David Fate Norton

Hutcheson's Moral Realism

Some s t range Love o f Simplicity in the S t ruc ture o f h u m a n Nature , or A t t a c h m e n t to some favourire Hypothesis, has engaged many Writers to pass over a great m a n y simple Perceptions, which we have found in ourselves . . . . Th i s Difficulty probably arises f r om our previous Notions o f a small N u m b e r o f Senses, so that we are unwil l ing to have recourse in ou r Theor i e s to any more; and r a the r strain out some Explication o f moral Ideas, with relation to some of the natura l Powers o f Percept ion universally acknowledged. -F ranc i s H u t c h e s o n

Hume's new science of the mind

“Human Nature is the only science of man.” T 1.4.7.14 For Hume, understanding the workings of the mind is the key to understanding everything else. There is a sense, therefore, in which to write about Humes philosophy of mind is to write about all of his philosophy. With that said, I shall nonetheless focus here on those specific doctrines that belong to what we today call the philosophy of mind, given our somewhat narrower conception of that subject. It should also be remembered that Hume describes his inquiry into the nature and workings of the mind as a science. This is an important clue to understanding both the goals and the results of that inquiry, as well as the methods Hume uses in pursuing it. As we will see, there is a thread running from Humes project of founding a science of the mind to that of the so-called cognitive sciences of the late twentieth century. For both, the study of the mind is in important respects just like the study of any other natural phenomenon. While it would be an overstatement to say that Humes entire interest lies in the construction of a science in this sense - he has other, more traditionally “philosophical,” concerns - recognizing the centrality of this scientific aim is essential for understanding him.

An introduction to Hume's thought

Much of what David Hume said about a wide range of subjects remains of great importance today. In the first volume of his first work, A Treatise of Human Nature, a work in which he articulated a new “science of human nature,” Hume focused on an interrelated set of issues in theory of knowledge, metaphysics, and philosophical psychology. More particularly, he explained how it is that we form such important conceptions as space and time, cause and effect, external objects, and personal identity. At the same time, he offered an equally important account of how or why we believe in the objects of these conceptions - an account of why we believe that causes are necessarily connected to effects, that there are enduring external objects, and that there are enduring selves - even though the human mind is unable to provide a satisfactory proof that these phenomena exist. In the second volume of the Treatise Hume expanded his account of human psychology, focusing on the origin and role of the passions and the nature of human freedom. In the third and final volume of this work he explored the origins and nature of morality. In later works he returned to many of these philosophical issues, but he also made substantial contributions to our understanding of political theory, aesthetics, economics, and philosophy of religion. In addition, he wrote an influential, six-volume History of England, a work published in over 175 editions in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and still in print.

Hutcheson's Moral Sense Theory Reconsidered

There is no more central feature of Francis Hutchesons moral philosophy than his theory of the moral sense. In the past this sense or faculty was widely understood to be a distinctive and independent sense devoted to the apprehension of moral qualities, but William Frankena has in recent years challenged this traditional view of Hutchesons theory, and offered in its place an emotivist interpretation. Without question Frankenas study was of the first importance, in that it seems to have overturned the much too simplistic traditional view of the moral sense. Unfortunately, however, Frankenas own interpretation of the moral sense is as inadequate and misleading as the view he overturns, for he concludes that the moral sense is not at all a cognitive faculty, that it does not, that is, apprehend moral qualities, but, rather , is a faculty that enables and motivates us to feel, express , and evoke moral emotions. The moral sense, he argues, is “the source of the feelings involved” in moral approbation or disapprobation, and this approbation is “wholly non-cognitive, very much as it is on Ayers more recent [emotivist] view … This, I shall show, is much too narrow a view; Hutcheson did not limit the moral sense to a single function, nor did he — lacking as he did twentieth-century perspectives — find it either necessary or desirable to assume that the domains of the cognitive and the emotive (or affective) were mutually exclusive.

The Foundations of Morality

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Hume’s Theory of Space and Time in Its Skeptical Context

In Treatise 1.2, Of the ideas of space and time, Hume examines our ideas of spatial extension and temporal duration, our ideas of geometric equality, straightness, flatness, and mathematical point, and our ideas of a vacuum and of time without change. Hume does not, however, restrict his attention to these ideas; he also draws conclusions about space and time themselves. He argues that space and time are not infinitely divisible, that their smallest parts must be occupied, and that as a consequence there is no vacuum or interval of time without change. His treatments of matters beyond the scope of the sections title have received harsh criticism. His conclusions have seemed contrary to mathematics and physics. His method of arguing - applying features of our mere ideas of space and time to space and time themselves - has seemed philosophically inept. The apparent success of these criticisms has led to widespread neglect of this part of Humes work. The neglect is unfortunate. In Of the ideas of space and time Hume gives important characterizations of the skeptical approach that will be developed in the rest of the Treatise. When that approach is better understood, the force of Hume’s arguments concerning space and time can be appreciated, and the influential criticisms of them can be seen to miss the mark.

David Hume: Common-Sense Moralist, Sceptical Metaphysician.

The Description for this book, David Hume: Common-Sense Moralist, Sceptical Metaphysician, will be forthcoming.