Hume states, “Since morals, therefore, have an influence on the actions and affections, it follows, that they cannot be deriv’d from reason; and that because reason alone, as we have already prov’d, can never have any such influence. 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.” Hume concludes that since it is morality that motivates us towards actions, and not reason, then morality cannot be a result of some rational decision making that occurs in our minds, but is instead due to our internal passions and desires.
Hume claims that, in the case of moral distinctions, reason cannot be relied on to discover what is right and wrong, or good and bad. Hume maintains that if moral distinctions were based on relations discovered by reason, then non-reasoning and even inanimate objects would be capable of vice and virtue. For instance, it is morally wrong for a son to murder his father. However, “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”. The relations involved in the sapling killing the parent tree, and the son killing his father are the same. If relations alone were what constituted right and wrong, then the sapling would be guilty of murder - even if it was claimed that the sapling had no choice, as the relations would be the same. Another way in which reason could distinguish between right and wrong is by discovering a fact in an agent’s character that makes their act virtuous or vicious. However, this is also not possible, according to Hume, as facts in the mind of a person are only vicious if the thoughts are actually implemented. If you just look at an agent, the vice will completely escape you; “You never can find it, till you turn your reflexion into your own breast, and find a sentiment of disapprobation, which arises in you, towards this action.”
The passions act as the source of moral value, in that they alone can provide the appropriate motivation for action, or move us to approve morality. They account for how it is that we are drawn to the objects of our experience, and how it is that we connect with the world. The passions are essential to moral action and desire, in their being lively responses to objects or states of affairs as we experience them. “Morality, therefore, is more properly felt than judg'd of”. Thus, from the point of view of Hume, the empirical scientist (motivated by his epistemological scepticism), there is available an empirical non-moral explanation or account of why we are drawn to objects in the world, and how we access and engage with it (subjective to the extent that it resides in us, not out there).
By far the most influential of Hume’s arguments for the claim that morality cannot derive from reason, depends on his thesis that morality is essentially motivating in a way that no state deriving from reason, no belief, can possibly be. Reason can never motivate, by itself, whereas morality is, Hume seems to say, intrinsically motivating, at least to some degree. His argument is as follows:
- The judgment that some act is wrong, or that some passion is vicious, is intrinsically motivating in the sense that a person so judges only if she is motivated (or would be under certain conditions) against the action or passion to some degree.
- Reason can only lead us to beliefs that such-and-such is the case, and no such belief is intrinsically motivating in this sense.
- Therefore, no moral judgment can derive from reason.
To say then, that morality is “more properly felt than judg’d of” is not the same as endorsing emotivism or non-cognitivism. It is simply to recognize the crucial role of sentiment in practical moral discovery. More generally, claiming that reason is unable to accomplish practical moral discovery is not the same as to claim that it has no role in the discovery of morals, that morals are invented rather than discovered, or that so-called moral judgments are not really judgments at all.
WORD COUNT: 883
BibliographyD. Hume - A Treatise of Human Nature, Book III, Part 1, Sections 1 and 2
Ethics - Peter Singer (Editor)
Ethics: The Classic Readings - David E Cooper (Editor)
Philosophy: The Classics – Nigel Warburton
