DAVID HUME (1711 - 1776)

"The passions makes us equal"--G. E. Lessing

The Buddha and Hume Compared:

1. Both of them thought that we should start with theory of knowledge first and then proceed to theory of reality. Without focusing first on what we can truly know, most philosophers are tempted to speculate on the nature of reality, form strong opinions, and then do their theory of knowledge later. Both the Buddha and Hume believe that this has led to incorrect beliefs in things that we cannot possibly know (God, atoms, souls, etc.).

2. Both had a fierce commitment to the empirical method. Hume, for example, rejected Locke and Berkeley as true, consistent empiricists. The Buddha was just a dogged in his determination to stick to experience and experience alone.

3. They both rejected the idea of eternal, unchanging substance of any type--material or spiritual

4. Both presented us with a bundle theory of the self.

But the differences are telling:

1. Hume claimed, much to the dismay of the scientists of his day, that we have no perception of causal relations. The Buddha, of course, claimed otherwise. Hume thought that causality was nothing but an habitual relation that we impose on experience.

2. No Buddhist equivalent to John Locke's tabula rasa (mind as blank slate), because dispositions always carried over from previous life. Zen Buddhist "blank" mind or "no" mind is not equivalent either. Here the idea is to empty the mind of "garbage" of ego formations.

3. Emotion and feeling are inextricably fused in any act of knowledge.

4. From (3) it follows that fact and value will always be fused. At this point the Buddha parts company with Hume.

5. ESP--major difference between Western and Eastern empiricists. Western empiricists would say that the Buddhists are really cheating empiricism by claiming such powers.

HUME'S EMPIRICAL METHOD AND SKEPTICISM

Previous moral theories have relied too much on reason and speculative theories about the nature of reality and human beings. Hume's "skepticism" means that we must suspend all knowledge claims for which we have insufficient evidence. First practiced by Greek philosophers in the Hellenistic period.

Hume's empirical method was drawn from the new science of Newton, Galileo, etc. We must suspend judgement about anything for which there is no immediate evidence. By this method we discover no purpose or teleology in anything at all except human action. In early modern science Aristotle's four causes are reduced to efficient causation, the simple movement of atoms in empty space. The ancient organic view of reality and society is replaced by an atomistic, mechanistic one with universal laws of motion.

Hume thought that philosophers and scientists who claim to follow the empirical method were not doing so correctly. They did not realize the skeptical implications of true empiricism. According to Hume, we cannot claim to know that:

1) atoms exist (they are "metaphysical" fictions) or even matter itself.

2) that any one thing actually causes any other thing. There is no evidence of any powers behind causation. All that we observe is the conjunction of cause and effect, and the latter is that which simply follows the former.

3) souls or minds exist. We look into ourselves (introspection) and find nothing but a flow of thoughts, feelings, and memories. We do not find a soul substance or even a self apart from these data. Bundle theory of self.

4) The will, strictly speaking, cannot be said to exist. It too is a "metaphysical" entity. Despite Hume's skepticism about the will he can still be called a voluntarism? The passions (emotions), not the will per se, are clearly evident and are the foundation of Hume's moral theory.

SCIENTIFIC VS. MORAL PROPOSITIONS: HUME'S CRITIQUE OF AQUINAS

Compare these two statements: "The sun always sets in the west"; and "Helping the injured is good." Aquinas would say that the first proposition is synthetic, and the second is analytic. Hume, however, disagrees. He believes that the second is also synthetic. How could Hume be right? He is correct if the negation of the proposition is intelligible. In other words, are there situations in which it is not always good to help the injured? If you can think of just one, then Hume is vindicated.

Aquinas' solution is too neat: good and evil do not always exclude one another. The doctrine of double effect, inspired by Aquinas, ironically shows that good and evil can sometimes coincide.

Hume still believes that there is a significant difference between ordinary empirical (synthetic) propositions and moral assertions. But it has nothing to do with whether the former are synthetic and the latter are analytic. (Hume still believes in analytic propositions, but they are now limited to logical and mathematical truths.) The factual nature of scientific propositions lies in the objects referred to, while morality lies in the feelings of the human subject. "Conscience" tells us that it's generally good to help the injured. For Hume conscience does not originate in reason, but resides in moral sentiment (feeling) that has been built up in the course of one's moral education.

The justification of the scientific proposition is based on the conjunction of two external, observable events, while the moral proposition deals with an external behavioral event and an internal feeling, one of approval or disapproval.

Does ethics for Hume then become simply a matter of taste--i.e., complete subjectivism and relativism? No, because we all have pretty much the same psychological make-up, the same likes and dislikes. Most moral disputes involve matters of facts which can be cleared up eventually. The moral sentiments will be the same after the factual matters are resolved.

IS MORALITY BASED ON REASON OR SENTIMENT?

(A summary of the argument from Hume's An Enquiry Concerning the Principle of Morals.)

Hume concedes that plausible arguments can be made for both moral rationalism (morality originates in reason) and moral voluntarism (morality originates in the will and the passions).

Early on Hume shows that he is committed to hedonism: "To virtue. . . it belongs to be amiable, and vice odious". This makes Hume a philosophical descendant of Epicurus and a forerunner of the 19th Century British utilitarianism.

DO REASON AND SENTIMENT CONCUR?

Actually, this seems to be position of Aristotle. We all have natural inclinations (Hume's "sentiments") to virtue, but learning, practical knowledge, and experience are necessary for the final cultivation of virtue. Hume's comments about beauty and acquired tastes are crucial in our final assessment of his own position: "But in many orders of beauty, particularly those of the finer arts, is requisite to employ much reasoning, in order to feel the proper sentiment." Think of cultivated for wine, opera, classical and contemporary music. Please note here that Hume is granting a larger role to reason than his final theory allows.

FOR HUME, HOWEVER, SENTIMENT WINS

Reason can ultimately have no hold the emotions. "What is intelligent, what is evident. . . what is true, procures only the cool assent of the understanding." Feelings of approval or disapproval are always needed. Reason can change how we see the facts of a situation, but it can never change our basic approval or disapproval. Think of a justified killing in self-defense. The facts of these special circumstances do not change our basic abhorrence to taking, under ordinary circumstances, another person's life.

Socrates, a great moral rationalist, warned us: Don't let the passions carry reason around like a slave. (Also Stoics, Aristotle, and Christian theologians--all moral rationalists.) But Hume says that we simply have to face the facts of life: we are basically creatures of passion and only intermittently rational. Ethics is based on practical knowledge drawn from moral sentiment.

WHAT IS A MORAL SENTIMENT?

A common, and unfounded, criticism of Hume is that he is an unmitigated moral relativist, because he believes that morality is based on individual feelings, which vary widely from person to person. This is not Hume's view, because a moral sentiment is a very special feeling. Your reading in Jones (on reserve) defines a moral sentiment as one that is

1) disinterested, as opposed to most self-interested feelings;

2) deals with character and motive, again very different from ordinary feelings;

3) built up over years of moral education, which involves, according to Hume's utilitarianism, many encounters with pain/pleasure, disapproval/approval.

4) learned, as opposed to most feelings that are not.

Although moral rules are not objective, they are, because of the common ground of moral education in civilized societies, at least "intersubjective" (shared among many moral subjects) rather than "intrasubjective" (private and different within individual subjects). Hume appears to break with his view that moral sentiment is learned when he comments that there is "some benevolence, however small, in every bosom" and "some internal sense of feeling which nature has made universal in the whole species."

GOOD OR EVIL IS NOT FOUND IN ANY FACT OR RELATION OF FACTS

"Reason judges either of matter of fact or of relations." Morality lies in neither. Although we are aware of all the objective facts in a given immoral situation--such as, A promised to repay a debt to B on a certain day, A has sufficient funds to reapy her debt on that day, A refuses to do so, and so--the wrongness of A's action cannot be found as an item in a complex list of facts upon which we reflect in arriving at a moral judgment. (Taken from Great Traditions in Ethics, p. 168.) A's evil can be found only in the feeling of disapproval that we experience in this situation. The facts of the situation are just as devoid of morality as in "acid turns litmus paper red."

If morality consists in rules, why are rules right? By reason, or by God's will? No, Hume says that rules are justified because human sentiment approves of some actions and disapproves of others.

SENTIMENT: THE ONLY SOURCE OF MORALITY

Virtue is "whatever mental action or quality gives to a spectator the pleasing sentiment of approbation; and vice the contrary." Reason, while not the source of morality, is still an essential tool in making moral decisions. (Recall analogy with the fine arts.) The appreciation of beauty originates, of course, in feelings, but it is enhanced and developed by the use of reason. In math and science, reason discovers new facts and new relations. In morality, reason discovers neither.

Abortion example: New facts about genetics were partially the reason why the Catholic Church changed its Canon Law regarding abortion in 1917. These new facts did not change one bit the negative moral sentiment that taking a human life is wrong. Sometimes we must suspend moral judgment until all the facts are in (e.g,, a murder case), but again, those facts do not change our basic moral sense that killing is wrong. Reason helps in the gathering of facts, but adds nothing (nor subtracts) from our moral sense.

Hume: "The approbation or blame which then ensues cannot be the work of the [rational] judgment, but of the heart." Moral judgment doesn't arise until there is a feeling of approval or disapproval. There is a great difference, then, between a mistake of fact and one of right. The former is never criminal, but the latter usually is. You can't be blamed for doing something out of ignorance, but you can be blamed for deliberately performing actions which go against what people generally approve.

FOR HUME BENEVOLENCE IS THE HIGHEST VIRTUE

“For supposing I saw a person perfectly unknown to me, who, while asleep in the fields, was in danger of being trod under foot by horses, I should immediately run to his assistance; and in this I should be actuated by the same principle of sympathy, which makes me concerned for the present sorrows of a stranger.”  Had Hume been reading Mencius? N. P. Jacobson suspects that he had (Understanding Buddhism,  p. 159).

Benevolence seems to attract the greater approbation from humankind. Great talent, courage, and success all invite envy, but benevolence does not invite such reactions. (Please note Hume's empirical method. No speculation about a world of perfection, either Plato's or Aquinas', but simple, straight-forward observation about experience, what humans do indeed approve.) Benevolence is the highest virtue because it gives the most satisfaction and happiness, and the least unhappiness. Hume is a proto-utilitarian. Others will be saying the same thing, 50 years later. Or what some of his contemporaries, such as Ben Franklin, were already saying.

Ben Franklin's Utilitarianism: "Vicious actions are not hurtful because they are forbidden [by God's command], but forbidden because they are hurtful." This is the difference between divine ethical subjectivism vs. humanistic ethical subjectivism.

THE VALUE OF JUSTICE IS BASED ON UTILITY

"Justice is useful to society." That is its sole justification. Imagine the perfect society in which there would be no desires that could not be satisfied. Justice as a virtue would not be needed, whereas benevolence would still be highly prized. Is benevolence an intrinsic value, not really tied to any utility? Seems like this means that Hume is not fully utilitarian.

Justice is also suspended in times of great emergency, but the virtue of benevolence would still reign supreme; e.g., the sharing or rationing of food - even expropriation of property for the survival of all. Benevolence is suspended only when you find yourself in a "society of ruffians." Then one "must consult the dictates of self-preservation alone." Justice is completely situational and based on utility. Its essence can be destroyed and its "obligation upon mankind" can be suspended.

SELECTIONS FROM YOUR TREATISE OF HUMAN NATURE (On the Web)

The only evidence of reality is our perceptions. Perceptions break down into ideas and impressions, and the latter can be internal (feelings, emotions [passions], volitions, and sensations) or external objects and activities.

Moral judgments must be one of these. It is obviously not an external object or activity.

Are moral judgments ideas, products of reason? If yes, then we have moral rationalism.

"Morals excite passions, and produce or prevent actions. Reason of itself is utterly impotent in this regard." Reason is passive, not active.

Only ideas are subject to reason - not actions.

PASSIONS DRIVE ACTIONS NOT REASON. This is the position called moral voluntarism.

Lessing: "In the passions we are all equal." Note the egalitarian (and nonsexist) advantages to such a view.

Reason can have an influence on conduct in two ways:

1. It can tell us what the proper object of desire is.

2. It can figure out how to obtain such an object.

Not so passive after all?

But reason can make mistakes in both of these calculations. These mistakes, however, are not moral errors.

Think of the following story: A husband is trying to find his wife in a one-room home with 15 people and sleeps with his sister-in-law by mistake. Even Aquinas agrees that this man has not sinned.

Judgments that direct action have no moral content. This is found only the feelings that accompany the judgments.

Reason is not entirely passive. "Reason and judgment may, indeed, be the mediate [i.e., indirect] cause of action, by prompting, or by directing a passion." This means that reason can persuade the will to do something.

Judgments can only be either true or false--not good or bad.

There is no correlation between

being                   truth            good

vs.                        vs.               vs.

non-being       falsehood           evil

as in Plato and Aquinas.

Fact and Value (the "Is" and the "Ought") are separated in Hume. They coincide for Plato and Aquinas.

No moral rationalist has "been able to advance a single step in [logical] demonstrations"? Not fair to Aquinas, who at least attempted a demonstration.

Morality lies neither in facts or any relation among facts.

THE CASE OF OAK TREE "PARRICIDE"

Why isn't the oak sapling guilty of murder? The facts in a human and oak tree parracide are analogous and the relations are the same.

Answer: the oak sapling is not conscious and has no will.

Hume: the relations have different causes but they are the same.

Isn't the son's desire to kill a morally relevant fact?

THE CASE OF ANIMAL INCEST

Why is it only immoral in humans? Reason in humans makes the difference.

No, says Hume: "Before reason can perceive turpitude, the turpitude must exist [as a sentiment]. Reason must find [duties], and can never produce them."

Hume's challenge: Examine a murder in all its aspects and show me the vice. "You can never find it...."

Vice and virtue are secondary qualities, such as sounds, color, heat and cold. John Locke's tree falling in the forest with no perceivers around.

Not qualities in objects, but perceptions in the mind. Still very real. A major discovery of moral "science."

Important passage on the "Is" and the "Ought." Factual statements, originating in reason, have the predicates "is" or "is not." Moral assertions, originating in sentiment, have the predicates "ought" or "ought not." How can we derive the "ought" from any "is"? How do we derive moral imperative from facts and the activity of reason?

MURDER MYSTERY EXAMPLE: Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers play with our moral sentiments and develop very subtle revelations of facts. But the facts alone (the "is" statements) do not really lead the "ought" statements. When we finally realize "the butler did it," the facts in the story did not lead to, nor did it change the moral sentiment we finally could express: "He ought not to have done that."

THREE CRITIQUES OF HUME'S MORAL THEORY

FIRST CRITIQUE: Isn't Hume then deriving "oughts" from psychological states of approval or disapproval, i.e., from psychological facts? Hume has to admit that sentiments are facts.

SECOND CRITIQUE: Jones' discussion (on reserve) and Hume's attack on "monkish" virtue. No sympathy with Stoic and Christian ethics, because they have no utility. Hume obviously did not ever have the privilege of enjoying the company of a Yogi or Zen Buddhist monk. Hume's disapproval here is very philistine and culture-bound. Many people have approved the monkish virtues and some monks mix easily with non-monkish society. Is Hume assuming the norms of his society and proclaiming them to be universal? Hume's empirical approach leads him into moral relativism. Hume disapproves of monkish virtues (they're vices for him), but others approve of them.

Hume's prejudice against ascetics is mild compared to his prejudice against blacks, Jews, Catholics, and the Irish. In a footnote to his essay "Of National Characters," he proposes a "polygenetic" theory of race: "I am apt to suspect the Negroes and in general all the other species of men (for there are four or five different kinds) to be naturally inferior to the white....Such a uniform and constant difference could not happen in so many countries and ages, if nature had not made an original distinction betwixt these breeds of men." Hume makes it clear that monogenetic views, which maintain that it is simply environment and lack of education that held these people back, do not take into consideration the clear evidence of their incorrigible, ineducable, and hence separate natures. Unfortunately, Hume's authority was widely used by racists many decades after this pronouncement. In his Essay Concerning Human Understanding, John Locke, a famous empiricist who preceded Hume, presents a scenario about a child, who has always associated white color and humankind, suddenly meeting a Negro. Locke maintains that "the child can demonstrate to you that a Negro is not a man, because white-colour was one of the constant simple ideas of the complex idea he calls man" (IV, vii, §16). Is empiricism responsible for modern racism? See complete essay "The Color Skin/The Color of Sin" in the Ethics Bluebook

THIRD CRITIQUE: Hume says that morality is just like beauty. The beauty of a circle is not a rational property but comes from our sentiment. Just as everything beautiful is useful, so is everything moral useful. Is this really true about the beautiful? Is Hume correct in saying that the beauty of geometric figures in paintings has nothing to do with their rational proportion? Plato and others disagree. Formalists in arts believe that the rational relations between line, color, and form, not mere sentiment, are the foundations for beauty in art and in nature.