The inertness of reason and Hume's legacy

Abstract

Hume argues against the seventeenth-century rationalists that reason is impotent to motivate action and to originate morality. Hume's arguments have standardly been considered the foundation for the Humean theory of motivation in contemporary philosophy. The Humean theory alleges that beliefs require independent desires to motivate action. Recently, however, new commentaries allege that Hume's argument concerning the inertness of reason has no bearing on whether beliefs can motivate. These commentaries maintain that for Hume, beliefs about future pleasurable and painful objects on their own can produce the desires that move us to action. First, I show that this reading puts Hume at odds with Humeans, since the latter are committed, not only to the view that beliefs and desires are both necessary to action, but also to the view that beliefs do not produce desires. Second, I review textual, philosophical and historical grounds for my interpretation of Hume's argument for the inertness of reason. I argue that the new line on Hume, while consistent with a certain reading of the Treatise, is not supported by the Dissertation on the Passions and the second Enquiry, where Hume argues that all motivation has an origin in “taste”, which I take to be different from belief. Thus, Hume's arguments do support the contemporary Humean theory of motivation.

Keywords::

• Hume
• reason
• motivation
• desire

Notes

^1. This article was presented at the 39th International Hume Conference at the University of Calgary in July 2012. I thank my commentator, Rob Shaver, for his insightful questions and criticisms, which have improved the content of this article tremendously. An earlier version of this article was presented at the Department of Philosophy, College of Charleston, in November 2011. I am grateful to both audiences for comments and questions. I also thank Jennifer Welchman for her very helpful editorial work.

^2. Defenders of the new reading in some form include: Cohon (2008, 63–79), Owen (forthcoming), Sturgeon (2015), and Pigden (2009). For a related discussion, see Botros (2006).

^3. DP refers to the Dissertation on the Passions (2007) by section and paragraph numbers.

^4. In contemporary Humeanism, one is said to have a motive when one has a desire and a belief about how to fulfill the desire; but a motive for Hume is the passionate state, rather than the desire–belief complex.

^5. Among passions that are not motives for Hume are pride and humility, which are reactive sentiments towards the self, rather than passions directed towards goals. Love and hatred are likewise reactions to others and in themselves are inert. Love, however, is connected to benevolence, which is a motive to seek the happiness of the beloved, and hatred is connected to anger, which is a desire for the misery of the one hated (T 2.2.6.3; SBN 367).

^6. There is evidence that all motivating passions are defined in terms of desires for Hume. See Bricke (1996, 36–7).

^7. This is a puzzling remark given that he later says that some passions, such as love, hatred, pride and humility (as I have noted), are not motives to action. They are impressions (of reflection), but, presumably, they do not actuate the soul. Of course, whether this is so depends on the meaning here of “actuate”.

^8. Cohon uses analogies to support this claim: If a manuscript produced by the process of typing falls off a desk and causes a loud noise, it does not follow that the typing produced the loud noise. If a statue made by the “lost wax” process causes a scandal, it does not follow that the lost wax process caused the scandal (2008, 74).

^9. Owen (forthcoming) also seems prepared to say that on Hume's view, beliefs of any content (not just those about pleasure and pain) could produce passions or action.

^10. Volition, for Hume, is a direct passion and an impulse towards action. He writes, for instance:

The impressions, which arise from good and evil most naturally, and with the least preparation are the direct passions of desire and aversion, grief and joy, hope and fear, along with volition. (T 2.3.9.2; SBN 438)

… Thus a suit of fine cloaths produces pleasure from their beauty; and this pleasure produces the direct passions, or the impressions of volition and desire. (T 2.3.9.4; SBN 439)

^11. That this is an essential feature of the Humean view is asserted by defenders and critics alike. See, for instance: Blackburn (1995), Hubin (1999), Smith (1994, 2004) and Searle (2001).

^12. If a belief produces volition to action or produces action directly, of course, no means–end belief is needed to get to action. Action follows volition immediately. A belief about the means to an end has a role in producing action only when a passion is the cause of the action, and one must figure out what to do in order to achieve the end of the passion.

^13. Contemporary philosophers have made this point in terms of “direction of fit”: beliefs attempt to fit themselves to the world, while desires attempt to fit the world to themselves. Anscombe (1957, 56) is credited for introducing this idea. Platts develops it (1979, 257). More recently, Smith (1994, 116) has defended the direction of fit description of belief and desire. For criticisms of the direction of fit criterion, see Sobel and Copp (2001).

^14. The view that beliefs of any content might motivate for Hume is different, so what I say here does not apply to it. I do say something about that proposal in the final section.

^15. Hume certainly thought we sometimes act against our assessment of the greatest good. See T 2.3.3.10; SBN 418.

^16. It is tempting to say that these cases do not actually count as cases of action, and Hume's theory of motivation need not apply to them. But I think he can account for them by reference to the instincts he names, and he never indicates that there is a restriction on the scope of action to intentional movement in the way that contemporary Humeans do.

^17. Owen (forthcoming) is the only critic I know of who has suggested that this might be Hume's view.

^18. Hume asserts that the violence or calmness of a passion has to do with its phenomenal dimension, or distinctive feeling. The way passions feel to us, however, does not correlate with motivation in the sense that the passion felt with the most internal turmoil among those passions experienced is the one on which we act, that is, the one with the greatest causal power. Hume makes the point that some passions are felt so calmly as to be mistaken for conclusions of reason, and yet among these calm passions are ones that often move us (T 2.3.4.1; SBN 418–19). Although not all readers would agree, I believe that calmness and violence are a function of force and vivacity, for Hume, and not of motivational strength. While Hume remarks in “Of the influence of belief” that beliefs have an effect on passions and actions because they approach the force and vivacity of impressions, this is not a commitment to the view that force and vivacity determines which among the various motives present is causally effective.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Elizabeth S. Radcliffe

Elizabeth S. Radcliffe is Professor of Philosophy at the College of William and Mary. She has published on Hume's moral and motivational theory and on the Humean theory of motivation and practical reasoning. She is editor of A Companion to Hume (Wiley-Blackwell, 2008). Her current projects involve Hume's theory of the passions and Hume's influence on contemporary moral psychology.