Hume Notesheet 2

Hume Notesheet 2

Reason is not the source of moral judgements

David Hume argued that reason, on its own, never tells you anything about how you should or should not behave. It is your feeling side that does this.

Hume: the basic motivators are pain and pleasure

Hume's picture is that when we think of something that might happen often we have an emotional reaction – we feel it is something we want to happen, or we feel it is something we don’t want to happen.

These two reactions, ‘propensity’ or ‘aversion’ (Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, Book II, Part III Section 3) are produced in us by our awareness that such and such a happening will give us pleasure, or pain.

Hume is saying all motivation comes from ‘the prospect of pain or pleasure’ (Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, Book II, Part III Section 3).

“’Tis obvious that when we have the prospect of pain or pleasure from any object, we feel a consequent emotion of aversion or propensity, and are carry’d to avoid or embrace what will give us this uneasiness or satisfaction.” Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, Book II, Part III Section 3.

Feelings might drive behaviour without involving pleasure/pain.

Isn't it possible to think that feelings might drive behaviour but not always via pleasure and pain?

For Hume, what we do is governed some of the time by thoughts and feelings of which we are conscious. And then it is the prospect of pain or pleasure that guides us.

How pursuing pleasure/avoiding pain can lead to altruism

How does it sometimes come about that I act to relieve the pain of others?

It comes about because of the capacity I have for sympathy. When I encounter the signs of suffering in another, the ideal form of that distress transmutes inside my mind into a feeling of the kind whose effects I am observing. That is to say, I myself feel the distress. Sympathy (as Hume means it) involves you feeling what another person is feeling.

But because this distress that I feel is a form of pain, the prospect of such a feeling will lead me to attempt to avoid it.

That is the basic framework of Hume's theory of morality.

Hume's rooting all motivation in pleasure and pain feeds the perceived problem of altruism

Sometimes people assume it is a very puzzling fact about human action, this fact that sometimes they appear to act unselfishly.

It is not difficult to see how people might end up behaving 'unselfishly' as a result of feelings.

But this is not 'motivated' action in the way Hume means it. It is not action you choose to do.

What Hume says is that whenever you do actually choose to perform an action then you always act on what you see as the balance of pleasure and pain - for you - in prospect. So if you decided to kill your lover's lover it would be because you judged that the outcome would mean less suffering for you.

How then, let us remind ourselves, does Hume account for unselfish actions? In a way he says there aren't any. But sometimes you will try and prevent someone suffering because sympathy will make you suffer if they suffer.

Justice

Sometimes we act in ways that seem to go against the promptings of the inclinations and aversions that we are born with.

Hume accounts for this on the supposition that in a complex society it is sometimes in an individual’s long-term interest to follow rules which in the short term appear purely altruistic.

"The remedy ... is not derived from nature, but from artifice; or more properly speaking, nature provides a remedy in the judgment and understanding, for what is irregular and incommodious in the affections. For when men, from their early education in society, have become sensible of the infinite advantages that result from it, and have besides acquired a new affection to company and conversation; and when they have observed, that the principal disturbance in society arises from those goods, which we call external, and from their looseness and easy transition from one person to another; they must seek for a remedy by putting these goods, as far as possible, on the same footing with the fixed and constant advantages of the mind and body. This can be done after no other manner, than by a convention entered into by all the members of the society to bestow stability on the possession of those external goods, and leave every one in the peaceable enjoyment of what he may acquire by his fortune and industry. By this means, every one knows what he may safely possess..." Hume, Treatise, Book III Part II Sect II, 'The remedy' )

Hume's thesis is that the members of society, realizing intellectually how important respecting other people's property is, elect to behave with restraint, believing that others will see the point of this as well and will respect your property if you respect theirs. So respect for property becomes established because people (a) accept that it is in their long-term interest to behave with restraint so long as others will broadly do the same and (b) they think others will indeed broadly do the same.

The next question is: why does behaving like this become categorised as a virtue, and behaving 'unjustly' a vice? ("Why we annex the idea of virtue to justice, and of vice to injustice?" Hume, Treatise, Book III Part II Sect II, 'Why we' )

"But though, in our own actions, we may frequently lose sight of that interest, which we have in maintaining order, and may follow a lesser and more present interest, we never fail to observe the prejudice we receive, either mediately or immediately, from the injustice of others; as not being in that case either blinded by passion, or byassed by any contrary temptation. Nay when the injustice is so distant from us, as no way to affect our interest, it still displeases us; because we consider it as prejudicial to human society, and pernicious to every one that approaches the person guilty of it. We partake of their uneasiness by sympathy; and as every thing, which gives uneasiness in human actions, upon the general survey, is called Vice, and whatever produces satisfaction, in the same manner, is denominated Virtue; "

Hume, Treatise, Book III Part II Sect II, 'But, though ...'

Hume and the 'function' of morality

Hume’s attempt to show how morality is a function of the psychological make-up we are born with is echoed by modern thinkers.

Hume and environmental philosophy

Hume’s thesis that our motivation for acting in others’ interests lies in the sympathies that are built into human nature has been taken up by modern environmentalists. If sympathy is what prompts us to act in the interest of others what we must do is somehow learn to extend our sympathies so that they embrace not human beings only but animals, plants and ecosystems as well.

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