A History of Philosophy | 48 Hume on Religion and Ethics

let me start by pointing out that his two major works dealing with religious matters his dialogues concerning natural religion in a natural history of religion the dialogues are really about natural theology the viability of the classic arguments for the existence of God ontological cosmological teleological and the the thing is cast in the form of a dialogue with three characters who represent of course three different positions one of them somewhat skeptical one of them sort of Lockean and one of them something of a platonic mystic and therefore you get a very vigorous kind of debate I don't want to go into the details of the the argument there's some comment on it in stuff and you can explore it more fully if you want to in Colston I think it needs to be said that this is a full scale critique of the claims of natural theology a critique of the arguments and such as there's no theological objections to the theology to doing it that way the the objections is that the arguments don't work the premises don't logically produce the conclusions and from Hughes day until this I think it's fair to say that there is been mainstream in philosophy of religion which is agreed with that assertion that the arguments are not sufficiently complete conclusive clear enough to prove the existence of a first cause a rational designer supremely good and so forth now that's not to say that the arguments don't have any weight at all in fact Hume himself in the last section of the dialogues admits that yes they do have considerable weight and he seems to think that Clinton's position is the one he's most inclined to agree with because of the the kind of impression and impression is the word in Humes technical sense of it because of the impression that the ordinance of nature predictability and so forth has honest so that from a rational logical point of view while the case is by no means clear logically complete it's not demonstrated we don't end a monster ative knowledge of God has not said yet there seems to be something there which might evoke beliefs now the dialogues are concerned then with the logic of belief but the natural history of religion is concerned with the psychology of belief and if you like you can see the relationship between those two as established in the first section of the inquiry concerning human and standing where he distinguishes between abstruse philosophy with its attempt at logical proofs and practical philosophy the sort of thing called things people live by yes see and he intends this to be represented by the distinction between the logical arguments of natural theology and the psychological basis for belief which he develops in the natural history affair and just as in the first section of the inquiry he he says that what we need really is some combination of the two so he seems to be saying with regards to matters religious notice what I said about the conclusion of the dialogues that dealing with the logic of the argument but at the end he seems to appealed at the psychology of belief yes a the logic sort of helps you to get clear about where you said although the psychological coercion that's involved in belief doesn't come from the logic comes from elsewhere so the natural history of religion then is dealing with psychological factors that contribute to belief he he has the the view that monotheism developed historically out of an earlier polytheism belief in one God developed out of a prior belief in many gods and that I think because he finds polytheism easier to explain in terms of some natural psychological development because after all as human beings we have many different concerns common to all of our lives we need to eat food we need some sort of security piece so forth so that we have a variety of emotions dimensions areas of emotional life and there are aspects of our experience within the world of nature which are likely therefore to leave impressions emotional impressions impressions to give rise to the notion of a are the cause of being who is doing this and so variety of such concerns such impressions a variety of gods polytheism is a natural psychological development lot of theism only develops however when the the rational the contemplative comes into play and reflecting on many gods and so forth seems to give rise to some unanswered questions possible problems because contemplatively we recognize that nature has something of an ordered unity about it contemplatively we recognize this and so we we come to think of one being behind the ordered unity you know that's the sort of line of thought the pre-socratics went through in metaphysics why is the one ultimate rather than many so he sees that in the dialogues on the other hand when the teleological argument gets to talking about the ordered unity of things the response that Hume introduces through one of the other characters is hard but it's it's our idea of a unity that's involved how do we know there is that it's--we you combine the various simple ideas into the complex idea and get a unified work you'll see but while logically you cannot prove then the ordered unity of the world you just know the ordered unity of your idea about the world complex ideas are not the originating ideas well that's the case yet psychologically it's still the fact that reflection on that tends to move us from and accordingly that historical development monotheism he feels as simply rational conception a speculative notion of natural religion resulting from natural theology monotheism in that sense isn't going to affect the imagination and produce those impressions feelings and consequently monotheism is likely to give way to some kind of a policy ism now historically how do you get policy as a subsequent to monotheism well he is suggesting that the psychological train would naturally lead there I think in effect what we we have is some rather monotheism as it loses its vitality giving rise to what I'd call a secular istic polytheism that is to say a secular society that has its gods its god of money its god of sex its god of power you'll see that sort of thing loss of any unified worldview but in in history the the fact is that while natural religion cannot long activate the life what is needed is that there be some historical account of that one God active in history Hume says that and obviously he is referring to the Christian story of God active in history and the Incarnation so his point is that religious belief is produced by things that happen in human experience historically and in every body's experience that arouse emotions impressions that give rise to ideas about the cause of what's happening so a psychological account of religious beliefs in the process of all of that what Hume has done for the history of thought of the of religion has been working with for the last 200 years namely the concern to reconstruct theistic arguments that are indeed valid the attempt to reconstruct theistic arguments discussion as to what sort of a God does natural theology point towards the problem of evil much more than previously because one of Humes objections to the teleological argument arguing from the ordered purposefulness of nature is that evil represents distally ologist lack of order or at least like a purpose discernible purpose and so the problem of evil came increasingly into focus the relationship between reason and emotion in religion obviously a crucial question and that includes the question of the evidential value of religious experience arguing from religious experience and then finally the question of the relationship between religion and morality because he argues that religion tends to divert people's attention from moral and social issues that they moral outcomes of religious belief aren't at all uniform he's not saying there are none but they're not uniform enough and that sort of question has given rise to attempts at moral arguments for the existence of God arguments for morality towards the existence of God so the whole agenda really that you get into in the philosophy of religion course really is an agenda that comes out of here this dialogues the point being that so much of this was taken for granted as effectively handled by the Scholastic tradition but only gradually did it all arie emerges in need of fresh attention now the the new developments then in philosophy of religion was spurred by Hume but don't say just whom you have to say Hume and Kant as we will see in the neck two or three weeks because by the time Kant is through with his critique of Pure Reason he too has given a resounding critique of rational proofs logical proofs for the existence of God and he too feels that religious belief is based on something other than logical proofs and with the time he's through with his writings on ethics he's given us a moral argument for the existence of God by the time he's through with his writings about aesthetics and the beauty of nature he's given us an aesthetic argument for the existence of God but not logical proofs what he does is something short of proof essentially he's saying that the only way to explain moral and aesthetic phenomena is by means of the postulate that God exists in other words you need theism and a theistic worldview to give an adequate account of moral and aesthetic experience but we'll see that as we we get to Immanuel Kant so let me pause there and see if there are things in this you want to toss around for a little while yeah Troy yes to trinitarianism as a form of polytheism yeah you know I'd have to double-check the the text of the thing to make sure I don't recall that in it so that if I were answering off-the-cuff I'd say no this is simply an extrapolation from his psychological explanation of the rise of polytheism first but let me check that text and get back to you I want I was wanting to reread it on Monday morning anyway for another purpose however let me let me add this this one other thing when you get to Hegel who suddenly no empiricist like the hume his agenda is vastly different than Hills Hegel sees a historical dialectic at work in the history of religion thesis antithesis synthesis where the thesis is pen thesis is polytheism the antithesis is pantheism the synthesis which is the highest form of truth is trinitarianism yeah part of that but the trinity 3 & 1 1 & 3 so the question of the historical development of religion certainly is live in this general period late 18th early 19th century around 1800 and Hume in a I think in a significant way has a hand in spurring inquiry and of his three of religion yes he which previously had not been an interest history generally is not an interest prior to about 1800 it's just part of what they called Bell let good riding and historical method as a science begins to develop around 1800 in fact Hume himself wrote a history of England which is said to involve historical methods by virtue of which Hume might be called one of the first great historical thinkers the beginnings of history as a science so well okay now somebody else statement the person responsible doesn't you see something like even though we can't er that I think is in the section called on a particular Providence which is about God yeah and I think that's the the same sort of line of thought as you get in the dialogues now when he says infer he doesn't mean logically demonstrate yes they in fact earlier on when he's talking about the fact that we experience constant conjunctions and somehow or other conclude that there's a necessary connection and he's already said there's no logical step involved he uses the word infer for that transition infer in those contexts seems to be a to mean a step that the mind takes which may not be a logical step so I think that's the case in that thing on special Providence it varies it varies there are there are some who are trying to provide demonstrative certainty as knock would call it more generally the appeal is to probability which is putting them in the evidential ESCAP okay probability the weight of evidence yes and a lot depends there on the epistemology with which they are working now you're gonna be reading about Thomas read this next week the Scottish realist read categorically rejects the theory of ideas and impressions he denies the whole business of representational knowledge we have a direct awareness of material bodies yes they which means that you don't argue from the idea of an ordered universe you argue from an ordered universe and consequently he can be much more positive about the outcomes of that now while read gave some lectures on natural theology he didn't do a lot of work in that area but that Scottish realist tradition affected a lot of people who did there was a Scottish theologian by the name of Robert Flint in the nineteenth century very influential his book theism was widely used even 50 years ago you can check it in the library if you like and the Princeton theologian Charles Hodge who systematic theology is still studied from all about the 1860s the philosophical framework he's working with the Scottish realism yes he and so as you would expect for a Scottish realest realest he's much more positive about the the theistic arguments than somebody with John Locke's theory of David Humes theory of ideas they think they have certainties two starters so it varies with that tradition and I think the that it's the Scottish realist tradition represented perhaps by Charles Hodge but others who came to America which shaped shaped the American evangelical apologetic that is oriented towards theistic arguments for the existence of God now there are other kinds of American tradition and apologetics but it came out of that reaction against Hume on the part of the Scottish resources okay and some of you may know that mark Knoll in the history department has done all sorts of historical research and publishing about the influence of Scottish realism on American evangelicalism essays galore not sure if he has a book on the subject the Eason he's got parts of books on subject so if you do work with mark Noll okay you'll get into something incidentally the the Whedon college president jail of abuzz well who was president Mitsy in the 30s early 40s was very much the Scottish realist very much the Charles Hodge sort of man very much so so that that influence was pretty evident right here at leaden in fact when I was an undergraduate here I studied with a man who had been a student of Oliver Boswell's after Boswell left here and taught in seminar so that my introduction to apologetics in college was the Scottish real estate from which I have considerably strayed yes that seemed to me cool in this little dialogue she was having with his friend his friend Hume said his friend went to the speech and explained how we really couldn't didn't forgot existence or anything of the sort from some of our world and Hume said but why not because we could you know we see a half-built house you can assume that there's an intelligent that he's going to bring it to completion of this sort of thing and his friend answered yeah but the reason can do though god is because we're dealing with two different mediums here we're dealing with we're transferring our earthly knowledge was something we have no idea about we don't have any impressions to relate to God and so in that sense by him giving that friends answer or whether it's his or not I don't know it seems that he said that you couldn't infer any particulars about God but but Humes answer to that that friend latest reply was I though you may not be granted you can infer the particulars that way but because this is a unique creation or a unique unique building or whatever this is something that we've never seen before and have no explanation for we can for at least a unique and special create yeah now you see that would be the kind of rational speculation which makes belief plausible but it wouldn't be the psycho had the psychological impact which would naturally elicit belief yes so that they you find that in combining the two he moves from the rational to the psychological and when when everything's on the table he always seems to come back to the psychological basis yeah okay let's turn to his ethics shall we and here the two main works to keep in mind are of course the treatise on human nature which is his early work when he was in his twenties book three I think I've said here part three I think he calls it book three book three of that is about morality and then later in life he came up with a shorter work more on the style of the inquiry concerning human understanding a short of work he's an easier one that he thought was required because all of the misunderstandings that are arisen about the the previous work and inquiry concerning the principles of morals and inquiry concerning the principles of morals now the two it seems to me say very much the same thing different emphases perhaps but very much the same and let me start by pointing out that the same basic issue about the relationship between reason and feeling comes up in ethics as in religion and every other area of Humes thinking in fact that is the way in which he introduces the subject in the inquiry concerning the principles of morals is morality founded on reason or on feeling his morality founded on reason or on feeling that's the question now in order to see what he's trying to get at two kinds of observations are necessary one that when he says feeling or passion or sentiment or says that we seem to have a kind of moral sense it's the vocabulary he's using what is referring to is impressions related to reflection now you remember his theory of impressions that all ideas are really arising as copies or imaginative productions suggested by original impressions sense impressions okay so that these ideas which are copies or which are result of memory perhaps imagination okay these are known by reflection on their own mental states so I may be reflecting indirectly on my impressions and these ideas themselves leave impressions which give rise to further ideas you remember that story so when he says that he's going to be discussing reason or feeling passion sentiment moral sense that this is dealing with impressions of reflection what he's talking about is these impressions yes a impressions of the ideas that ran through our minds in relationship to things and our experience plainly then he's going to give an empiricist account of the origin of moral beliefs if he's going to follow that route Moral Sentiments our impressions of reflections resulting from earliest sense impressions and ideas of what is happening or might happen now sentiments can be calm well they can be violent and he develops that distinction in book two of the treatise which is entirely on the passions passions can become or they can be violent so that we have calm feelings about beauty but on the other hand there are violent sentiments violent passions like love patron proud pride and jealousy violent not in the sense that they are hurting somebody necessarily but in the sense that they're strong forceful rather than the calm steady satisfaction of mutti now violent impressions may be a direct response maybe a direct response to ideas and impressions which are occurring like two experiences of pleasure and pain that you're undergoing and you have feelings about that or they may be indirect responses in direct responses to experience that are mixed with certain other feelings that we have a feeling of pride that is mixed with the experience of what somebody has just said about you and the feeling that comes out of that is therefore one of these indirect things because it's mixed with something else so what he's doing then in raising this question as to whether morality is based on reason or passion is drawing on his theory of the impressions okay because passions emotions sentiments feelings they are impressions impressions if you like second-order impressions now that's the first thing to give context to it context in his own thinking the second thing is historical context historical context because the question is morality founded on reason or sentiment was the hot issue in discussion of ethics in his day that was the hot issue the Enlightenment tradition of course had tended to say that if ethics is founded on reason John Locke had said moral knowledge is to monster ative knowledge just like mathematics yes knowledge has to do with the agreement and disagreement of ideas so if you have the idea of the right to property which according to Locke is a natural right it's not an artificial construct it's a natural right and if you have the idea of theft and then simply by comparing those two ideas you find that there is disagreement between them and you know that theft is therefore in violation of the right to product and so moral knowledge is simply relations of ideas knowledge demonstrative knowledge according to John Locke now Hume heartily disagree is and he disagrees because he doesn't think that anybody in the state of nature so-called has a right to property is that he seems to think Locke does that the right to property is prior to the being any civil society yes because he has a natural law ethic but Hume disagrees he rejects natural law ethics he says that that idea of the state of nature is a is a myth a fiction not only does it historically not exist but you can't even imagine it the way Hume talk not talks about it it's so involved with logical inconsistency like on the notion of a right to property when property is a product of organized society rather than anything else so on the one hand then there are those who say that morality is based on reason like John Locke now there were also some of the moral sense philosophers of the day that we'll be looking at next week like Joseph Butler who argued that our moral judgments waning conscience we say that would be wrong you see that's an immediate awareness at wrongness but Butler and others in that tradition would say that that is a rational judgment Thomas Reid I mentioned Scottish realist he maintains we have a direct awareness of wrongness and it's a rational judgment that we make and he argues that against David Hume so there are those who contend then that moral knowledge is rational knowledge moral judgments of rational judgments the basis of morality is in reason and more basically of course natural law of some sort on the other hand there is there are those among the moral saints philosophers like the famous Earl of Shaftesbury who had been Locke's patron and Francis Hutcheson also incidentally very influential in early American philosophy Shaftesbury and Hutchison who maintained that conscience our moral sense is more akin to aesthetic feeling than it is to mathematics or demonstrative reasoning that it's more a matter of moral taste sort of making rational judgments that you can no more argue about the rightness or wrongness of something then that you can argue as to whether a certain piece of music is beautiful with somebody who doesn't have a developed taste for it sentiment feeling taste and there are places where a Hume uses the word taste also and it's not surprising therefore the people who respond to this emphasis on feeling try to argue that aesthetic judgment is also rational judgment not only moral judgment but aesthetic judgment so that there is some objective truth about aesthetic values something objective about moral values now as far as Hume is concerned these are all subjective and those critics of Hume like Thomas Reid point out what has happened historically is something like this once the theory of ideas was introduced primary qualities became subjective now taking back secondary qualities became subjective then with Berkeley second not only secondary but primary qualities became subjective with secondary qualities subjective color so beauty became subjective and with David Hume the leaf became not a matter of rational judgment but something subjective a matter of theme and what was left but for moral belief to be subjective also so it's traced to the influence of the theory of ideas subject devising what previously had been regarded as objective all the way down the line the Scottish realists hold that primary qualities and secondary qualities are both objective that aesthetic and moral values are both objective that belief is a rational intuition not just a psychological response and so the issue is pretty well defined in that way and Hume is trying to formulate his view now Hume is a man of moderation he refuses to buy the idea that reason is the basis of morals he refuses to buy the idea that sentiment or feeling alone is the basis of morals sure and just as it was with the abstruse and the practical the logical and the psychological he's like the little boy offered two kinds of pie which would you like a little bit of each if you please he wants a combination of the two may you see he tried to pull that off in religion can he pull it off in X that's what he tries to do okay well if reason has a role in relationship to ethics for human what is its role well remember that reason for Hume can produce two kinds of judgments and only two judgments about the relations of ideas the judgments about matters of fact so the question about the role of reason is what knowledge do we have related to ethics of relations of ideas that is a fact sounds simple well relations of ideas yes definitions of moral terms definitions of moral terms that is to say if we say justice is such-and-such definition there's a relation of ideas subject and predicate are agreeing in the definition so we can define moral terms we can talk for instance about the relationship of different moral concepts the relationship for instance between benevolence and self-interest right they don't exactly agree with each other do they knowledge has to do with the agreement and disagreement all right so that's one thing that Reason can do second thing has to do with matters of fact reason can describe the circumstances in which we have to act could provide us with factual knowledge about situations that we face with factual understanding of the possible consequences of actions okay some reason contributes in those ways now notice that last phrase consequences of actions because one of the main links between reason and feeling is going to be utility he's a pre utilitarian utilitarian at least if you mark the beginning of utilitarianism with Bentham and mill it's from John it's from David Hume they really get the idea what then is the role of what thing can reason not do reason cannot justify appealing to consequences and utility no point might as a matter of prudence might tell you in to be prudent see but why do you want to be prudent it can't really justify appeals to utility it cannot motivate you to want to do something and it cannot approve or disapprove an action they can just describe consequences now if reason cannot approve or disapprove in action you can't make moral judgments moral judgments approve or disapprove so reason can make no moral judgments and in as much as responses of feeling and not judgments feelings are not true or false only propositions judgments are true or false in as much as feelings are not true or false feelings make no moral judgments there are no moral judgments you see now there are moral sentiments there are moral feelings that give rise to utilitarian statements why what about sentiment what's the role of sentiment well I said that the common ground is utility and you can see how reason hitches on the utility how the sentiment hit your ID on utility well you see utility they consequences that are for the common good of everybody utility is based on the feeling of benevolence benevolence is wishing wanting willing what is good for others a sentiment of benevolence beneficence is doing what's good benevolence is wanting what's good but why are we that way inclined in our feelings towards others Hobbs had said we're not we're all like ravenous beasts and Hume argues against egoism Hobbs have been accused of a radical egoism and in Humes day the term hob ism there was an epithet of disdain for a view that really I don't think Hobbs held that there is not a shred of friendliness or anything else in a human being naturally yes a well Hume argues against that he's arguing that there is a natural benevolence in all human beings a natural altruism in all human beings how in varying degrees he's not saying how much it varies in degree greatly but there is some natural benevolence there sort of by Nature how does it develop and he's doing dealing with sort of a developmental moral psychology well it develops out of a feeling of simple thing develops out of feeling of sympathic sympathy which involves as I feel sympathy either pleasure for you or pain with you oh I feel for you we say I feel for you yes so that there is yourself interests involved there in the pain or pleasure that I feel but why would I feel sympathy I feel sympathy because reason tells me of factual similarities between you and me your experience and mine and remember one of the principles of Association resemblance resemblance so when there are resemblances between your experience in mine the complex ideas that develop in my mind involve both of us yes and because they involved both of us I feel not just for me but for you and there is a natural benevolence in all human beings well this then is the is the essence of his position his is to two ways in which this theory is labeled this is an ethical subjectivism and it's an ethical naturalism now let me explain those terms the current to this day ethical subjectivism is the view that there is there are no objective moral qualities there are no objective truths of an ethical sort about objective states of affairs but rather when I say something is wrong something's good I'm talking about my own feelings my own sentiments so that in this case you see we're out of benevolence I feel with you and I say that's too bad what you had to go through what I'm really doing is saying I'm suffering when I think of what you're going through I'm not saying that it's wrong that you have to go through it I'm saying it's painful to you and it's painful to me so wrongness and rightness just have to do with the subjective feelings of those who experience it talk about it there are ethical naturalism is this is as well though don't equate the two subjectivism is only one kind of naturalism a subjectivist kind there are Objectivist kinds of naturalism ethical naturalism is the view that morality is grounded in nature morality is grounded in nature and because it's grounded in the nature of our emotional psychology you think it's grounded in our emotional psychology Hume is a an ethical that promised and he talks about laws of nature now they're not laws of nature in some metaphysical sense like Aristotle or innate as in the Platonists they're not laws of nature in the sense of being there already when we come into the world he's very plain that these laws of nature are artifacts but they are laws of nature in the sense that they arise naturally in the course of nature because of the nature of our psychological development in relationship to other people so he has an ethic based on a natural developmental psychology the nature of psychological development the nature of emotional development is what gives rise to ethics and he's very quick to say that this is universally the same for all human beings this process of development because of the way in which God made us to function now whether he says God with tongue-in-cheek or because he really believes it of course is another question but at least he's saying if there's a theistic basis in your thinking then all right but the immediate basis is the universality of the psychological process so he's not an ethical relativist the laws of nature he sees as 3/1 having to do with property the stability of possession one having to do with transferring it by consent never having to do with keeping promises you see and so he says this is the way the laws about justice develop and he even talks about the laws of the nations which is the phrase used in natural law theory from the Romans and Aquinas onwards laws of nations are laws pertaining in all nations well so did these three that he spells out because without the security of possession there would be constant war of all against all without transferring by consent there would be no commerce and without keeping of promises there would be no alliances or treaties so these are laws that apply for utilities sake between the nations as well as between individuals but these laws of nature are but just utilitarian things justice is a utilitarian notion justice is simply the utility of giving to week each what's his due yes well there's Humes okay Monday

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Length: 61min 11sec (3671 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 16 2015