Hume’s Ethics: A Comprehensive Overview
11 Key Features of Humean Ethics
- Reason alone, concerned with truth and falsity, cannot motivate action.
- Passions can be either violent or calm.
- Sympathy for others is a natural instinct, though self-love often predominates. This instinct plays a significant role in moral and political attitudes.
- Moral rules influence reason but do not originate from it.
- Moral judgments are not factual descriptions.
- Vice and virtue are perceptions of the mind.
- Judging actions as virtuous or vicious reflects an evaluation of character.
- Approval arises from actions or qualities perceived as inherently pleasurable.
- Approval or disapproval stems from our assessment of pleasure or pain-producing qualities.
- An action is morally good only if a motive exists in human nature to produce it, separate from moral sense.
- The sense of justice, upon which moral and political obligation depend, arises from impressions based on human convention.
The Naturalistic Fallacy
Hume criticized the naturalistic fallacy: deriving an “ought” from an “is.” The origin of moral ideas lies within human nature. Attraction or disapproval towards an action is a feeling, not a rational judgment. Hume believed duty doesn’t merit special action; good acts can arise from generosity or kindness. True moral feeling is natural and disinterested, not imperative. Attributing the origin of moral ideas to God is problematic, as it implies humans never err morally.
Critique of Substance
Hume maintained that knowledge of facts comes from belief. Habit and custom explain causality and the concept of substance. We can’t move from an impression to something never experienced. Belief in substance arises from errors in associating ideas. Hume criticized the idea of innate ideas and substance as causes, arguing for reliance on senses despite their potential for skepticism. Belief in substance stems from psychological mechanisms that perceive constancy, not logical necessity.
A Critical Theory of Causality
Hume viewed causal relationships as law-like but clarified this as statistical rather than logically necessary. He didn’t differentiate between mediate and final causality, ultimately reducing causality to contiguity.
Emotivism as a Moral Proposal
Hume’s ethical theory is often summarized as emotivism: moral ideas originate from emotion, lacking rational justification. Morality is based on sentiment, not reason. As a liberal, Hume valued tolerance in human relations. He distinguished between propositions of ideas and matters of fact based on experience. Moral judgments fall into neither category.
Hume sought an ethics grounded in observation, like Newtonian physics. Moral value depends on the feelings evoked in the subject. “Good” actions or individuals attract us due to perceived friendliness. This “sympathy” is instinctive and psychological.
Ethics lacks “real value” and is unrelated to logical inference. Hume’s ethics is a relativistic emotivism with analytical and psychological elements, incorporating a realistic assessment of consequences, approaching utilitarianism.