A Treatise of Human Nature (1738–40) ist ein Buch des schottischen Philosophen David Hume, das von vielen als Humes wichtigstes Werk und eines der einflussreichsten Werke in der Geschichte der Philosophie angesehen wird. [1] Die Treatise ist eine klassische Aussage des philosophischen Empirismus, der Skepsis und des Naturalismus. In der Einleitung stellt Hume die Idee vor, alle Wissenschaft und Philosophie auf eine neuartige Grundlage zu stellen: eine empirische Untersuchung der menschlichen Natur. Beeindruckt von Isaac Newtons Errungenschaften in den Naturwissenschaften, versuchte Hume, dieselbe experimentelle Denkmethode in das Studium der Humanpsychologie einzuführen, um das "Ausmaß und die Kraft des menschlichen Verstehens" zu entdecken. Gegen die philosophischen Rationalisten argumentiert Hume, dass die Leidenschaft eher als die Vernunft das menschliche Verhalten bestimmt. Er führt das berühmte Problem der Induktion ein und argumentiert, dass das induktive Denken und unsere Überzeugungen hinsichtlich Ursache und Wirkung nicht durch Gründe gerechtfertigt werden können. Unser Glaube an Induktion und Kausalität ist vielmehr das Ergebnis von Gewohnheiten und Gewohnheiten. Hume verteidigt einen sentimentalistischen Bericht über Moral und argumentiert, dass Ethik eher auf Gefühl und Leidenschaft als auf Vernunft basiert, und erklärte bekanntlich, dass "Vernunft ist und nur der Sklave der Leidenschaften sein sollte". Hume bietet auch eine skeptische Theorie der persönlichen Identität und einen kompatibilistischen Bericht über den freien Willen.
Zeitgenössische Philosophen haben über Hume geschrieben, dass "niemand die Geschichte der Philosophie tiefer oder beunruhigender beeinflusst hat", [2] und dass Humes Treatise "das Gründungsdokument der kognitiven Wissenschaft" [3] und der "ist". wichtigste philosophische Arbeit in englischer Sprache. " Zu dieser Zeit stimmte die britische Öffentlichkeit jedoch nicht zu, und schließlich stimmte Hume selbst zu und überarbeitete das Material in Inquiry of Human Understanding (1748) und Inquiry zu den Prinzipien von Moral (1751). In der Einführung des Autors zu dem ersten schrieb Hume:
„Die meisten der in diesem Band enthaltenen Prinzipien und Überlegungen wurden in einem Werk in drei Bänden mit dem Titel A Treatise of Human Nature veröffentlicht: ein Werk, das der Autor vor seinem Austritt aus dem College geplant hatte und das er schrieb und schrieb nicht lange danach veröffentlicht. Ohne Erfolg zu haben, war er jedoch bewusst, dass er zu früh in die Presse gegangen war, und er hat das Ganze in den folgenden Abschnitten neu formuliert, wobei einige Nachlässigkeiten in seinen früheren Begründungen und mehr im Ausdruck, so hofft er, korrigiert werden . Mehrere Autoren, die die Philosophie des Autors mit Antworten geehrt haben, haben jedoch darauf geachtet, alle ihre Batterien gegen diese jugendliche Arbeit zu richten, die der Autor nie anerkannt hat, und haben sich jeden Vorteil verschafft, um die Vorteile zu gewinnen, die sie sich darüber vorstellten : Eine Praxis, die allen Regeln der Offenheit und des fairen Handels zuwiderläuft, und ein starkes Beispiel jener polemischen Artefakte, für die ein bigotter Eifer sich für befugt hält. Von nun an wünscht der Autor, dass die folgenden Stücke allein als seine philosophischen Gefühle und Prinzipien enthaltend betrachtet werden können. “
Zu Eine Untersuchung zu den Grundsätzen der Moral sagte Hume: "Von all meinen Schriften, historischen, philosophischen oder literarischen, unvergleichlich die besten." [4]
Inhalt edit ]
Einleitung [ edit ]
Humes Einführung stellt die Idee vor, die gesamte Wissenschaft und Philosophie auf eine neuartige Grundlage zu stellen: eine empirische Untersuchung der menschlichen Psychologie. Er beginnt mit der Anerkennung "dieses gemeinsamen Vorurteils gegen metaphysische Vernunft [i.e., any complicated and difficult argumentation]", eines Vorurteils, das als Reaktion auf "den gegenwärtigen unvollkommenen Zustand der Wissenschaften" (einschließlich der endlosen wissenschaftlichen Streitigkeiten und des übermäßigen Einflusses der "Beredsamkeit" auf die Vernunft) gebildet wurde. Aber da die Wahrheit "sehr tief und abstrus" liegen muss, "wo die" größten Genies "sie nicht gefunden haben, ist eine sorgfältige Argumentation dennoch erforderlich. Alle Wissenschaften, so Hume weiter, hängen letztendlich von "der Wissenschaft des Menschen" ab: Wissen über das Ausmaß und die Kraft des menschlichen Verstehens, ... die Natur der Ideen, die wir verwenden, und ... die Vorgänge, die wir in unseren Überlegungen ausführen. " ist notwendig, um echte intellektuelle Fortschritte zu erzielen. So hofft Hume, "die Prinzipien der menschlichen Natur zu erklären", "schlägt damit [ing] ein komplettes System der Wissenschaften vor, das auf einem fast völlig neuen Fundament aufgebaut ist und das einzige, auf dem sie mit jeder Sicherheit aufstehen können". Eine a priori Psychologie wäre jedoch aussichtslos: Die Wissenschaft vom Menschen muss mit den experimentellen Methoden der Naturwissenschaften verfolgt werden. Dies bedeutet, dass wir uns mit gut bestätigten empirischen Verallgemeinerungen begnügen müssen, die "die endgültigen ursprünglichen Qualitäten der menschlichen Natur" nicht kennen. Und ohne kontrollierte Experimente müssen wir unsere Experimente in dieser Wissenschaft durch eine vorsichtige Beobachtung des menschlichen Lebens aufgreifen und sie so nehmen, wie sie im gemeinsamen Lauf der Welt erscheinen, durch das Verhalten von Männern in Gesellschaft, in Angelegenheiten und in ihren Freuden. "
Buch 1: Des Verständnisses [ edit ]
Teil 1: Von Ideen, ihrer Herkunft, Zusammensetzung, Verbindung, Abstraktion usw. [ bearbeiten ]
Hume argumentiert, dass jede einfache Idee aus einem einfachen Eindruck abgeleitet wird, sodass alle unsere Ideen letztendlich aus der Erfahrung stammen: Hume akzeptiert den Konzept-Empirismus und lehnt die rein intellektuellen und angeborenen Ideen der rationalistischen Philosophie ab. Humes Doktrin unterscheidet zwei wichtige Unterscheidungen: zwischen Eindrücken (die erzwungenen Eindrücke der Erfahrung, "all unseren Empfindungen, Leidenschaften und Emotionen") und Ideen (den schwachen Wahrnehmungen, die in "Denken und Denken" zu finden sind) und zwischen komplexen Wahrnehmungen (was möglich ist) in einfachere Teile unterschieden werden) und einfache Wahrnehmungen (was nicht möglich ist). Er räumt ein, dass unsere komplexen Ideen möglicherweise keinem direkten Erlebnis entsprechen (z. B. können wir die komplexe Idee einer himmlischen Stadt bilden). Jede einfache Idee (z. B. von der Farbe Rot) entspricht direkt einem einfachen Eindruck, der ihr ähnelt - und diese regelmäßige Entsprechung legt nahe, dass beide kausal miteinander verbunden sind. Da die einfachen Eindrücke den einfachen Vorstellungen vorstehen und denen ohne funktionierende Sinne (z. B. Blindheit) die entsprechenden Vorstellungen fehlen, kommt Hume zu dem Schluss, dass einfache Vorstellungen aus einfachen Eindrücken abgeleitet werden müssen. Notorisch betrachtet Hume den "fehlenden Blauton" als Gegenbeispiel.
| Perzeptionen in Abhandlung 1.1 | |||||||||||||||||||||
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| In Teil 1 von Buch 1 unterteilt Hume die mentalen Wahrnehmungen in verschiedene Kategorien. Die einfache / komplexe Unterscheidung, die für Wahrnehmungen in allen Kategorien gelten kann, ist nicht abgebildet. |
Bei einer kurzen Untersuchung der Eindrücke unterscheidet Hume dann zwischen Empfindungseindrücken (gefunden in der Sinneserfahrung) und Reflexionseindrücken (hauptsächlich in emotionalen Erlebnissen), um nur eine weitere Diskussion für die Behandlung der Leidenschaften in Buch 2 zu berücksichtigen. Zurück zu den Ideen, findet Hume zwei wesentliche Unterschiede zwischen den Vorstellungen der Erinnerung und den Vorstellungen der Imagination: Die ersteren sind kraftvoller als die letzteren, und während die Erinnerung die "Ordnung und Position" der ursprünglichen Eindrücke beibehält, ist die Vorstellungskraft frei trennen Sie alle einfachen Ideen in neue komplexe Ideen. Trotz dieser Freiheit folgt die Phantasie dennoch allgemeinen psychologischen Prinzipien, wenn sie von einer Idee zur anderen übergeht: Dies ist die "Assoziation von Ideen". Hier findet Hume drei "natürliche Beziehungen", die die Phantasie leiten: Ähnlichkeit, Angrenzung und Verursachung. Die Vorstellungskraft bleibt jedoch frei, um die Ideen entlang einer der sieben "philosophischen Beziehungen" zu vergleichen: Ähnlichkeit, Identität, Raum / Zeit, Quantität / Anzahl, Qualität / Grad, Widerspruch und Verursachung. Hume beendet diese Diskussion über komplexe Ideen mit einem skeptischen Bericht über unsere Vorstellungen von Substanzen und Modi: Obwohl beide nichts anderes als Sammlungen von einfachen Ideen sind, die durch die Vorstellungskraft miteinander verbunden werden, beinhaltet die Idee einer Substanz auch das Zuordnen eines fabrizierten "unbekannten" etwas in dem [the particular qualities] dazugehören soll, "oder aber einige Anknüpfungs- oder Kausalitätsbeziehungen, die die Qualitäten miteinander verbinden und dazu bringen, neue Qualitäten zu erhalten, falls sie entdeckt werden.
Hume beendet Teil 1, indem er (im Anschluss an Berkeley) argumentiert, dass sogenannte "abstrakte Ideen" tatsächlich nur bestimmte, allgemein verwendete Ideen sind. Erstens macht er drei Punkte gegen unbestimmte Vorstellungen von Quantität oder Qualität. Er besteht darauf, dass es nicht möglich ist, die Länge einer Linie von der Linie selbst zu unterscheiden, die endgültige Ableitung aller Ideen von vollständig bestimmten Eindrücken und die Unmöglichkeit unbestimmter Objekte in der Realität und damit auch in der Idee. Zweitens gibt er einen positiven Bericht darüber, wie abstraktes Denken tatsächlich funktioniert: Wenn wir gewöhnt sind, denselben Begriff für eine Reihe ähnlicher Elemente zu verwenden, wird das Anhören dieses allgemeinen Begriffs eine bestimmte Idee aufrufen und den damit verbundenen Brauch aktivieren, der die Vorstellungskraft auslöst alle ähnlichen Ideen bei Bedarf abrufen. Der allgemeine Begriff "Dreieck" ruft also die Idee eines bestimmten Dreiecks auf und aktiviert den Brauch, der die Phantasie anlegt, um andere Ideen von bestimmten Dreiecken aufzurufen. Schließlich verwendet Hume diese Darstellung, um sogenannte "Unterscheidungen der Vernunft" zu erklären (z. B. die Bewegung eines Körpers vom Körper selbst zu unterscheiden). Obwohl solche Unterscheidungen absolut unmöglich sind, argumentiert Hume, erreichen wir dieselbe Wirkung, indem wir die verschiedenen Punkte der Ähnlichkeit zwischen verschiedenen Objekten feststellen.
Teil 2: Von den Ideen von Raum und Zeit [ edit ]
Humes "System über Raum und Zeit" weist zwei Hauptlehren auf: die -Elektrine dass Raum und Zeit nicht unendlich teilbar sind, und die -Lehre, wonach Raum und Zeit nicht von Objekten getrennt werden können. Hume beginnt mit dem Argument, dass, da "die Fähigkeit des Geistes begrenzt ist", unsere Vorstellungskraft und unsere Sinne letztendlich ein Minimum erreichen müssen: Ideen und Eindrücke, die so klein sind, dass sie unteilbar sind. Und da nichts kleiner sein kann, sind unsere unteilbaren Ideen "adäquate Repräsentationen der kleinsten Teile der Erweiterung [spatial]". Unter Berücksichtigung dieser "klaren Ideen" führt Hume einige Argumente an, um zu zeigen, dass Raum und Zeit nicht unendlich teilbar sind, sondern aus unteilbaren Punkten zusammengesetzt sind. Seiner Ansicht nach wird die Idee des Raumes von unserer Sinneserfahrung (Anordnung farbiger oder greifbarer Punkte) und der Idee der Zeit von der wechselnden Abfolge unserer eigenen Wahrnehmungen abstrahiert. Dies bedeutet, dass Raum und Zeit nicht für sich alleine gedacht werden können, abgesehen von Objekten, die im Raum angeordnet sind oder sich über die Zeit verändern. Wir haben also keine Vorstellung von absolutem Raum und Zeit, so dass Vakuum und Zeit ohne Veränderung ausgeschlossen sind.
Hume verteidigt dann seine beiden Lehren gegen Einwände. In der Verteidigung seines Finitismus gegen mathematische Einwände argumentiert er, dass die Definitionen der Geometrie tatsächlich seinen Bericht stützen. Er argumentiert dann, dass wichtige geometrische Ideen (Gleichheit, Geradheit, Ebenheit) über die üblichen Beobachtungen, Korrekturmaße und die "imaginären" Normen, die wir von Natur aus anfällig sind, keinen präzisen und verarbeitbaren Standard haben. Daraus folgt, dass die Geometrie äußerst subtil ist Demonstrationen der unendlichen Teilbarkeit kann nicht vertraut werden. Als nächstes verteidigt Hume seine relationalistische Doktrin und untersucht kritisch die angebliche Idee eines Vakuums. Keine solche Idee kann aus unserer Erfahrung von Dunkelheit oder Bewegung abgeleitet werden (allein oder begleitet von sichtbaren oder fühlbaren Objekten), aber tatsächlich erklärt diese Erfahrung, warum wir fälschlicherweise glauben, wir hätten die Idee: Nach Hume verwechseln wir die Idee mit zwei entfernte Objekte, die durch andere sichtbare oder fühlbare Objekte getrennt sind, mit der sehr ähnlichen Vorstellung von zwei Objekten, die durch eine unsichtbare und nicht greifbare Entfernung voneinander getrennt sind. Mit dieser Diagnose in der Hand antwortet er auf drei Einwände aus dem Vakuumlager - und fügte eine skeptische Bemerkung hinzu, dass "seine Absicht niemals darin bestand, in die Natur von Körpern einzudringen oder die geheimen Ursachen ihrer Operationen zu erklären", sondern nur "zu erklären" das Wesen und die Ursachen unserer Wahrnehmungen oder Eindrücke und Ideen ".
Im letzten Abschnitt berücksichtigt Hume unsere Vorstellungen von Existenz und äußerer Existenz. Zunächst argumentiert er, dass es keinen bestimmten Eindruck gibt, aus dem die Vorstellung von der Existenz abgeleitet werden kann. Stattdessen ist diese Idee nichts anderes als die Idee eines Objekts, so dass das Denken an etwas und das Denken als existent dasselbe sind. Als Nächstes argumentiert er, dass wir uns nichts vorstellen können, was über unsere eigenen Wahrnehmungen hinausgeht. Unsere Vorstellung von der Existenz äußerer Objekte ist daher höchstens eine "relative Vorstellung".
Teil 3: Wissen und Wahrscheinlichkeit [ edit ]
Abschnitte 1–3 [ edit
Hume erinnert sich an die sieben philosophischen Beziehungen und teilt sie in zwei Klassen auf: vier, die uns "Wissen und Gewissheit" geben können, und drei, die es nicht können. (Diese Abteilung erscheint in der ersten -Umfrage von Hume als "Relations of Ideas" bzw. "fact of fact".) Was die vier Relationen angeht, so können alle durch die Intuition Wissen vermitteln : sofortiges Erkennen einer Beziehung (z. B. eine Idee ist heller als eine andere). Aber mit einem der vier "Anteile in Menge oder Zahl" erreichen wir gewöhnlich Wissen durch Demonstration von : Schrittweises Schlußfolgern (z. B. Beweise in der Geometrie). Hume macht zwei Bemerkungen zum demonstrativen Argumentieren in der Mathematik: Diese Geometrie ist nicht so präzise wie die Algebra (obwohl sie im Allgemeinen noch zuverlässig ist), und dass mathematische Ideen nicht "spirituelle und verfeinerte Wahrnehmungen" sind, sondern stattdessen von Eindrücken kopiert werden.
| Immediate | Inferential | |
|---|---|---|
| Beziehungen von Ideen | Intuition | demonstrative Argumentation |
| Tatsachen | Wahrnehmung | wahrscheinliche Begründung |
Bei den anderen drei Beziehungen handelt es sich bei zwei von ihnen (Identität und Raum / Zeit) lediglich um eine unmittelbare sensorische Wahrnehmung (19459003) (19459006) (z. B. ein Objekt neben einem anderen). Aber mit der letzten Beziehung, der Verursachung, können wir über die Sinne hinausgehen, durch eine Form der Schlußfolgerung, die er als wahrscheinliche Begründung bezeichnet. Hier beginnt Hume mit seiner berühmten Untersuchung der Kausalität, angefangen mit der Frage Aus welchem Eindruck leiten wir unsere Vorstellung von der Kausalität ab? Alles, was man in einem einzigen Fall von Ursache und Wirkung beobachten kann, sind zwei Beziehungen: Verbindung in Raum und Priorität in der Zeit. Hume besteht jedoch darauf, dass unsere Vorstellung von Verursachung auch eine geheimnisvolle notwendige Verbindung beinhaltet, die die Ursache mit der Wirkung verbindet. "[S] topt kurz" durch dieses Problem, setzt Hume die Idee der notwendigen Verbindung in die Warteschleife und untersucht zwei verwandte Fragen: Warum akzeptieren wir die Maxime "was anfängt zu existieren, muss eine Ursache haben"? und Wie funktioniert der psychologische Prozess des wahrscheinlichen Denkens? In seiner ersten Frage macht Hume geltend, dass die Maxime nicht auf Intuition oder Demonstration (die Behauptung, dass wir mindestens von Objekten begreifen können, begründet sei ohne Ursache zu existieren) und widerlegt dann vier angebliche Demonstrationen der Maxime. Er kommt zu dem Schluss, dass unsere Annahme dieser Maxime irgendwie "aus Beobachtung und Erfahrung" gezogen werden muss, und wendet sich daher der zweiten Frage zu.
Abschnitte 4–8 [ edit ]
Hume entwickelt einen detaillierten dreistufigen psychologischen Bericht darüber, wie wahrscheinliche Argumentation funktioniert (d. H. Wie "das Urteil" wirkt). Erstens, unsere Sinne oder unser Gedächtnis müssen uns einen Gegenstand vorlegen: Unser Vertrauen in diese Wahrnehmung (unsere "Zustimmung") ist einfach eine Frage ihrer Kraft und Lebhaftigkeit. Zweitens müssen wir eine Schlussfolgerung machen, die sich von unserer Wahrnehmung dieses Objekts zu einer Vorstellung von einem anderen Objekt bewegt: Da sich die beiden Objekte vollkommen voneinander unterscheiden, muss diese Schlussfolgerung auf die Erfahrung der Vergangenheit zurückgehen, dass die beiden Objekte immer wieder zusammen betrachtet werden . (Diese "Konstante Konjunktion" wird zeitnah neben Angrenzung und Priorität in Humes immer noch weiterentwickelndem Bericht über unsere Kausalitätsidee abgelegt.) Aber was genau ist der Prozess, durch den wir auf Erfahrungen der Vergangenheit zurückgreifen und einen Rückschluss aus dem gegenwärtigen Objekt auf das Objekt ziehen anderes Objekt?
Hier entsteht das berühmte "Induktionsproblem". Hume argumentiert, dass diese alles entscheidende Folgerung nicht durch einen Argumentationsprozess begründet werden kann: weder demonstrative Argumentation noch wahrscheinliche Begründung. Keine demonstrative Begründung: Es kann nicht gezeigt werden, dass die Zukunft der Vergangenheit ähneln wird, denn "[w] kann sich zumindest eine Veränderung im Lauf der Natur vorstellen", bei der sich die Zukunft erheblich von der Vergangenheit unterscheidet. Und keine wahrscheinliche Argumentation: Diese Art von Argumentation stützt sich auf vergangene Erfahrungen, was bedeutet, dass voraussetzt, dass die Zukunft der Vergangenheit gleicht. Mit anderen Worten: Wenn wir erklären, wie wir auf vergangene Erfahrungen zurückgreifen, um kausale Schlüsse zu ziehen, können wir uns nicht auf eine Art von Argumentation berufen, die sich selbst auf vergangene Erfahrung stützt - das wäre ein Teufelskreis, der uns nirgendwohin führt.
Die Schlussfolgerung beruht nicht auf Argumenten, schlussfolgert Hume, sondern auf der Ideenvereinigung : Unsere angeborene psychologische Tendenz, sich entlang der drei "natürlichen Beziehungen" zu bewegen. Erinnern wir uns daran, dass eine der drei Ursachen Kausalität ist: Wenn also zwei Objekte in unserer Erfahrung ständig miteinander verbunden sind, führt die Beobachtung des einen natürlich dazu, eine Vorstellung vom anderen zu bilden. Dies bringt uns zur dritten und letzten Stufe von Humes Bericht, unserem Glauben von an dem anderen Objekt, während wir den Prozess des wahrscheinlichen Denkens abschließen (z. B. Wolfspuren sehen und zuversichtlich schließen, dass sie durch Wölfe verursacht wurden). Der einzige Unterschied zwischen einer geglaubten und einer lediglich konzipierten Idee besteht nach seinem Glauben aus der zusätzlichen Kraft und Lebhaftigkeit des Glaubens. Und es gibt eine allgemeine psychologische Tendenz für jede lebhafte Wahrnehmung, etwas von ihrer Kraft und Lebhaftigkeit auf jede andere Wahrnehmung zu übertragen, die von Natur aus damit verbunden ist (z. B. wenn man "das Bild eines abwesenden Freundes" sieht), wird unsere Vorstellung von dem Freund lebendiger natürliches Verhältnis der Ähnlichkeit). So führt die lebendige Wahrnehmung des einen Objektes in der wahrscheinlichen Begründung nicht nur dazu, eine bloße Vorstellung von dem anderen Objekt zu bilden, sondern belebt diese Idee zu einem vollwertigen Glauben. (Dies ist nur der einfachste Fall: Hume möchte in seinem Bericht auch mögliche Überlegungen ohne bewusste Reflexion sowie mögliche Überlegungen auf der Grundlage einer einzigen Beobachtung erklären.)
Abschnitte 9–13 [ edit ]
Hume pausiert jetzt für eine allgemeinere Untersuchung der Psychologie des Glaubens. Die beiden anderen natürlichen Beziehungen (Ähnlichkeit und Angrenzung) sind zu "schwach und unsicher", um selbst Glauben zu erzeugen, aber sie können immer noch einen bedeutenden Einfluss ausüben: Ihre Anwesenheit stärkt unsere vorbestehenden Überzeugungen und sie tendieren uns zu ähnlichen Ursachen Ihre Auswirkungen und ihre Abwesenheit erklären, warum so viele nicht an ein Leben nach dem Tod glauben. In ähnlicher Weise können andere Arten von kundenspezifischer Konditionierung (z. B. auswendiges Lernen, wiederholtes Lügen) starke Überzeugungen hervorrufen. Als nächstes betrachtet Hume den gegenseitigen Einfluss des Glaubens und der Leidenschaften und des Glaubens und der Imagination. Nur Überzeugungen können einen motivierenden Einfluss haben: Es ist die zusätzliche Kraft und Lebhaftigkeit eines Glaubens (im Gegensatz zu einer bloßen Idee), die ihn "fähig macht, auf den Willen und die Leidenschaften einzuwirken". Und wiederum neigen wir dazu, Überzeugungen zu bevorzugen, die unseren Leidenschaften schmeicheln. Ebenso muss eine Geschichte etwas realistisch oder vertraut sein, um die Vorstellungskraft zu erfreuen, und eine überaktive Vorstellungskraft kann zu wahnhaften Überzeugungen führen. Hume sieht diese vielfältigen Phänomene als Bestätigung seines Glaubens an "Kraft und Lebhaftigkeit". In der Tat halten wir uns "davon ab, unseren Glauben bei jeder Steigerung der Kraft und Lebendigkeit unserer Ideen zu verstärken", indem wir die bisherigen Erfahrungen nüchtern reflektieren und "allgemeine Regeln" für uns selbst bilden.
| Wahrscheinliche Begründung in Abhandlung 1.3 | ||||||||||||||||||
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| In Teil 3 von Buch 1 unterteilt Hume die wahrscheinlichen Argumente in verschiedene Kategorien. |
Hume untersucht dann die wahrscheinliche Argumentation unter Bedingungen empirischer Unsicherheit und unterscheidet "Beweise" (schlüssige empirische Beweise) von bloßen "Wahrscheinlichkeiten" (weniger als schlüssige empirische Beweise). Er beginnt mit einem kurzen Abschnitt über die "Wahrscheinlichkeit von Chancen" und führt das Beispiel eines sechsseitigen Würfels an, wobei vier Seiten in einer Richtung und zwei Seiten in einer anderen Richtung markiert sind: Hintergrund führt dazu, dass der Würfel mit einer Seitenlage landet Die Kraft dieser Erwartung wird jedoch gleichgültig auf die sechs Seiten aufgeteilt und schließlich gemäß den Markierungen der Würfel wieder vereinigt, so dass wir erwarten, dass die eine Markierung mehr als die andere ist. Dies ist hauptsächlich ein Vorspiel zur "Wahrscheinlichkeit von Ursachen", bei der Hume drei "Arten der Wahrscheinlichkeit" unterscheidet: (1) "unvollständige Erfahrung", bei der junge Kinder nicht genug beobachtet haben, um irgendwelche Erwartungen zu bilden, (2) "entgegengesetzte Ursachen". , wo beobachtet wurde, dass das gleiche Ereignis aufgrund versteckter Faktoren unter verschiedenen Umständen unterschiedliche Ursachen und Auswirkungen hat, und (3) eine Analogie, bei der wir uns auf Beobachtungsgeschichte stützen, die dem vorliegenden Fall nur unvollständig ähnelt. Er konzentriert sich auf die zweite Wahrscheinlichkeitsart (insbesondere reflektierend die über eine gemischte Sammlung von Beobachtungen spricht) und bietet eine psychologische Erklärung, die der Wahrscheinlichkeit der Wahrscheinlichkeit sehr ähnlich ist: Wir beginnen mit dem benutzerdefinierten Impuls, dies zu erwarten Die Zukunft wird der Vergangenheit ähneln, sie auf die einzelnen vergangenen Beobachtungen aufteilen und dann (unter Berücksichtigung dieser Beobachtungen) die Impulse aller übereinstimmenden Beobachtungen wieder vereinigen, so dass das endgültige Gleichgewicht des Glaubens die am häufigsten beobachteten Fälle begünstigt.
Humes Diskussion über die Wahrscheinlichkeit endet mit einem Abschnitt zu allgemeinen kognitiven Verzerrungen, beginnend mit Neuheitseffekten. Erstens ist der Glaube an die Schlussfolgerung umso stärker, je jünger das Ereignis ist, dessen Ursache oder Wirkung wir suchen. Zweitens ist der Glaube an die Schlussfolgerung umso stärker, je jünger die Beobachtungen sind, auf die wir zurückgreifen. Drittens, je länger und diskontinuierlicher eine Argumentationslinie ist, desto schwächer ist unser Glaube an die Schlussfolgerung. Viertens können irrationale Vorurteile durch Übergeneralisierung aus Erfahrung gebildet werden: Die Vorstellungskraft wird in unzulässiger Weise durch "überflüssige Umstände" beeinflusst, die häufig beobachtet wurden, um die tatsächlich relevanten Umstände zu begleiten. Paradoxerweise besteht die einzige Möglichkeit, den schädlichen Einfluss "allgemeiner Regeln" zu korrigieren, darin, anderen allgemeinen Regeln zu folgen, die durch das Nachdenken über die Umstände des Falls und unsere kognitiven Einschränkungen gebildet werden. In diesem Abschnitt verwendet Hume seinen Glaubenssatz "Kraft und Lebhaftigkeit" des Glaubens, um diese "unphilosophischen" Einflüsse auf unsere Argumentation zu erklären.
Abschnitte 14–16 [ edit ]
Nachdem Hume seinen Bericht über mögliche Argumente abgeschlossen hat, kehrt Hume zu der mysteriösen Idee der notwendigen Verbindung zurück. Er weist einige vorgeschlagene Quellen dieser Idee zurück: weder von den "bekannten Eigenschaften der Materie" noch von Gott noch von irgendeiner "unbekannten Eigenschaft" der Materie oder von unserer Kraft, unseren Körper nach Belieben zu bewegen. Denn alle Ideen stammen aus der Erfahrung, und in keinem Einzelfall beobachten wir so etwas wie eine notwendige Verbindung, die die Ursache verbindet. Die Idee entsteht jedoch aus wiederholten Beobachtungen, und da die bloße Wiederholung in den Objekten selbst nichts Neues erzeugen kann, muss die Idee daher von etwas Neuem in unserem Geist ausgehen. Daraus schließt er, dass die Idee der notwendigen Verbindung von innen kommt: aus dem Gefühl, das wir erleben, wenn der Geist (durch wiederholte Beobachtung bedingt) eine kausale Schlussfolgerung macht. Und obwohl seine Schlussfolgerung für den gesunden Menschenverstand schockierend ist, erklärt Hume dies mit der Feststellung, dass "der Geist eine große Neigung hat, sich auf äußere Objekte zu verbreiten". Schließlich bietet er zwei Definitionen von "Ursache" an: eine in Bezug auf die Objekte (dh ihre Prioritätsbeziehungen, die Aneinanderreihung und konstante Konjunktion) und eine andere in Bezug auf den Geist ] (dh die kausale Inferenz, die es beim Betrachten der Objekte macht).
Hume beendet Teil 3 mit zwei kurzen Abschnitten. Erstens stellt er acht Regeln für die empirische Identifizierung wahrer Ursachen vor: Schließlich, wenn wir die Erfahrung beiseite lassen, "[a] kann jedes Ding irgendetwas produzieren". Zweitens vergleicht er die menschliche Vernunft mit der tierischen Vernunft, ein Vergleich, der für seine assoziationistische Darstellung der wahrscheinlichen Argumentation spricht. Schließlich sind Tiere eindeutig in der Lage, aus Erfahrung durch Konditionierung zu lernen, und doch sind sie eindeutig nicht in der Lage, komplizierte Argumente zu erarbeiten.
Teil 4: Von den skeptischen und anderen Systemen der Philosophie [ edit
Abschnitte 1–2 [ edit
Hume beginnt Teil 4, indem er argumentiert, dass "alles Wissen aufgrund der Möglichkeit eines Irrtums in Wahrscheinlichkeit zerfällt": Selbst die grundsichere Gewissheit der Mathematik wird weniger als sicher, wenn wir uns daran erinnern, dass wir irgendwo einen Fehler gemacht haben könnten. Aber es wird schlimmer: Die Reflexion über die Fehlbarkeit unseres Geistes und die Meta-Reflexion über die Fehlbarkeit dieser ersten Reflexion usw. [19459003adinfinitum verringert die Wahrscheinlichkeit letztendlich in die totale Skepsis - oder zumindest ] wäre wenn unsere Überzeugungen allein durch das Verständnis bestimmt würden. Aber nach Hume geschieht dieses "Aussterben des Glaubens" nicht wirklich: Glaube zu haben ist Teil der menschlichen Natur, was Humes Einschätzung des Glaubens nur als "eher ein Akt des Sensiblen als des kogitativen Teils unserer Natur" bestätigt. . Und in Bezug auf warum wir nicht in die totale Skepsis versinken, argumentiert Hume, dass der Geist eine begrenzte Menge an "Kraft und Aktivität" hat und dieses schwierige und abstruse Denken "die Vorstellungskraft" belastet "", " [ing] den regelmäßigen Fluss der Leidenschaften und Gefühle behindern ". Infolgedessen ist eine äußerst subtile skeptische Argumentation nicht in der Lage, unseren Glauben zu überwinden und zu zerstören.
Als nächstes folgt ein äußerst langer Bericht darüber, warum wir an eine äußere physische Welt glauben: dh, warum wir glauben, dass Objekte ein fortgesetzt (existierend, wenn nicht beobachtet) und (19459006) (existierendes äußeres) haben zu und unabhängig vom Geist) Existenz. Hume betrachtet drei potentielle Quellen dieses Glaubens - die Sinne, die Vernunft und die Vorstellungskraft. Es sind nicht die Sinne: Sie sind eindeutig nicht in der Lage, uns über alles Unbeobachtete zu informieren. Sie können uns auch nicht über Objekte mit unterschiedlicher Existenz informieren: Die Sinne präsentieren uns nur Sinneswahrnehmungen, was bedeutet, dass sie sie nicht als Repräsentationen einiger weiterer Objekte darstellen können oder als selbst darstellen können . Objekte mit unterschiedlicher Existenz (denn die Sinne sind nicht in der Lage, das geheimnisvolle Selbst zu identifizieren, es von den Sinneswahrnehmungen zu unterscheiden und es zu vergleichen). Und das ist kein Grund: Selbst Kinder und Narren glauben an eine Außenwelt, und fast jeder von uns nimmt unsere Wahrnehmung auf naive Weise als Objekte mit einer fortgesetzten und eindeutigen Existenz an, die gegen die Vernunft verstößt. Also muss dieser Glaube aus der Fantasie kommen.
Aber nur einige unserer Eindrücke bringen den Glauben hervor: nämlich Eindrücke mit Konstanz (unveränderliche Erscheinung im Zeitverlauf) und Kohärenz (Regelmäßigkeit in wechselnden Erscheinungen). So entwickelt Hume einen Bericht darüber, wie die mit kohärenten und konstanten Eindrücken gefütterte Imagination den Glauben an Objekte mit fortwährender (und daher eindeutiger) Existenz herbeiführt. In Anbetracht der kohärenten Eindrücke haben wir nur einen Weg, um unsere Beobachtungen konsistent mit der Erfahrung der Vergangenheit zu erklären: Wir nehmen die Vermutung an, dass bestimmte Objekte nicht wahrgenommen werden. Und da dies mehr Regelmäßigkeit voraussetzt, als in früheren Beobachtungen zu finden ist, kann das kausale Denken allein dies nicht erklären: So ruft Hume die Tendenz der Imagination auf, in jedem "Zug des Denkens" inert zu bleiben, wie eine Galeere, die von den Rudern in Bewegung gesetzt wird ". Um "ein so gewaltiges Bauwerk zu erklären, wie ... das Fortbestehen aller äußeren Körper", hält Hume es für notwendig, die Konstanz 19459006 in seinen Bericht zu bringen, und zwar wie folgt: (1) Die Identität wird charakterisiert als Unveränderlichkeit und Ununterbrochenheit über die Zeit. (2) Da der Geist dazu neigt, Ideen, die sehr ähnlich sind, zu verwirren, wird er natürlich den Fall einer unterbrochenen Beobachtung eines unveränderlichen Objekts mit einem Fall vollkommener Identität verwechseln. (3) Diese Kombination aus perfekter Identität und unterbrochener Beobachtung führt zu kognitiver Dissonanz, die durch die Herstellung einer fortgesetzten Existenz aufgelöst wird. (4) Diese Fiktion wird durch die "lebendigen Eindrücke" der Erinnerung an das beobachtete Objekt zu einem vollwertigen Glauben.
Aber dieser naive Glaube an die fortgesetzte und eindeutige Existenz unserer Wahrnehmungen ist falsch wie einfache Beobachtungen leicht zeigen. Philosophen unterscheiden daher die mentale Wahrnehmung von äußeren Objekten. Dieses philosophische "System einer doppelten Existenz" könne jedoch niemals direkt aus der Vernunft oder der Vorstellung entstehen. Stattdessen ist es "der monströse Nachwuchs zweier Prinzipien", nämlich. Unser naiver Glaube an die fortwährende und eindeutige Existenz unserer Wahrnehmungen, zusammen mit unserer reflektierenden Schlussfolgerung, dass Wahrnehmungen vom Geist abhängen müssen. Erst durch den naiven natürlichen Glauben fabriziert die Imagination dieses "willkürlich erfundene" [ed] philosophische System. Hume endet damit, dass er starke Zweifel an jedem System äußert, das auf "solchen trivialen Qualitäten der Phantasie" basiert und "[c] Arelessness und Aufmerksamkeit" als einziges Mittel gegen Skepsis empfiehlt.
Sections 3–6[edit]
Next, Hume presents a brief critique of "antient philosophy" (traditional Aristotelianism) and "modern philosophy" (post-Scientific Revolution mechanical philosophy), focusing on their rival conceptions of external objects. As for the incomprehensible "fictions of the antient philosophy", he thinks they can shed further light on human psychology. We begin with contradictions in "our ideas of bodies": between seeing bodies as ever-changing bundles of distinct qualities, and seeing bodies as simple unities that retain their identity across time. We reconcile these contradictions by fabricating "something unknown and invisible" that underlies change and unifies the distinct qualities together: i.e., the substance of traditional metaphysics. Similar fictions, fabricated by the imagination to resolve similar difficulties, include substantial formsaccidentsand occult qualitiesall meaningless jargon used only to hide our ignorance. Modern philosophy, however, claims to disown the "trivial propensit[ies] of the imagination" and follow only solid reason (or, for Hume, "the solid, permanent, and consistent principles of the imagination"). Its "fundamental principle" is that secondary qualities ("colours, sounds, tastes, smells, heat and cold") are "nothing but impressions in the mind", as opposed to the primary qualities ("motion, extension, and solidity") that exist in reality. But Hume argues that primary qualities cannot be conceived apart from the secondary qualities. Thus if we follow solid reason and exclude the latter, we will be forced to contradict our own senses by excluding the former as well, thereby denying the entire external world.
Hume then examines "the nature of the mind", starting with the materialist-dualist debate over the substance of the mind. He rejects the whole question as "unintelligible", for we have no impression (and therefore no idea) of any substance, and defining 'substance' as something which may exist by itself doesn't help (each of our perceptions, Hume argues, would then count as a distinct substance). Turning to the question of the "local conjunction" of mind and matter, he considers and endorses the anti-materialist argument which asks how unextended thoughts and feelings could possibly be conjoined at some location to an extended substance like a body. Hume then provides a psychological account of how we get taken in by such illusions (in his example, a fig and an olive are at opposite ends of a table, and we mistakenly suppose the sweet figgy taste to be in one location and the bitter olive taste to be in the other), arguing that unextended perceptions must somehow exist without having a location. But the contrary problem arises for dualists: how can extended perceptions (of extended objects) possibly be conjoined to a simple substance? Indeed, Hume waggishly adds, this is basically the same problem that theologians commonly press against Spinoza's naturalistic metaphysics: thus if the theologians manage to solve the problem of extended perceptions belonging to a simple substance, then they give "that famous atheist" Spinoza a solution to the problem of extended objects as modes of a simple substance. Finally, Hume examines causal relationsarguing on behalf of materialists that our observations of regular mind-body correlations are enough to show the causal dependence of the mind on the body, and that, since "we are never sensible of any connexion betwixt causes and effects" in general, our inability to detect any a priori connection between mind and body does nothing to show causal independence.
Finally, Hume weighs in on the topic of personal identity. Notoriously, he claims that introspective experience reveals nothing like a self (i.e., a mental substance with identity and simplicity), but only an ever-changing bundle of particular perceptions. And so he gives a psychological account of why we believe in personal identity, arguing that "the identity, which we ascribe to the mind of man, is only a fictitious one, and of a like kind with that which we ascribe to vegetables and animal bodies". Hume's account starts with our tendency to confound resembling but contrary ideas, viz. the idea of "a perfect identity" and the idea of "a succession of related objects", an absurdity we justify by means of "a fiction, either of something invariable and uninterrupted, or of something mysterious and inexplicable, or at least... a propensity to such fictions". Next, he argues that the everyday objects we ascribe identity to (e.g., trees, humans, churches, rivers) are indeed "such as consist of a succession of related objects, connected together by resemblance, contiguity, or causation": thus we overlook relatively minor changes, especially when slow and gradual, and especially when connected by "some common end or purpose" or "a sympathy of parts to their common end". Applying all this to personal identity, he argues that since all our perceptions are distinct from each other, and since we "never observ[e] any real connexion among objects", our perceptions are merely associated together by the natural relations of resemblance (in part produced by the memory) and causation (only discovered by the memory). And consequently, leaving aside the fictions we invent, questions of personal identity are far too hazy to be answered with precision.
Section 7[edit]
Hume finishes Book 1 with a deeply skeptical interlude. Before continuing his "accurate anatomy of human nature" in Books 2 and 3, he anxiously ruminates: the "danger" of trusting his feeble faculties, along with the "solitude" of leaving behind established opinion, make his "bold enterprizes" look foolhardy. All his thinking is based on the "seemingly... trivial" principles of the imagination ("
Book 2: Of the Passions[edit]
Part 1: Of pride and humility[edit]
Sections 1–6[edit]
Hume begins by recalling Book 1's distinction between impressions of sensation ("original impressions", arising from physical causes outside the mind) and impressions of reflection ("secondary impressions", arising from other perceptions within the mind), examining only the latter. He divides these "reflective impressions"—"the passions, and other emotions resembling them"—into "the calm and the violent" (nearly imperceptible emotions of "beauty and deformity", and turbulent passions we experience more strongly) and into "direct and indirect" (depending on how complicated the causal story behind them is). Pride and humility are indirect passions, and Hume's account of the two is his leading presentation of the psychological mechanisms responsible for the indirect passions.
| Passions in Treatise 2 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Throughout Book 2, Hume divides the passions into different categories. The calm/violent distinction, which may apply to passions in all categories, is not pictured. |
Since we cannot put the feeling of a passion into words, Hume identifies passions via their characteristic causes and effects. The cause of a passion is what calls up the passion: e.g., pride can be caused by one's beautiful house. A cause can be subdivided into the subject itself (e.g., one's house) and the quality of the subject that "operates on the passions" (e.g., the beauty of one's house). The object of a passion is what the passion is ultimately directed at: pride and humility are both directed at oneself. Both object and cause have a foundation in human nature: according to Hume, the object of these passions is fixed by the basic constitution of human psychology (Hume uses the term "original"), whereas their causes are determined by a more general set of adaptable psychological mechanisms ("natural" but not original).
Hume's account relies on three mechanisms. First, the "association of ideas": the mind tends to move from one idea to another idea that is naturally related to it. Second, the "association of impressions": the mind tends to move from one passion to another passion that resembles it in feeling (e.g., from joy to love). Third, their "mutual assistance": if we feel a passion towards something, we will tend to feel a resembling passion towards something else naturally related to it (e.g., from anger at one person to impatience at a related person). Applying all this to pride, Hume argues that the pleasant sensation of pride, directed at ourselves, naturally tends to be called up when something naturally related to ourselves produces a pleasant sensation of its own. Likewise with humility: when something naturally related to ourselves produces an unpleasant sensation of its own, it tends to make us ashamed of ourselves. These indirect passions are thus the product of the "double relation of impressions and ideas".
Hume completes his account with five "limitations". First, in order for pride or humility to be produced, the relation of ideas must be a relatively close one. Second, because our judgments are strongly influenced by "comparison", this relation must apply only to ourselves or a few others. Third, the cause of pride or humility must be something evident to ourselves and others. Fourth, this cause must be a long-lasting one. Fifth, general rules have a strong influence on our passions, leading us to overlook occasional anomalies.
Sections 7–10[edit]
In the next three sections, Hume puts his account to the test by examining three causes of pride and humility: the qualities of one's mind, of one's body, and of external objects. First, the qualities of the mind: our virtues and vices. Here Hume's main point is that, whatever the true nature of moral evaluation, whether it is a matter of innate moral psychology (Hume's own view), or instead self-interest and cultural training (the view of Hobbes and Mandeville), his account will hold up. For, on either theory, virtues produce a pleasant sensation of their own and vices a painful sensation of their own. Next come the qualities of the body: physical beauty and deformity. Here Hume's main point is that the beauty or deformity of something's structure is nothing more than its power to produce pleasure or pain in us. To the objection that though health and sickness produce pleasure and pain in us, they are not typically sources of pride or humility, he recalls that these passions require a long-lasting cause related only to ourselves or a few others—thus a long record of exceptionally poor health can in fact be a source of shame. Finally, Hume examines the qualities of external objects related to us. Though the natural relation of resemblance has little influence, he explains, external objects do not cause pride or humility without some relation of contiguity or causation—a fact he takes to confirm his overall account. After a few minor illustrations, Hume explains why pride in one's ancestors is magnified when the family enjoys uninterrupted possession of land, and when it is passed down from male to male (both of the conditions, he claims, serve to strengthen the relation of ideas).
Hume devotes an entire section to "property and riches". His account easily accommodates property: he defines it as private use consistent with the laws of justice, contends that (whether justice be a natural or artificial virtue) our minds naturally associate owners with their belongings, and observes that all things "useful, beautiful or surprising" call up pride in their owner. But it is more difficult to accommodate riches: i.e., the mere power of acquiring the comforts of life. For Hume's earlier account of causation eliminated the distinction between power and the exercise of power, as well as the very idea of an unexercised power—and how can I take pride in mere coins and paper without such an idea? Hume finds two ways for something like unexercised power to influence our passions: first, predictions of human behavior are (absent "strong motives") plagued with uncertainty, and we can receive anticipatory pleasure or unease from probable or merely possible exercise of power (tentatively reasoning from our own past conduct to guess what we might do); second, a "false sensation of liberty" presents all feasible courses of action as fully possible to us, giving us an anticipatory pleasure unrelated to any reasoning from experience. Hume finishes by noting the pride we take in power over others, a pride enhanced by comparing our condition to theirs (thus humans are prouder to own other humans than to own sophisticated machinery).
Sections 11–12[edit]
Hume's next section adds a new kind of cause of pride and humility: viz., reputationa "secondary cause" grounded in the enormously important mechanism of sympathy. For Hume, sympathy with others, or "communication", is that mechanism by which we naturally tend to receive and share in the passions and opinions of those we feel close to. We start by observing "external signs" (e.g., smiling or speaking) and forming an idea of another's sentiments. Since our extremely vivid conception of ourselves will tend to enliven any related idea, the closer the relation we see between ourselves and the other person, the more vivid our idea of their sentiments. And if this relation is close enough, we will end up actually feeling their passion or believing their opinion: i.e., our idea of their passion or opinion will grow so lively as to become the very passion or opinion itself. This mirrors Hume's earlier account of causal reasoning: both processes move along the three natural relations, channeling the force and vivacity of vivid perceptions into faint ideas, enlivening them into much stronger perceptions.
Pride or shame in one's reputation, Hume continues, stems primarily from the sympathetically communicated opinions of others. But additional factors play a role: others might be seen as a good judge of character ("authority"), and the very question of one's self-worth is both emotionally heightened and apt to evoke a self-conscious deference to the opinions of others. The resulting account explains various observations: why pride is affected more by the opinions of certain people (those whose character we like, whose judgment we respect, or who we have known for a long time), and less by opinions we know to be false (and thus cannot share in). Hume finishes by illustrating and confirming his account with a concrete example (viz., a man from a high-class family fallen on hard times leaving home to do manual labor elsewhere), and considering some minor objections.
In the final section, Hume seeks to confirm his overall account of pride and humility by applying it to animals. Following the model of anatomists, who test hypotheses by examining similar structures in humans and animals, Hume argues that animals can be observed to show pride and humility, that the causes are much the same (viz., pleasing qualities of the body), and that animals have the requisite psychological mechanisms (viz., the association of ideas, the association of impressions).
Part 2: Of love and hatred[edit]
Sections 1–3[edit]
Hume's treatment of love and hatred is much like his treatment of pride and humility: all four are indirect passions produced by a double relation of impressions and ideas. As Part 2 begins, he again distinguishes object from cause, and quality from subject; whereas pride and humility were directed at oneself, love and hatred is directed at "some other person". As before, a relation of ideas is needed between the cause of love or hatred and the person loved or hated, and a relation of impressions between the cause (with a pleasant or unpleasant sensation of its own) and the resulting love or hatred. And since pride and love are closely connected (as Hume observes, we seek to win others' love by showcasing the qualities we take pride in), the arguments of Part 1 can simply be carried over.
In a series of eight "experiments", Hume tests his account against observations drawn from ordinary life. The first four experiments simply confirm that the four indirect passions arise only in response to something pleasant or unpleasant related to some person: utterly neutral objects (e.g., an ordinary stone) and objects related to no one (e.g., an unfamiliar environment) will never produce pride or humility, love or hatred. The final four experiments focus on how easily a transition is made from one passion to another. As Hume's account would predict, we easily go from love and hatred to pride and humility: e.g., I can take pride in my relation to someone else with lovable qualities. Curiously, however, the reverse does not hold: e.g., my pride in my own qualities will not lead me to love someone else for their relation to me. To explain this, Hume argues that the imagination has trouble going from lively ideas to obscure ideas (e.g., from the idea of oneself to that of another person). Next, as Hume's account would also predict, we easily transition from love of one person to love of others related to this person. But the transition is easiest when we "descend" from the greater to the lesser: e.g., "'tis more natural for us to love the son upon account of the father, than the father upon account of the son". And yet the imagination has the opposite tendency: e.g., moving easily from Jupiter's moons to Jupiter itself. To resolve this difficulty, Hume argues that it is easier for the passions to make minor changes (adding in the love of a related lesser person) than major changes (adding in the love of a related greater person), and that the passions "are a more powerful principle than the imagination". Finally, Hume acknowledges a case where we can move easily from pride to love: "when the very cause of the pride and humility is plac'd in some other person", e.g. when your praise of me excites my pride and I end up loving you for it. But this exception only confirms Hume's account: since the first passion arises from the other person, we easily move to a passion directed at that same person.
Hume then confronts an objection: his account ignores intention, having us love or hate those who bring us pleasure or pain even where this is completely unintended. In response, Hume insists that qualities unrelated to intentional action really can elicit love or hatred, so long as the qualities are "constant and inherent in [someone's] person and character": e.g., disliking someone for their ugliness or stupidity. It is with isolated actions that intention is important: it "connect[s the action] with the person" and can also amplify the pleasantness or unpleasantness of the action, whereas "entirely involuntary and accidental" actions arouse only mild or short-lived passions. In a further illustration, Hume considers our emotional reaction to those who harm us from perfectly justified motives (e.g., judges, competitors): though we will not hate them if we are reasonable, we often hate them anyway, even inventing reasons to hate them.
Sections 4–5[edit]
In the next two sections, Hume uses sympathy to account for some particular causes of love and hatred. First, "relationacquaintanceand resemblance": we sometimes love others not for their personal qualities, but simply because they are related to us, familiar to us, or similar to us. In these cases, pleasure arises from the sheer stimulating effects of sympathy: family members, neighbors, and acquaintances are a durable source of lively ideas, as are individuals with personal qualities resembling our own. And as Hume puts it, "[e]very lively idea is agreeable, but especially that of a passion". He adds an explanation of why children feel far less related to mothers who remarry and yet only somewhat less related to fathers who remarry—the imagination (which "finds a difficulty in passing from greater to less") is more inclined to go from the mother to the mother's new family than from the father to the father's new family, a transition which weakens the original parent-child relation.
Second, we sometimes esteem people not for their personal qualities, but simply for being rich and powerful (esteem and contempt being "species of love and hatred"). To account for this phenomenon, Hume identifies three candidate "principles": (1) We enjoy thinking of their luxuries. (2) We think they might give us some of their wealth. (3) We sympathize with their happiness. He then argues that the third principle, sympathy, is by far the most important. The first principle has some influence on its own, but mostly operates by means of sympathy. And the second principle has little influence: it is relatively rare to receive any personal advantage from the rich and powerful, and we esteem them even when this is known to be impossible. Hume closes the section with an overview of "the force of sympathy". Many animals, and especially humans, have a psychological need for social interaction. Moreover, sympathy with usefulness explains "[m]ost kinds of beauty": e.g., the convenience of a house, the fertility of a field. Lastly, Hume observes that "the minds of men are mirrors to one another": a rich man enjoys his luxuries, which brings esteem from others, which in turn excites the rich man's pride, which encourages further pursuit of riches.
Sections 6–12[edit]
The next six sections are dedicated to an examination of the "compound passions", i.e. passions arising from "the mixture of love and hatred with other emotions". Hume begins with benevolence and angermotivational "desires" aimed at bringing about "the happiness or misery of the person belov'd or hated". This marks an important contrast: love and hatred have innate motivational consequences, whereas pride and humility are only "pure emotions in the soul". But Hume goes on to note that benevolence and anger are (despite the talk of "mixture") not an "essential part" of love and hatred; instead, they are distinct passions of their own that only happen to be naturally conjoined with the sensations of love and hatred, just as hunger is naturally conjoined with an empty stomach.
Next come pity and malice. Like benevolence and anger, they are motivational desires aimed at bringing about another's happiness or misery; but unlike benevolence and anger, they apply quite generally—not only to those we love or hate, but even to complete strangers. Thus Hume calls them "counterfeited" versions of benevolence and anger. Pity (also called "compassion") is received by sympathetic communication: anyone can arouse our pity, just by communicating "their interests, their passions, their pains and pleasures" to us. Even people who show no emotion at their misfortune can arouse our pity due to the influence of general rules on our imagination. Malicious joy is produced by comparison—"
The following section sees Hume amending his account in response to a problem. If love and hatred are produced by anyone who brings us pleasure or pain, as Hume has argued, then we should love those who bring us malicious joy, and hate those who bring us the pain of pity. But this runs contrary to experience: we tend to hate the objects of our malice, and love the objects of our pity. Hume resolves this problem by introducing a new kind of relation of impressions: in addition to "the resemblance of sensations", there is also "the parallel direction of the desires". Thus the connection between pity and love, and between malice and hatred, lies in their motivational tendencies (which run parallel to each other), not in the way they feel (which run contrary to each other). Hume gives examples to illustrate and confirm this "principle of a parallel direction", including a discussion of the emotions found in business rivals and business partners. But another problem arises: since Hume says we have esteem for the rich and contempt for the poor, how can he say we tend to love the objects of our pity? Hume's solution presents us with three levels of sympathy with misfortune: (1) weak sympathy, which makes us feel only the present misfortune of the afflicted, producing only contemptuous pity; (2) strong sympathy (i.e. "double sympathy"), which moves us beyond the present misfortune so that we take a motivating interest in their entire life, producing compassionate love; (3) all-consuming sympathy, which makes us fixate on the present misfortune, leaving us too "overcome with horror" to experience any other passions.
In the next section, Hume continues examining the compound passions, characterizing respect (also called "esteem") as a mixture of love and humility and contempt as a mixture of hatred and pride: the qualities of others produce love or hatred immediately, pride or humility by comparison, and respect or contempt when these are joined together. And because we have "a much stronger propensity to pride than to humility", there is more pride in contempt than there is humility in respect. Hume then acknowledges a problem: why, given his account, aren't love and hatred always accompanied by respect and contempt? His answer is that, whereas "pride and hatred invigorate the soul" and are associated with "magnificent" objects, "love and humility infeeble [the soul]" and are associated with "mean" objects: thus lovable objects too mild to produce much pride (e.g., "good nature, good humour, facility, generosity, beauty") will produce "pure love, with but a small mixture of humility and respect". Hume finishes with an explanation of why social inferiors are expected to keep their distance from their superiors.
The final compound passion is "the amorous passion", i.e. romantic love. It consists of three distinct passions: a sense of beauty, libido, and kindness. These three passions are bound together both by "resemblance" (all have a pleasant sensation) and by "a parallel desire" (all have related motivational tendencies). Accordingly, any one of them can end up producing the other two, with beauty most likely to produce the other two (kindness and libido being "too remote" from each other, and beauty "plac'd in a just medium betwixt them"). Hume argues that this phenomenon reinforces his "double relation of impressions and ideas" account.
Hume finishes Part 2 with his last section on animal psychology. Love and hatred, he writes, can be produced in animals simply by the pain or pleasure felt from an object, or by such relations as "acquaintance" and "likeness" of species. Sympathy works to spread feelings (e.g. fear, grief) from one animal to another, keep animal play from leading to injury, and animate a pack of hunting dogs beyond their individual level of excitement. In general, Hume remarks, the psychological mechanisms at work do not require any sophisticated "force of reflection or penetration": "[e]very thing is conducted by springs and principles, which are not peculiar to man, or any one species of animals".
Part 3: Of the will and direct passions[edit]
Sections 1–2[edit]
In Part 3, Hume begins examining the motives that bring us to action. After a glancing mention of the direct passions and a perfunctory definition of the will as a mere impression we feel, he confronts the hoary philosophical problem of free will and determinism, dedicating two sections to a defense of soft determinist compatibilism. In the first section, he makes a case for "the doctrine of necessity". The issue, as Hume sees it, is whether human action is determined by a necessity comparable to "physical necessity"—the necessity that governs physical objects. But since, according to Book 1, physical necessity is nothing more than constant conjunction and the causal inferences drawn by the human mind, the issue then comes down to this: is there a regular correspondence between human action and human psychology, and do we base causal inferences upon such regularities? Hume thinks the answer to both questions is obviously in the affirmative: the uniformity found in the world of human affairs is comparable to that found in the natural world, and the inferences we base on "moral evidence" (concerning human psychology and action) are comparable to the inferences we base on natural evidence (concerning physical objects). Thus, given Hume's idiosyncratic account of necessity, it is hard to deny that human action is governed by necessity.
In the next section, Hume challenges "the doctrine of liberty"—the view that human beings are endowed with a distinctive kind of indeterministic free will—by setting out and debunking "the reasons for [its] prevalence". First, since we confuse necessity with violent constraint, we end up confusing freedom from necessity (the indeterministic "liberty of indifference") with freedom from violent constraint (the compatibilist "liberty of spontaneity"). As a compatibilist, Hume accepts the latter kind of free will, deeming it "that species of liberty, which it concerns us to preserve" and even "the most common sense of the word"; but he rejects freedom from necessity as either "absurd" (being nothing more than sheer "chance") or else "unintelligible". Second, we are deceived by a "false sensation of liberty": when deliberating about our own actions, there is "a certain looseness" to the will, so that we can easily produce an "image or faint motion" for each alternative course of action. Thus we end up convinced that we really could have acted differently, even though "a spectator can commonly infer our actions from our motives and character". Finally, we mistakenly think necessity poses a threat to moral responsibility, and is therefore "dangerous... to religion and morality". After noting that being dangerous is not the same as being falseHume recalls that his "necessity" is a very attenuated one: there is nothing dangerous or even controversial about saying that constant conjunction and causal inference apply to human action as well as physical objects. He then attempts to turn the tables on his opponents, arguing that necessity is in fact "essential" to moral responsibility: the rewards and punishments of human law would be pointless if human action were not regular and uniform, and divine punishment would be unjust if a person's actions were a matter of sheer chance, lacking any causal connection to the person's psychology, and revealing nothing about the person's character. Thus the threat to moral responsibility comes not from necessitybut from indeterministic liberty.
Sections 3–8[edit]
Hume then passes from the will itself to the motivational factors that determine voluntary actions. Against the traditional view that reason and the passions frequently come into motivational conflict, Hume argues that reason is incapable of opposing the passions, and that the passions cannot run contrary to reason. First, reason alone cannot motivate us—it can only perform demonstrative or causal reasoning. And since abstract demonstrations influence us only by directing causal reasoning (e.g., doing math to pay your debts), and causal reasoning influences us only by directing preexisting motives (e.g., figuring out how to make the food you want), reason itself cannot bring about any motivation. And this in turn means it cannot counteract or regulate the passions: on the contrary, "[r]eason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions". Second, passions cannot be in agreement or disagreement with reason: for this is a matter of the agreement or disagreement between an idea and the object it represents, and passions do not represent anything else. Thus Hume notoriously writes: "'Tis not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger". Of course, if a passion is based on a false judgment—about an object that doesn't really exist, or a causal relation that doesn't really hold—then the passion can be considered "unreasonable" in a less strict sense of the term. But "even then", insists Hume, "'tis not the passion, properly speaking, which is unreasonable, but the judgment". Finally, Hume argues that the alleged conflict between reason and the passions is actually a conflict between two different kinds of passions—the calm passions and the violent passions. Since both the calm passions and reason "operat[e] with the same calmness and tranquility", we confuse them with each other and mistakenly suppose our calm passions to be "determinations of reason".
The following five sections examine the factors which give passions their motivational force. Unsurprisingly, the violence of a passion makes it stronger; but even a calm passion can be extremely strong due to "repeated custom and its own force", especially when it has been "corroborated by reflection, and seconded by resolution". Nevertheless, since "[g]enerally speaking, the violent passions have a more powerful influence on the will", Hume focuses on the factors which increase the violence of passions. First, when a "predominant passion" is accompanied by other "inferior" passions, it can acquire violence by "swallow[ing them] up": e.g., strong love can be made more violently passionate by a touch of anger. Other psychological phenomena (e.g., opposition, uncertainty, obscurity) can produce the same effect by stimulating us with agitation and mental effort. Next, "custom and repetition" can both leave us with a direct inclination to perform the activity we are repeating and also affect the violence of related passions. Hume discusses three stages of repeated activity: (1) The sheer novelty of unfamiliar activities makes our feelings more intense, either magnifying our pain or adding on the pleasure of "wonder [and] surprise". (2) An activity performed with "moderate facility" is "an infallible source of pleasure" (cf. "flow"), sometimes even converting pain into enjoyment. (3) But excessive repetition can make formerly pleasant activities so dull as to be unpleasant.
Our passions can also acquire violence from the vivacity of our ideas. Thus particular ideas make for more violent passions than general ideas, and so too for fresh memories, conventional ideas, and ideas enlivened by great eloquence or passionate delivery. And, as in Book 1, only beliefs (as opposed to "mere[s] fiction of the imagination") can call up any of our passions. Hume also devotes two sections to examining the vivacity of our ideas of space and time and the corresponding effect on our passions. In the first section, he accounts for three phenomena concerning vivacity and violence: (1) Distance in space and time is associated with a reduction in vivacity and violence (e.g., we care more about the near future than the distant future), simply due to the number of mental steps needed to move from the present to the remote. (2) Distance in time is associated with a greater reduction than distance in space, because our sensory experience makes it easier to hold an array of spatial points in mind than an array of temporal points. (3) The distant past is associated with a greater reduction than the distant future, because it is easier for the mind to go with the flow of time than to go against it. In the second section, he accounts for three very similar phenomena concerning "esteem and admiration": (1) Distance in space and time is associated with an increase in esteem and admiration (e.g., "a great traveller", "a Greek medal"), because the pleasure received from the sheer greatness of the "interpos'd distance" is transferred to the distant object itself. (2) Distance in time has a greater effect than distance in space (e.g., ancient relics are more admired than furniture from abroad), because we are challenged and invigorated by the greater difficulty of mentally traversing distance in time. (3) The distant past has a greater effect than the distant future (e.g., we admire our ancestors more than our posterity), because we are challenged and invigorated by the greater difficulty of going against the flow of time. Hume finishes with a convenient summary of the preceding six sections.
Sections 9–10[edit]
At last Hume examines the direct passionsdividing them into two classes. First and most prominently, there are those direct passions which arise immediately from pleasure or pain (in Hume's terminology, "good or evil")—this is simply due to "an original instinct" that orients us towards pleasure and away from pain. Joy and grief/sorrow arise from pleasure or pain that is "certain or probable". Hope and fear arise from pleasure or pain that is "uncertain" to some degree. Desire and aversion arise from pleasure and pain "consider'd simply". And the will "exerts itself" when pleasure or the absence of pain is within our power to obtain. Second, there are those direct passions which "arise from a natural impulse or instinct, which is perfectly unaccountable": here Hume mentions benevolence, anger, hunger, and lust (in section 3 he had mentioned self-preservation and the love of one's children). These diverse instinct-based passions, Hume writes, "produce good and evil [i.e., pleasure and pain]", as opposed to the other direct passions, which arise from pleasure and pain.
Hume spends the rest of the section on hope and fearstarting with a simple account based on probability. In conditions of uncertainty, as the imagination fluctuates between a pleasant scenario and an unpleasant scenario, the passions follow suit, fluctuating between joy and grief. And since different passions can blend together (like the lingering notes of a string instrument), the mixture of joy and grief will end up producing either hope or fear. But "contrary passions" interact differently depending on what they are directed at: the passions have no influence on each other if their objects are completely unrelated (e.g., joy at xgrief at y); the passions tend to cancel each other out if they have the same object (e.g., joy at xbut also grief at x); and the passions tend to blend together if they have "contradictory views of the same object" (e.g., joy at xgrief at not-x). Next, Hume tries to confirm and extend his account, noting that hope and fear can arise from "all kinds of uncertainty": thus fear can be produced by the mere thought of a possible evil if it is great enough, the immediate presence of a potential evil known to be impossible, the certainty of an evil too horrible to think about or whose precise nature is unknown, or anything extremely surprising. Even utterly irrelevant circumstances, or something expected to be pleasantcan call up fear if shrouded in uncertainty. Hume closes the section by begging off any discussion of subtle "variations" of hope and fear, or of the role of the will and the direct passions in animals.
Book 2 finishes with a brief section on curiosity—"the love of truth", which leads us to take pleasure in intellectual pursuits and achievements. For both the abstract truths of "mathematics and algebra" and the real-world truths of "morals, politics, natural philosophy", we do not care much about truth "merely as such". Instead, there are three other factors chiefly responsible for "the pleasure of study": (1) Intellectual challenge: the exercise must force us to "fix our attention and exert our genius". (2) Importance/utility: the topic must be useful or important enough to "fix our attention" via "a remote sympathy" with those our work might help (a sympathy that even motivates scholars lacking in "public spirit"). (3) Direct concern: just as hunters and gamblers begin to care about success itself more than the reward it brings, likewise scholars begin to develop a direct concern for the scholarly problems they work on (this due to the aforementioned principle of a "parallel direction"). Finally, Hume offers an account of the social curiosity that fuels gossip: since doubt and uncertainty are painful, especially when they concern events whose ideas are forceful, we are naturally curious about the happenings of our immediate social environment.
Book 3: Of Morals[edit]
Part 1: Of virtue and vice in general[edit]
Hume begins Book 3 by examining the nature of moral evaluation, offering a critique of moral rationalism and a defense of moral sentimentalism: in the terms of his overall system, Hume is arguing that the evaluations in our mind are impressionsnot ideas. His main target is the rationalism of such philosophers as Clarke and Balguy, which posits "eternal fitnesses and unfitnesses of things, which are the same to every rational being that considers them", in effect classifying morality alongside mathematics under "relations of ideas". Hume's principal arguments against this rationalism rest on Book 2's thesis that there is no opposition between reason and the passions: reason alone cannot motivate us, and "passions, volitions, and actions" cannot be in agreement or disagreement with reason. This thesis "proves directly", he writes, that an action's moral status cannot consist in the action's agreement or disagreement with reason, and it "proves indirectly" that moral evaluation, which has a practical influence on us and can "excite passion[s] and produce or prevent actions", cannot be "the offspring of reason". Nor can the morality of an action be founded on the true or false judgments causally linked to it: no immoral action is wrong due to its arising from a mistake of fact, or (contra Wollaston) due to its causing false judgments in others.
After summing up this critique, Hume develops a "more particular" case against rationalism, recalling his system's two kinds of reasoning: "the comparing of ideas" and "the inferring of matter of fact". Now as for demonstrative reasoning, the four abstract relations from Book 1 seem perfectly irrelevant to morality, and indeed it is hard to see how any relation could have just the right scope (holding only between someone's psychology and external situation) and the right practical implications as well (somehow it must be certain a priori that no rational being could consider these relations without being motivated accordingly). Consider the immorality of parricide and incest: this cannot consist merely in the abstract relations at play, for the very same relations can be found in perfectly non-moral contexts involving inanimate objects and animals. And as for probable reasoning, Hume famously contends that we observe nothing in an action besides its ordinary non-moral qualities—experience reveals no moral qualities unless one looks to the moral feelings in one's own mind, so that virtue and vice are (like the secondary qualities of modern philosophy) "not qualities in objects, but perceptions in the mind". This first section ends with the famous is-ought paragraph.
Hume is thus left endorsing a moral sentimentalism somewhat like that of Hutcheson: "Morality... is more properly felt than judg'd of". The moral evaluations in our mind are impressions—"nothing but particular pains or pleasures"—and Hume's task is to explain how certain kinds of "action, or sentiment, or character" produce these special moral sentiments in us. But a problem arises: since pleasant or painful feelings can be produced by inanimate objects, why doesn't sentimentalism succumb to the same objection Hume has just raised against rationalism? First, he contends there are many different kinds of pleasure and pain, and that the moral sentiments (which arise "only when a character is consider'd in general, without reference to our particular interest") have a distinctive feeling, noticeably different than the feelings called up by inanimate objects (or matters of self-interest). Second, he reminds us that the four indirect passions are produced by pleasant or unpleasant qualities in ourselves or other personsnot inanimate objects. This objection dispatched, Hume closes with two points about the psychological origin of moral sentiments. First, on the working assumption that nature tends to produce variety from "a few principles", he hopes to find "general principles" underlying our moral psychology. Second, to the question of whether these principles are "natural", he replies that it depends on the meaning of "natural": they are not miraculousnor are they rarebut they might sometimes draw on human artifice (his system will include both natural virtues and artificial virtues), adding that none of these meanings can sustain the popular view (defended by Butler) that "virtue is the same with what is natural, and vice with what is unnatural". Before proceeding to his detailed examination of moral psychology, Hume takes a parting shot at moral rationalism and its "incomprehensible relations and qualities, which never did exist in nature, nor even in our imagination, by any clear and distinct conception".
Part 2: Of justice and injustice[edit]
Sections 1–2[edit]
Hume devotes Part 2 to the "artificial virtues": those positive character traits that would have no moral appeal were it not for social conventions established by human artifice. The most important of these virtues is justiceand in the first section Hume offers his so-called "circle argument" to show that justice would not be seen as a virtue in a hypothetical world lacking the relevant social conventions. First, Hume contends, character-based motives are morally more fundamental than actions: we approve of an action only insofar as it indicates some virtuous motive in the agent's character, so that what makes an action virtuous in the first place is the virtuous motive it proceeds from. But this motive must be an ordinary motive in human nature, as opposed to the distinctive moral motive of performing the action because it is virtuous (i.e., a "sense of duty"). After all, this moral motive presupposes that the action already counts as virtuous, and it would be circular to derive the action's virtue from a motive which itself presupposes the action's virtue. And so if justice were a natural virtue, there would have to be an ordinary motive in human nature that could make someone obey the rules of justice. But according to Hume, no such motive can be found: unbridled self-interest leads us away from justice, concern for reputation only goes so far, impartial public benevolence cannot explain all cases of justice and is not even a true element of human nature (contra Hutcheson, we love others only in a limited and discriminating way), and private benevolence for our nearest and dearest cannot explain the universal and impartial nature of justice. Thus there is no motive capable of making justice count as a virtue, not until certain social conventions come into place. Hume closes this section by adding that we evaluate motives largely by comparison with what we consider to be normal human psychology, and that the rules of justice are so "obvious" and "necessary" an invention that they can still be deemed "natural" to the human species.
Hume next devotes an important and lengthy section to two questions: First, how is the social convention of justice established? And second, why do we invest the rules of justice with moral significance? His answer to the first question begins with our need for society. Humans are not strong, skilled, or secure enough to meet our needs alone, and only society can offer additional labor force, specialization, and mutual aid—all important advantages of society learned of through growing up in families. But this necessary social union is threatened both by human selfishness (or rather "confin'd generosity") and by the scarcity and instability of external goods. And since our uncultivated natural affections cannot overcome these obstacles (we see nothing wrong with having a normal amount of selfishness and generosity), it is left to our reason and self-interest to find a solution: through "a general sense of common interest" that is "mutually expressed" and known to everybody, we gradually develop a social convention for the stabilizing and safeguarding of external goods, with improved compliance and stronger social expectations feeding into each other, a process Hume compares to the development of languages and currency. He insists that this convention is not a promisefamously illustrating the point with the example of two men agreeing to row a boat together, simply from a sense of mutual advantage rather than from any promise. And as justice is defined in terms of such a convention, so too the related concepts of "propertyor rightor obligation" can mean nothing in its absence.
Since the chief obstacle to society (our selfishness, especially our insatiable acquisitiveness) is in fact the very motive responsible for society, the growth of social order depends less on our moral qualities than on our intellectual qualities. But since stabilizing external goods is such a "simple and obvious" rule, the convention is established with little delay, so that "the state of nature" is a "mere philosophical fiction"—not very realistic but useful for theorizing. Similarly edifying, "the golden age" (a fictional time of superabundant resources and universal brotherly love) helps shed light on the origins of justice: were it not for certain non-ideal circumstances (selfishness, limited generosity, resource scarcity, resource instability), the rules of justice would be pointless. Real-world cases also illustrate the idea: close personal relationships bring one's private belongings into common ownership, and free goods like air and water are allowed unrestricted use. And this general point, Hume says, reinforces three earlier points: (1) Public benevolence cannot be why we obey the rules of justice, for it would only make these rules pointless. (2) Moral rationalism cannot make sense of justice: mere abstract reasoning can neither account for the fact that justice hinges on specific background conditions, nor produce the concern for our interests that originally leads us to establish the rules of justice. (3) Justice is an artificial virtue: though the whole purpose of justice is to serve our interests, the connection between justice and our interests dissolves in the absence of the relevant social convention. For without this convention, wholehearted pursuit of the public interest would make justice pointless and unrestrained pursuit of private interests would leave justice in ruins. And likewise, without this convention, certain individual acts of justice (e.g., returning money to a villain) would run contrary to our private interests and even the public interest: such unfortunate acts are worth performing only because of our convention-based expectation that others will follow our example and reinforce the "whole system", which does serve everyone's advantage.
Hume's answer to the second question is that our approval of justice and disapproval of injustice is based in sympathy with the public interest. Justice was established to serve our interests, but when society grows large enough, we might lose sight of how injustice threatens social order. Fortunately, the threat can be made vivid again when I myself am the victim of injustice, or when I impartially sympathize with others threatened by injustice. Their sympathetically communicated negative feelings form the basis of my disapproval of injustice, and this evaluation subsequently extends to my own behavior through the influence of general rules and sympathy with the opinions of others. Three additional factors then reinforce these moral sentiments: (1) Public leaders propagandize on behalf of justice (contra Mandeville, this technique works only by appealing to and intensifying moral sentiments we already have). (2) Parents instill children with a reliable and deeply rooted concern for the rules of justice. (3) Concern for reputation makes us scrupulously avoid injustice as a matter of personal principle.
Sections 3–6[edit]
The next four sections see Hume completing his examination of justice as an artificial virtue: he argues that "the three fundamental laws of nature, that of the stability of possessionof its transference by consentand of the performance of promises" are all based on human convention. He begins by discussing the general rule of stability and its applications. To make a peaceful establishment of society, we must avoid controversial "particular judgments" about who is best suited to make use of what resources, and instead adopt a general rule of present possessionsimply as a "natural expedient" with all the appeal of custom. Once society has been established, the additional rules of occupation (i.e. "first possession"), prescription (i.e. "long possession"), accession (e.g. "the fruits of our garden"), and succession (i.e. inheritance) are developed. These rules are largely the product of the imagination, with ownership determined by the association of ideas. Second, because "rigid stability" would of course bring great disadvantages (resources having been allocated by mere "chance"), we need a peaceful way to induce changes in ownership: thus we adopt the "obvious" rule of transference by consent. And as for the related rule of "delivery" (physically transferring the object or some symbolic token thereof), this is simply a useful technique for visualizing "the mysterious transition of the property" (property being an inconceivable quality "when taken for something real, without any reference to morality, or the sentiments of the mind"), much as Catholics use imagery to "represent the inconceivable mysteries of the Christian religion".
Hume then examines the final "law of nature"—the performance of promises—giving a two-stage argument that promise-keeping is an artificial virtue. First, promises are naturally unintelligible, for there is no distinctive mental act for promises to express, neither resolutions nor desires nor a direct willing of the act. And as for willing an obligationthis is too absurd to be plausible: given that changes in obligation require changes in human sentiment, it is plainly impossible to will an obligation into existence. But second, even if promises were naturally intelligible, they could not create an obligation: i.e., even if we were foolish enough to mentally will an obligation, nothing would change, since no voluntary act could ever change human sentiments. Hume also reprises the circle argument, arguing that there is no motive for promise-keeping other than a sense of duty in doing so.
How, then, does the artificial convention of promising come about? The first two laws of nature, for all their usefulness, leave many further opportunities for mutual advantage unrealized (e.g., non-simultaneous cooperative exchanges of labor), unable to overcome the meanness of human nature in the absence of "mutual confidence and security". But unvirtuous individuals will soon learn to cooperate with each other simply from a self-interested expectation of the benefits of future cooperation, and special language is introduced to express one's resolution to perform one's part (on penalty of social distrust)—thus the practice is distinguished from the favors of true friends, and secured through staking one's reputation on faithful performance. The convention is then made moral in the same way as before ("[p]ublic interesteducationand the artifices of politicians") and a fictional act of the mind ("willing an obligation") is fabricated to make sense of the moral obligation. Finally, Hume reinforces this explanation by observing that a promise obligates you even if you mentally crossed your fingers, but does not obligate you if it was honestly unintended or if you were obviously joking, and yet does obligate you if your devious insincerity is apparent to shrewd observers, and yet does not obligate you if induced by force (alone among all motives): "[a]ll these contradictions", Hume says, are best explained by his convention-based account of promising. He adds that the "terrible" Catholic doctrine of intention (viz., that a sacrament is invalidated if its minister is in the wrong state of mind) is actually more reasonable than the practice of promising—since theology is less important than promise-keeping, it can afford to sacrifice utility to consistency.
Finally, Hume reviews these "laws of nature" and offers three additional arguments for their artificiality. (1) Justice is commonly defined in terms of property, and yet it is impossible to understand property except in terms of justice. But since there is no natural sentiment of approval for the practice of justice described in neutral language, "abstracting from the notio[n] of property" (e.g., restoring an object to its first possessor), justice is not a natural virtue. (2) Justice and injustice come in bright lines and sharp boundaries, whereas our natural moral sentiments come in degrees. (3) Justice and injustice are universal and general, whereas our natural moral sentiments are partial and particular: e.g., justice might decide in favor of a featherbrained and filthy-rich bachelor instead of a level-headed man trying to support his destitute family, setting aside as irrelevant all the circumstances that engage our affections in favor of the latter.
Sections 7–12[edit]
In the next six sections, Hume completes his "system concerning the laws of nature and nations" with a lengthy discussion of government. The need for government arises from our short-term thinking: though lawful conduct is clearly in our interest, we get carried away by a dangerous "narrowness of soul, which makes [us] prefer the present to the remote", so that rule violations become more frequent and therefore more strategically advisable. Humans are incapable of overcoming this weakness and changing our nature, no matter how much we may regret it from a clear-sighted long-term perspective, so we must instead change our situation and turn to the artificial expedient of government: giving fairly disinterested public officials the power to enforce the laws of justice, to decide disputes impartially, and even to provide public goods otherwise underproduced due to free rider problems.
Hume then critiques the liberal Whig theory of government as deriving its authority only from the consent of the governed, as traced back to an original contract between ruler and people. He agrees with the rudiments of the Whig theory: simple societies can long subsist without government, for it is war between societies that first brings serious social disorder (from conflict over the spoils of war) and then government, with military leaders becoming political leaders at a public assembly. But though government typically originates in a social agreement, promising cannot be its one and only source of authority. For, as Hume has argued, promise-keeping itself originates in a social convention serving the public interest, so that if government serves the public interest by "preserv[ing] order and concord in society", then it gains an authority of its own equivalent to that of promise-keeping. We have a parallel interest in both: promise-keeping is a human invention needed for social cooperation, and government is a human invention needed (in large and advanced societies) for reliably enforcing such practices and thereby preserving social order, with neither invention serving a more general or more significant interest than the other. And the two run parallel morally as well: promise-breaking and anti-government action are both disapproved of primarily from a sense of common interest. Thus there is no sense founding the one in the other. Hume also appeals to the opinions of everyday people (which in questions of morality and other sentimentalist domains "carry with them a peculiar authority, and are, in a great measure, infallible"), who see themselves as born to obedience independently of any promising, tacit or otherwise, even to authoritarian states—an understanding reflected in legal codes on rebellion.
But Hume agrees with the Whigs about the right of resistance when governments become tyrannical. Our interest in government consists in "the security and protection, which we enjoy in political society", and therefore disappears as soon as the authorities become intolerably oppressive. And though our moral obligation to allegiance might be expected to linger on stubbornly due to the influence of general rules, our familiarity with human nature and the history of tyrants will give us additional general rules marking out exceptions to the common rule. And thus public opinion ("perfectly infallible" in questions of morality) is not wed to any exceptionless rule of "passive obedience", but is perfectly willing to "make allowances for resistance in the more flagrant instances of tyranny and oppression".
The next problem of allegiance is who exactly is the rightful ruler? And according to Hume, such questions are often irresolvable by reason, and it can be wise to simply go with the flow in the "interests of peace and liberty". Again, Hume agrees that political society begins with a social agreement promising allegiance to certain people. But once a government acquires its own authority by serving the public interest, it is (paradoxically) in our interest to renounce our interest and simply abide the powers that be, lest we fall into divisive controversies over the best possible ruler. Questions of succession are then answered with five somewhat arbitrary principles: (1) long possession: the influence of custom favors long-established forms of governments, though it takes longer to acquire a right to large nations; (2) present possession: few governments have any better claim to authority than successfully holding onto power; (3) conquest: we favor glorious conquerors over detestable usurpers; (4) succession: along with the clear advantages of hereditary government, Hume emphasizes our imaginative tendency to associate parents with children and pass belongings from one to the other; (5) positive laws: lawmakers may change the form of government, though any drastic departures from tradition are apt to diminish popular allegiance. And with so many distinct principles, the choice of ruler is sometimes wonderfully clear, and sometimes hopelessly unclear. In a closing discussion of the Glorious Revolution, Hume defends keeping the right of resistance unformulated and out of the legal code, and extending this right from cases of direct oppression to cases of interbranch constitutional encroachment in "mix'd governments", adding two "philosophical reflections": first, Parliament's authority to exclude the heirs of rulers they have deposed, but not the heirs of rulers who simply died, derives from mere imaginative inertia; second, a contested change in authority may acquire legitimacy retroactively from a stable line of successors.
Hume then examines international law: the similarities between individuals and entire nations yield the same three laws of nature as before, but the special needs of nations call for special rules (e.g., diplomatic immunity). But because cooperation among nations is "not so necessary nor advantageous as that among individuals", moral rules have significantly less force in international contexts and "may lawfully be transgress'd from a more trivial motive"—i.e., a weaker natural obligation brings a weaker moral obligation. Only general practice can determine exactly how much weaker the obligation is, and indeed the fact that the rules are recognized to be weaker in practice shows that people have "an implicit notion" of their artificiality.
The final section examines the social rules governing the sexual behavior of women ("chastity and modesty"), which Hume takes to nicely illustrate how artificial virtues grounded only in social interest can nevertheless acquire universal force. It is boringly obvious that these rules are not exactly natural, and yet they solve a natural problem: a child needs both parents, parents need to know the child is theirs, and paternity is subject to uncertainty. And since questions of sexual fidelity cannot be settled in courtrooms, society needs informal norms (with weakened evidential standards and heightened reputational import) policing fidelity in women. Indeed, Hume adds, given female weakness in the face of sexual temptation, society needs women to feel a strong aversion to anything even suggestive of infidelity. This solution might sound unrealistic in the abstract, but nature has made it a reality: those personally concerned with infidelity have swept along the unconcerned in their disapproval, molded the minds of girls, and extended the general rule into apparently irrational territory, with "debauch'd" men shocked at any female transgression and postmenopausal women condemned for perfectly harmless promiscuity. Men instead stake their reputation on courage (a partly natural virtue) and enjoy looser sexual norms, fidelity in males (like cooperation among nations) being less important for society.
Part 3: Of the other virtues and vices[edit]
Section 1[edit]
Hume finishes the Treatise by examining the "natural virtues": those character traits approved of independently of social conventions. In a general review of morality and the passions, he reminds us that human psychology is driven by pain and pleasure, which call up direct passions and then the indirect passions that explain moral evaluation and which "qualities or characters" count as virtuous or not. And since the indirect passions apply to actions only as indicating something stable in the agent's mind, the moral sentiments are also directed primarily at "mental qualities" and only derivatively at actions.
After this review, Hume presents his central "hypothesis" concerning the natural virtues and vices: moral evaluation of these traits is best explained in terms of sympathy. The hypothesis is supported by three points: sympathy is so "very powerful" that mere observation of an emotion's causes or effects can communicate the emotion to us, the beauty we find in anything useful stems from sympathy with the pleasure it might bring its users, and likewise the moral beauty we find in the artificial virtues stems from sympathy with the public interest that these virtues serve. Given these three points, and given that natural virtues and social utility often go together, parsimony dictates that we also explain the natural virtues in terms of sympathy. Hume finds the connection between virtue and utility fairly obvious: it inspired Mandeville's erroneous account of virtue as a fraudulent invention of conniving politicians, and indeed the connection is even stronger with natural virtues than with artificial virtues. For though artificial virtues may harm society in particular cases (promoting the public interest only when mediated by a "general scheme"), natural virtues help society in every case, which makes it even more probable that sympathy explains moral evaluation of the natural virtues.
Hume further develops his sympathy-based account of the natural virtues by considering two objections. First, variability and impartiality: how can something as variable as sympathy account for moral impartiality of the sort that recognizes virtue in loved ones and complete strangers alike? Hume's answer is that, because variability in moral evaluation would lead to hopeless practical conflict, we correct ourselves in our "general judgments" by fixing onto a "common point of view": i.e., we focus on the people within someone's sphere of influence, and evaluate his character by sympathetically considering how they are affected by his character traits. Indeed, we perform similar corrections for our senses and our aesthetic judgments. Of course, our passions may resist correction, so that only our language is changed; but we still know that our emotional favoritism of some over others would go away if we were equally close to them all, which is perhaps enough to settle "a general calm determination of the passions". Second, moral luck: how can sympathy explain cases where unusual external circumstances have prevented someone's internal character from having its usual effects? Hume's answer is that the imagination follows general rules, focusing more on something's general tendencies than its actual effects, and that our moral sentiments are influenced accordingly. Naturally, we will feel even stronger approval when the general tendency is actually realized, but we deliberately set aside moral luck to correct our general moral judgments. This explains how we can manage such "extensive sympathy" in morality despite our "limited generosity" in practice: it takes "real consequences" and particular cases to "touch the heart" and "controul our passions", but "seeming tendencies" and general trends are enough to "influence our taste".
He finishes this general treatment of the natural virtues with a fourfold classification: every natural virtue is either (1) useful to others, (2) useful to the person himself, (3) immediately agreeable to others, or (4) immediately agreeable to the person himself. Of these "four sources of moral distinctions", the most important are the virtues of usefulness, which please us even when mere private interest is at stake: thus we approve of prudence and frugality, and while the vice of "indolence" is sometimes indulged (as an excuse for the unsuccessful or a veiled boast of sophistication), "dexterity in business" wins approval by sheer sympathy with the person's private interest. The two categories of useful virtues are often blended together by sympathy: what hurts me ends up paining others as they sympathize with me, and what hurts others ends up paining me as I sympathize with them. Less important are the virtues of immediate agreeableness: instead of reflecting on the positive tendencies of a mental quality, we simply find it pleasant in and of itself (e.g. wit, insouciance). And even here sympathy plays a major role: we approve of these virtues in large part because they bring pleasure to others or the person himself. Hume concludes with "a general review of the present hypothesis"—viz., that we evaluate character by sympathetically considering its impact on the person himself and others within his sphere of influence—and a brief remark on how "good or ill desert" is explained in terms of the benevolence or anger that come with evaluating (i.e. loving or hating) another person.
Section 2–3[edit]
Hume then applies his "general system of morals" to two kinds of virtue: the rough "heroic virtue" of the greatand the kind-hearted virtue of the good. As for heroic virtue, it derives its merit from a suspect source: pride. Pride has a bad name because the idea of someone superior to us can be so immediately disagreeable, but Hume distinguishes between "ill-grounded" and "well-grounded" pride. Ill-grounded pride pains us by comparisonwhen someone else overrates their own merit and this idea of a superior becomes more than an "idle" fiction and reaches a medium level of strength. But someone else's well-grounded pride brings us pleasure by sympathywhen the idea is so strong in us that we fully believe in their merit. And thus well-grounded pride is a virtue, thanks to its usefulness and agreeableness to the person himself. Now, because we are so prone to the vice of excessive pride, social harmony demands artificial rules ("rules of good-breeding") against the open expression of any pride at all. But "a man of honour" is still expected to have a healthy internal sense of his own merit, and those whose modesty goes too far are scorned for their "meanness" or "simplicity". Thus it is that heroic virtues—"[c]ourage, intrepidity, ambition, love of glory, magnanimity, and all the other shining virtues of that kind"—are chiefly admired for the "well-regulated pride" they embody. Indeed, though excessive pride is harmful to oneself (even when courteously concealed from others), and military glory is often extremely harmful to others, nevertheless there is something admirable and "dazzling" in the pride of a hero, due to the immediately agreeable "elevated and sublime sensation" he experiences. Hume adds that our disapproval of open pride even in those who have never insulted us (e.g. historical figures) is due to an additional sympathy with the people around them.
As for the virtues of "goodness and benevolence", Hume explains their merit primarily in terms of their positive impact on others. The section begins by reviewing Hume's account of moral evaluation from the common point of view, and of sympathy with a person's sphere of influence. Here the "tender passions" are not only themselves good for society, they are needed to direct other virtues towards the public good. But there is also a more immediate approval, as we are simply "touch'd with a tender sentiment" or sympathetic to characters like our own—this is why even benevolent "trifles" and excesses in love still win approval, as the love in their minds easily converts into love in our minds for them. As for the contrasting "angry passions", they are judged by comparison with humanity in general—such passions are excused when normal, sometimes scorned when absent, and even applauded when impressively low, though "they form the most detested of all vices" when they "rise up to cruelty"—and for its negative impact on others. Indeed, in general, your moral virtue is mostly determined by how desirable you are in different social relations.
Sections 4–5[edit]
Hume finishes by explaining how his system accommodates not only the "moral virtues" but also the "natural abilities" of the mind, and by downplaying the distinction as not very important and largely a matter of mere terminology. Virtues and abilities are alike, Hume contends, in their "causes and effects": they are mental qualities that produce pleasure and elicit approval, and we all care about both. To the objection that the distinction matters because the approval of abilities feels different from the approval of virtues, Hume responds that our approval of different things always feels different (e.g., with different virtues). To the objection that virtues are unlike abilities in being voluntary and involving free will, Hume replies that many virtues are involuntary (especially the virtues of the great), that voluntariness has no clear relevance to the process of moral evaluation, and that we have no free will other than mere voluntariness. But voluntariness helps explain why "moralists" think the distinction matters: in contexts of moral exhortation, Hume explains, it is important to focus on those qualities that are most responsive to social pressure, rather than approving indiscriminately of any mental excellence, like everyday people and ancient philosophers.
These natural abilities of the mind are valued mainly for their usefulness for the person himself: e.g. prudence, sagacity, industry, patience. Sometimes immediate agreeableness is most important, whether to others (e.g. wit, eloquence, charisma, even cleanliness) or the person himself (e.g. cheerfulness). Our judgments are influenced by empirical associations between a quality and a person's age or walk of life (e.g., disapproval of levity in the old). Natural abilities also influence our evaluations by making an able person more consequential in life, for good or ill. The question of why we are less inclined to value a person according to the quickness and accuracy of their memory Hume explains by noting that (unlike the intellect) "the memory is exerted without any sensation of pleasure or pain; and in all its middling degrees serves almost equally well in business and affairs".
Thus far Hume's account has dealt exclusively with mental qualities, but he goes some way to accommodate "bodily advantages" and "the advantages of fortune", which are equally capable of eliciting "love and approbation". Thus women love a strong man in sympathy with the utility a lover of his could be expected to receive, everyone finds beauty in healthy and useful body parts, and an immediate pleasure or dismay arises from the perception of regular features or "a sickly air", respectively. Thus we esteem the wealthy by sympathy with the pleasure their riches give them, reinforced by their being more consequential. Hume notes that, though he cannot explain why, the feeling of approval is more determined by the kind of subject contemplated (e.g., an inanimate object, or a person) than by the kind of mechanism driving the approval (e.g., sympathy with utility, or immediate agreeableness).
Section 6[edit]
The conclusion of Book 3, and therefore the Treatise as a whole, briefly recapitulates the reasoning for Hume's thesis that "sympathy is the chief source of moral distinctions". Indeed, most would agree that justice and "the useful qualities of the mind" are valued for their usefulness, and what besides sympathy can explain why we care about the public good or "the happiness of strangers"? This "system of ethics" is not only supported by "solid argument", Hume adds, but it can help moralists show the "dignity" and the "happiness" of virtue. First, it puts morality in a good light to see it derived from "so noble a source" as sympathy: we end up approving of virtue, the sense of virtue, and even the psychological principles underlying the sense of virtue. And while the artificiality of justice may seem unattractive at first, this disappears when we remember that since "
See also[edit]
References[edit]
- ^ The book has appeared in many editions after the death of the author. See Hume, David (1888). Selby-Bigge, L.A., ed. A Treatise of Human Nature. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Retrieved 30 June 2014. via Archive.org; Hume, David (1882). Green, T.H.; Grose, T.H., eds. A Treatise of Human Nature : Being an Attempt to Introduce the Experimental Method of Reasoning into Moral Subjects & Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. 1 . London: Longmans, Green & Co.; Hume, David (1882). Green, T.H.; Grose, T.H., eds. A Treatise of Human Nature : Being an Attempt to Introduce the Experimental Method of Reasoning into Moral Subjects & Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. 2 . London: Longmans, Green & Co. Retrieved 30 June 2014. via Archive.org
- ^ Isaiah Berlin
- ^ Jerry Fodor
- ^ Hume, David (1776) My Own LifeURL =
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