User:Atcovi/Ethics/Lecture4

Credits: S. Castleberry

David Hume and Reason is Inert
This page discusses Hume's viewpoints on morality.

Plato's view on morality is that doing a good thing is cause by rational thinking. Doing the wrong thing is caused by emotional thinking.

Hume disagrees. He believes that reasoning cannot be a motivator for an action (reason is inert). Reason has never been the cause of an action, and only passion/emotion motivates. Reason can never go against passion.


 * Reason is, and ought to be, a slave to the passions. Tis not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the world to the scratching of my finger

The Naturistic Fallacy (G.E Moore): "is/ought gap" --> Normative facts are not a thing as nothing is inherently good or bad.


 * One cannot derive an ought from an is

Dr. Cohen provides a counter-example: Pine tree/top soil vs. pine tree/desert, rocky soil: therefore, we ought to grow pine trees in top soil.

What is Morality?

 * Based on emotion (emotivism)
 * All human beings naturally have sympathy for their relatives, not strangers.
 * Strangers: extendes sympathy.
 * We need morality as it is useful. It gives advantages/greater utility.
 * Hume is a "descriptive" relativist and not really an "ethical" relativist
 * It's not what is truly right or wrong, but more as to what type of society do we sire to constitute whether something is right or wrong? And what are the steps and legislations to achieving this society?