Hume's Moral Philosophy

Mike Mackus May 8th, 2009 Professor Bolton Phil 297 Ethical Projectivism in Treatise Hume’s moral theory is particularly interesting because we are able to read it in so many different ways. However, the various interpretations of it that we may offer become complicated by the fact that Hume did not even seem so sure himself. The Treatise as Hume’s science of the mind gives us a picture of what we might call our natural inclinations towards certain attitudes in regards to and assessments of particular actions. In order to get a clear picture of Hume’s account and to decide how we might want to interpret it in accordance with other elements of Hume’s more general theory of cognitive architecture we must first look to the Humean theory of motivation. Once we can understand the way Hume views motives and actions of the will we can then see why Hume purports an ethical anti-rationalism. Yet, moreover, when we conjoin Hume’s moral theory with other aspects of his science of man we will be inclined to dismiss the title of anti-rationalism and search for a more suiting one which captures the relevance of Hume’s psychology to present day research in the cognitive sciences. For Hume, the will is simply the impression generated by the mind when one knowingly gives rise to an action. In this sense, the will is a sort of productive faculty: it can take some sort of input and as an output produce the desired action. As Hume contends, we are entirely conscious of this impression and it is felt not only by the production of new movements in the body but also when new perceptions are willed into the mind. The question for Hume then is what induces the will to move or what causes the will to perform as it does. While we have already labeled the will a productive faculty this only sheds little light on a possible answer. We cannot simply say that since the will has a productive ability- that is, an ability to produce 1

something that was not present in the original input- that it does not require investigation; rather, Hume’s goal in exploring the will is only made slightly clearer by the analogy to a productive faculty: it seems we already are fairly aware of the outputs of our will, or, more accurately, we are aware of the forms they usually take (i.e. the raising of an arm or a thought presented to the mind); yet, on the other hand, it is not immediately clear that we understand the form of the input required to produce these given outputs. Traditionally, we often think of our passions in conflict with reason; people are inclined to say things of the sort, “I stopped eating the chocolate because it is unreasonable to eat that much candy” or “I know it was a stupid thing to do but I had to listen to my heart”. Each case displays our inclination to explain actions in terms of a relation between desires and reasons, where in the former sentence we see “reason” trumping “desire” and vice versa in the second case. Obviously following from this is the idea that one should aim to be rational and found his motives on sound reasoning. Hume, however, breaks with this view by setting forth two theses that he intends to prove: “first, that reason alone can never be a motive to any action of the will; and secondly, that it can never oppose passion in the direction of the will” (T 413). In order to prove these claims Hume sets out two arguments to show that reason is inert. Hume explains that the understanding has two different ways of exerting itself- through demonstrative reasoning or probably. Taking up the first of the two, Hume has in mind logical and mathematical rules; these rules are applied on an abstract level to understand the relation between ideas but never to understand the relation between objects. That is, demonstrative reasoning never can make a claim about the existence of something. In other words, in dealing with ideas, demonstrative reasoning can never provide us with a conclusion about reality. Thus, since acting involves an existential belief about reality, demonstrative reasoning alone cannot induce the will to move.

2

Likewise, Hume argues, probable reasoning can never induce the will to move. Here, probable reasoning consists of our empirical knowledge about the relation of objects and events in the world. For the most part Hume is thinking of cause and effect: if I know that sticking my hand into a flame will burn me I will not do it. It seems like such causal reasoning can motivate my will to put my hand elsewhere then into a flame. But Hume holds that this is not the case: “… ‘tis evident in this case, that the impulse arises not from reason, but is only directed by it” (T 414). Our reasoning serves to discover some particular relation, say, between an object that is hot and the pain I feel when I come into contact with it, but it is natural human inclination to avoid things that burn. In other words, there must be some sort of attraction or aversion that the mind perceives as caused by some object such that the mind then becomes attracted or repelled by it in future cases. Reason is the discoverer of this connection but were it the case that the connection did not have an impact on me then I would not be inclined to take any action. Hume argues that if reason is the means by which we arrive at these relations between objects in the world then it cannot be by reason “that the objects are able to affect us” (T 414). Probable reason is a means of gaining knowledge about the world but it is only in particular cases where this knowledge has an impact on us so there must be another force by which the will is induced to move. Our understanding- the operations of demonstrative and probable reasoning- cannot cause the will to move. Hume extends his argument against reason further by claiming “since reason alone can never produce any action, or give rise to volition” then “the same faculty is as incapable of preventing volition, or of disputing the preference with any passion or emotion” (T 415). Hume believes that this is a necessary consequence of his previous argument. Taking the conclusion from above, that reason cannot induce the will to move, as his first premise, Hume argues that

3

the only way to prevent an inclination of the passions is with another similar counter-inclination. However, reason cannot produce such counter-inclinations or else reason would have a role in creating such impulses in the first place. Moreover, Hume takes a step to say that the mental states entailed by passions and beliefs are vastly different. He takes it that passions do not have intentional objects and thus do not represent anything in the world. Hence, passions do not have a truth-value. When I am happy or sad I simply have the perception of a particular emotion and my mental state makes no reference to anything outside of itself. In this sense, the passions are a sort of second-order impression. Thus Hume sees it as impossible that a passion could be opposed by reason because any belief is a proposition with a truth value. In order to oppose a belief one needs to show a contradiction, to show that we can derive statements according to valid inferences that turn out to actually be false; however, a passion cannot prove a belief to be inconsistent or contradictory- my desire for a cup of coffee does not say anything about the world and thus cannot assist me in determining whether or not I am justified in holding the belief that there is coffee in the kitchen- and, likewise, the truth-value of the proposition “There is coffee in the kitchen” has no impact on my desire for or my inclination towards coffee. We’re quick to correct Hume now that our desires do indeed have intentional objects: the content of my desire for coffee is just coffee; or my aversion to dog bites holds the idea of dogs biting. Nonetheless, we would want to say that this does not destroy Hume’s arguments. While we are forced to agree that some passions do have intentional objects it is not so clear that they all do; and, even so, we can draw the line elsewhere by arguing on Hume’s behalf that beliefs are propositions with a truth-value contingent upon the world we live in while our passions and desires make no claims to truth or, rather, make no claims about the world.

4

Hume’s theory of morals is derived directly from his theory of motivation. Hume holds that morals are the types of things that can influence actions. Thus Hume’s theory of morals is bound to the arguments he uses in describing the motivating factors of the will. Given this, he argues that morals cannot be founded on or arrived at by reason. One proof Hume supplies is as follows: we have already seen that actions are not induced by reason alone; hence actions cannot be deemed reasonable or unreasonable; actions, however, can be laudable or blamable; thus if our morals describe actions in a particular way it is not by means of reason and so being irrational (or, rational) is not the same as being blamable (or, laudable). These properties that we are often inclined to use interchangeably are really separate and distinct, arising from completely different circumstances. Hume also sets forth a similar argument to show that through reason we cannot arrive at a means of morally evaluating actions: reason can never approve of or contradict an action and hence can never oppose it; morality, on the other hand, often influences our will moving us to fulfill some sort of obligation; hence we cannot derive morals through reasoning“actions do not derive their merit from a conformity to reason, nor their blame from a contrariety to it” (T 458). In making this move Hume takes a step away from the majority of his predecessors. Hume’s undertaking in the Treatise is a science of man through empirical methods. He cannot give himself the privileged view point that the human mind has access to an external world where we will discover laws of nature and morality. Rather, Hume has taken the task of explaining the natural operations of the human mind and its inclination towards certain beliefs, whether they are causal, moral, aesthetic or metaphysical. Thus, it is not really skepticism in Hume that purports his ethical anti-rationalism; but rather, this ethical anti-rationalism is a consequence of the naturalistic Humean framework: Hume understands morality to lie outside of reason- or more precisely, to not be solely determined by reason- but that does not mean that

5

Hume is advocating any type of relativism and it does not entail that reason plays no role at all in the realm of ethics. Hume’s job then, as we understand it, is to find the way in which humans arrive at their moral beliefs and, moreover, explain the reasons why we see a particular sort of consistency in all humans while not seeing one-hundred percent unanimity. In regards to how humans arrive at moral distinctions, Hume takes the stance that upon considering a particular action from a general, unbiased viewpoint, the observer will either find a feeling of approval, where he will refer to the action as virtuous, or the observer will find a feeling of disapprobation, where he will refer to the action as vicious. Hume states simply, “It lies in yourself, not in the object. So that when 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 contemplation of it” (T 469). This passage, however, illuminates two further key points. First, it reiterates that moral evaluations and judgments are really just perceptions: they are mental states that are directly related to a passion that naturally gives rise to it. And by saying that these moral evaluations are a product of the constitution of one’s nature he is stating that these feelings are more or less a circumstance of the instincts of the human mind and thus most people have little disagreement in moral evaluation of general actions. Yet, secondly, Hume is saying something about what it means to be a member of a linguistic community: these lexical items we have to describe morals can never be entirely accurate. When I state that such-and-such an action is vicious (or virtuous) I am simply stating that upon contemplating the action a feeling of disapproval (approval) arose in me. The terms we use to denote vice and virtue aren’t necessarily in exact accordance with the impressions that we label vice and virtue; however, we should assume that they are rather close approximates that serve the linguistic community (more or less) adequately when one expresses

6

a moral statement. Nonetheless, though, Hume sees these expressions as doing little more than communicating a particular sentiment a person has in accordance with a given action. Hume draws an interesting connection between the perception of morals and the perceptions of secondary qualities- that is, qualities we perceive to be in the world but are actually dependent on and exist only in the mind. For example, the sensory-perception of colors is entirely dependent on our biological and psychological apparatus that has been fine tuned by evolution in order to see the world; our way of seeing the world is dependent on the way our eyes collect and differentiate light, or, more precisely, the very small fraction of the spectrum that is made visible to us. In this sense, colors are secondary because they are perceived in a subjective manner and are only a product of our senses (our way of understanding the world), not necessarily relaying to us objective truths about the world. This analogy to secondary qualities, however, cannot help but be problematic. Things like sound, taste, colors, etc, are surely distinct from quality such as shape, extension and number; but as for moral sentiment, it does not appear to be of the same nature as that first group, at least not when it is compared to primary qualities. One would be hard-pressed to argue that secondary qualities do not express something about the world: we perceive a particular color because the collection of atoms in an object reflect only certain frequencies of light- the mind then interprets these frequencies in a certain way; taste is the result of chemicals in an object that interact with our tongue- the mind then interprets these feelings in a certain way. While these secondary qualities are collected by sense organs and interpreted by the mind in our own human way they still tell us things about the world as it actually exists; or maybe another way of putting it is that these secondary qualities are perceived in such a way that anyone with a human mind and body will understand them in a certain way while others- animals or Martians- with different minds will perceive them differently (or

7

perhaps not at all). The means of perceiving it does not change its being in the world: light is still emitted at the frequencies we denote as “red” regardless of whether or not a human mind is here to perceive it; and a tree falling in the woods still creates a wave of vibrations in the air molecules that surround it regardless of whether or not there is an ear to hear it. But, on the other hand, the mind’s understanding of morals doesn’t seem to bear this connection with the world. Moral claims tell us more about the speaker (or the nature of that speaker’s species) than about the world around us. So the analogy to secondary qualities seems like it might fall short but we can surely make something of what Hume means by it. In other words, when making moral judgments Hume would suggest that we are using our moral sense: just as we have sensory-apparatus that allows us to interpret light, sounds and smells in certain ways, we also have a sense that produces moral evaluations. Like secondary qualities, these moral evaluations do not exist in the world, but rather are only really present to the mind. However, one could argue the case that even though moral judgments cannot be connected back to something as real as, say, waves of light radiating at a particular frequency, that they are still derived from real things in the world. That is, for example, when someone contemplates an act of stealing and arrives at a feeling of disapproval we can say if it weren’t for that act of stealing there would have been no disapproval; the moral sense took observation of the world and from that derived a moral conclusion. But we would still be inclined to say that this moral sense has the self as one of its main objects of observation by which it arrived at its conclusions; it is when one looks to the feelings in himself that he finds moral distinctions and thus there does not seem to be anything inherently virtuous or vicious in an action. So our moral sense is just the means by which we make moral

8

considerations ultimately based on the feelings that actions arouse in us when we contemplate them in an impartial, unbiased manner. Interpreting Hume’s moral sense in this way, however, is problematic. Hume holds that moral judgments are really just sentiments. Accepting Hume’s sentimentalist thesis is a must but at the same time we have to remember where this thesis follows from. That is, Hume’s theory of motivation sets out to prove reason cannot induce the will to move; this is unlike morals because morals can induce the will to move; thus morals cannot be founded on reason. Yet, as we have seen so far, Hume is advocating a view that says moral judgments are really just expressions of an emotion; that is, an account of my moral beliefs is only really a description of the sentiments that certain actions give rise to. The question for Hume then is how we can reconcile these two components of his theory: how can we allow for morals to have the power to move the will while still holding that moral judgments are really only descriptive in nature? We could continue to hold that moral judgments are non-propositional and maybe endorse a sort of emotivism on Hume’s behalf. We could argue that these moral statements are not mere reports of what someone is or is not feeling but rather it is an expression of that sentiment in hopes of arousing a similar sentiment in regards to some action in another hearer. But, as Mackie argues, we would not be unreasonable to believe that “Hume simply failed to distinguish between expressing a sentiment and reporting it” (70). Moreover, if we want to move in the direction of explaining how our morals could possible motivate action it seems that we might be inclined to read other pieces Hume’s general theory in conjunction with his view on morality. Here we can bring in two aspects of Hume’s philosophy that will shed some light on what to make of morals. First is Hume’s essay “Of the Standard of Taste”. Throughout the essay Hume draws connections between aesthetics and morals, jumping back forth between “beauty”

9

and “moral beauty”. Further, he purports a theory closely related to his morality, that aesthetic qualities such as beauty or deformity are also derived from sentiments within a person: “Beauty is no quality in things themselves: it exists merely in the mind which contemplates them; and each mind perceives a different beauty” (234-235). So we might also say that humans have an aesthetic sense, similar to the moral sense in so far that they both resemble sensory-apparatus related to secondary qualities: the qualities we perceive to be existent in the external world are really only perceptions dependent on our minds. Thus, just as with morality, we see a theory that defends some sort of relativistic notions; however, Hume argues that there is some sort of basis from which accurate judgments of aesthetic quality are derived: “Among a thousand different opinions which different men may entertain of the same subject, there is one, and but one, that is just and true: and the only difficulty is to fix and ascertain it” (234). This is somewhat confusing because there does not seem to be a similar thesis put forth in Hume’s moral theory. If there is a foundation from which we can arrive at accurate conclusions about aesthetic beauty we then should see if this same foundation can provide a foundation for morality. The distinction Hume makes here, that we don’t seem to be making in his account of morals, is that “[t]he difference… is very wide between judgment and sentiment. All sentiment is right; because sentiment has a reference to nothing beyond itself, and is always real, wherever a man is conscious of it. But all determinations of understanding are not right; because they have reference to something beyond themselves” (234). So the distinction that is lacking in our above account is one between sentiment and judgment. This makes sense when thinking about the way we consider moral values: when a particular sentiment is aroused in me upon contemplating an action there is no way it could be right or wrong because it simply is; yet, when my sentiment gives way to a judgment, say, that I conclude it is wrong to hurt animals, there is then a proposition which may

10

be deemed true or false by others, or, perhaps more accurately, right or wrong. We arrive at these conclusions not by means of demonstrative proof, but rather, as Hume argues, by way of practice. Just as in aesthetics when one is first presented with an unfamiliar genre of music one has few ways of evaluating it and understanding it and the sentiments that accompany it may be very faint; similarly, there are moral cases that people are generally unfamiliar with or that are peculiar which don’t seem to have precise answers. I believe Hume would argue that we can indeed arrive at a solution that is at least more right than wrong by means of practice- by way of analyzing the situation as best we can from the perspective of an unbiased observer who comes to the table with a clear mind so as to be able to understand the sentiments he feels. Secondly, we can return to Hume’s views on causation to support such a reading. Hume holds that we make claims about causes and effects even though we do not have warrant to do so. Nonetheless, he argues that some of the conclusions we draw about causes and effects are better than others: one can actually hold a belief that a necessary connection exists between, say, a flash of lightning and a dog barking, but that is no where near as accurate as the belief of lightning as the cause of thunder; that is to say, though we do not seem to be able to found our belief in causal reasoning on some inductive principle, we are still able to use causal reasoning accurately and effectively as well as use it improperly. This is the obvious consequence of the human mind “gilding or staining” the world with what we believe to perceive in it. We may project the idea of causal necessity as existing between two objects or events when we are not entirely warranted to but this is still a task that Hume believes we can do right or wrong. Thus if humans can engage in causal reasoning as well as aesthetic reasoning it seems that the best way to round out Hume’s moral theory is to claim that humans take part in the active process of moral reasoning. Earlier we noted that the will is a productive faculty and in a similar fashion so are these other

11

processes: causal reasoning produces a belief about the connection between two objectsregardless of whether it is right or wrong, existent or non-existent, the human mind holds these beliefs to be true and it seems to do so with a good degree of accuracy and success; and, likewise, we can say moral reasoning produces a judgment about the world that can be deemed accurate or inaccurate, judgments that seem necessary to human survival- regardless of whether or not we perform them accurately or with justification it is something we believe we can do and thus we will continue to do it. This projectivist reading of Hume is far from an endorsement of any type of moral relativism. On the contrary, I believe that Hume has simply provided an overview of how we might take the mind to operate in certain circumstances. The mind is apt to project onto reality that which is not actually there: we perceive our morals from the sentiments that arise from contemplating an action and thus project those sentiments onto the action or object as if they have an actual existence. But that does not mean we would be better off to not do that; rather, causal and moral reasoning figure into our everyday lives and help humans operate in the world both psychologically and socially. If anything I believe Hume’s account tends to give us further reason to believe that there are many different types of intelligence than what are traditionally accepted. Theories of multiple intelligences have been gaining steam in recent years but it seems that Hume had a head start: when analyzing the mind we see that there are means of reasoning outside the realm of demonstrative proof; we see that the mind deploys causal reasoning, moral reasoning and aesthetic reasoning in order to make sense out of the world- probably along with a host of other means. While many take these claims of Hume’s as grounds for skepticism it seems much more productive to understand them as claims simply about the ways in which we as humans reason about and understand the world: instead of denying how successful we are at, say, causal or moral reasoning, maybe we ought to accept the

12

means by which we do it by in order to better understand how progress can be made.

13