Hume, Treaties of Human Nature

Main Claim

Ethical theories: say how reason gives us morality

Hume: reason cannot be the basis of morality

◦ Morality is desire-like, a matter of passions/sentiments, rather than reason.

First argument: reason cannot supply moral motivation.

◦ Reason alone cannot motivate an action.

> Because reason deals only in the realm of knowledge.

> Knowledge aids action, but not prompts action.

> Knowledge needs to be paired with desire to motivate.

◦ Morality motivates action by itself.

> Thus a moral conclusion cannot be arrived through reason.

> If it could be arrived through reason, reason alone could motivate.

Second argument: reason can only be applied to what is the case (to what is).

◦ If a conclusion motivates, the conclusion must be desire-like.

> As motivation is, by definition, something desire-like.

> But desires do not stand in truth/falsity relation to the facts.

What reason can/can’t do

> Reason can tell you that there is something that you desire

> Reason can tell you how to achieve something you desire.

◦ But in both cases, the desire must be present independently.

> Reason cannot give you the desire.

◦ Maybe reason can tell that some desire is useful to have.

> But realizing this is not the same as having the desire!

Supporting argument 3 - unreason does not equal immorality

◦ Being unreasonable is not being immoral.

> Failing to reason properly about how to satisfy desire is a not moral mistake

◦ Not immoral to fail to realize which desires are useful.

> Not immoral to fail to have a desire one has reasoned out to be useful.

Supporting argument 4 - morality and facts

◦ A fact: An object has a property or that multiple objects stand in a relation.

> Relations among objects include things like Resemblance, Contiguity, Proportion.

◦ Hume: no matter how this turns out, locating morality among the facts requires that there be relation between passion and external object.

Counterpoint - Aristotle

◦ Aristotle told us of a relation: the mean of deficit and excess.

> Supposedly they can be rationally apprehended or inferred.

> Proportionality is one of Hume’s factual relations.

Rebuttal

◦ Any factual relation occurs all over.

> Morally inert objects stand in relation to Proportion.

◦ A pot might contain an excess or a deficit of water, but no morality is attached to this circumstance.

> A factual matter of deficit or excess is not in itself a moral fact.

◦ If a particular relation is a moral fact, there should be a moral fact wherever the relation occurs.

Supporting argument 5 - fact and will

> Even if you can find suitable relations that the mind could infer between passion and action, these relations would need to be so that inferring them would establish a certain kind of will.

> But nothing we know about the mind works like this.

> No mere recognition of a fact ever also creates a particular will.

Morality Definition

◦ Morality does not exist independently of humanity.

> Hume counts right or wrong among the categories we use to describe our own perception of the world, rather than independent facts about the world.

◦ Emotively reacting to actual or supposed actions

> Supposed act excites in us moral approval —> motivated to do this act

• Exhausts psychology of morality

Boo-hurray theory of ethics - emotivisim

> Saying that something is wrong is approximately like shouting boo, or to mark an act out as subject to blame or punishment.

> Saying that something is right is approximately like shouting hurray, or to mark an act out as subject to praise or reward.