The Scottish Philosopher David

Hume

AN INTRODUCTION INTO THE ETHICAL

THEORY OF DAVID HUME.
IF YOU WANT TRUTH LOOK TO SCIENCE OR
MATHEMATICS; ETHICS IS ULTIMATELY BASED ON OUR
FEELINGS; NATURAL MORAL SENTIMENTS IS WHERE
MORAL DECISION-MAKING IS GROUNDED.

David Hume
1711 - 1776
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Early Life
Born in Edinburgh, and raised under a strict Presbyterian
regimen, he enrolled in the University of Edinburgh when he
was twelve years old.
After three years, he dropped out without a degree, planning
to devote himself to philosophy and literature.
A short time later, Hume admitted he had lost the faith of his
childhood, writing that once he read Locke and other
philosophers, he never again entertained any belief in
religion.

Humes Skepticism
A skeptic is a person who demands clear, observable,
indubitable evidence before accepting any knowledge
claim as true.

Humes Skepticism
Humes empirical criterion of meaning holds that all
meaningful ideas can be traced to sense experience
(impressions).
Beliefs that cannot be reduced to sense experience are
technically not ideas at al, but meaningless utterances.

Identity and Continuity

Our minds confer identity on things; we do not perceive it.
Rather, we feign or fabricate continuity.
His point is that we have no direct impression of cause and
effect, the link between perceptions that would make our
assumptions about identity and continuity certain.

Conjoined events do not prove they are causally

connected any more than there is a causal connection
between the rooster crowing and the sun rising.
All one can do is extrapolate based on oft-repeated
occurrences. He does not deny the principle of
causality; he denies the basis on which some people
try to prove causality.
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Hume on the Self

Applying his empirical criterion of meaning, Hume argues
that we do not have any idea of the self as it is commonly
understood.
If we have no impression of the self, what are we?
According to Hume, if there is no underlying, constant
thing to unite our sensory perceptions, then the self is
nothing more than a bundle of such perceptions. This is
known as Humes bundle theory of the self.

Hume on the Self

Hume on Religion
In 1751, Hume wrote the most devastating, direct, and
irreverent of his works, the Dialogues Concerning Natural
Religion.
In his Dialogues, Hume mounts an unrelenting attack on the
argument from design and other attempts to demonstrate
the existence of, or understand the nature of, God.
Hume did not deny the existence of God a position known
as atheism; rather, he adopted the agnostic view that we
do not know enough to assert or deny the existence of God.

Hume v. Aquinas
Aquinas Teleological Argument Argument for the existence of God,
which claims that the universe manifests order and purpose that
can only be the result of a conscious intelligence.

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Hume v. Aquinas
The life of man is of no greater importance to the universe
than that of an oyster. David Hume, On Suicide

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Hume on Morality
If the mind creates the ideas of causality and
necessity, then reason alone can never be our
guide to moral action.
Instead, Hume had another theory:
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.

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Hume on Morality
Moral facts do not exist; rules of morality are not derived
from reason.
A moral evaluation does not express any proposition or
state any fact. Either it gives vent to a feeling, or it
is itself a feeling.
Vice and virtue are perceptions in the mind based upon
sentiment.

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Consider the following

quote:
Take any action allowed to be vicious: willful murder, for instance.
Examine it in all its lights and see if you can find that matter of fact,
or real existence, which you call vice. You never can find it, till you
turn your affection 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
your self, not in the object. So that which 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.
~ A Treatise of Human Nature, Everymans Library (New York: E.P.
Dutton, 1956) 2:177.
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Hume v. Kant
Kants ethical theory is based upon duty to reason. The categorical
imperative provides an imperative to act.
According to Kant, no matter how unpleasant the command makes you feel,
you are obligated to fulfill it.

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Hume v. Kant

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Fallacy of Deriving Ought

from Is
In every system of morality which I have hitherto met
with, I have always remarked, that the author proceeds
for some time in the ordinary way of reasoning, and
establishes the being of a God, or makes observations
concerning human affairs; when of a sudden I am
surprised to find, that instead of the usual copulations of
propositions, is, and is not, I meet with no proposition
that is not connected with an ought, or an ought not.

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Fallacy of Deriving Ought

from Is
Moral theories begin by observing some specific
facts about the world, and then they conclude from
these some statements about moral obligation.
In other words, they move from statements about
what is the case to statement about what ought to
be the case

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Natural Virtues
Natural virtues originate in nature and are more universal (compassion,
generosity, gratitude, friendship, fidelity, charity, benevolence,
clemency, equity, prudence, etc).
In the Human Treatise, Hume states, there is no such passion in
human minds, as the love of mankind, merely as such, independent of
personal qualities, of service, or of relation to ourselves Tis true, there
is no human, and indeed no sensible, creature, whose happiness or
misery does not, in some measure, affect us when brought near to us
and represented in lively colours (pg. 13).

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Artificial Virtues
Artificial virtues are dependent upon social structures (justice*; fidelity
to promises, chastity, modesty, duties to sovereign states)
Study of individual assessments reveal that socially useful acts are approved while
those which are socially detrimental are disapproved.

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Hume on Justice:
As justice evidently tends to promote public utility and to support civil society, the
sentiment of justice is either derived from our reflecting on that tendency, or like
hunger, thirst, and other appetites, resentment, love of life, attachment to offspring,
and other passions, arises from a simple original instinct in the human breast, which
nature has implanted for like salutary purposes.

~ An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, (Chicago: Open

Court, 1966), 35.

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Hume v.
Utilitarianism
We find ethical actions agreeable not because of the utility of such
actions (they are useful to me) but because we have a moral
sentiment or feeling of approval about such actions.
In thinking about the pleasures or pains of other people, we (along with
all other normal human beings) are attracted to what arouses in us
natural sentiments of humanity and benevolence. Such sentiments
are not derived from self-love but from a sense of identifying with
other human beings
Of course, promoting social utility is in our own self-interest, but acting
for the sake of promoting our own self-interest is not a good enough
reason for acting in a moral way
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Why is there common

morality?
Problem: If morality is based on individual sentiments, why do we
agree?
Answer: The human psychological makeup of man is similar.
Therefore, moral sentiments and therefore also moral judgments
will tend to be similar. If provided the same data, people will tend to
respond similarly.

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Advantages of Humes Ethical

Outlook
1.

Some will appreciate the fact that it removes metaphysical

mysteries from realm of ethics because it grounds morality in moral
sentiments which all humans share.

2. Pleasure and pain are important considerations in ethical judgments.

3. It seems to avoid the egoism of the utilitarian perspective.

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