Hume, David | Research & Encyclopedia Articles

David Hume (1711–1776) is one of the most influential philosophers of the modern period. He was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, on April 26. His first and mostimportant work, A Treatise of Human Nature (published in two installments in 1739 and 1740, before Hume turned thirty years old), was supplemented in later life by Essays, Moral and Political (two volumes, 1741–1742), An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748), and An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (1751). The latter two books restate in more accessible form the arguments of the Treatise. He also wrote a six-volume history of England (1754–1762) and Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, published posthumously in 1779. Hume, who died in Edinburgh on August 26, applied what he considered the experimental method of science to an examination of ideas and morals, thereby developing an ethics that bases moral judgments on feelings. Because emotivism is so frequently assumed in the contemporary West, to read Hume can be an exercise in cultural self-understanding.

Hume begin his Treatise arguing that human knowledge is limited to sense-experience. The contents of sense-experience can be distinguished into impressions and ideas. Impressions, which include all sensations and passions, are more forceful and lively than ideas, which are "the faint images of these in thinking and reasoning" (Hume 1888 [1739–1740], p. 1). Ideas are thus epistemologically inferior to impressions, and the secondary status that Hume gives them remains characteristic of popular denigrations of their relative impotence. This distinction also suggests that the logical analysis of conceptual relations is less important than the knowledge of matters of fact.

Hume further distinguishes between the simple and complex. Simple impressions and ideas, such as the seeing or imagining of a particular shade of red, admit of neither distinction nor separation. Complex impressions and ideas, such as the seeing or imagining of an apple, can be analyzed into their component parts. Whereas all simple ideas are derived from and exactly represent simple impressions, many complex ideas are not, and so their veracity must be called into question. In Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Hume remarks, "When we entertain, therefore, any suspicion that a philosophical term is employed without any meaning or idea (as is but too frequent) we need but enquire, from what impression is that supposed idea derived? And if it be impossible to assign any, this will serve to confirm our suspicion" (Hume 1894 [1748], p. 22). Something like this view is often employed when people appeal to science in rejecting ideas of God or the soul.

But the most famous subject of Hume's criticism is the relation of cause and effect. Philosophers and scientists traditionally believed that to know something fully requires knowledge of the cause on which it depends. For Hume, such knowledge is impossible. Although the causal relationship provides the basis for all reasonings concerning matters of fact, all such reasoning is quite contingent. This is because one can always imagine, without contradiction, the contrary of every matter of fact (e.g., "the sun will not rise tomorrow" neither is nor implies a contradiction). For Hume, the causal relationship between any two objects is based strictly on experience, and all that experience establishes concerning causal relationships is that the cause is prior in time and contiguous to its effect. Experience cannot establish a necessary connection between cause and effect, because one can imagine without contradiction a case in which the cause does not produce its usual effect (e.g., one can imagine that a cue ball violently strikes another billiard ball and then, instead of causing the billiard ball to move, the cue ball bounces off it in some random direction). The reason why a person might mistakenly infer that there is something in the cause that necessarily produces its effect is because past experiences have habituated the person to think in this way (see Treatise, Book I, Part III; first Enquiry, secs. IV–V). In thus arguing that humans have no direct impression of anything more than spatial and temporal contiguity, Hume sees himself extending empirical science. At the same time, he reduces science's epistemic power by depriving it of any deep knowledge about what lies beyond experience.

Hume's argument with regard to morals is similar. For Hume, moral distinctions are derived from feelings of pleasure and pain of a special sort, and not—as held by many Western philosophers since Socrates—from reason. Working from the empiricist principle that the mind is essentially passive, Hume argues that reason by itself can never prevent or produce any action or affection. Because morals concerns actions and affections, it cannot be based on reason.

Reason can influence human conduct in only two ways. First, reason can inform a person of the existence of something that is the proper object of a passion, and thereby excite it. Second, reason can deliberate about means to an end that a person already desires. But should reason be in error in either of these areas (for instance., by mistaking an unpleasant object for one that is pleasant, or by mistakenly selecting the wrong means to a desired end), it is not a moral but an intellectual failing. As a final point, Hume argues for a distinction between facts and values. According to Hume, one cannot infer conclusions about what ought to or ought not be the case based on premises of what is or is not (see Treatise, Book III, Part I, sec. 1).

Because moral distinctions are not based on reason, Hume infers that they are based on sentiments that are felt by what he calls a "moral sense." When a person describes an action, sentiment, or character as virtuous or vicious, it is because its view causes a pleasure or pain of a particular kind. Hume is well aware that not all pleasures and pains lead to moral judgments (for example, the pleasure of drinking good wine). Rather, it is "only when a character is considered in general, without reference to our particular interest, that it causes such a feeling or sentiment, as denominates it morally good or evil" (Hume 1888 [1739–1740], p. 472). Finally, Hume argues that even though moral distinctions are based on feelings, this does not lead to moral relativism. This is because the general moral principles and the moral sense faculty that recognizes them are common to all human beings.

As indicated, Hume's view that the source of moral approval and disapproval is not reason but the sentiments that are felt has been widely influential. In the twentieth century this view was restated as the emotive theory of ethics. According to A. J. Ayer's Language, Truth, and Logic (1936), once statements of the form "X is wrong" are distilled of their factual components, they merely evince the speaker's moral disapproval, for example, "Boo X!"

In contemporary times, such a view is often deployed against anyone who attempts to make ethical criticisms of science or technology, with the claim that critics are simply stating their own personal preferences. Abandoning Hume's belief in a moral sense faculty common to all humans as itself unjustified by empirical science, it is argued that in a pluralistic society, with many different sentiments and preferences, scientists and engineers should be at liberty to research or invent as they see fit—with perhaps the sole proviso that they do not materially harm other persons. Whether or to what extent this is an adequate ethics for science and technology is a question that Hume's philosophy obliges us to ponder.

Enlightentment Social Theory;; Human Nature;; Locke, John;; Risk and Emotion;; Scientific Ethics.

Ayer, A. J. (1936). Language, Truth, and Logic. London: Gollancz.

Ayer, A. J. (1980). Hume. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Hendel, Charles William. (1925). Studies in the Philosophy of David Hume. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Hume, David. (1741–1742). Essays, Moral and Political, 2 vols. Edinburgh.

Hume, David. (1754–1762). History of England, 6 vols. London.

Hume, David. (1777). The Life of David Hume, Esq., Written by Himself, ed. Adam Smith. London. Included in the 1955 Macmillan edition of the Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding.

Hume, David. (1888 [1739–1740]). A Treatise of Human Nature, 3 vols., ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Hume, David. (1894 [1748 and 1751]). Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding and the Principles of Morals, ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Hume, David. (1935 [1779]). Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, ed. Norman Kemp Smith. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Smith, Norman Kemp. (1941). The Philosophy of David Hume. London: Macmillan.

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