Notes on Hume

I posted this last week, apparently in the blog for the wrong class... so here it is for everyone's benefit...

Class, I didn't feel we had enough time to cover Hume's arguments thoroughly last time, and his philosophy is actually very important, so I've put together some notes based on the reading to help everyone understand him better.

Also, for those of you interested, I'm going to start holding review sessions on Tuesdays before class (5pm) on the material from the previous class, so this week we'll be reviewing Hume. The way these sessions will run is this: I'll ask questions based on the reading/lecture, and randomly pick one of those present to answer the question. This should help everyone prepare for the last test.

Anyway, here are the notes:



OF THE INFLUENCING MOTIVES OF THE WILL

· Most ethical systems work under the presupposition that morality is based on reason, and that reason ought to triumph over the passions.

· In order to refute this belief, Hume is going to prove that:

1. Reason alone can never be a motive of any action of the will.

2. Reason can never oppose passion in the direction of the will.

· There are two kinds of judgments: from demonstration and from probability.

· Demonstrative judgments deal with relations of ideas (mathematics, for instance), and these do not lead to any kind of action.

· When the prospect of pain or pleasure arises, reason provides the means to attain our end; it discovers this relation of means and ends, and guides our actions accordingly, but the impulse arises not from reason: it originates in our passions and feelings.

· Notice that unlike Kant, who sees reason as the ultimate end of our actions, Hume sees reason as merely instrumental in the attainment of our desires, which are contingent.

· Since reason is incapable of producing volition, it is also unable to prevent volition.

· "Nothing can oppose or retard the impulse of volition, but a contrary impulse."

· The principle that opposes our passion, cannot be the same with reason:


"Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them."


· "A passion is an original existence… and contains not any representative quality, which renders it a copy or any other existence or modification… It is impossible, therefore, that this passion can be opposed by, or be contradictory to truth and reason; since this contradiction consists in the disagreement between ideas, considered as copies, with those objects, which they represent."

o In other words, feelings are internal impressions without any kind of reference to the external world (the way that the senses refer to the world, for instance).

o If feelings are not representations of the external world, and there is no point of reference for them (nothing to which you can point and say "there!"), then feelings have nothing to do with truth and falsehood.

o Since reason deals with the relationship between true and false judgments, and feelings have nothing to do with truth, you guessed it, reason has nothing to do with the origin of feelings.

· "When I am angry, I am actually possesst with the passion…"

o The point Hume is trying to establish here is that we are not in control of our feelings, our feelings control us.

o This should not surprise you. Do you have a choice in whether you like chocolate ice cream? Or do you simply find yourself liking it (or not liking it)?

o You don't believe Hume? No problem, you can test this hypothesis (after all, he was the first philosopher to really provide a philosophical formulation for the scientific method):

§ All you'd have to do is provide a rational reason why your aesthetic preferences are better than whatever it is you don't provide.

§ You might be able to do this for some things (I do this all the time myself), and might believe that you've been able to refute Hume, but you'll soon also realize, if you allow yourself to be honest enough, that what's really taking place is that you are looking for excuses or ways of rationalizing your judgments.

§ How could this last claim be true?

§ Very simple, it's betrayed by the fact that before you were presented with this challenge, you probably never thought of reasons why you should prefer chocolate ice cream over, say, vanilla.

§ If you never thought about this, that implies that you never invoked rational reasons for your preference.

· "Passions can only be contrary to reason only so far as they are accompanied with some judgment or opinion. According to this principle, which is so obvious and natural, it is only in two senses that any affection can be called unreasonable:"

1. When a passion is based on the supposition of the existence of something non-existent.

2. When, in acting on a passion, we confuse ourselves in our causal judgments and use the improper means in order to attain our desired end.

"Where a passion is neither founded on false suppositions, nor chooses means insufficient for the end, the understanding can neither justify nor condemn it. It is not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger."

· "The consequences are evident. Since a passion can never, in any sense, be called unreasonable, but when founded on a false supposition. or when it chuses means insufficient for the designed end, it is impossible, that reason and passion can ever oppose each other, or dispute for the government of the will and actions."


MORAL DISTINCTIONS NOT DERIVED FROM REASON

· Do we distinguish between virtue and vice by means of our ideas or our impressions?

· Ideas are mental representations, and the intensity with which we feel them is dull.

o How strongly do you feel about Fermat's last theorem? Or the square root of 9?

· Impressions are sense perceptions and feelings, the intensity of which is always much more intense than mere ideas.

o How strong is the feeling of catching your boyfriend/girlfriend cheating on you?


· "Those who affirm that virtue is nothing but a conformity to reason… concur in the opinion that morality, like truth, is discerned merely by ideas, and by their juxtaposition and comparison."

· Two kinds of philosophy: speculative and practical, and morality is supposed to influence our passions and actions, and to go beyond the calm and indolent judgments of the understanding.

· From what Hume has already shown, he simply manipulates his earlier claims to show that:

o "Since morals, therefore, have an influence on the actions and the affections, it follows, that they cannot be derived from reason… Morals excite passions, and produce or prevent actions. Reason, of itself, is utterly impotent in this particular. The rules of morality, therefore, are not conclusions of our reason."

· And for the grand conclusion of this little section:

o "As long as it is allowed, that reason has no influence on our passions and action, it is in vain to pretend, that morality is discovered only by a deduction of reason."


· Reason is the discovery of truth and falsehood between ideas. Since passions are original and imply no reference to other passions, volitions and actions, it is, therefore, impossible that they can be pronounced either true or false, or be contrary or conformable to reason.


· "Actions may be laudable or blamable, but they cannot be reasonable: laudable or blamable, therefore, are not the same with reasonable or unreasonable."

· "But perhaps it may be said, that though no will or action can be immediately contradictory to reason, yet we may find such a contradiction in some of the attendants [or relations] of the action, that is, in its causes or effects."

o "I am more to be lamented than blamed, if I am mistaken with regard to the influence of objects in producing pain or pleasure, or if I know not the proper means of satisfying my desires. No one can ever regard such errors as a defect in my moral character."

o "Should it be pretended, that though a mistake of fact be not criminal, yet a mistake of right often is; and that this may be the source of immorality[?]"


· Two possibilities: virtue and vice are discoverable either by relations between objects or in matters of fact discoverable by reason.

· Relations would be something that exist between entities. Cause and effect are relations, for instance.

o "If you assert that vice and virtue consist in relations susceptible of certainty and demonstration, you must confine yourself to those…relations, which alone admit of that degree of evidence; and in that case you run into absurdities, from which you will never be able to extricate yourself. For as you make the very essence of morality to lie in the relations, and as there is no one of these relations but what is applicable, not only to an irrational, but also to an inanimate object; it follows, that even such objects [inanimate] must be susceptible of merit or demerit."

o In other words, if it were the relations that produce the moral character of actions, then just like people can cause some effect, inanimate objects can also cause the same effect.

o Yet, we don't think that inanimate objects have anything to do with morality.

o Therefore morality does not lie in these relations.

o Example of ingratitude (in the form of patricide) in order to show that relations cannot be what distinguishes morality from immorality (page 6).

o In his own words: "Of all crimes that human creatures are capable of committing, the most horrid and unnatural is ingratitude, especially when it is committed against parents, and appears in the more flagrant instances of wounds and death. This is acknowledged by all mankind, philosophers as well as the people; the question only arises among philosophers, whether the guilt or moral deformity of this action be discovered by demonstrative reasoning, or be felt by an internal sense, and by means of some sentiment, which the reflecting on such an action naturally occasions. This question will soon be decided against the former opinion, if we can shew the same relations in other objects, without the notion of any guilt or iniquity attending them. Reason or science is nothing but the comparing of ideas, and the discovery of their relations; and if the same relations have different characters, it must evidently follow, that those characters are not discovered merely by reason. To put the affair, therefore, to this trial, let us chuse any inanimate object, such as an oak or elm; and let us suppose, that by the dropping of its seed, it produces a sapling below it, which springing up by degrees, at last overtops and destroys the parent tree: I ask, if in this instance there be wanting any relation, which is discoverable in parricide or ingratitude? Is not the one tree the cause of the other's existence; and the latter the cause of the destruction of the former, in the same manner as when a child murders his parent? It is not sufficient to reply, that a choice or will is wanting. For in the case of parricide, a will does not give rise to any DIFFERENT relations, but is only the cause from which the action is derived; and consequently produces the same relations, that in the oak or elm arise from some other principles. It is a will or choice, that determines a man to kill his parent; and they are the laws of matter and motion, that determine a sapling to destroy the oak, from which it sprung. Here then the same relations have different causes; but still the relations are the same: And as their discovery is not in both cases attended with a notion of immorality, it follows, that that notion does not arise from such a discovery."

o Example of incest (showing that arguing that reason separates morality from immorality begs the question (page 6):

o "But to chuse an instance, still more resembling; I would fain ask any one, why incest in the human species is criminal, and why the very same action, and the same relations in animals have not the smallest moral turpitude and deformity? If it be answered, that this action is innocent in animals, because they have not reason sufficient to discover its turpitude; but that man, being endowed with that faculty which ought to restrain him to his duty, the same action instantly becomes criminal to him; should this be said, I would reply, that this is evidently arguing in a circle. For before reason can perceive this turpitude, the turpitude must exist; and consequently is independent of the decisions of our reason, and is their object more properly than their effect. According to this system, then, every animal, that has sense, and appetite, and will; that is, every animal must be susceptible of all the same virtues and vices, for which we ascribe praise and blame to human creatures [just like they can infer, same as us, the relationship between cause and effect]. All the difference is, that our superior reason may serve to discover the vice or virtue, and by that means may augment the blame or praise: But still this discovery supposes a separate being in these moral distinctions, and a being, which depends only on the will and appetite, and which, both in thought and reality, may be distinguished from the reason. Animals are susceptible of the same relations, with respect to each other, as the human species, and therefore would also be susceptible of the same morality, if the essence of morality consisted in these relations."

· The argument that morality is discovered in matters of fact discoverable by reason won't work either:

o Example of murder to show that the matter of fact discoverable by reason won't work either (page 7).

o "Nor does this reasoning only prove, that morality consists not in any relations, that are the objects of science; but if examined, will prove with equal certainty, that it consists not in any matter of fact, which can be discovered by the understanding. This is the second part of our argument; and if it can be made evident, we may conclude, that morality is not an object of reason. But can there be any difficulty in proving, that vice and virtue are not matters of fact, whose existence we can infer by reason? Take any action allowed to be vicious: Willful murder, for instance. Examine it in all lights, and see if you can find that matter of fact, or real existence, which you call vice. In which-ever way you take it, you find only certain passions, motives, volitions and thoughts. There is no other matter of fact in the case. The vice entirely escapes you, as long as you consider the object. You never can find it, till you turn your reflection 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 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 the contemplation of it."

o In other words, what you find is not a moral fact but a fact about yourself.

o You find yourself overcome by a feeling, and this feeling is so strong that you mistakenly believe that it refers to something real.

o This would explain, for instance, why everyone is so quick to think that there is something objectively wrong with incest. We have a gut feeling about it that's so strong that we actually believe it's true.

o Hume believes this is perfectly normal because nature has made us creatures endowed with certain feelings.

o More than 200 years later, evolutionary psychologists, such as Debra Lieberman, are now providing empirical support for Hume's claims: There are certain adaptive mechanisms in our brains, which are usually triggered by environmental cues, that have evolved because they proved themselves to be useful against alternative competing traits.

o Notice also how an evolutionary explanation does not argue in teleological terms, so it does not violate our intuitions concerning the temporal direction of cause and effect.


The "is/ought" problem
· The basic problem Hume brings up here is that the attempt to ground moral values on descriptive facts is ultimately logically fallacious.

· The fact that something "is" does not logically entail what "ought" to be the case.

· As a purely logical point, this is enough to refute any version of natural law theory, as well as Ayn Rand's foundation for her ethical egoism, since an "is" cannot logically entail an "ought."

· So, to say that something is immoral because it's unnatural commits one to this logical fallacy that Hume was the first to recognize.

· The Palmer book has a nice discussion of this topic too.


MORAL DISTINCTIONS DERIVED FROM A MORAL SENSE

· Given all of the above, it may be concluded that "morality, therefore, is more properly felt than judged of."

o This conclusion is also supported by the monkey article: capuchin monkeys are not exactly rational in the same way we are, and yet they seem to experience certain feelings (such as anger and resentment) with respect to injustice, which we normally assume, perhaps mistakenly, to be a rational moral concept.

· Of what nature are these impressions [or feelings]? Agreeableness and disagreeableness:

o "An action, or sentiment, or character is virtuous or vicious; why? because its view causes a pleasure or uneasiness of a particular kind. In giving a reason, therefore, for the pleasure or uneasiness, we sufficiently explain the vice or virtue. To have the sense of virtue, is nothing but to feel a satisfaction of a particular kind from the contemplation of a character [this would explain why we feel a certain satisfaction when we perform a good action]. The very feeling constitutes our praise or admiration. We go no farther; nor do we enquire into the cause of the satisfaction. We do not infer a character to be virtuous, because it pleases: But in feeling that it pleases after such a particular manner, we in effect feel that it is virtuous."

o Notice the subtlety, and philosophical importance, of this last point (the underlined green section):

§ Hume is making a metaphysical and a phenomenological distinction.

· A metaphysical claim is a claim about ultimate reality, about how things really are.

· A phenomenological claim is a claim about our experiences, independently of any reality (about our perceptions and feelings, for instance, but also about things like our dreams).

· In other words, you might say a metaphysical claim is an objective claim, while a phenomenological claim is a subjective claim (a claim about a subject).

§ The distinction is the following:

§ There is no such thing as the objectivity of morality: morality is simply an illusion that we all have, it's not real, not even when it produces pleasure.

§ What happens is that when something produces pleasure our mind makes the automatic assumption that what produced the pleasure really is good.

§ So, from the subjectivity of our experience, and the constitution of our own nature, we assume the objectivity about something external to us.

§ In other words, it's because of the intensity of our dislike for the idea of incest/rape/murder/whatever, that we assume there really is some truth about these moral ideas independent of how we feel about them.

§ But, Hume argues, this is all an illusion caused by how our mind works.


OF THE ORIGIN OF THE NATURAL VIRTUES AND VICES
· In order to figure out the true origin of our moral feelings, Hume analyzes many different virtues and identifies sympathy for our fellow people to be the basis for most of our moral feelings:

o "Now as the means to an end can only be agreeable, where the end is agreeable; and as the good of society, where our own interest is not concerned, or that of our friends, pleases only by sympathy: It follows, that sympathy is the source of the esteem, which we pay to all the artificial virtues."

· And it is because of our natural sympathy for those around us that we derive pleasure from actions or events that ultimately result in the good of humanity.

o "Thus it appears, that sympathy is a very powerful principle in human nature, that it has a great influence on our taste of beauty, and that it produces our sentiment of morals in all the artificial virtues. From thence we may presume, that it also gives rise to many of the other virtues; and that qualities acquire our approbation, because of their tendency to the good of mankind. This presumption must become a certainty, when we find that most of those qualities, which we naturally approve of, have actually that tendency, and render a man a proper member of society: While the qualities, which we naturally disapprove of, have a contrary tendency, and render any intercourse with the person dangerous or disagreeable."

o Notice how close this last part ends up being to Ruth Benedicts's defense of cultural relativism (as a descriptive theory, not a normative one).

o As we'll soon see, this Humean idea of what results in the usefulness, or utility, to society, "the good of mankind," is going to be the seed from which utilitarianism is going to grow (even though Hume would probably not have believed in it as much as actual utilitarians do, precisely because utilitarians are moral realists, while Hume is a moral skeptic).