Moral skepticism and moral naturalism in Hume's Treatise

Hume Studies

Volumn 27, Issue 1, 2001, Pages 3-83

  Sturgeon, Nicholas L ^a  

^a Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics   (United States)

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EID: 48449100760     PISSN: 03197336     EISSN: 19479921     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/hms.2011.0241     Document Type: Article

References (75)

1. References in the text prefaced by "T" are to David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge, 2nd ed., revised by P. H. Nidditch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978).
2. David Hume, Enquiries concerning Human Understanding and concerning the Principles of Morals, ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge, 3rd ed., revised by P. H. Nidditch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975).
3. Barry Stroud, Hume (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1977), 265 (n. 7 to p. 187).
4. A point first noted in recent discussion, so far as I am aware, by Geoffrey Hunter in "Hume on Is and Ought," Philosophy 37 (1962), repr. in The Is-Ought Question, ed. W. D. Hudson (London: St. Martin's, 1969), 59-63.
5. As pointed out by A. C. Maclntyre, "Hume on 'Is' and 'Ought'," The Philosophical Review 68 (1959), repr. in Hudson, 42-3; by Hunter, 60-1
6. more recently by Annette Baier, A Progress of Sentiments (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991), 176-7.
7. As Jonathan Harrison notes in Hume's Moral Epistemology (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), 69-70.
8. In section 1 (EPM 169-75) and Appendix 1 (EPM 285-94), especially the latter, of the Enquiry concerning Morals.
9. see also, in Essays Moral, Political, and Literary, ed. T. H. Green and T. H. Grose, 2 vols. (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1889), 2: 173
10. see for example A. G. N. Flew, "On the Interpretation of Hume," Philosophy 38 (1963), repr. in Hudson, 68-9
11. W. D. Hudson, "Hume on Is and Ought," The Philosophical Quarterly 14 (1964), repr. in Hudson, 73-6
12. J. L. Mackie, Hume's Moral Theory (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970), 70.
13. Hume's Moral Theory, 58
14. see 390-3 in my "Brandt's Moral Empiricism," The Philosophical Review 91 (1982): 389-422.
15. And it would be equally remarkable if he were concerned, as both Harrison (Hume's Moral Epistemology, 72)
16. Mackie (Hume's Moral Theory, 62) appear to think he might be, about the derivation of any conclusion containing only a nonmoral "ought."
17. Hume's Moral Epistemology, 62; emphasis in original
18. Jonathan Bennett notes an important tendency in Hume's writings on the understanding to identify matters of fact simply with what in the first Enquiry (EHU 26) he calls "absent" matters of fact, i.e., those matters of fact that are discoverable (if at all) by inference (Locke, Berkeley; Hume [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971], 244-7).
19. Joseph Addison, in Spectator 412 and 413 Qune23 and 24,1712), explains beauty as a secondary quality (without using the terminology), and then adds that he supposes his "Reader acquainted with that great Modern Discovery ... : Namely, that Light and Colours, as apprehended by the Imagination, are only Ideas in the Mind, and not Qualities that have any Existence in Matter"; he refers his reader to Locke's Essay, II viii, for an explanation
20. The Spectator, ed. Donald F. Bond [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965], 3: 547).
21. The Principles of Human Knowledge, §10
22. see also §§14, 15, and Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous, in Berkeley's Philosophical Writings, ed. David M. Armstrong [London: Collier, 1965], 151.
23. An Inquiry Into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue, 2nd ed. [London, 1726; facsimile repr. New York: Garland Publishing Co., 1971], 14
24. Essays Moral, Political and Literary [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963], 168.
25. John Locke, An Essay concerning Human Understanding ed. Peter H. Nidditch [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975])
26. Essay II viii 10.
27. Arthur N. Prior, Logic and the Basis of Ethics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1949), 67.
28. In Hume's System (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990)
29. and Stroud (Hume, 180-92).
30. G. E. Moore does (Principia Ethica [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1903], viii, x)
31. Mackie (Hume's Moral Theory, 71-2, 74)
32. Stroud notices this: Hume, 264 [n. 1 to p. 172
33. see Charles Stevenson, "The Emotive Meaning of Ethical Terms," in Tacts and Values (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1963), 30
34. A. J. Ayer, "The Analysis of Moral Judgements," in Philosophical Essays (London: Macmillan, 1965), 240-2
35. and R. M. Hare, The Language of Morals (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952), chapter 5.
36. Stroud is typical on these issues. He argues that no reductive naturalistic analysis, such as the ideal observer theory, "could be acceptable to Hume, since it would commit him to the view that moral judgments, so understood, can be arrived at by reasoning alone" (Hume, 265 [n. 9 to p. 191]; see 183-4). And he takes the is-ought gap to be due to the special motivational force of moral judgments, a force conclusions of reason lack (187).
37. see Charlotte Brown, "Is Hume an Internalist?," Journal of the History of Philosophy 26 (1988): 69-87.
38. By Rachael M. Kydd, Reason and Conduct in Hume's Treatise (London: Oxford University Press, 1946), 103-10
39. Locke and Clarke, whose view was that moral conclusions could be demonstrated simply by comparison of ideas: that, as Locke was "bold to think... Morality is capable of Demonstration, as well as Mathematicks" (Essay, III xi 16).
40. see Margaret Wilson, "Superadded Properties: The Limits of Mechanism in Locke," in her Ideas and Mechanism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), 196-208.
41. As we shall see in Section VI, elements of it can be found in Philippa Foot's "Hume on Moral Judgement," in Virtues and Vices (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), 74-80. But she does not herself assemble these elements.
42. see the note to section 1 of the first Enquiry, in editions E and F [Essays Moral, Political and Literary, ed. Grene and Grose, 2: 10])
43. Francis Hutcheson, Illustrations on the Moral Sense, ed. Bernard Peach [Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1971], 163-4
44. Hume appeals to the comparison explicitly not only in the matter-of-fact paragraph, but also in his essay "The Sceptic" (quoted in note 22, above) and in a note that was appended to section 1 of the Enquiry concerning Human Understanding in editions E and F (see preceding note)
45. A dissent here comes from Simon Blackburn, "Hume on the Mezzanine Level," Hume Studies 19 (1993), who claims (273) "not only that Hume did not rely on the Comparison [with secondary qualities] in his ethics, but that he could not possibly have done so, for reasons lying deep within his philosophy.
46. "Hume on Causation," in David Hume: a Symposium, ed. D. F. Pears (London: Macmillan, 1963), 55-66.
47. Warnock, "Hume on Causation," 58.
48. see Kenneth Winkler, "The New Hume," The Philosophical Review 100 (1991): 541-79.
49. Spectator 413, in The Spectator 3: 545.
50. Inquiry, 47.
51. Inquiry, 99-105, 302-3.
52. Outside the Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, which, except for one brief reference below, I put to one side; I find it too difficult in them to tell what Hume's view is on the issues I am considering here.
53. A Review of the Principal Questions in Morals, ed. D. D. Raphael [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1948], 14
54. For example, Harrison, 63-6
55. Colin McGinn, The Subjective View (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), 145-55
56. Simon Blackburn, "Errors and the Phenomenology of Value," in Morality and Objectivity, ed. Ted Honderich (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985), 13-15.
57. There is an enormous literature on this topic. Seminal contributions include Thomas Nagel, "What is it Like to be a Bat?" The Philosophical Review 83 (1974): 435-50
58. Sydney Shoemaker, "Functionalism and Qualia," Philosophical Studies 27 (1975): 291-315
59. N. J. Block, "Troubles with Functionalism," in Perception and Cognition, Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, ed. C. W. Savage (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1978), vol. 9, 261-325.
60. All of these articles are reprinted in Readings in Philosophy of Psychology, ed. Ned Block (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980), vol. 1.
61. Philippa Foot, "Hume on Moral Judgement," 76.
62. such as Páll Árdal Passion and Value in Hume's Treatise, 2nd ed. [Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1989]
63. see Donald Ainslie, "Scepticism About Persons in Book II of Hume's Treatise," Journal of the History of Philosophy 37 (1999): 469-92, on 472-6.
64. See for example Roderick Firth, "Ethical Absolutism and the Ideal Observer," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 12 (1952): 317-45
65. Gilbert Harman, The Nature of Morality (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), 41-52.
66. See Block, "Troubles with Functionalism," in Readings in Philosophy of Psychology, 1: 271-2, for the distinction between analytic functionalism (just "functionalism," in Block's terms) and psychofunctionalism.
67. Price, A Review of the Principal Questions in Morals
68. W. D. Ross, The Right and the Good (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1930).
69. Stephen Darwall's "Motive and Obligation in Hume's Ethics," Noûs 27 (1993): 415-48
70. see also his The British Moralists and the Internal 'Ought' (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 284-318.
71. D. M. Armstrong, Belief, Truth and Knowledge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), 71. Indeed, one might note that all of the expressions Hume uses to pick out, however inadequately, the peculiar feeling or manner of conception that constitutes belief-"a superior force, or vivacity, or solidity, or firmness, or steadiness"-are terms replete with causal connotations. At T 119, moreover, he is clear that the distinctive influence of belief is not just on our actions but on our passions.
72. Anthony Kenny, Action, Emotion and Will (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963), 22-5, 192-3
73. P. L. Gardiner, "Hume's Theory of the Passions," in David Hume: a Symposium, ed. D. F. Pears (London: MacMillan, 1963), 37-8.
74. Foot applauds Gardiner's complaint in the passage quoted above, from "Hume on Moral Judgement," 76. J. R. S. Wilson, Emotion and Object (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972), develops a causal account of the emotions in opposition to Kenny, but agrees that the connection of pride with the idea of self is not a contingent fact; see 43-4.
75. One reason to wish for more elaboration is that, as Kenny points out (Action, Emotion and Will, 23-4) this latter passage can be read (and, by him, is read) as affirming the ultimate contingency of the connection, which depends only on "the primary constitution of the mind." I am required to think that this may be right; compare my interpretation, in Section IV, of Hume's assignment of the behavior of our moral sentiments to the "the constitution of our nature" (T 470, in the matter-of-fact paragraph) or to the "original fabric and formation of the human mind" (EPM 172).