Hume is traditionally regarded as a compatibilist about freedom and determinism, because in his discussion in the Enquiry concerning Human Understanding he argues that if we understand the doctrines of liberty and necessity properly, all mankind consistently believe both that human actions are the products of causal necessity and that they are free. The two treatments, however, surprisingly enough, are entirely consistent.
In both works he argues that just as we discover necessity in this sense to hold between the movements of material bodies, we discover just as much necessity to hold between human motives, character traits, and circumstances of action, on the one hand, and human behavior on the other.
He says in the Treatise that the liberty of indifference is the negation of necessity in this sense; this is the notion of liberty that he there labels absurd, and identifies with chance or randomness which can be no real power in nature both in the Treatise and the first epistemological Enquiry. Human actions are not free in this sense. Hume argues, as well, that the causal necessity of human actions is not only compatible with moral responsibility but requisite to it.
To hold an agent morally responsible for a bad action, it is not enough that the action be morally reprehensible; we must impute the badness of the fleeting act to the enduring agent. Not all harmful or forbidden actions incur blame for the agent; those done by accident, for example, do not. According to Hume, intentional actions are the immediate product of passions, in particular the direct passions, including the instincts. He does not appear to allow that any other sort of mental state could, on its own, give rise to an intentional action except by producing a passion, though he does not argue for this.
The motivating passions, in their turn, are produced in the mind by specific causes, as we see early in the Treatise where he first explains the distinction between impressions of sensation and impressions of reflection:. Thus ideas of pleasure or pain are the causes of these motivating passions.
Not just any ideas of pleasure or pain give rise to motivating passions, however, but only ideas of those pleasures or pains we believe exist or will exist T 1. More generally, the motivating passions of desire and aversion, hope and fear, joy and grief, and a few others are impressions produced by the occurrence in the mind either of a feeling of pleasure or pain, whether physical or psychological, or of a believed idea of pleasure or pain to come T 2.
These passions, together with the instincts hunger, lust, and so on , are all the motivating passions that Hume discusses. The will, Hume claims, is an immediate effect of pain or pleasure T 2. The will, however, is merely that impression we feel when we knowingly give rise to an action T 2. The causes of action he describes are those he has already identified: the instincts and the other direct passions. Hume famously sets himself in opposition to most moral philosophers, ancient and modern, who talk of the combat of passion and reason, and who urge human beings to regulate their actions by reason and to grant it dominion over their contrary passions.
His view is not, of course, that reason plays no role in the generation of action; he grants that reason provides information, in particular about means to our ends, which makes a difference to the direction of the will.
His thesis is that reason alone cannot move us to action; the impulse to act itself must come from passion. The first is a largely empirical argument based on the two rational functions of the understanding. The understanding discovers the abstract relations of ideas by demonstration a process of comparing ideas and finding congruencies and incongruencies ; and it also discovers the causal and other probabilistic relations of objects that are revealed in experience.
Demonstrative reasoning is never the cause of any action by itself: it deals in ideas rather than realities, and we only find it useful in action when we have some purpose in view and intend to use its discoveries to inform our inferences about and so enable us to manipulate causes and effects. Probable or cause-and-effect reasoning does play a role in deciding what to do, but we see that it only functions as an auxiliary, and not on its own.
Our aversion or propensity makes us seek the causes of the expected source of pain or pleasure, and we use causal reasoning to discover what they are.
Once we do, our impulse naturally extends itself to those causes, and we act to avoid or embrace them. Plainly the impulse to act does not arise from the reasoning but is only directed by it. Probable reasoning is merely the discovering of causal connections, and knowledge that A causes B never concerns us if we are indifferent to A and to B.
Thus, neither demonstrative nor probable reasoning alone causes action. The second argument is a corollary of the first. It takes as a premise the conclusion just reached, that reason alone cannot produce an impulse to act.
Given that, can reason prevent action or resist passion in controlling the will? To stop a volition or retard the impulse of an existing passion would require a contrary impulse. If reason alone could give rise to such a contrary impulse, it would have an original influence on the will a capacity to cause intentional action, when unopposed ; which, according to the previous argument, it lacks.
Therefore reason alone cannot resist any impulse to act. Therefore, what offers resistance to our passions cannot be reason of itself. The third or Representation argument is different in kind. One might suppose he means to give another argument to show that reason alone cannot provide a force to resist passion. Yet the Representation Argument is not empirical, and does not talk of forces or impulses. Therefore, a passion or volition or action , not having this feature, cannot be opposed by truth and reason.
The point here is not merely the earlier, empirical observation that the rational activity of the understanding does not generate an impulse in the absence of an expectation of pain or pleasure. The main point is that, because passions, volitions, and actions have no content suitable for assessment by reason, reason cannot assess prospective motives or actions as rational or irrational; and therefore reason cannot, by so assessing them, create or obstruct them.
By contrast, reason can assess a potential opinion as rational or irrational; and by endorsing the opinion, reason will that is, we will adopt it, while by contradicting the opinion, reason will destroy our credence in it. The Representation Argument, then, makes a point a priori about the relevance of the functions of the understanding to the generation of actions. Hume allows that, speaking imprecisely, we often say a passion is unreasonable because it arises in response to a mistaken judgment or opinion, either that something a source of pleasure or uneasiness exists, or that it may be obtained or avoided by a certain means.
In just these two cases a passion may be called unreasonable, but strictly speaking even here it is not the passion but the judgment that is so. And there is no other instance of passion contrary to reason. Interpreters disagree as to whether Hume is an instrumentalist or a skeptic about practical reason. Either way, Hume denies that reason can evaluate the ends people set themselves; only passions can select ends, and reason cannot evaluate passions.
Instrumentalists understand the claim that reason is the slave of the passions to allow that reason not only discovers the causally efficacious means to our ends a task of theoretical causal reasoning but also requires us to take them. The classificatory point in the Representation Argument favors the reading of Hume as a skeptic about practical reason; but that argument is absent from the moral Enquiry.
Hume claims that moral distinctions are not derived from reason but rather from sentiment. His rejection of ethical rationalism is at least two-fold. Moral rationalists tend to say, first, that moral properties are discovered by reason, and also that what is morally good is in accord with reason even that goodness consists in reasonableness and what is morally evil is unreasonable. Hume rejects both theses. Some of his arguments are directed to one and some to the other thesis, and in places it is unclear which he means to attack.
Demonstrative reasoning discovers relations of ideas, and vice and virtue are not identical with any of the four philosophical relations resemblance, contrariety, degrees in quality, or proportions in quantity and number whose presence can be demonstrated. Nor could they be identical with any other abstract relation; for such relations can also obtain between items such as trees that are incapable of moral good or evil.
Furthermore, were moral vice and virtue discerned by demonstrative reasoning, such reasoning would reveal their inherent power to produce motives in all who discern them; but no causal connections can be discovered a priori. Causal reasoning, by contrast, does infer matters of fact pertaining to actions, in particular their causes and effects; but the vice of an action its wickedness is not found in its causes or effects, but is only apparent when we consult the sentiments of the observer.
Therefore moral good and evil are not discovered by reason alone. Hume also attempts in the Treatise to establish the other anti-rationalist thesis, that virtue is not the same as reasonableness and vice is not contrary to reason. He gives two arguments for this. The first, very short, argument he claims follows directly from the Representation Argument, whose conclusion was that passions, volitions, and actions can be neither reasonable nor unreasonable.
Actions, he observes, can be laudable or blamable. The properties are not identical. The second and more famous argument makes use of the conclusion defended earlier that reason alone cannot move us to act. Morality — this argument goes on — influences our passions and actions: we are often impelled to or deterred from action by our opinions of obligation or injustice. Therefore morals cannot be derived from reason alone. This argument about motives concludes that moral judgments or evaluations are not the products of reason alone.
From this many draw the sweeping conclusion that for Hume moral evaluations are not beliefs or opinions of any kind, but lack all cognitive content. That is, they take the argument to show that Hume holds a non-propositional view of moral evaluations — and indeed, given his sentimentalism, that he is an emotivist: one who holds that moral judgments are meaningless ventings of emotion that can be neither true nor false. Such a reading should be met with caution, however.
For Hume, to say that something is not a product of reason alone is not equivalent to saying it is not a truth-evaluable judgment or belief. Hume does not consider all our propositional beliefs and opinions to be products of reason; some arise directly from sense perception, for example, and some from sympathy.
Also, perhaps there are propositional beliefs we acquire via probable reasoning but not by such reasoning alone. One possible example is the belief that some object is a cause of pleasure, a belief that depends upon prior impressions as well as probable reasoning. Another concern about the famous argument about motives is how it could be sound.
In order for it to yield its conclusion, it seems that its premise that morality or a moral judgment influences the will must be construed to say that moral evaluations alone move us to action, without the help of some further passion. This is a controversial claim and not one for which Hume offers any support. The premise that reason alone cannot influence action is also difficult to interpret. It would seem, given his prior arguments for this claim e.
Yet it is hard to see how Hume, given his theory of causation, can argue that no mental item of a certain type such as a causal belief can possibly cause motivating passion or action. Such a claim could not be supported a priori. And in Treatise 1. It is possible that Hume only means to say, in the premise that reason alone cannot influence action, that reasoning processes cannot generate actions as their logical conclusions; but that would introduce an equivocation, since he surely does not mean to say, in the other premise, that moral evaluations generate actions as their logical conclusions.
The transition from premises to conclusion also seems to rely on a principle of transitivity If A alone cannot produce X and B produces X, then A alone cannot produce B , which is doubtful but receives no defense.
Commentators have proposed various interpretations to avoid these difficulties. If we understand the terms this way, the argument can be read not as showing that the faculty of reason or the beliefs it generates cannot cause us to make moral judgments, but rather as showing that the reasoning process comparing ideas is distinct from the process of moral discrimination.
This is usually thought to mean something much more general: that no ethical or indeed evaluative conclusion whatsoever may be validly inferred from any set of purely factual premises. A number of present-day philosophers, including R. Some interpreters think Hume commits himself here to a non-propositional or noncognitivist view of moral judgment — the view that moral judgments do not state facts and are not truth-evaluable.
If moral evaluations are merely expressions of feeling without propositional content, then of course they cannot be inferred from any propositional premises. Some see the paragraph as denying ethical realism, excluding values from the domain of facts. It other words, one can dispute truth but not taste. Hume supports his view with two main arguments. Here, he proclaims that morality produces in us certain feelings, like love or hate, which reason alone cannot produce.
In other words, it is part of our nature of virtue to produce a sentimental response. Reason alone cannot determine what emotional response in we will have to something, thus reason cannot be the origin of our ideas of virtue and vice.
The second main argument is the notion of motivation. Here he proclaims that moral distinctions move us to action. One has to have sentiments of want or aim or desire in order to act. The first four support the idea of amiability while the final supports the idea of motivation. This means that reason can only state specifics and does not give grounds for analysis beyond those facts. In other words, reason is insufficient in determining approval or disapproval of an action.
For example, if someone steals an item from a store, facts can only tell us what was taken, how he did it, how long it took, etc. Reason cannot say if the action is right or wrong, it only describes the details. More This book interprets the moral philosophy of David Hume, focusing on two areas: his metaethics and the artificial virtues. Authors Affiliations are at time of print publication. Your current browser may not support copying via this button.
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Contents Go to page:. But they differ on the basic nature of virtue, and they present different catalogues of particular virtues and vices. For this reason, Hume seems far more comfortable with the bourgeois virtues integral to successful participation in modern commercial and political society cf. EPM 9. Vices, by contrast, are those traits that generate a displeasing sentiment of disapproval. The trait of prudence, for example, is a virtue because it tends to be pleasing to such a spectator.
In other words, a trait is a virtue only insofar as it tends to provoke the moral sentiment of approval in a properly situated spectator. If it did not tend to provoke this response, it would not be a virtue. This marks a significant departure from Aristotelian conceptions of virtue Cohon Hume discusses a capacious catalogue of particular virtues and vices.
The question is not whether some virtues are fake or phony and others are authentic. The question is whether some depend on social rules and conventions and others do not. Organizing his catalogue by means of this distinction allows Hume to steer a middle path between those who see morality as entirely conventional e.
According to Hume, some virtues do depend on social convention but others do not Cohon — In both cases, he seeks to explain why people tend to develop such traits and why they tend to be pleasing to judicious spectators. Hume drops the artificial-natural distinction from the second Enquiry , but his investigations there are motivated by the same questions and the resulting view also steers a middle course between Mandeville and Hutcheson.
According to the Treatise , artificial virtues include justice, fidelity to promises, allegiance to government, and chastity. Hume devotes much discussion to justice, which he treats as a paramount and paradigmatic artificial virtue. Hume understands justice primarily as honesty with respect to property or conformity to conventions of property T 3. Establishing a system of property allows us to avoid conflict and enjoy the possession and use of various goods, so the social value of conventions involving property seems obvious.
Yet one reason that justice receives such attention from Hume is that it poses a problem about moral motivation and moral approval. Hume claims that there needs to be a natural non-moral motive for morally good actions, for otherwise they could only be done because they are morally good; and that would be circular, since our judgment of acts as morally good reflects our approval of the motives and traits that give rise to the acts in question T 3. But this position makes it hard to see how justice can be a virtue; for it is hard to find the requisite natural, nonmoral motive for it.
Self-interest is the natural motive that justifies our establishing rules regarding property T 3. Neither public nor private benevolence would do, since neither could motivate all just actions T 3.
But since sympathy with the public interest itself seems neither nonmoral nor inherent in human nature, this claim redescribes the problem rather than solves it. Hume must ground sympathy for the public interest in more obviously natural sentiments, and explain its development from them e.
Otherwise, Hume must abandon his claim that all morally good actions—even those associated with artificial virtues—have non-moral, natural motives. See Gauthier ; Mackie ch. Among the natural virtues, Hume includes beneficence, prudence, temperance, frugality, industry, assiduity, enterprise, dexterity, generosity, and humanity T 3.
In the second Enquiry , he distinguishes among virtues useful to others, virtues useful to oneself, virtues immediately agreeable to oneself, and virtues immediately agreeable to others.
Among qualities useful to ourselves are discretion, caution, enterprise, industry, assiduity, frugality, economy, good sense, prudence, discernment EPM 6. Qualities immediately agreeable to oneself include cheerfulness, tranquility, benevolence, and delicacy of taste.
Qualities immediately agreeable to others include good manners, politeness, wit, ingenuity, decency, cleanliness, and a graceful or genteel manner. What holds all these varied traits together as virtues is their evoking the sentiment of approval in spectators, itself grounded in sympathy.
Like Hume, Kant takes virtue to be central to human morality. According to Kant, virtue is the form in which a being with an imperfect or non-holy will expresses her supreme commitment to morality. Second, virtue is a kind of strength. Third, virtue presupposes opposition and entails internal struggle.
Kant often seems to identify our inclinations as the primary opponents of morality G: ; V , ; C His considered view, however, is that inclinations are not the source of the problem. It is because of radical evil that virtue implies struggle and demands strength. The fundamental task of the virtuous person is to achieve the proper ordering of her incentives, giving the moral law undisputed priority over self-love.
Virtue both expresses and promotes inner freedom. These duties are grounded in the moral law, the supreme principle of morality, which impresses itself on imperfect, finite rational beings like us as a categorical imperative. Whatever duties we have must ultimately derive from this supreme moral principle. As Kant explains,.
In accordance with this principle a human being is an end for himself as well as for others, and it is not enough that he is not authorized to use either himself or others merely as a means since he could then still be indifferent to them ; it is in itself his duty to make the human being as such his end.
Kant does not claim to derive these duties from the categorical imperative or the supreme principle of virtue alone. Rather, in moving from general principles of morality to moral duties, he draws on a variety of considerations regarding human nature and other aspects of the natural world.
Hume and Kant share a number of influences, so we should not be surprised to see areas of overlap. First, like most eighteenth century philosophers, both regard the pursuit of virtue as central to human morality.
Fourth, their respective conceptions of virtue are secular by historical standards. Neither recognizes duties to God, for example, and neither counts piety or hope among the virtues. He follows Hume in rejecting fasting, self-flagellation, mortification of the flesh and other forms of physical self-chastisement and self-abasement as false virtues. Kant condemns such attempts at. Yet there are striking and important differences between their views.
Hume defines virtue in terms of the moral sentiments of a properly situated judicious spectator, and his definition makes virtue and vice dependent on such responses. Kant, by contrast, defines virtue in terms of duty, obligation, and law. A few additional differences are worth noting. First, both philosophers recognize and discuss a plurality of virtues and vices.
MM and Second, Hume casts a much wider net with regard to the qualities that count as virtues. The concepts of virtue and vice can apply to things outside our control, such as traits and motives that spring involuntarily from our basic temperament. Kant, by contrast, restricts the application of these concepts to traits, behaviors, and attitudes that are voluntarily adopted and cultivated as a matter of principle. For Kant each virtue and each vice has its own maxim MM This would be true even of wit or good memory, for example.
Wit and good memory are certainly things that an agent might cultivate for the sake of her natural perfection. A third important contrast concerns justice.
Justice is an immensely significant virtue for Hume, but is not treated by Kant as a virtue at all. As long as one does not hinder their freedom in a way that violates universal law or legitimate positive law, one complies with the demands of justice. It is a matter not of justice itself, but of ethics, if one respects the rights of others not from fear of punishment but from respect for persons or law. The moral worth adhering to acting rightly out of respect for right is not part of justice, but of ethics; it is a matter of self-constraint or virtue.
Finally, their conceptions of moral vice are quite different. For Hume a vice is a mental quality that provokes disapproval from a judicious spectator. Hume and Kant both believe that freedom is essential to morality. Moreover, both believe that a philosophical theory and vindication of human morality requires reconciling freedom with universal causal necessity determinism. However, they offer different conceptions of freedom, different ways of reconciling it with necessity, and different ways of understanding why this reconciliation matters for morality.
On this view, a person is free when, and only when, her action is not necessitated by any antecedent causes. Hume rejects this idea as unintelligible T 2. So the liberty of spontaneity is freedom from violence, but not freedom from necessity per se. These are cases where we lack the liberty of spontaneity. But a person has such liberty whenever she is able to do what she wants to do. In such cases, her actions are causally necessitated, just like any other event in nature; but they are caused by motives that spring from her own character.
According to Hume, this is the form of liberty at issue in religion, morality, law, and common life. The liberty of spontaneity, as just described, is perfectly compatible with causal necessity.
There are two main reasons people often believe otherwise. First, we tend to conflate the two ideas of liberty. In cases where we enjoy the liberty of spontaneity, our experience suggests that we also enjoy something more. Yet this is a mistake explained by the blind spots of introspection. An outside observer, whether a friend or a scientist,.
The second source of resistance to compatibilism stems from confusion about necessity. People are prone to think that necessity rules out liberty because they conflate necessity with compulsion or force. They believe that when A causes B, A compels or forces B.
Hume holds that this is a mistake, however. For example, experience shows that the vibration of a particular string is constantly conjoined with a particular sound. As a result, the mind develops the habit of immediately inferring the sound from the vibration EHU 7. We believe that the sound is causally necessitated by the vibration, but the necessity is a product of the imagination, which associates the idea of the sound with the perception of the vibration.
This feeling that there is a necessary connection between them is the whole of the matter EHU 7. So defined, causal necessity no longer poses an obvious threat to liberty. But causes do not force or compel their effects. The only real threat is necessitation by external forces, as when a person is forced to do something she does not want to do. On this reading, Hume analyzes the concepts of liberty and necessity in order to show that, properly understood, they do not conflict.
We can be rationally justified in holding a person responsible for her action even though all human actions are caused. The only question is whether she , rather than some other person or external force, is the cause of her action.
Above all it is an empirical explanation for why we sometimes feel that people are responsible for their conduct.
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