Hume’s Position Considered for the Fourth Time

Whether moral relations be contingent or in some way necessary lies at the core of the divide between moral sceptic and moral realist. In focusing on the development of a system of morality it is wise to be clear about what these relations indicate from the start.

Of course the Humean position on reason implicitly involves a certain conception of necessity and contingency which will influence one’s appreciation of morality and the ambit of the moral realm. Where does one stand on the question of what is necessarily, and what contingently, connected to human beings and the world they inhabit? It is his answer to this question that so clearly demarcates Hume from Kant and Nagel. When it comes to such foundations of morality as human nature and human capacities Hume always looks to experience; and the data from the empirical world, on his model, are always contingent. The way people are could conceivably⁷ always have been otherwise.

In one sense, such a conclusion follows from Hume’s very narrow conception of necessity, a conception which is linked to the demand for logical demonstration. This is the Treatise Book I requirement of reason, similar to reason’s role in mathematics, which demands a contradiction between two ideas in order to eliminate the possibility of contingency. Or in terms of necessity, a relation between two propositions is necessary if and only if that relation cannot be denied without contradiction. And by demanding that contradiction be the test of necessity it can be seen that no empirical questions, no matters of fact, may ever be said to be necessary. All of experience is consigned to the realm of the contingent. Thus human nature and human capacities clearly become contingent, not necessary, matters. So too do moral relations — the relations between an act and its rightness — for there is no contradiction in asserting any act to be virtuous or for that matter vicious.

Now it may well be that Hume’s conception of necessity is too reduced. Perhaps certain elements of experience are more than merely contingent but must be true if humans’ experience of the world is to be as it is; again, perhaps there are limited ways in which humans can experience the world and for such beings not everything conceivable is in fact possible. Given particular beings with defined qualities perhaps some further matters of fact must be necessary (z'.e. can be known a priori). This is the insight first offered by Kant. However in its general form, as a broad claim that in some respects the world necessarily presents itself to humans in a particular way because of our perceptual faculties,⁸ this issue is beyond my purposes in this book and I do not pursue it. What I do pursue here though is the much narrower issue of whether the basic framework of moral relations is contingent. And on this specific question 1 find myself firmly in the Humean camp.

However, it is not requisite to adopt a narrow Humean ‘contradiction’ test of necessity and contingency to say that the basic framework of moral relations is empirically contingent. For not only are differing moral standards and values conceivable, they in fact have evinced themselves in different societies and eras and even within different groupings of a single society.⁹ A Humean conception of the contingency of the particular values in any system of constraints on action, in any system of public morality, can be tied¹⁰ directly to varying experiences from the empirical world. Such claims to contingent status are analogous to saying something is true, but only under existing conditions. Even so, they are at least one level stronger than claims founded on conceivability alone, where anything is conceivable that is not self-contradictory.

The fact that many varying standards of value have actually existed makes the highly speculative questions of whether there are grades of necessity and contingency or whether there are psychological necessities questions that, strictly speaking, need not be answered. Appeal to the empirical facts of myriad value systems having existed places the weight of observable evidence firmly behind the contingency of moral relations and standards and against any necessity of values.

Such an appeal is, of course, in keeping with Hume’s descriptive, naturalistic emphasis." More importantly perhaps, it places the onus on those who assert that moral relations are objective, mind-independent and in some sense necessary and noncontingent to explain why natural, causal explanations of morality are insufficient. Why should evaluation of right and wrong conduct not be causally explicable in natural terms but require transcendental explanations? Objectivists such as Nagel start with a presumption in favour of objectivity¹² and defend that presumption only by explicitly forswearing natural, causal explanations and instead providing a theory about how humans must ‘necessarily’ perceive the world. With quite a different starting point, Hume explicitly does want explanation to be in terms of the natural, causal world. This includes explanation of moral evaluating. On this naturalistic basis Hume looks to see if moral relations be subjective or objective and, as 1 have argued above, finds that morality is subjective. The stage is then set for Hume to offer a convincing naturalistic account of why it is people approve and disapprove as they do.

I accept the Humean descriptivist, naturalistic perspective. I also accept that such a perspective implies the real, external world need not be a moral world. That it is for humans a moral world'³ requires explanation and so it is to Hume’s causal, conventionalist account of how an interpersonal system of moral sentiments can arise from non-moral premisses that I now turn in this chapter and the next. That account is much more than some sort of crude emotivism or vague reliance on “a trick of individual psychology”¹⁴ and is at the heart of Hume’s originality. It requires examination of Hume’s concepts of sympathy and virtue as well as of the pre-moral construction of justice.

As I have already argued, ail action is motivated at base by some sort of desire or inclination, however much of a role reason plays in guiding us through the means to that end.

Thus when any individual performs a moral act there must have been some inclination or inclinations present which explain and in a limited sense justify¹⁵ that action (the action being a way to satisfy the inclination(s)). This Humean strategy starts with the non-moral, human psychology, and attempts to show how a moral system can be achieved. For Hume the motivation for being moral is traceable to feelings, passions, inclinations or desires which can be understood in terms other than the moral. Ethical motivation can be understood outside of ethics.

What Hume offers is a description of how certain instinctive or natural passions or inclinations, together with the instinctive or natural principle of sympathy, can combine to create an inclination to follow the rules of morality. In other words, a conventional process takes place which transfers the desire to satisfy natural or instinctive inclinations into a desire to satisfy an artificial or created inclination. It is this conventional process which Hume describes in Book III Part ii when discussing the artificial virtues.

I shall postpone until chapter nine consideration of the extent of actual uniformity of the natural inclinations and sentiments which are the building-blocks of Hume’s theory. Here I simply note and stress that the existence of moral feelings and inclinations is contingent on there being these instinctive passions and on the fortuitous presence of sympathy.

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Source: Allan James. A Sceptical Theory of Morality and Law. Peter Lang,1998. — 277 p.. 1998

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