Moral Distinctions Not Derived from Reason
Morality for Hume was not a universal concept, but a human construct founded on reason and human sentiment. The fact that individuals dispute whether an action is right or wrong and use a rational form of discussion to reach a conclusion is strong proof in favor of morality being founded on reason. However, humans also have feelings of approval or disapproval concerning these actions, which provides evidence that sentiment is also part of the human condition. Hume considers several opposing sentiments, such as pride and humility, or love and hate, and treats the way these feelings operate on us as concrete examples of our behavior, not as generalized abstractions. Sentiments motivate us and often place us in a position where we must make a judgment, which is usually made by a coordination of reason and sentiment. Moral distinctions are thus not derived from reason but from our moral sense. What we regard as vice and virtue are not qualities in and of themselves, with an objective, independent existence, but qualities in our minds. Against the moral rationalists, who hold that moral judgments are based on reason, Hume maintains that it is difficult even to make their hypothesis intelligible. Reason, Hume argues, is a judgment about
Some philosophers have argued convincingly that Hume is a moral subjectivist, while others claim that he is a moral realist. Moral skepticism, or subjectivism, is an epistemological position that we do not have knowledge or justification for believing in objective moral principles. Moral skepticism does not involve the rejection of moral values themselves, but simply the denial that we have knowledge of an objective realm of morals. Moral skeptics sometimes argue that moral values are similar to aesthetic judgments. Aesthetic judgments are not objective in nature, but are based on human preferences. Analogously, moral skeptics argue that moral judgments are also not objective. The most effective argument for moral skepticism is to question the existence of the realms in which objective moral principles are thought to reside. If the very notion of a spirit-like realm of abstract entities is called into question, then moral principles cannot be objective in that sense. Moral realists, on the other hand, claim that morals are objective truths discovered by our consciousness, and are not derived from emotional reactions. A moral realist must maintain that virtue and vice exist in the world independent of our feelings. Hume's view would appear to be the opposite; if you take away human sentiment, there would be no relations or matters of fact in the world that could be called good or evil. Given this information, it would seem obvious that Hume is a moral skeptic, but his views differ considerably from well-known moral skeptics, such as J.L Mackie. either matters of fact or relations. However, morality does not consist of a single matter of fact that can be immediately perceived, intuited, or grasped by reason alone, and therefore morality cannot be a judgment about matters of fact. Hume, like Mackie, also argued that there is, in general, an instinctive psychological tendency to give an objective explanation to something which is subjective in origin. Although Hume also denies the existence of moral truths and holds many similar viewpoints, he does not hold the same views as Mackie entirely. Hume believes that while moral judgments may be universal to a degree, they are still largely a matter of human psychological reactions. Hume also believes t
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Approximate Word count = 1527
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)
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