Philosophy and Ideas
1. Introduction
Hume’s sentimentalist morality famously downplays the role of reason. I will argue that while his approach works at explaining the natural phenomenon of morality, it fails to properly address the reason-based normative aspects of morality.
I will start by outlining Hume’s view on reason in morality and then will comment on the problematic psychological theory which underlies his view and then on the interpretation problems caused by the contrast between Hume’s quotable bold claims and contrasting more nuanced views. I will then look in turn at four propositions about reason that have been taken from Hume – that morality in general is not based on reason, that reason cannot motivate morality, that reason cannot choose ultimate ends and that reason cannot make moral judgements – in each case looking at what Hume has been quoted as saying, what his real view may have been and critically examining his position.
2. Hume on Reasons in Morality
In his writings on morality, Hume’s main aim was to give a naturalistic account of the phenomenon of moral practice. He saw morality as being part of human nature, based on our natural degrees of sympathy for those closer to us and to operate through instinctive moral sentiments which cause people to have a positive emotional response to virtuous behaviour by others and oneself and to respond with disapprobation to vicious acts. Hume concludes that acting virtuously tends to lead to beneficial outcomes in terms of individual and overall utility, and therefore that our moral sentiments are advantageous. [1]
Hume’s view of the role of reason in morality is drawn from his particular picture of the operation of the mind. For Hume, the mind works by perceptions, which are of two kinds, impressions which are the more vivid original perceptions, and ideas, which are faint copies or combinations of impressions. Impressions are impressions of sensation arising from the senses but also impressions of reflections being emotions and desires. Reasoning works with ideas as either demonstrative reasoning – finding abstract relations between ideas – or as probable reasoning – discovering causal relations between ideas.
From his psychological picture, Hume argues that morality cannot be based on “reason alone.” Reason is inert, and so passion is needed to choose ends, to provide motivation towards ends and to respond with moral emotions to the virtuous and vicious. The role of reason is limited to assisting in identifying ends and to finding means towards ends.[2]
3. Hume’s Psychological Theory
The starting point of all three books of the Treatise is Hume’s psychological picture of how the mind works. Hume claims that the mind consists solely of perceptions and that by introspection these can be clearly divided between impressions and ideas. Much of what Hume says about morality and reason is derived from his psychological theory. Notably, he claims that because reasoning only operates on ideas which are “weak copies” of impression, it is clear to us by introspection that “reason is inert.”
While Hume is for the most part gloriously emphatic about his psychological theory, there are also signs that he struggled to follow it consistently. He appreciates that we rate a similar bad act done nearby and far away as being equally bad, despite our having a stronger emotional reaction of disapprobation to the one that is close to us – Hume has to explain that here we take a “general view” of the disapprobation. Elsewhere, he is forced to admit that far from passions being clearly distinguishable from reasons, there are some weak motivating passions that are indistinguishable from reasons. Both these examples suggest a move away from the view that moral reactions are pure sensations to consider them as more conceptual. This reflects the general weakness of Hume’s empiricist approach seen throughout his philosophy in a failure to recognise that thinking involves concepts rather than perceptions.
Hume’s aim was to launch a “science of man”, but now that psychology has matured as a science, it is not surprising that his first efforts may seem crude. We therefore may want to eliminate the psychological part of his approach in interpreting his philosophy. But even after removing his psychology – which Hume had presented enthusiastically as the foundations for his approach – much of his view of morality survives. The psychology can be seen as a ladder which Hume used to reach his conclusions, but a ladder which we may now do without. As Anscombe comments:
although he reaches his conclusions – with which he is in love – by sophistical methods, his considerations consistently open up very deep and important philosophical problems.[3]
4. Bold Claims
Hume makes a number of bold and much quoted statements about the limited place of reason in morality. These can be seen as arising from Hume’s simplistic psychological model and particularly from construing “reason” as deductive reasoning.[4] But the implications of many of these radical statements are not consistently followed when Hume sets out his fuller position.
Most notoriously, Hume claims that:
Tis not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger[5]
This is a strong position which seems dangerously wrong. The underlying error here is that Hume has conflated a psychological and a normative claim. My psychology may be such that an itch motivates me more than anything, but there are normative reasons why other things may be (much) more important, considered against a normative standard such as the evaluation of what is best all things considered.
Parfit writes:
Given Hume’s greatness, Hume’s passage has done great damage, since Hume’s claims have seen to support the view that preferences cannot be unreasonable, or irrational[6]
But elsewhere Hume refers to preferences that we have reasons to have. For example, Hume says: “we ought to prefer that which is safest and most agreeable”[7] and he also argues that we should not be biased to the near.[8]
Parfit concludes:
There is often a difference between what people think they believe and what they really believe. That is especially likely in the case of those who have original ideas. [9]
Hume on reason in morality can be read at different levels:
5. Four Claims
While acknowledging that Hume can be read at different levels, I will now look in more detail at four claims about reason in morality that have rightly or wrongly been taken from Hume:
For each of these propositions I will set out Hume’s relevant bold claims and the indications in Hume’s text that suggest a subtler interpretation and will then consider the merit of Hume’s position or positions.
6. Morality in general is not based on reason
Hume makes some statements that could be read as saying that reason has no place in morality. For example, he says “The rules of morality therefore are not conclusions of our reason.”[10] But to take such statements in isolation would be to wilfully misread Hume as even in the Treatise his claim is only that “reason alone” is not enough for morality. In the Enquiry, Hume sets out the role of reason more thoroughly and notes that before applying the moral sentiments:
It is often necessary that much reasoning should precede, that nice distinctions be made, just conclusions drawn, distant comparisons formed, complicated relations examined, and general facts fixed and ascertained.[11]
But while recognising a role for reason, Hume is emphatic that the business or morality is more about sentiment than reason. What are the strengths and weaknesses of Hume’s sentimentalist approach? I will first look at what I consider its main strength – that it explains much of the phenomenon of morality – and then at what I regard as its main weakness – that it does not directly address the aspect of morality concerned with using reason in making choices.
Explaining the phenomenon of morality
By concentrating on morality as being based on instinctive sentiments, Hume is able to fulfil his main aim of giving a naturalistic explanation of morality.
Hume was right to point out that a lot of what goes on in moral behaviour is instinctive and happens without reasoning. He was ahead of his time in anticipating an approach which was later developed by Charles Darwin[12] and then by evolutionary ethicists. For example, Hume anticipates Reciprocal Altruism and Kin Altruism when he writes:
there is no such passions in human minds as the love of mankind, merely as such, independent of personal qualities, of services, or of relations to ourseit.[13]
Indeed, Hume could have gone further and considered the extent to which his “artificial virtues”, including within “justice” respect for agreements and for property, are an instinctive part of human nature. Keeping to agreements and respecting property are so basic to functioning human life that it would not be surprising if evolution had selected for these traits to be simply followed instinctively. Hume says that “the sense of justice and injustice is not deriv’d from nature, but arises artificially, tho’ necessarily from education and human conventions”[14] and sets out at length how this occurs. Research suggests[15] that reciprocal altruism is a basic human feature, so perhaps even Hume’s artificial virtues can be seen as more instinctive rather than reasoned.
Within sentimentalist approaches, a distinctive feature of Hume’s position is his view that the moral sentiments operate by reacting to virtuous and vicious character. This seems to be too narrow as there are other situations where we have a moral sentimental reaction. I see beautiful countryside threatened by development and think that it must be protected: this is a situation where no obvious agent is involved but I have a motivating moral reaction. Moral sentiments seem to be broader than described by Hume and are applied to actions and situations as well as to character.
Morality as choice
Hume’s sentimentalist theory may describe a central part of morality, but it does not cover all aspects. While part of our moral practice may be instinctive and based on emotions, morality also includes more conscious elements. Morality includes the business of making choices between alternative courses of action, which will involve assessing reasons for and against. Such assessments seem to be inherently about reasoning rather than emotion.
Further, Hume’s approach is conservative as it provides little room to challenge conventional moral views. If common sentiments show that a man’s obligation to be chaste is ”proportionately weaker”[16] than a woman’s, then that is to be accepted without argument. Hume explains how morality works and is pleased to find that morality as a general system is justified by its good effects. But he does not address the normative questions of what morality should be, or what we should do when moral sentiments conflict.
Interim conclusion
The Humean view that morality is based more on sentiments than reason reflects Hume’s concentration on the aspects of morality which are instinctive rather than those which inherently involve reasoning. It is better at explaining the natural phenomenon of morality than at addressing morality as a normative endeavour.
7. Reason cannot motivate moral action
Hume is consistent and emphatic in his view that reason alone cannot motivate moral action. This comes initially from his psychological theory that reason is “inactive” and “utterly impotent” and “has no influence on our passions and actions”[17] so that morality must get its motivation from sentiments. But he also introduces a more enduring second point, that it is only because morality motivates that it is useful:
Extinguish all warm feelings … and morality is no longer a practical study, nor has any tendency to regulate our lives and actions. [18]
Hume’s second point, the view that motivational power is an essential feature of morality, has historically been very influential and continues to be so. It has been an underlying assumption for Humean accounts of morality which work from the starting point of motivating desires.
But it has also been argued strongly that this approach is mistaken. Phillipa Foot in (Foot 2001) described how she had previously assumed “Hume’s practicality requirement” but had come to realise that this is “based on a mistake.” Her later view is that a reasoned moral judgement is complete without needing an additional conative element. She considers that acting on reasons is a basic mode of operation for human beings, but that the concept of moral judgement should be kept distinct from the concept of moral action as between the two can come ignorance, weakness of will and shamelessness.
Opponents of Hume’s practicality requirement stress the distinction to be made between “normative reasons” and “motivating reasons.”[19] Normative reasons are “considerations that count in favour of” an action, reasons that provide justification for an action relative to a norm. By contrast, motivating reasons are those reasons that may cause the agent to act. It is claimed that Hume and his followers conflate the two kinds of reasons.
Parfit notes the distinction between these two kinds of reasons and argues that we should use a “purely normative” conception in both practical reasoning and in morality to properly address discussions of what matters.[20] He considers that confusions arise for those who take the Humean assumption that morality is inherently motivating.
Parfit takes the case of someone who would gain many years of good life by taking a medicine but has no motivation to do so: the person has a normative reason to take the medicine but no motivating reason. A sophisticated Humean may suggest that if motivational reasoning was ideally corrected this would produce an appropriate reason to take the medicine, but Parfit considers that this approach may not work and at best confuses a straightforward matter for pure normativity.
Blackburn[21] argues that we should work by taking moral concepts as inherently- motivating as (1) otherwise we have to introduce an extra step in providing for motivation and as (2) a concept of the purely normative is unnecessarily abstract. My response to this is that pure normativity is a distinct abstract concept which needs to be respected, which we use and can manage, and which will lead to confusions if ignored.
My conclusion is that we should use purely normative moral concepts and drop Hume’s view that moral concepts include motivation. We can use reason to evaluate what to do, separately from the further consideration of motivation. Yet, what we judge is best to do will bear on what we actually do, as we are creatures that work with and respond to reasons.
8. Reason cannot choose ultimate ends
Hume is associated with the very influential view that ends are a matter of sentiment rather than reason so that reasoning only has an instrumental role. Explicitly, he says:
The ultimate ends of human action can never, in any case, be accounted for by reason, but recommend themselves entirely to the sentiments and affections of mankind, without any dependence on the rational faculties.[22]
But this statement is balder than Hume’s considered position which is that “reason alone”[23] cannot chose ends and that reason has a role when it:
excites a passion by informing us of the existence of something which is a proper object of it[24]
Whatever Hume’s precise view, the idea that reason does not apply to ends has historically and continues to be very influential. It underlies a view that we should refrain from “making value judgements” and a methodological approach in economics and other social sciences of taking revealed preferences as given. But is it justified?
It is notable that in practice ultimate ends can always or almost always be a subject of reasoned discussion. We can debate the place of happiness and obligations among ends and review the status of claimed divine commands. Choosing ends doesn’t seem to be a matter of taste – and even with taste we can fluently discuss the merit of art and food. It may be that at a deep level ultimate ends are linked to human needs, but even if this is the case reason will have a role to choose more specific ends. If someone is dogmatic and will not “listen to reason” then the potential to use reason to consider ultimate ends will pass him by, but this does not invalidate the point that ultimate ends are capable of being the subject of reasoning. The view that reason cannot be applied to ultimate ends seems wrong.
Hume may have had in mind a view that ultimate ends need to motivate and so, on his psychological model, need to be supported by sentiment rather than reason. This view is appealing and may be in line with what actually happens – that we choose our ultimate ends mainly be sentiment (or perhaps by instinct and habit) with reason having a more minor role. We may largely choose our ultimate ends by what motivates us, but it is a separate normative question “what ultimate ends would it be best to choose.”
This distinction between motivating and normative reasons for choosing ultimate ends can be illustrated by adapting Hume’s own preference for the wordly over the monkish virtues.[25] My motivation may be to take my ultimate end as living a monkish life in service to a god. But grant that the god does not exist and then from a normative external perspective I am choosing badly, and it would be better if I took my ultimate end to be to live a virtuous secular life. My motivations may largely explain what I chose as my ultimate ends, but these ends may always be challenged by reasoning from a normative perspective.
While Hume’s stated view overlooks the normative perspective, in practice he uses it widely in recommending certain ultimate ends, for example in his claim that monkish “austerities and self-denials” are “useless.”[26]
9. Reason cannot make moral judgements
In Hume’s picture of morality, a central role is played by moral approbation – our reactions to virtuous and vicious character and actions of others and ourselves. Hume says that these reactions are purely a matter of sentiment rather than reason. He says that moral approbation is “the object of feeling, not of reason. It lies in yourself, not in the object.”[27]
He also says:
When you pronounce any action of character to be vicious you mean nothing, but from the constitution of your nature you have a feeling or sentiment of blame from the contemplation of it.[28]
For Hume, a moral approbation is a recognisably distinct kind of mental perception, a positive approbation being a “pleasure” or a “satisfaction” and a disapprobation being a feeling of “uneasiness”, “blame” or “pain.” He says:
The distinguishing impressions, by which moral good or evil is known, are nothing but particular pains or pleasures[29]
However, Hume recognises that our sentimental moral reactions will vary depending on our mood and on our distance from and our relation to the moral actor. We therefore need to “fix on some steady and general point of view”[30] to get a corrected moral reaction, similarly to how we correct our sensual perceptions for our point of view. But with a distinction between our sentimental reaction and our corrected moral judgement, even on Hume’s own account our moral judgements involve an element of interpretation and so are a matter of reason as well as sentiment.
That said, how good is Hume’s sentimentalist picture of how we make moral judgements? Its strength is that it explains much of how we in practice interact with others through our largely emotional reactions of approval and disapproval to what we see others do. Hume was ahead of his time in appreciating that the reactive attitudes are a deep part of human nature and play a vital role in coordinating societies and facilitating good outcomes.
But moral judgements are about more than responding to character with feelings of pleasure and disgust. Commonly moral judgements are arrived at by considering reasons and are justified relative to reason. And moral judgements can be made in situations where sentiment is not obviously involved such as in the decisions of organisations.
10. Conclusion
I have outlined Hume’s view of reason in ethics and commented on his problematic underlying psychological theory and the unrepresentativeness of his bold claims. I then looked critically at four major propositions about reason in ethics that have been taken from Hume. My overall conclusion is that although Hume’s sentimentalist ethics largely succeeds in providing a naturalistic explanation of the phenomenon of morality, its weakness is that it does not directly address the aspects of morality which concern using reason to choose what to do.
Notes
[1] (Hume 1738, Page 318)
[2] (Hume 1738, Page 238)
[3] (Anscombe 1958)
[4] (Cohon 2008)
[5] (Hume 1738, Page 215)
[6] (Parfit 2011, Volume II, Page 455)
[7] (Hume 1738, Page 271)
[8] (Hume 1738, Page 538)
[9] (Parfit 2011, Volume II, Page 457)
[10] (Hume 1738, Page 237)
[11] (Hume 1751, Page 172)
[12] (Darwin 1871)
[13] (Hume 1738, Page 249)
[14] (Hume 1738, Page 250)
[15] (Dawkins 1976, Chapter 10)
[16] (Hume 1738, Page 295)
[17] (Hume 1738, Page 457)
[18] (Hume 1751, Page 172)
[19] (Alvarez 2010)
[20] (Parfit 2011, Chapter 30)
[21] (Blackburn 1998)
[22] (Hume 1751, Page 293)
[23] (Hume 1738, Page 237)
[24] (Hume 1738, Page 459)
[25] (Hume 1751, Page 280)
[26] (Hume 1751, Page 280)
[27] (Hume 1738, Page 243)
[28] (Hume 1738, Page 243)
[29] (Hume 1738, Page 244)
[30] (Hume 1738, Page 299)
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—. 1984. Reasons and Persons. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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