HUME'S NON-COGNITIVIST MORAL ANTI-REALISM

COGNITIVISM with respect to moral discourse = Moral statements (i.e., particular moral judgments, moral rules and moral principles) make reports or claims that are either true or false.

NON-COGNITIVISM with respect to moral discourse = Moral statements are neither true nor false. Why is Hume a non-cognitivist?

MORAL REALISM: Some moral statements are true.

MORAL ANTI-REALISM = No moral statements are true.

TWO VARIETIES OF MORAL ANTI-REALISM:

Cognitivist Anti-Realism: The view that all moral statements are false.

Non-Cognitivist Anti-Realism: The view that moral statements are neither true nor false.

Hume's Two-Fold Challenge to the Moral Realist

Reason [i.e., the Understanding, which includes both Reason and the Imagination] determines truth and falsity.

All such determinations are purely descriptive. They have no motivational force. They include real relations of ideas [Reason] or real existence or matters of fact (especially causal means-end relations) [Imagination].

Moral judgments, are normative (they have motivational force). Therefore, moral judgments are not produced by the understanding.

We saw in Book 2, Part 3, Section 3 that Hume moves very quickly from the claim that reason [the understanding] alone cannot produce an action to the claim that reason cannot oppose a passion. On his own account, the passions "yield to our reason without any opposition" when reason [the understanding] determines that one of the "suppositions" of the passions is false.

To answer Hume's challenge, it is not enough for a moral realist to claim that reason [the understanding] can oppose a passion. On Hume's own account, purely descriptive beliefs about existence and means-end relations can extinguish a passion. Hume's challenge to the moral realist is to explain how anything else that reason does can oppose a passion. Thus, the moral realist must show that reason [the understanding]: (1) can determine normative moral truths and then (2) use them to oppose a contrary passion.

Book 3, Part 1, Section 1: Why Moral Distinctions Cannot Be Derived from Reason [i.e., the Understanding, Understood to Include Reason and the Imagination]

The Understanding: "Reason is the discovery of truth or falsehood. Truth or falsehood consists in an agreement or disagreement either to the real relations of ideas, or to real existence and matter of fact. Whatever, therefore, is not susceptible of this agreement or disagreement, is incapable of being true or false, and can never be an object of our reason."(T 3.1.1.9)

"Demonstrative reason discovers only relations."(T 3.1.1.19, note 69) Why does Hume think that moral relations cannot be discovered in this way? The example of ingratitude is not a persuasive one. But the challenge is persuasive. How could abstract relations of ideas motivate us to do anything?

Why does Hume think that morality does not consist in matters of fact? Is his example of willful murder persuasive? Why does Hume deny that the wrongness of the murder can be identified with any of the matters of fact? Because he is assuming that if you pick any matter of fact, he can describe another situation in which that fact holds, but the act is not wrong [vicious]? For example, killing in self-defense is not wrong [vicious].

Book 3, Part 1, Section 2: The ideas of virtue (right) and vice (wrong) are derived from impressions of reflection.

The Passions: "Whatever therefore is not susceptible of this agreement or disagreement, is incapable of being true or false, and can never be an object of our reason. Now, it is evident our passions, volitions, and actions, are not susceptible of any such agreement or disagreement; being original facts and realities, complete in themselves, and implying no reference to other passions, volitions, and actions. It is impossible, therefore, they can be pronounced either true or false, and be either contrary or conformable to reason."(T 3.1.2.9)

Why is Hume so sure that moral judgment is a product of the passions rather than the understanding?

According to Hume, what is the source of our ideas of virtue and vice, right and wrong?

It is a particular kind of pleasure [or displeasure] that we feel when we consider a person's character or motivation from the general point of view. The general point of view is explained more fully in T 3.3.1.

The Is-Ought Divide

"I cannot forbear adding to these reasonings an observation, which may, perhaps, be found of some importance. In every system of morality which I have hitherto met with, I have always remarked, that the author proceeds for some time in the ordinary way of reasoning, and establishes the being of a God, or makes observations concerning human affairs; when of a sudden I am surprized to find, that instead of the usual copulations of propositions, is, and is not, I meet with no proposition that is not connected with an ought, or an ought not. This change is imperceptible; but is, however, of the last consequence. For as this ought, or ought not, expresses some new relation or affirmation, it is necessary that it should be observed and explained; and at the same time that a reason should be given, for what seems altogether inconceivable, how this new relation can be a deduction from others, which are entirely different from it."(T 3.1.1.27)

How might a moral realist reply to this argument?

What challenge will Hume make in reply?

Book 1, Part 3: What is moral judgment? The Example of the Natural Virtues

Moral judgments are judgments of character.

What is the role of sympathy?

What is the role of causal reasoning?

What is the role of the general point of view?

What are the four features that can make something a moral virtue or moral vice (for both natural and artificial virtues and vices)? Are all four kinds of virtues moral virtues?

HUME ON ILLUSIONS OF MORAL JUDMENT AND THE CORRECTION OF MORAL SENTIMENTS

Why does Hume think that our moral judgments about those who are close to us tend to be stronger than our moral judgments about those who are more distant from us (in space or time). Why does he think that these judgments need to be corrected? According to Hume, how do we correct them?

What does Hume mean by: "Reason requires such an impartial conduct"(T 3.3.1.18)? Does this introduce a cognitivist element into his account of morality?

The general point of view is one from which we can correct for our own partiality. The idea of "correcting" our sentiments suggests that there is something we can make a mistake about. But the idea of a mistake would seem to imply that moral judgments are true or false (and thus products of the understanding). Is Hume involved in an inconsistency?