is derived from utility to society (social utility)
- utility – of benefit to society
- social virtues only apply to society
- ex. justice – one cannot be just in the state of nature: there is no one to be just with
- Hume: justice is the most important social virtue
- if we lack justice in a society in which justice is required, we are all at risk
- however, if we were perfectly humane and fully capable of complete empathy, whether we had abundance or lived in an extreme of deprivation & want, there would still be no need for justice
- these virtues are to be the aim
- justice is relevant when living in a society of equals
- animals are worth of us being naturally virtuous toward them is moral, but treating a cat with justice is not because in cats are not equals
- whenever virtues occur, they are met with a feeling of approval
- even if you are not beneficial of someone's generosity, approval is felt
- whether or not you are the recipient of these, there is a general feeling of appreciation
- Hume: one should respond to virtues with the right kind of feeling
- justice is not the whole extent of morality
- the other part of morality is the virtue, of benevolence
- if everyone were in touch enough with their compassion, there would be no need for justice
- why would I share with those who are depraved, because I can put myself in your place, I imagine what it must be like for you and it moves me to act, to share
- because animals are not equals, we need not be just toward them
- this does not mean that morality is not tied to justice though, justice applies in a society of equals
- just because something is outside the bounds of justice does not mean it is outside the bounds of morality
- also, we may be wrong about what the true nature of the thing which we are judging to be not equal
- Hume wants his account of morality to critically assess social structures
- treating equals as not equals is unjust
- this requires us to have a breadth of experience
- prejudice: pre-judge (prior to experience)
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