David Hume "Feelings as the Basis of Morality"

1. Reason Subordinate to Emotion (pertains to moral motivation)

-the common conception of reason and its role.

Hume's main theses in Part 1

i) "reason alone can never be a motive to any action of the will..."

ii) reason "can never oppose passion in the direction of the will..."
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"the understanding exerts itself after two different ways."
-abstract or demonstrative reasoning.

-practical reasoning ("avoid or embrace what will give us uneasiness or satisfaction").
objects must affect us in the first place; understanding relations between them cannot, by itself, motivate us to act.

-it plays a role, but reason is never original impulse never comes from reason.

-the fact that A causes B is irrelevant to me if I care about neither these objects (in fact it's only important to me if I care about B in the first place).
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i) "reason alone can never be a motive to any action of the will..."

a) Passions, according to Hume, cannot contradict or conflict with reason, because there is no way in which passions can get the world wrong. Passions are things onto themselves, not ideas about the world.

-passion is an "original existence."

-in other words, it has no reference to another object; it is not a copy of something else in the way that our ideas are copies of something else.

"contradiction consists in the disagreement of ideas, considered as copies, with those objects, which they represent...

ii) reason "can never oppose passion in the direction of the will..."

b) Sometimes, it seems to us that reason controls the passions. But, according to Hume, this is the work of "calm desires and tendencies."

-strength of mind is a matter of calmer passions holding general dominance over the violent ones.
unreasonable passions (one might want to say irrational)

1. when fear, hope etc. "is founded on the supposition of objects, which really do not exist."

2. when we choose a bad strategy for promoting our goals ("we choose means insufficient for the designed end."

"It is not contrary to reason for me to..."

2. Moral Distinctions Not Derived From Reason (pertains to moral justification)

-passions cannot be concerned with truth and falsity.
-therefore reason cannot be the source of our moral judgments.

...Take any action allows vicious: willful murder, for instance. Examine it in all light, and see if you can find that matter of fact, or real existence, which you call vice."

-to find the source of your moral judgment, you must look inwards "into your own breast, and find a sentiment of disapprobation, which arises in you towards this action."

-deriving an ought from an is

3. Why Utility Pleases

-deriving morality from self-love (self-interest):
the self interested approach doesn't account for the way we hand out praise and blame.

-sympathy may be weak as a motivator, but no one can plausibly deny its existence.

-moral distinctions arise from this sense of fellow feeling and concern for others.