Does Hume Underestimate Reason Essay Research Paper

Does Hume Underestimate Reason Essay, Research Paper

Does Hume underestimate the importance of reason in moral thinking.

reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions.

Hume’s moral theory arises out of his belief that reason alone can never cause action. Action is caused by desires or feelings and as reason alone can never cause action, morality is rooted in our feelings. It is necessary, therefore, to look at precisely what arguments he presents in favour of his view of reason with regard to moral thinking, whilst also examining the idea that if reason is not the sole arbiter of moral thinking, then what is.

Ethics arouses a great deal of interest in almost all spheres of life; from deciding whether two fourteen-year-old boys are culpable for killing a child, to deciding whether human cloning should be allowed, to deciding whether or not to hand in a wallet that was found on the street. Moreover, it is a universal concept, found in some form or another in every culture, subculture, and even counterculture (some suggest a code in which there is honour among thieves). Furthermore, it is a highly controversial subject, and its theoretical treatment is historic. In some moral systems, for example rationalism, reasoned action is thought to be the epitome of moral behavior, if morality is not to become purely subjective . Hume argues the contrary. However, before Hume s viewpoint, that morality cannot be found solely through reason, can be examined, it might be prudent to look at his ideas about morals

With regard to morality, Hume was most concerned with people s actions, since he believed that their actions causally followed from their sentiments and desires. In this way, reason is incapable of motivating an action. Rather, Hume would say that it is our sentiment that ultimately drives our actions. According to Hume, reason cannot fuel an action and therefore cannot motivate it. In order to prove this against the idea of rationalism, Hume suggests firstly, that those who suggest that morality conforms to reason, and certain unchanging relations between things, are in turn suggesting that morality can be traced back merely to ideas and their relations. Thus, Hume argues that rationalists suggest that reason alone enables us to make moral distinctions. Moreover, Hume then goes on to make a number of arguments suggesting that reason alone is not adequate to make moral judgments. It may be prudent, therefore to briefly summarise these arguments..

Firstly, Hume argues that moral distinctions directly influence our behaviour, since they directly arouse our passions and make us act. Secondly, Hume argues that our passions, desires and actions are not representative of anything else; they are compleat in themselves , and as such, they cannot be either true or false. Further, reason is always and concerned with discovering what is true and what is false, and so cannot cause any actions, which as we have seen, can have no truth value. A further argument is that although some actions may be unreasonable in that they contradict previous actions and may be regarded as immoral, this is not because actions are caused by an immoral faculty of reason but merely by an error of fact; the sentiments decide a goal, and reason decides the means to that goal. In this case, the reason is faulty but not immoral. Similarly, Hume reproaches the rationalists on the grounds that the relation between the theft of an apple and of a car to their respective owners is the same, and as such rationalism does not admit of degrees. Still further, Hume argues that all competing moral theories move from is to ought by deduction, and yet, he argues, it is a entirely different relation. However, there is one more argument, which may require a more detailed examination.

In this argument, Hume makes a number of claims, yet one of the most important is that virtue and vice cannot be found in the subject, but begins as a feeling by an outside observer. In this way, when an act of murder is committed, then all that can be seen objectively, is the murderer s volitions, passions and such. However, it is vicious because of the feelings that it compels inside ourselves and the murderer. Moreover, the same relations occur between a spider which kills its mate as a wife who kills her husband, yet the former is neutral, the latter is wrong. Rationalism, cannot escape this, Hume argues.

On the other hand, this is all to take Hume at his word, and this would not be in the philosophical tradition. Firstly, against Hume s claim that the theft of an apple and the theft of a car are the same relation, I would argue that they do have the same relation to their owners as far as possession is concerned, and yet they do not as far as value is concerned. Each owner may put a value on their possessions such that a person might decide that they will get so much utility from eating an apple and so much from being able to travel wherever that person wants. This idea of utility is a rational procedure, and so we can reason that the theft of a car is more serious because the thief is stealing more utility from the owner. Furthermore, although is and ought are different relations, they are logically related. However, the precise view of morality does alter that relation, for example to take utilitarianism, then if it produces most utility for me to be the Prime Minister, then I