Hume’s emotivism

Michael Lacewingenquiries@alevelphilosophy.co.

uk

Cognitivism vs. non-cognitivism

• What are we doing when we make moral judgments?

• Cognitivism: moral judgments, e.g. ‘Murder is wrong’– Aim to describe how the world is– Can be true or false– Express beliefs that the claim is true

• Non-cognitivism: moral judgments– Do not aim to describe the world– Cannot be true or false– Express attitudes towards the world

Subjectivism• Moral judgements assert or report

approval or disapproval– E.g. ‘X is wrong’ means ‘Most people

disapprove of X’– This is a cognitivist theory

• Obj: racism is wrong, even though, historically, most people have approved of it

Speaker subjectivism• ‘X is wrong’ means ‘I disapprove of

X’– Again, cognitivism

• Obj: (if we know what we think) we cannot make moral mistakes– Why deliberate?

• Emotivism: Moral judgments cannot be true or false– ‘X is wrong’ expresses disapproval of

X

Hume’s first argument against cognitivism

• Moral judgements can motivate actions.– Assumed

• Reason cannot motivate action.• Therefore, moral judgements are not

judgements of reason.• (Cognitivism claims that moral

judgements express beliefs, and reason is the faculty for forming beliefs.)

Hume on reason• Why think reason can’t motivate?• Judgments of reason are either

relations of ideas or matters of fact, and either true or false

• We are motivated by emotions and desires, which are not true or false– Judgments of reason and motivating

states have opposite ‘directions of fit’

One reply• Moral judgments do not motivate

us– We must want to be morally good, too– Therefore, moral judgments could be

judgments of reason

Hume’s second argument against

cognitivism• There are only two types of judgements

of reason, relations of ideas and matters of fact.

• Moral judgements are not relations of ideas.

• Moral judgements are not matters of fact.

• Therefore, moral judgements are not judgements of reason.

Hume on reason (again)

• If Hume is right about the scope of reason, then empiricism is true.

• Why think moral judgments are not relations of ideas?– Any relation that describes moral or

immoral actions also applies to physical objects, but these aren’t moral or immoral. Murder vs. a plant killing a plant

– Wilful killing: same relation, different cause

Hume on reason (again)

• Why think moral judgments aren’t matters of fact?– Which fact?– Take any action allow’d to be vicious: Wilful

murder, for instance. Examine it in all lights, and see if you can find that matter of fact … which you call vice. In which-ever way you take it, you find only certain passions, motives, volitions, and thoughts. There is no other matter of fact in the case. The vice entirely escapes you, as long as you consider the object.

Ought and is• Judgments of what ought to be are

not judgments of what is• ‘[T]his ought … expresses some

new relation [of which it] seems altogether inconceivable, how this new relation can be a deduction from others, which are entirely different from it’

Rationalism returns?• Judgments of reason are not

restricted to relations of ideas and matters of fact– Kant: moral judgments indicate

whether a maxim can be universalized (relation of ideas?)

– Moral judgments are judgments about what reasons we have – non-natural, normative facts

On is and ought• Hume is right that judgments of ‘is’

(natural facts) are distinct from judgments of ‘ought’– He is also right that we can’t deduce

ought from is– Instead, we must weigh up the

reasons that natural facts give us (e.g. hurting someone is a reason not to do it)

Hume’s theory• Moral judgments express our feelings of

approval or disapproval– when you pronounce any action or

character to be vicious, you mean nothing, but that … you have a feeling … of blame from the contemplation of it

• Moral ‘properties’ are like secondary qualities – they exist in our minds, not in their objects– Colour is not wavelengths of light, but a

subjective experience caused by light

On secondary qualities• Secondary qualities are not subjective

– Colour is conceptually dependent on vision, but not any individual’s vision

– Colours are real, but relational, properties• Likewise, moral judgments are

conceptually dependent on people finding things valuable and being rational– But they are true or false depending on

whether something is good for us/rational or not