Philosophy Assignment

Hume – ethics notes – “Morality is Based on Sentiment,” from Arthur & Scalet. Selections are taken from the Treatise of Human Nature (1739-1740) and the Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (1751). Hume’s argument is largely based on his understanding of reason. It’s worth thinking about the status of reason in the thinkers we’ve looked at previously (as well as one we haven’t). Plato famously divides the soul into three parts: the desiring part, the thumotic or spirited part, and the rational part. Plato’s Republic develops the city-in-speech as an image of the soul, and the relation that exists between the various parts of the city in speech are meant to illustrate the relation between the parts of the soul in the individual (as an aside: it is astonishing how many people lose sight of this fact, despite Socrates’ own continual reference to it). Plato’s Phaedrus provides another image, from 246a-254e. In particular, it is described at 246a-b, and the conflict within the soul of reason, desire, and thumos is vividly presented from 253d-254e. Desire is unruly, and ruled over by reason – but it need not be unruly. In a well-constituted soul, the unruly horse desires rightly. In the Republic, the combination of thumos (a kind of desire for honor) and reason rule over desire. In the well-constituted soul, the spirited part governs the desiring part with the aid of spiritedness. Though the selection didn’t necessarily make it clear, Aristotle conceives of reason as distinctively human – he calls us the rational animal. Hume suggests that reason is simply authoritative for many previous thinkers. Aristotle, however, conceives of choice in terms of appetite and reason working together – in the virtuous human being, that appetite accords with nature and is oriented toward the mean, relative to us, as a prudent person would understand it. Aristotle’s view is perhaps clearer in Aquinas. There, as we saw, reason judges both means and ends, but those ends are prompted by human nature. The natural inclinations direct us toward what is good, and we judge if and how those ends ought to be pursued. Thomist natural law does not involve the subordination of reason and desire, but the cooperation of reason and natural desire. The same for Aristotle and, I’d suggest, for Plato. Hobbes gave us a radically different view. For Hobbes, morality is really just self-interest rightly understood. The moral man, according to Hobbes, is the one who has the most far-reaching understanding of his own good. Reason, according to Hobbes, is subsidiary to desire or passion. Nonetheless, the goodness or badness – justice or injustice – of an action is determined by how it accords with reason. Rousseau identified reason as a decline from our natural condition: for Rousseau, reason serves to hide our natural duties from us. Natural right – and therefore the requirements of morality –

are rooted in two pre-rational sentiments: a desire for self-preservation and pity. We reason about things only because we are corrupted by civilization. 50. The ancient and medieval thinkers said every rational creature is obligated to govern action with reason. Against such views, Hume wants to prove two things:

1. Reason alone is never a motive for any action of the will 2. Reason alone can never oppose passion

Reason, Hume argues (top right) is chiefly concerned with demonstration – and that in the world of ideas. The will, however, places us in the realm of reality – consequently, he argues, will and reason seem to be “totally removed from each other.” Mathematics and mechanics are useful, but do not have any influence as such. Hume’s point is that abstract or mathematical reasoning never influences our actions directly, but only “directs our judgment concerning causes and effects” (of course, elsewhere Hume is radically skeptical about our ability to know such things, and therefore this should perhaps be taken with a grain of salt). Abstract reasonings do not terminate in action. When we suspect pain or pleasure of any object, we have related emotions of aversion or propensity, and this in turn leads us to actions: avoidance or embrace. It is the emotions that lead to these actions. Here, Hobbes says, emotion encompasses numerous objects related to or with the initial object – we reason about those relations, and our actions vary only insofar as our reasoning varies. Hume’s point is clear enough: reasoning directs the action, but the action does not originate in reasoning, but in emotion. Objects are perceived, and a prospect of pain or pleasure is experienced; on this basis, emotion desires or seeks avoidance, reason judges of the relations between objects and these different judgments lead to different actions. 51. (same paragraph continued) Further, Hume argues, it is only on the basis that we expect pleasure or pain that we inquire into the relations among objects. Without that possibility of pleasure or pain, such investigation doesn’t happen. Hume writes: “It can never in the least concern us to know that such objects are causes, and such others effects, if both the causes and the effects be indifferent to us. Where the objects themselves do not affect us, their connection can never give them any influence; and it is plain, that as reason is nothing but the discovery of this connection, it cannot be by its means that the objects are able to affect us.” In other words, our analysis and understanding of the world stems from desire and aversion, i.e., emotions. THEREFORE, reason can neither create nor prevent volition, nor can it dispute “the preference of any passion or emotion.” Note that Hume severely limits the faculty of reason in comparison

to an Aristotle or an Aquinas. His objection to them is this: they think reason is more authoritative than it actually is. Whether this is a fair objection is a different question. A passion, says Hume, is original – it is not a copy (i.e., an impression). “When I am angry,” he writes, “I am actually possessed with the passion, and in that emotion have no more a reference to any other object, then when I am thirsty, or sick, or more than five foot high.” Two points are perhaps worth making in this respect:

1. Sickness or height might have no referent outside of oneself, but thirst seems to: thirst as a feeling characterizes a lack of something. As recognition of a lack, it clearly presupposes that which it lacks.

2. Aristotle describes anger as a rational passion: anger, for Aristotle, to be legitimate, must be rational. We get angry about the perception of injustice – which is a rational judgment. But at the same time, we can also get angry for physical reasons, as Aristotle concedes in the Physics (i.e., elevated temperature of the blood).

Hume’s point is that it is impossible for a passion to be opposed by reason, or to contradict the truth. Insofar as they are feelings, yes: but we must ask whether it is legitimate to consider the passions merely as feelings, or if they are more accurately considered as feelings with reference to something else. Additionally, we can also ask if there is a distinction to be made between the desire for retribution (anger) and the desire for water (thirst). Hume next addresses the question of how we confuse the passions with reason. It is simple enough, he says: some desires or tendencies are so calm that, even though they are real passions, they produce little emotion in the mind. These desires are of two kinds:

1. Certain instincts that are present by nature, for example a. Benevolence b. Resentment c. Love of life d. Kindness to children

2. General appetites to the good or aversions toward evil When these passions are clam, Hume says, they cause no disorder in the soul and are easily mistaken for the determinations of reason. We confuse them because the sensations are not sufficiently different from the sensations associated with reason. TOP RIGHT There are also violent emotions – upon being injured by another, I feel a “violent passion of resentment” and when I am threatened with a grievous ill “my fears, apprehensions, and aversions rise to a great height.” The error of the metaphysicians is, he says: “ascribing the direction of the will entirely to one of these principles, and supposing the other to have no influence.” Who would fall prey to such a

claim? Certainly no one we have read so far in this course. He continues: what we call strength of mind is merely the prevalence of the calm passions, and no man is sufficiently strong-minded not to give in to these passions at some point or another. Nevertheless, Hume concedes that there are two senses in which we can call a passion unreasonable:

1. When a passion is based on the supposition of objects that do not actually exist 2. When, in acting on the basis of a passion, we choose inappropriate means and deceive

ourselves about causes and effects If a passion does not meet these two criteria, it cannot be judged – either to justify or to condemn – by the understanding. Thus Hume writes: “It is not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger. It is not contrary to reason for me to choose my total ruin to prevent the least uneasiness of an Indian or person wholly unknown to me. It is as little contrary to reason to prefer even my own acknowledged lesser good to [53] my greater, and have a more ardent affection for the former than for the latter.” 53. The upshot of all this is that for a passion to be unreasonable it must be accompanied by a false judgment – and, speaking precisely, it is the judgment that is unreasonable, not the passion. Because of this, Hume writes, “it is impossible that reason and passion can ever oppose each other, or dispute for the government of the will or actions. The moment we perceive the falsehood of any supposition, or the insufficiency of any means, our passions yield to our reason without any opposition.” PART II: Moral Distinctions Not Derived From Reason Hume won’t repeat his arguments about the inertia of reason. Instead, he will focus on the function of reason. Simply put: “Reason is the discovery of truth or falsehood. Truth or falsehood consists in an agreement or disagreement either to the real relations of ideas, or to real existence and matter of fact. Whatever… is not susceptible of this agreement or disagreement” cannot be true or false and can therefore never be a subject for reasoning. Specifically, the “passions, volitions and desires” are not capable of such agreement or disagreement and are therefore not subject to reason. In the full paragraph on the right hand side of 53, we get two crucial points.

1. Contra Hobbes, actions do not derive merit from their conformity to reason. 2. Reason, therefore, has no connection with moral good or evil.

Thus, actions can be praiseworthy or blameworthy, but they cannot be reasonable or unreasonable because they stem from the emotions or passions rather than reason. “Moral distinctions,” he writes, “are not the offspring of reason.” He brings up murder as an example, saying that we cannot locate such a thing as vice. All we find, upon examination, are “certain passions, motives, volitions and thoughts.” As long as we consider murder itself, we find no vice. The “vice” of murder is projected onto the action by our own sense of approbation – in other words, we have a sentiment that condemns murder, but that condemnation is rooted in feeling rather than reason: “It lies in yourself, not in the object.” What does it mean, then, when we call an action vicious or wicked or evil? It means merely that “from the constitution of your nature you have a feeling or sentiment of blame from the contemplation of it. Vice and virtue… may be compared to sounds, colours, heat and cold, which, according to modern philosophy, are not qualities in objects but perceptions in the mind.” Moral judgments, too, are merely perceptions in the mind. Top 54: read the passage underlined in green. Ask class. The last paragraph of this section takes up the is/ought problem. Hume’s view is that authors make the turn from is to ought without sufficient justification, and that attention to this fact would “subvert all the vulgar systems of morality” and let us see that the distinction between vice and virtue is not founded upon reason. III. WHY UTILITY PLEASES This section involves a more direct rebuttal to Hobbes. Hume says that the Hobbesian deduction of morality from self-interest is opposed by “the voice of nature and experience.” His objection is a simple, and, frankly, common-sensical one. We frequently praise virtuous actions performed in distant lands and ancient times, yet in such cases we have no self-interest at stake. Yet nonetheless, he says, we approve of noble and brave deeds performed by an adversary even though such deeds may be incompatible with our own interest. Utility is agreeable, he writes, and we approve of useful actions, but in the way we make such judgments we seem to move beyond our self-interest. Citing Horace, Hume writes that the human face borrows smiles or tears from the human face. In other words, we read the emotions of others on their faces, and such readings often move our own emotions: “the natural symptoms, tears and cries and groans, never fail to infuse compassion and uneasiness. And if the effects of misery touch us in so lively a manner; can we be supposed altogether insensible or indifferent to its causes”?

55. Human happiness and misery is echoed in our own feelings of pleasure or uneasiness. These sentiments have a power to influence our actions – the degree of power may be debatable, but its presence is not. Sympathy is fainter than self-interest, and it is fainter for persons remote than for those close by. Because of this, says Hume, we must neglect such differences and render our “sentiments” more public and social. This is accomplished through “the intercourse of conversation,” whereby we collectively form “some general unalterable standard” by which we judge character and manners. Such judgments, then, having their genesis as they do in conversation with our fellows, scarcely can rise above the level of conventions. But there is more to it than that: benevolence is “infused in our bosom… some spark of friendship for humankind; some particle of the dove kneaded into our frame, along with the elements of the wolf and serpent.” We can usefully compare him to Hobbes and Rousseau here. Hobbes would deny the “particle of the dove” while agreeing regarding “wolf and serpent;” Rousseau would deny the “wolf and serpent,” but not the dove – Rousseau finds man to be peaceful, gentle, and frugivorous, but he denies the natural presence of reason. Hume can be said to stand midway between two extremes, then, in that he presents a natural inclination to peace, contra Hobbes, but also admits a warlike nature and the natural rational faculty, contra Rousseau – of course, this faculty has nothing to with morality for Hume, while it has everything to do with morality for Hobbes. These “generous sentiments” lead us to prefer what is useful to mankind: “a moral distinction… immediately arises,” i.e., a sense of praise or blame for useful or harmless actions. The selfish passions do not have a role in the formation of morals because, Hume argues, they are self-directed or selfish, and morality “implies some common sentiment to all mankind, which recommends the same object to general approbation, and makes every man, or most men, agree in the same opinion or decision concerning it.” This “implies,” he says, a universal sentiment common to all mankind. Designating others as enemies, rivals, antagonists or adversaries is simply self-love; but when we call others “vicious or odious or depraved,” we speak in language we expect our audience to concur with – in doing so, a man must adopt a point of view “common to him with others… some universal principle of the human frame.” If such judgments mean that such a person is incompatible with society, the one who judges has chosen just such a common point of view. The human heart, he argues, “will never be wholly indifferent to the public good” – again, compare Rousseau, who presents the philosopher as only concerned with threats to society because reason has blotted out his natural impulse of pity, or Hobbes, who roots concern with the public good in a selfish concern for the private good. Hume simply says that it is natural – though he concedes this “affection for humanity” is not as strong as selfishness, vanity, or ambition.