Ethics and Epistemology in Hume

Abstract

This essay addresses the relationship between Hume’s moral theory and his epistemological project. More specifically, it focuses on one particular aspect of the relationship between Hume’s moral theory and his general scepticism with regard to reason. Several philosophers, such as David Owen and Annette Baier, have suggested that Hume’s moral theory provides significant support for his appeal to reason/reasoning. To uncover some of the main obstacles that any future attempts to rest Humean reason on ethics will probably face, this essay critically examines a few of the most prominent examples of such accounts, particularly Michael Ridge’s “Epistemology Moralized: David Hume’s Practical Epistemology,” the most developed account of the possible moral support of reason in Hume‘s philosophy.

Notes

1. A version of this essay was presented at the 39^th International Hume Society Conference in Calgary, Canada, in July 2012.David Norton, David Hume: Common Sense Moralist, Sceptical Metaphysician (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982), 12–13.

2. David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge, 2^nd ed., rev. ed. P. H. Nidditch (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 3.1.1.1; and David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. David Fate Norton and Mary J. Norton (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 455. Hereafter all references to the Treatise come in two parts: the first refers to the paragraph in the Norton and Norton edition (abbreviated as T); the second refers to the page number in the Selby-Bigge edition revised by P. H. Nidditich (abbreviated as SBN).

3. Others have emphasized the importance of morality for understanding Hume. Janet Broughton calls Hume’s view “a canon of eudaimonism.” Janet Broughton, “Hume’s Skepticism about Causal Inferences,” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 64.1 (1983): 14. Yet another like-minded perspective emanates from Annette Baier: “The whole of Hume’s epistemology, in Book One of the Treatise, is in the services of his philosophy of passion and action in Books Two and Three.” Annette Baier, “Hume: The Reflective Women’s Epistemologist,” in Feminist Interpretations of David Hume, ed. Anne Jaap Jacobson (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000), 21.

4. Michael Ridge, “Epistemology Moralized: David Hume’s Practical Epistemology,” Hume Studies 29.2 (2003): 165–204.

5. See, for example, Donald L. M. Baxter, Hume’s Difficulty: Time and Identity in the Treatise (New York: Routledge, 2008).

6. David Owen, Hume’s Reason (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 205.

7. Owen, Hume’s Reason, 212 (emphasis added); cf., 220.

8. David Hume, An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, ed. Tom L. Beauchamp (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 157.

9. Ridge, “Epistemology Moralized,” 187.

10. Notice how Ridge characterizes the situation: “Any attempt to present the argument [of 1.4.1] as even remotely plausible would go beyond the present scope and moreover in my view the argument cannot be rescued. Fortunately, as my aim is to see whether Hume can accept the argument’s conclusion without vitiating his overall project, I can happily avoid the question of whether the argument is sound. . . . Hume’s worries about the understanding’s subverting itself have philosophical significance even if this notorious argument is beyond salvage” (196, n. 6).

11. Ridge, “Epistemology Moralized,” 180, 193.

12. For the purposes of this essay, I shall use the terms “reason” and “understanding” interchangeably.

13. Ridge, “Epistemology Moralized,” 187–88; original emphasis.

14. Ridge, “Epistemology Moralized,” 188; Ridge’s emphasis.

15. Ridge’s point is reminiscent of a point made by Deleuze: “The case of the practice of morality, however, is quite different. Here, the parts are given immediately, without any inference required, and without any necessary application.” Gilles Deleuze, Empiricism and Subjectivity: An Essay on Hume’s Theory of Human Nature, trans. Constantin V. Boundas (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991), 35.

16. Ridge, “Epistemology Moralized,” 187–88; emphasis added.

17. See also Ridge, “Epistemology Moralized,” 193.

18. Ridge, “Epistemology Moralized,” 187.

19. Ridge, “Epistemology Moralized,” 189.

20. Hume puts the point thus: “Now as none will maintain, that our assurance in a long numeration exceeds probability, I may safely affirm, that there scarce is any proposition concerning numbers, of which we can have a fuller security. For ’tis easily possible by gradually diminishing the numbers, to reduce the longest series of addition to the most simple question, which can be form’d, to an addition of two single numbers; and upon this supposition we shall find it impracticable to shew the precise limits of knowledge and of probability, or discover that particular number, at which the one ends and the other begins. But knowledge and probability are of such contrary and disagreeing natures, that they cannot well run insensibly into each other, and that because they will not divide, but must be either entirely present, or entirely absent. Besides, if any single addition were certain, every one wou’d be so, and consequently the whole or total sum; unless the whole can be different from all its parts” (T, 1.4.1.3; SBN, 181).

21. Ridge, “Epistemology Moralized,” 189.

22. Ridge, “Epistemology Moralized,” 188–89.