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"The reasonable person redefines reason so as to give him- or herself a reasonable concept. Hume is reasonable in just this way: if reason is the capacity to grasp the reasons for things, then what he does is give an account of the reasons for things that rejects the long, traditional account of reasons defended by both the rationalists and the Aristotelians.
On this new concept of reason, our judgments about that world are all fallible. But this is not scepticism, at least not scepticism in any reasonable sense of that term – though it is a reason that does not come up to the standard of incorrigibility and infallibility of the rationalists and the Aristotelians. We all know the examples given by philosophers, of dreams and of square towers that look round in the distance: these establish the fallibility of our ordinary uses of the reason that gets us around the world where we find ourselves. But we do have precisely that same reason to help us correct these errors. As Hume put it in the first Enquiry: ‘These sceptical topics, indeed, are only sufficient to prove, that the senses alone are not implicitly to be depended on ; but that we must correct their evidence by reason, and by considerations, derived from the nature of the medium, the distance of the object, and the disposition of the organ, in order to render them, within their sphere, the proper criteria of truth and falsehood’ (E 124). ‘Within their sphere, [they, the senses, constitute] the proper criteria of truth and falsehood’: hardly the remark of a sceptic." (pp.3-4)
"But after so remarking, Hume goes on to note that there are ‘more profound’ arguments against reason. These are the arguments of the philosophers for the scientific picture of the world. There are our ordinary beliefs about the independence of the objects that we perceive in daily life – the tables, chairs, square towers, and so on, that are there in the world in which we find ourselves. But the new science has called this world into question. The real objects, those independent of the mind, are in fact, according to this view, quite unlike the objects of sense. As for the sensible appearances of things, these are dependent for their existence upon the state of our sense organs. There is, then, a gap between the world in which we all naturally believe, on the one hand, and the world to which philosophical – scientific – reasoning leads us, on the other." (p.4)
" [Hume] does not quell all the doubts of the sceptic. But he does show how we can bring together the worlds of the ‘vulgar’ – the world of ordinary experience – and the world of the ‘philosopher’ – the scientific picture of the world and of our place in it. [...]
In fact, I propose to argue, Hume in the Treatise systematically defends a version of that philosophical/metaphysical position once known as ‘critical realism.’ Hume is not a sceptic ; he is a critical realist, but one who recognizes the fallibility of human judgment." (p.5)
"Descartes is on the side of Aristotle and Plato and in that sense looks back towards the past. Hume is critical of them all: it is he and not Descartes who makes the radical break with the past (with, no doubt, the help of Locke and Berkeley)." (p.6)
"The view attributed to Hume is close to that of Russell in the Analysis of Matter as well as to that of Sellars père. It is argued that causal reasoning can be extended beyond the world of sense experience, provided we allow Hume the use of abstract relative ideas. Then we can, to use the language of Russell, form definite descriptions to refer to objects with which we are not acquainted." (p.12)
"Our study grants Hume’s attack on religion but aims to show how the sceptical arguments that achieve that end leave commonsense and science unscathed – its books escape the flames, they retain their utility for the ordinary reasonable person." (p.14)
"Commentators often studiously avoid, it seems to me, the Humean attack on religion. One cannot, of course, avoid the essay on miracles or the essay on God’s particular providence. But the overall attack is missed. Part of missing that point is missing the point about Pascal. It is important, it seems to me, to recognize that Hume is arguing for the socially pernicious nature of Pascal’s belief. The errors in religion, the errors that one finds in Pascal, are dangerous. It is not just that the ‘Dialogue’ concluding the second Enquiry deals with the relativity of ethical codes – which it does. But that is not all that it does. It is also an argument that some ethical codes – those of superstition – do not satisfy the principle of utility, nor do they fit in with the natural sympathetic tendencies of humankind." (p.16)
"It is often recognized that Hume argues that reason – that is, pure reason – cannot provide a justification of any causal inference, nor the inferences to the existence of bodies. The former is a matter of custom rather than reason – that is, pure reason. It does not follow that reason cannot provide reasons justifying one causal inference over another. Nor does it mean that one cannot have good reasons for believing – as we all inevitably do – in the existence of body and even in the existence of those bodies of which the new science talks. It depends on what one might reasonably refer to as reason. If reason is the capacity to grasp causes, then, if causation be a matter of regularity, as Hume’s first definition of ‘cause’ requires, then what other than custom could grasp those causes and what other than custom ought to be referred to as ‘reason’? Thus, having disposed of reason as providing knowledge of (‘ultimate’) causes (causes as necessary connections), but retaining as reasonable a set of ‘rules by which to judge of causes and effects’ (Treatise I, iii, 15), Hume enters, in the section that immediately follows, into a discussion of the reason of animals, a sort of reason that they share with us albeit to a lesser degree – reason in a sense of ‘reason’ that is other than the one that has just been rejected – but a reason in which conforming one’s thought to the ‘rules by which to judge of causes and effects’ is a case of reason and, in fact, is reason at its best. That Hume redefines the concept of reason to a more reasonable concept than that provided by the rationalists and the Aristotelians is something that any adequate reading must recognize. This is important because it allows us to characterize Hume as a philosopher who is more than a sceptic. He is a philosopher who does allow that inductive inferences are a matter of reason, and who does allow that some inductive inferences are more reasonable than others, and who even allows that it is reasonable to infer from our impressions the existence of body. It is precisely this recognition that there is a reasonable sense of ‘reason’ that enables him to draw the distinction between, on the one hand, theology, which reason (this reasonable sense of ‘reason’) condemns as useless, worthy of the flames, and, on the other hand, common sense and its extension, science, which reason judges useful, and worth saving – worth saving from the ravages of the fires of scepticism." (pp.18-19)
"In the Treatise, Hume provides a set of rules by which to judge of causes and effects. These rules define when it is reasonable to adopt towards a regularity (‘cause’ by Hume’s first definition of that concept) the attitude mentioned in the second definition of ‘cause.’ In the first Enquiry these rules are given in a rather different and more diffuse form, in a long footnote in the section dealing with the ‘Reason of Animals’ and just before the essay on ‘Miracles.’ The point of giving these rules in this context in the first Enquiry is to make clear that uniform experience of humankind justifies the inference to the principle that for every event there is a cause – that is, a naturalistic cause. An unusual and apparently miraculous event – for example, six days of darkness in the year 1600 or, perhaps, the effect of a thorn at Port Royal – in short, an example of an unusual event contrary to our expectations formed from nature yet to which there is strong testimonial evidence – on the basis of the causal principle such an event calls for the search for a naturalistic cause. That is, it does not call for the attribution of the event to the actions of a non-naturalistic deity. Hume clearly means for the reader to use these rules in his or her considerations concerning miracles. At least, that is what the reasonable person would do: use reasonable rules to provide reasoned judgments about the causes of unusual events.
It is, I shall be arguing, reason in this reasonable sense of ‘reason’ that Hume uses to defend his critical realism: the reason which is critical of religion is just that reason which defends the scientific picture of the world." (p.19)
[Chapitre 1 : Abstract Ideas and other Linguistic rules in Hume]
"Now, in the Treatise Hume repeatedly uses the language of cognition when discussing ideas. Thus, in discussing causal inferences generally, he appeals to the logical properties of ideas: ‘We may draw inferences from the coherence of our perceptions, whether they be true or false ; whether they represent nature justly, or be mere illusions of the senses’ (84). Again, we are said to ‘assent’ to ideas (94ff), another cognitive act, characterizing belief. The Treatise is stuffed with the language of eighteenth-century logics such as Crousaz or the Port Royal Logic, as for example when Hume speaks of the ‘simple conception of any thing’ (94), an act that is contrasted with the acts of uniting, separating, mingling, and confounding of our ideas which are cited later (94). Again, it is the mind that conceives and comprehends or understands (161, 162) ; this understanding is preceded by acts of conception or having ideas (164, 168). All of these Hume refers to as ‘actions of the mind’ (177) ; they are functions of the ‘intellectual faculties of the mind’ (138). This cognitive aspect of Hume’s account of ideas has been emphasized by such commentators as John Yolton.3 But at the same time, we also have the standard account of Hume’s views in which ideas are simply images and therefore lack cognitive functions. There is no doubt that there are both these strands in Hume. The usual response is that Hume was inconsistently trying to have the best of both worlds, in which ideas are simply images but at the same time also are intentional entities playing a cognitive role. The whole thing is treated as another example of Hume’s confused way of thinking.
What we shall argue is that the two sides of Hume’s account of ideas can be reconciled if we explore carefully the research methods of associationist psychology, and in particular the method of introspective analysis. Once this is understood, I shall suggest, we will be able to see that Hume can, in principle at least, have it both ways, quite consistently." (p.22)
"The utilitarian aspects of Hume’s account of morality are well known. The virtues are settled patterns of action and behaviour that are productive of good consequences, good either for the actor or for others. As Hume says, ‘every quality of the mind, which is useful or agreeable to the person himself or to others, communicates a pleasure to the spectator, engages his esteem, and is admitted under the honourable denomination of virtue or merit’ (EM, section IX, Part I, p. 276). There are on the one hand the natural virtues, which we would have even in a situation of non-scarcity, and on the other hand the artificial virtues of justice and property, or promising and contract, or allegiance (as well as the artificial virtues of chastity and modesty). The artificial virtues depend on the formation of social conventions, general conformity to which serves the interests of all in situations of general scarcity, or, more generally, of a common need.
The conventions of justice or property provide a social order for the distribution of scarce material goods, giving one the right to keep and to use goods that one possesses, and imposing on others the obligation to respect that right; and, correspondingly, giving others the rights to their goods, and imposing upon oneself the obligation to leave them free to keep and to use their goods. Hume’s account of the roots of these conventions of property provide the model for his accounts of the roots of the other conventions: those of promising and contract, and those of allegiance, as well as other norms." (p.23)
"Virtues are those settled patterns of action that benefit oneself or others. There is no metaphysical human essence that defines human virtue. Nonetheless, for Hume virtue is indeed rooted in human nature, except that it is rooted in the empirical features of what humans are and what they might become. And what humans are, though they may become more than this, are material beings with material needs. Community exists, not because it is part of the human essence that we are communal or political beings, but because we are on the one hand animal and on the other hand rational. We come to recognize that communal order – law, if you wish – is the price we must pay in order to satisfy our material needs in this world of scarce resources. Unless there are established ways to divide scarce resources peacefully, no one can be sure of satisfying any of his or her needs." (p.24)
"These prudential considerations lead each and therefore all to conform to standards of cooperative behaviour. These standards are reasonably called conventions, but they cannot be understood as being of the nature of a social contract since they do not originate in any sort of promise." (p.24)
"The order secured by conformity to the conventions of law is thus an instrumental good that achieves long-term gain at the expense of short-term loss: but the gain is far greater than the loss. The deal is worth it.
The order involves the coordination of action among individuals. Specifically, the order consists in it being the case that for every person, if that person is in a situation X, then that person does Y. Insofar as each of us desires peace through order, each of us desires that this generalization be true. We therefore so act to ensure that it is true: each one of us trains or habituates both oneself and at the same time others so that one’s own and their behaviour conforms to this rule, that is, so that this generalization does turn out – on the whole, at least – to be true. This conformity is a habit that exists in each person: it is inculcated in that person both by him- or herself and by all others. Each of us has an interest in the rule being true, that is, an interest in conformity to the convention being universal." (p.25)
"Those who hold that social authority derives from promising assume that one makes the promise in order to obtain a return. But this cannot be, because promising, unlike contracting, does not involve the expectation of a return. To be sure, the conventions of promising yield a benefit in which everyone shares provided that there is general conformity to the conventions. The same holds for contracting. But while there are such general benefits that derive from keeping our promises, when we promise we do not expect that the promisee will pay directly for what has been promised. In the case of contract, however, the contract is made in the expectation that the contractee will provide a return to the contractor. In the case of a promise, what is promised is a gift; in the case of a contract, there is a trade." (p.27)
"The key point that Hume makes against any argument that the authority of the laws of property and allegiance arise from some sort of (social) contract is that promising, which is at the core of the practice of making contracts, presupposes the existence of conventions and therefore cannot account for the authority of those conventions: promising presupposes linguistic conventions, it therefore cannot explain those conventions." (p.28)
"Hence, if we understand meaning –linguistic meaning– as determined by rules with normative force, then those rules cannot be explained in terms of an intentional act, a speech act, that determines that meaning. Some may be so explained, but in the end the conventions derive from elsewhere. [...] The idea is to show that the conventions of language acquire the force they have through their being instituted by a volition or act of will: words have the meanings they have through a sort of social contract created by the determination –a volition– to use words in a certain way. But a volition can confer meaning only if certain conventions obtain –the conventions of naming, for example. So linguistic meaning cannot be accounted for in terms of determinations to use words in certain ways." (p.29)
"It is often said that Hume is a subjectivist, in the sense that for him our acquaintance with the world consists of acquaintance with impressions and ideas, all of which are subjective entities. The claim is made often enough that it must have some basis in the text. Or, it should be said, in the text of Book I of the Treatise. But we have just seen that Hume argues in Book III that the conventions of language arise in a social context: they are artificial norms that arise to ensure the satisfaction of human needs common to those in a social community. Our ideas achieve meaning not through their being baptized but through social conventions that develop in human communities. But to say that meaning arises in a social context is to imply that meaning is not wholly subjective." (pp.29-30)
"That people are now reading the Treatise as a single work, where Book III must be read in the light of Book I and Book I read in the light of Book III, depends on there being some general recognition that there is a Book II which links the extremes into a unified work. It was Árdal’s achievement in Passion and Value in Hume’s Treatise, to effect the rediscovery as it were of Book II and to restore to the Treatise a unity that it had lost. This makes Árdal’s work central not only to the reading of Hume that is developed in the present essay but also central to any reading of the Treatise that hopes to make a legitimate claim to our serious attention." (p.30)
"Hume intends his account of the rules of property to apply, given suitable changes, to the rules – that is, to syntactic, semantic, pragmatic, and epistemic norms and to our moral and aesthetic norms. These norms or conventions are artificial, justified by considerations of prudence: general conformity to these norms will yield a better life, one that better secures the material means necessary to survival (and reproduction)." (p.31)
"Hume is indeed a utilitarian and a contractarian, but that is not all, there are other features to Hume’s moral theory. [...] this standard view of Hume as a sort of sophisticated Hobbesian or Lockean does not give a full picture of Hume’s moral theory." (p.31)
"The relevant point about human being was made long ago by Aristotle, who insisted that society is not there simply for the convenience of its members –society is not simply a set of conventions designed to make survival easier, not just a set of norms justified by prudential considerations. To be sure, it is that. The point is, it is not just that. Rather, society is, besides that, a moral community." (pp.31-32)
"Hobbes had argued that the norms of civil society –the norms of property, of contract or promising, and of allegiance to the chief magistrate– are purely prudential. The standard view, deriving from Aristotle, was that these norms are rooted in a human essence or form ; they are part of human nature. The point is metaphysical: any individual with this essence or form aims, as a matter of metaphysical necessity, at the ends determined by the essence, where this essence or form is a metaphysical reality not given in ordinary sense experience of the things of the world but presented rather in a sort of rational intuition. And since the essence or form determines how we necessarily aim, it determines what we ought to do. The essences are not only descriptive but also normative: the values required by civil society are built into our very being and into the ontological structure of the universe. All things have a built-in teleology determined by their essence or form, but human beings have a further capacity, that of becoming aware of or conscious of essences: we are rational creatures and are able to become aware of these reasons for things. Among the essences of which we can become aware are our own; this is an awareness of our necessarily determined ultimate ends. About these, we as rational beings do not deliberate; but we can deliberate about means to these ends. Among the ultimate ends, sanctified by the ontological structure of the universe, are the norms of civil society: simple self-awareness will tell us that much. This had been the background in Richard Hooker. But Hobbes invoked what is in effect the empiricist principle, that if something is not given in sense experience or explained in terms that are, then that thing does not exist, it is not to be part of one’s ontology. This eliminates the essences or forms of things from the furniture of the universe. But in doing that there is also an elimination of the human essence or form, and of course our awareness of such things. That is, there is the elimination of both the moral structure of the universe, including the norms of civil society, and that part of human nature that aims us towards those things as ultimate ends. The result is an account of human beings in which they simply are not fit for civil society, nor do they have any moral sense. All action is prudential, towards ends that have no intrinsic moral value." (pp.33-34)
"Hume’s response to Hobbes and to the critics of Hobbes was to attempt to find in the empirical nature of humankind some feature that could do, psychologically at least, the task that was done in the older scheme by our capacity to grasp the moral order of things and of human relations. He argues, with Hobbes, that the norms of civil society are based on considerations of self-interest. But there is, besides self-love, another natural tendency in human beings, and that is the psychological mechanism of sympathy, which moves people in such a way that these norms, as benefiting the common good with which we sympathize, acquire moral as well as prudential force: ‘The whole scheme ... of law and justice is advantageous to the society; and it was with a view to this advantage that men, by their voluntary conventions, established it. After it is once established by these conventions, it is naturally attended with a strong sentiment of morals, which can proceed from nothing but our sympathy with the interests of society. We need no other explication of that esteem which attends such of the natural virtues as have a tendency to the public good’ (Treatise, III, iii, 1, p. 579). The moral force of the norms of civil society therefore is rooted in something like a moral sense. This was Hume’s gesture to the moral intuitionists, though they could rightly object that this gesture, this offer of a relatively attractive aspect to humankind, hardly gave them the ontological foundations of value that their metaphysics of morals was designed to provide." (pp.36-37)
"As a final example of the common criticism of Hobbes and Locke, let us note the scientist and philosopher–theologian Isaac Barrow, who protested that Hobbes’s doctrine was a ‘monstrous paradox, crossing the common sense of men, which in this loose and vain world hath lately got such vogue that all men naturally are enemies one to another.’30 In fact, we are obliged to act benevolently precisely because, contrary to Locke, such acts are rooted innately in our human nature: ‘We are indispensably obliged to these duties, because the best of our natural inclinations prompt us to the performance of them, especially those of pity and benignity, which are manifestly discernible in all, but most powerful and best natures; and which, questionless, by the same most wise and good Author of our beings were implanted therein both as monitors to direct, and as spurs to incite us to the performance of our duty.’
Now, the point is that these philosophers are following lines that, as we have suggested, were laid down already in a tradition going back to Aristotle and Plato. On this view there is an eternal human essence, which is also, in the Christian version of this metaphysics, an idea in the mind of God. This essence not only defines what human being is but also what, ideally, it ought to be. It not only explains what human beings are, as their formal cause, but also as the final cause defines what they ought to be. On the account deriving from Aristotle, it is part of this essence that human beings are social beings, concerned not only with their own well-being but also with justice and the well-being of others. The essence thus defines human virtue and vice, and these include the social virtues and social vices. Contrary to Hobbes and Locke there are indeed moral motives in human beings, motives that aim at the good, at the human ideal or essence. These motives are judged by reason to be right or wrong, and they are true or false in the sense that they aim or fail to aim at the achievement of the human good or essence.
Now, Hume is concerned to establish, in agreement with these thinkers, and against Hobbes and Locke, that human beings are moral beings, that there are moral sentiments that move us to action over and above the motives of self-interest that form the foundation of civil society. [...]
Hume rejects the objectivism of thinkers such as Bentley and Clarke. This relativist account of moral evaluation is explicit in, for example, the following remark that Hume makes in Book III of the ‘Treatise,’ in the context of his discussion of promises: ‘All morality depends upon our sentiments; and when any action, or quality of mind, pleases us after a certain manner, we say that we lie under an obligation to perform it’." (pp.39-40)
"Bentley and Clarke appealed to a concept of reason that could grasp the real essences of things as formal and final causes of things. Hume has already rejected this concept of reason in Book I of the Treatise. This is in effect the core of Hume’s famous scepticism about objective necessary connections : we do not know the real essences or forms of things, the objective necessary connections among entities. Understanding things does not consist in grasping such eternal essences, but rather in subsuming things under matter-of-fact regularities. Reason, that is, Humean reason, thus does not grasp an objective eternal standard by means of which to judge the truth and falsity of our moral evaluations: in this sense, there is no foundation in the essences of things for standards of evaluation. Reason thus yields no ‘ought’." (p.41)
"We judge actions and dispositions to be morally good just in case they are productive of happiness or pleasure, either in oneself or in others. And just as fear is a sign of danger, so moral approbation is a sign of utility. Just as fear is neither true nor false, so moral approbation is neither true nor false." (p.42)
"Sympathy is undoubtedly a part of ordinary human nature, and equally undoubtedly processes of substitution, generalization, and sublimation do occur. Whether the latter can be derived from the former solely by processes of association is more doubtful." (p.43)
"The moral rules of civil society – the argument works in the same way for rules of language – could not possibly be innate; their objects are too varied to suppose that there is any innate mechanism in human being that brings about our conformity to those rules. Nor could they be based in some general human benevolence, for our sense of benevolence extends only as far as the limits of our family or small tribal group. What enables groups to live together in situations of scarcity is the artifice of the conventions of justice, promising, and allegiance. Prudential reason seeking to secure our own self-interest extends the limits of civil society in a way that our innate but limited benevolence cannot do. These conventions create new motives. [...]
If a promise is not kept, then the promisor feels the frustration of his or her unfulfilled expectation. Our sympathy responds to this; we feel the same unease. We thus come to respond to injustice even where it does not affect us directly. Through a process of generalization this unease, this disapprobation, comes to be directed at any violation of the rules of promising, or, more generally, of rules of civil society. It comes even to be directed at any violation of these rules that we commit or might be tempted to commit. Its object thus becomes that each and all conform to the conventions of civil society [...]
The moral sentiments in this way come to enforce the social conventions, which have their original basis in the material needs of human kind. They transform a contractual union into a moral community." (pp.43-44)
"Butler adopts the position of Clarke with regard to the basis of human morality in the eternal essences of things. But he locates this within a carefully delineated phenomenology of moral experience. In particular, he insists on the role of conscience as a faculty of moral intuition. On his account, then, the deliverances of conscience are insight into the metaphysical essences of things, but they are also signs, given to us by the creator, of what is in our own and the community’s longrun interest. In the latter respect the deliverances of conscience function as do the passions on such accounts as those of Descartes, as signs for securing our human well-being. Hume takes up this sort of position but exorcises the role of metaphysical essences. The deliverances of conscience, that is, our moral sentiments, are in fact simply signs for the well-being of each and all, including ourselves. But it is not because God has created us in just this way ; as Hume argues, it is wrong to suppose that we could have innate capacities directed at the very complex and diverse ends defined by the conventions of civil society. Rather, the source of our moral sentiments lies in the ordinary human capacity for responding sympathetically to our fellow human beings and the equally natural and human tendency to generalize these sentiments from some to all." (pp.44-45)
"The standard view of the rules for language, or at least the one that arises from the rationalist tradition, is that language is conventional but built upon a sort of social contract, a shared agreement to use words in a certain way. On this standard view, the meaning of a word derives from a decision to use the word in a certain way. Hume argues against this, with special reference to the case of promising. The argument is that just as promising presupposes rather than accounts for the rules of language, so in general, acts which succeed in conferring meaning on a term –and there are some of those (e.g., the naming of a newly discovered element) –presuppose rather than account for meaning. And in particular, the act of conferring meaning presupposes conventions. So such acts cannot account for the institution of the conventions of language." (p.46)
-Fred Wilson, The External World and Our Knowledge of It. Hume’s Critical Realism, an Exposition and a Defence, University of Toronto Press Incorporated, 2008, 809 pages.
