## 1. Major figures



The major figures in Scottish eighteenth century philosophy were
Francis Hutcheson, David Hume, Adam Smith, Thomas Reid and Adam
Ferguson. Others who produced notable works included Gershom
Carmichael, Archibald Campbell, George Turnbull, George Campbell,
James Beattie, Hugh Blair, Alexander Gerard, Henry Home (Lord
Kames), John Millar and Dugald Stewart.


## 2. Carmichael on Natural Law



Gershom Carmichael (1672-1729) studied at Edinburgh University
(1687-1691), taught at St Andrews University (1693-1694),
and spent the rest of his life at Glasgow, first as a regent in arts
and then as professor of moral philosophy. He was a main conduit into
Scotland of the European natural law tradition, a tradition of
scientific investigation of human nature with a view to constructing
an account of the principles that are morally binding on us. Among the
great figures of that tradition were Hugo Grotius (1583-1645)
and Samuel Pufendorf (1632-1694), thinkers whose writings played
a major role in moral philosophical activity in Scotland during the
Age of Enlightenment.



In 1718, during the first stirrings of the Scottish Enlightenment,
Carmichael published *Supplements and Observations upon the two
books of the distinguished Samuel Pufendorf's On the Duty of Man
and Citizen*. In 1724 he published a second edition containing
extensive additional material. Carmichael affirms: "when God
prescribes something to us, He is simply signifying that he requires
us to do such and such an action, and regards it, when offered with
that intention, as a sign of love and veneration towards him, while
failure to perform such actions, and, still worse, commission of the
contrary acts, he interprets as an indication of contempt or
hatred" (Carmichael, [NR], p. 46). Hence we owe God love and
veneration, and on this basis Carmichael distinguishes between
immediate and mediate duties. Our immediate duty is formulated in the
first precept of natural law, that God is to be worshipped. He seeks a
sign of our love and veneration for him, and worship is the clearest
manifestation of these feelings.



The second precept, which identifies our mediate duties, is:
"Each man should promote, so far as it is in his power, the
common good of the whole human race, and, so far as this allows, the
private good of individuals" ([NR], p. 48). This relates to our
'mediate' duties since we indirectly signify our love and
veneration of God by treating his creatures well. On this basis,
Carmichael deploys the distinction between self and others in two
subordinate precepts: "Each man should take care to promote his
own interest without harming others" and "Sociability is
to be cultivated and preserved by every man so far as in him
lies." These precepts, concerning duties to God, to self and to
others, are the fundamental precepts of natural law, and though the
precept that God is to be worshipped is prior to and more evident than
the precept that one should live sociably with men, the requirement
that we cultivate sociability is a foundation of the well-lived
life.



Carmichael therefore rejects an important aspect of Pufendorf's
doctrine on the cultivation of sociability, for the latter argues that
the demand "that every man must cultivate and preserve
sociability so far as he can" is that to which all our duties
are subordinate. Yet for Carmichael the precept that we worship God is
not traceable back to the duty to cultivate sociability, and therefore
the requirement that we cultivate and preserve sociability cannot
precede the laws binding us to behave appropriately towards God.



For instance, God is central to the narrative concerning the duty to
cultivate our mind, for performance of this duty requires that we
cultivate in ourselves the conviction that God is creator and governor
of the universe and of us. Carmichael criticises Pufendorf for paying
too little attention to the subject of cultivation of the mind, and
indicates some features that might profitably have been considered by
Pufendorf, for example the following.



Due cultivation of the mind involves filling it with sound opinion
regarding our duty, learning to judge well the objects which commonly
stimulate our desires, and acquiring rational control of our passions.
It also involves our learning to act on the knowledge that, as regards
our humanity, we are neither superior nor inferior to other people.
Finally, a person with a well cultivated mind is aware of how little
he knows of what the future holds, and consequently is neither
arrogant at his present happy circumstances nor excessively anxious
about ills that might yet assail him.



The Stoic character of this text is evident, as is Carmichael's
injunction that we not be disturbed on account of evils which have
befallen us, or which might befall us, due to no fault of ours. The
deliberate infringement of the moral law is said however to be another
matter; it prompts a discomfort peculiarly hard to bear. In full
concord with the Stoic tendency here observed, we find him supporting,
under the heading 'duty to oneself', a Stoic view of
anger. Though not expressing unconditional disapproval of anger, he
does point out that it is difficult to keep an outburst of anger
within just limits, and that such an outburst is problematic in
relation to natural law, for: "it must be regarded as one of the
things which most of all makes human life unsocial, and has pernicious
effects for the human race. Thus we can scarcely be too diligent in
restraining our anger" ([NR], p. 65). Anger conflicts with
sociability and it is only by due cultivation of the mind that our
sociability can be fortified and enhanced.


## 3. Hutcheson and Archibald Campbell



The first of the major philosophers was Francis Hutcheson
(1694-1746). His reputation rests chiefly on his earlier
writings, especially *An Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of
Beauty and Virtue* (London 1725), *Reflections upon Laughter
and Remarks on the Fable of the Bees* (both in the Dublin Journal
1725-1726), and *Essay on the Nature and Conduct of the
Passions with Illustrations on the Moral Sense* (London 1728). His
magnum opus, *A System of Moral Philosophy*, was published
posthumously in Glasgow in 1755. During his period as a student at
Glasgow University (c. 1711-1717) Gershom Carmichael taught
moral philosophy and jurisprudence there and there are clear signs in
Hutcheson's writings of Carmichael's influence though it
is not known whether he studied under Carmichael during his student
days. In 1730 he took up the moral philosophy chair left vacant on
Carmichael's death. Hutcheson is known principally for his ideas
on moral philosophy and aesthetics. First moral philosophy.



Hutcheson reacted against both the psychological egoism of Thomas
Hobbes and the rationalism of Samuel Clarke and William Wollaston. As
regards Hobbes, Hutcheson thought his doctrine was both wrong and
dangerous; wrong because by the frame of our nature we have
compassionate, generous and benevolent affections which owe nothing at
all to calculations of self-interest, and dangerous because people may
be discouraged from the morally worthy exercise of cultivating
generous affections in themselves on the grounds that the exercise of
such affections is really an exercise in dissimulation or pretence. As
against Hobbes Hutcheson held that a morally good act is one motivated
by benevolence, a desire for the happiness of others. Indeed the wider
the scope of the act the better, morally speaking, the act is;
Hutcheson was the first to speak of "the greatest happiness for
the greatest numbers".



He believed that moral knowledge is gained via our moral sense. A
sense, as the term is deployed by Hutcheson, is every determination of
our minds to receive ideas independently of our will, and to have
perceptions of pleasure and pain. In accordance with this definition,
the five external senses determine us to receive ideas which please or
pain us, and the will does not intervene -- we open our eyes and
by natural necessity see whatever it is that we see. But Hutcheson
thought that there were far more senses than the five external ones.
Three in particular play a role in our moral life. The public sense is
that by which we are pleased with the happiness of others, and are
uneasy at their misery. The moral sense is that by which we perceive
virtue or vice in ourselves or others, and derive pleasure, or pain,
from the perception. And the sense of honour is that which makes the
approbation, or gratitude of others, for any good actions we have
done, the necessary occasion of pleasure. In each of these cases the
will is not involved. We see a person acting with the intention of
bringing happiness to someone else, and by the frame of our nature
pleasure wells up in us.



Hutcheson emphasises both the complexity of the relations between our
natural affections and also the need, in the name of morality, to
exercise careful management of the relations between the affections.
We must especially be careful not to let any of our affections get too
'passionate', for a passionate affection might become an
effective obstacle to other affections that should be given priority.
Above all the selfish affections must not be allowed to over-rule
'calm universal benevolence'.



Hutcheson's opposition to Hobbesian egoism is matched by his
opposition to ethical rationalism, an opposition which emerges in the
*Illustrations upon the Moral Sense*, where he demonstrates
that his account of the affections and the moral sense makes sense of
the moral facts whereas the doctrines of Clarke and Wollaston totally
fail to do so. Hutcheson's main thesis against ethical
rationalism is that all exciting reasons presuppose instincts and
affections, while justifying reasons presuppose a moral sense. An
exciting reason is a motive which actually prompts a person to act; a
justifying reason is one which grounds moral approval of the act.
Hutcheson demonstrates that reason, unlike affection, cannot furnish
an exciting motive, and that there can be no exciting reason previous
to affection. Reason does of course play a role in our moral life, but
only as helping to guide us to an end antecedently determined by
affection, in particular the affection of universal benevolence. On
this basis, an act can be called 'reasonable', but this is
not a point on the side of the rationalists, since they hold that
reason by itself can motivate, and in this case it is affection, not
reason that motivates, that is, that gets us doing something rather
than nothing.



If we add to this the fact, as Hutcheson sees it, that it has never
been demonstrated that reason is a fit faculty to determine what the
ends are that we are obliged to seek, we shall see that
Hutcheson's criticism of rationalism is that it can account for
neither moral motivation nor moral judgment. On the other hand our
natural affections, in particular benevolence, account fully for our
moral motivation and our faculty of moral sense accounts fully for our
ability to make an assessment of actions whether our own or
others'.



Certain features of Hutcheson's moral philosophy appear in his
aesthetic theory also. Indeed the two fields are inextricably related,
as witness Hutcheson's reference to the 'moral sense of
beauty'. Two features especially work hard. He contends that we
sense the beauty, sublimity or grandeur of a sight or of a sound. The
sense of the thing's beauty, so to say, wells up unbidden. And
associated with that sense, and perhaps even part of it --
Hutcheson does not give us a clear account of the matter -- is a
pleasure that we take in the thing. We *enjoy* beautiful things
and that enjoyment is not merely incidental to our sensing their
beauty.



A question arises here regarding the features of a thing that cause us
to see it as beautiful and to take pleasure in it. Hutcheson suggests
that a beautiful thing displays unity (or uniformity) amidst variety.
If a work has too much uniformity it is simply boring. If it has too
much variety it is a jumble. An object, whether visual or audible,
requires therefore to occupy the intermediate position if it is to
give rise to a sense of beauty in the object. But if Hutcheson is
right about the basis of aesthetic judgment how does disagreement
arise? Hutcheson's reply is that our aesthetic response is
affected in part by the associations that the thing arouses in our
mind. If an object that we had found beautiful comes to be associated
in our mind with something disagreeable this will affect our aesthetic
response; we might even find the thing ugly. Hutcheson gives an
example of wines to which men acquire an aversion after they have
taken them in an emetic preparation. On this matter his position may
seem extreme, for he holds that if two people have the same experience
and if the thing experienced carries the same identical associations
for the two people, then they will have the same aesthetic response to
the object. The position is however difficult to disprove, since if
two people do in fact disagree about the aesthetic merit of an object,
Hutcheson can say that the object produces different associations in
the two spectators.



Nevertheless, Hutcheson does believe aesthetic misjudgments are
possible, and in the course of explaining their occurrence he deploys
Locke's doctrine of association of ideas, a doctrine according
to which ideas linked solely by chance or custom come to be associated
in our minds and become almost inseparable from each other though they
are 'not at all of kin'. Hutcheson holds that an art
connoisseur's judgment can be distorted through his tendency to
associate ideas, and notes in particular that a connoisseur's
aesthetic response to a work of art is likely to be affected by the
fact that he owns it, for the pleasure of ownership will tend to
intermix with and distort the affective response he would otherwise
have to the object. Hutcheson, it should be added, is equally
sensitive to the danger to our moral judgments that is posed by our
associative tendency. And in both types of case the best defence
against the threat is reflection, understood as a mental probing, an
examination and then cross-examination, whether of a work of art or of
an action, and of the elements in and aspects of our situation that
motivate our judgments, all this with a view to factoring out
irrelevant considerations. Without such mental exercises we cannot, in
his view, obtain what he terms 'true liberty and
self-command'. This position, which he presents several times,
points to a doctrine of free will not otherwise readily discernible in
his writings. Our free will, on this account, is a habit of reflection
through which we form a judgment which we are in a position to defend.
We stand back from the object of reflection, do not allow ourselves to
be overwhelmed by it, but instead adjudicate it in the light of
whatever considerations we judge it appropriate to bring to bear
(Broadie 2016).



A philosopher of the early period of the Scottish Enlightenment with
whom Hutcheson may helpfully be compared and contrasted is his close
contemporary Archibald Campbell (1691-1756), professor of
divinity and church history at St Andrews University. Both men studied
at Glasgow University under John Simson, a professorial divine much
harassed by conservative Reformists in the Kirk on account of his
rejection of the Kirk's doctrine that, since the Fall, human
nature through the generations has suffered from total depravity. In
due course Hutcheson and Campbell were both harassed by the Kirk on
account of their claim that human beings are by nature inclined to
virtue, for the Kirk took that claim to imply that the two men did not
fully embrace the doctrine of total depravity. However, beyond this
agreement Campbell opposes Hutcheson on certain essential points. Most
especially, in his *Enquiry into the Original of Moral Virtue*
(1733) Campbell rejects Hutcheson's claim that for an action to
be virtuous it must be motivated by a disinterested benevolence, and
argues to the contrary that all human acts are and can only be
motivated by self-love. From which Campbell concludes that all
virtuous human acts also are motivated by self-love. This claim,
though at first sight Hobbesian, is however not at all of a Hobbesian
stripe, for Campbell holds that the self-love that motivates us to
perform a virtuous act takes the form of a desire for esteem, where
the desired esteem derives from our gratification of another
person's self-love. As well as writing against Hobbes and
Hutcheson, Campbell also directs his fire at Bernard Mandeville, who
held that a virtuous act must involve an exercise of self-denial, in
the sense that to act virtuously we have to cut across, or frustrate
our natural principles, whereas for Campbell, as also for Hutcheson,
virtuous acts are performed in realisation of, and not at all in
conflict with, our nature. The Kirk set up a committee of purity of
doctrine to investigate the teachings of Campbell, a Kirk minister who
painted such a distressingly agreeable picture of human nature. The
conservatively orthodox Reformists on the Committee wished to move
against him, but the Kirk's General Assembly, which was already
beginning to display an Enlightenment spirit, prevented such a move,
and Campbell retained his professorship of divinity and his position
as minister of the Kirk. Campbell's ideas, till now neglected,
are at last beginning to receive serious consideration (Maurer 2012,
2016).


## 4. Hutcheson, Hume and Turnbull



Hutcheson influenced most of the Scottish philosophers who succeeded
him, perhaps all of them, whether because he helped to set their
agenda or because they appropriated, in a form suitable to their
needs, certain of his doctrines. In the field of aesthetics for
example, where Hutcheson led, many, including Hume, Reid, and
Archibald Alison, followed. But influences can be hard to pin down and
there is much dispute in particular concerning his influence on David
Hume (1711-1776). It is widely held that Hume's moral
philosophy is essentially Hutchesonian, and that Hume took a stage
further Hutcheson's projects of internalisation and of grounding
our experience of the world on sentiment or feeling. For Hume agreed
with Hutcheson that moral and aesthetic qualities are really
sentiments existing in our minds, but he also argued that the
necessary connection between any pair of events E1 and E2 which are
related as cause to effect is also in our minds, for it is nothing
more than a determination of the mind, due to custom or habit, to have
a belief (a kind of feeling) that an event of kind E2 will occur next
when we experience an event of kind E1. Furthermore Hume argues that
what we think of as the 'external' world is almost
entirely a product of our own imaginative activity. As against these
reasons for thinking Hume indebted to Hutcheson there are the awkward
facts that Hutcheson greatly disapproved of the draft of
*Treatise* Book III that he saw in 1739 and that Hutcheson did
his best to prevent Hume being appointed to the moral philosophy chair
at Edinburgh University in 1744-1745. In addition many of their
contemporaries, such as Adam Smith and Thomas Reid, held that
Hume's moral philosophy was significantly different from
Hutcheson's (Moore 1990).



One close contemporary of Hutcheson, who also stands in interesting
relations to Hume, is George Turnbull (1698-1748), regent at
Marischal College, Aberdeen (1721-1727), and teacher of Thomas
Reid at Marischal. He describes Hutcheson as "one whom I think
not inferior to any modern writer on morals in accuracy and
perspicuity, but rather superior to almost all" (*Principles
of Moral Philosophy*, p. 14), and no doubt Hutcheson was an
influence on Turnbull in several ways. But it has to be borne in mind
that the earliest of Turnbull's writings, *Theses
philosophicae de scientiae naturalis cum philosophia morali
conjunctione* (Philosophical theses on the unity of natural
science and moral philosophy), a graduation oration delivered in 1723
(*Education for Life*, pp. 45-57), shows Turnbull already
working on a grand project that might be thought of as roughly
Hutchesonian, but doing so several years before Hutcheson's
earliest published work (Turnbull [EL]). As regards Turnbull's
relationship with Hume, we should recall that the subtitle of
Hume's *Treatise of Human Nature* is "An attempt to
introduce the experimental method of reasoning into moral
subjects". As with Hume's *Treatise*, so also
Turnbull's *Principles of Moral Philosophy*, published in
1740 (the year of publication of Bk. III of the *Treatise*) but
based on lectures given in Aberdeen in the mid-1720s, contains a
defence of the claim that natural and moral philosophy are very
similar types of enquiry. When Turnbull tells us that all enquiries
into fact, reality, or any part of nature must be set about, and
carried on in the same way, he is bearing in mind the fact, as he sees
it to be one, that there are moral facts and a moral reality, and that
our moral nature is part of nature and therefore to be investigated by
the methods appropriate to the investigation of the natural world. As
the natural philosopher relies on experience of the external world, so
the moral philosopher relies on his experience of the internal world.
Likewise, writing in Humean terms, but uninfluenced by Hume, Turnbull
affirms: "every Enquiry about the Constitution of the human
Mind, is as much a question of Fact or natural History, as Enquiries
about Objects of Sense are: It must therefore be managed and carried
on in the same way of Experiment, and in the one case as well as in
the other, nothing ought to be admitted as Fact, till it is clearly
found to be such from unexceptionable Experience and
Observation" (*Education for Life*, pp. 342-3). It
is, in Turnbull's judgment, the failure to respect this
experimental method that led to the moral scepticism (as Turnbull
thought it to be) of Hobbes and Mandeville, whose reduction of
morality to self-love flies in the face of experience and shocks
common sense.



The experience in question is of the reality of the public affection
in our nature, the immediate object of which is the good of others,
and the reality of the moral sense by which we are determined to
approve such affections. This moral sense, of whose workings we are
all aware, is the faculty by which, without the mediation of rational
activity, we approve of virtuous acts and disapprove of vicious ones;
and the approval and disapproval rise up in us without any regard for
self-love or self-interest. In a very Hutchesonian way Turnbull
invites us to consider the difference we feel when faced with two acts
which are the same except for the fact that one of them is performed
from love of another person and the other act is performed from
self-interest. These facts about our nature have to be accommodated
within moral philosophy just as the fact that heavy bodies tend to
fall has to be accommodated within natural philosophy.



Turnbull is committed to a form of reliabilism according to which the
faculties that we have by the frame or constitution of our nature are
trustworthy. It is not simply that we are so constructed that we
cannot but accept their deliverances; it is that we are also entitled
to accept them. Turnbull, a deeply committed Christian, believed that
the author of our nature would not have so constituted us as to accept
the deliverances of our nature if our nature could not be relied upon
to deliver up truth. We are in the hands of providence, and live
directed towards the truth for that reason. This doctrine has been
termed 'providential naturalism', and bears a marked
resemblance to the language and also to the substance of the position
held by Turnbull's pupil Thomas Reid.


## 5. Kames on aesthetics and religion



Henry Home, Lord Kames, likewise held a version of providential
naturalism. In his *Essays on the Principles of Morality and
Natural Religion* (1779) he has a good deal to say about the
senses external and internal, treating them as enabling us, by the
original frame of our nature, to gain access, without the use of
reasoning processes, to the realities in the corresponding domains,
including the moral domain. Kames's moral sense has as much to
do with aesthetics as with morality; or rather, for Kames, no less
than for Hutcheson, virtue is a kind of beauty, moral beauty, as vice
is moral deformity. Beauty itself is ascribed to anything that gives
pleasure. And as there are degrees of pleasure and pain, so also there
are degrees of beauty and ugliness. In the lowest rank are things
considered without regard to an end or a designing agent. The
possibility of greater pleasure, and of the ascription of greater
beauty, arises when an object is considered with respect to the
object's end. A house, considered in itself, might be beautiful,
but how much more beautiful is it judged to be if it is seen to be
well designed for human occupancy.



Approbation, as applied to works of art, is our pleasure at them when
we consider them to be well fitted or suited to an end. The
approbation is greater if the end for which the object is well suited
also gives pleasure. A ship may give pleasure because it is so
shapely, and also give pleasure because it is well suited to trade,
and also give pleasure because trade also is a fine thing. If these
further things are taken into account the beauty of the ship is
enhanced. Kames argues that these kinds of pleasure can also be taken
in human actions, and that human acts can cause pleasure additionally
by the special fact about them that they proceed from intention,
deliberation and choice. In the case of, for example, an act of
generosity towards a worthy person, the act is intentionally well
suited, or fitted, to an end whose beauty is recognised by the agent.
The fact that observation of acts displaying generosity, and other
virtues, gives us pleasure is due to the original constitution of our
nature. The pleasure arises unbidden, and no exercise of will or
reason is required, any more than we require to use our reason to see
the beauty of a landscape or a work of art.



Kames wrote extensively on revealed and natural theology. As regards
the latter, he often has Hume in his sights, particularly Hume's
*Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion* (1779), with whose
contents Kames was familiar decades before the work's
publication. Hume held that in an inference from effect to cause no
more should be assigned to the cause than is sufficient to explain the
effect. In particular, if we argue from the existence of the natural
world to the existence of God we should ascribe to God only such
attributes as are requisite for the explanation of the world. And
since the world is imperfect, why not say that we are not constrained
by the facts in the natural order to ascribe perfection to God? Kames,
on the other hand, holds that there are principles implanted in our
nature that permit us to draw conclusions that reason alone does not
sanction. If something is a tendency of our nature then we have to
rely on it as a source of truth. Invoking just such a tendency Kames
affirms that though we see both good and evil around us we do not
conclude that the cause of the world must also be a mixture of good
and evil: "it is a tendency of our nature to reject a mixed
character of benevolence and malevolence, unless where it is
necessarily pressed home upon us by an equality of opposite effects;
and in every subject that cannot be reached by the reasoning faculty,
we justly rely on the tendency of our nature" (*Essays*,
p. 353). In any case Kames sees a world which is predominantly good
even though it has 'a few cross instances'. But the few
cross instances might not look so cross, or even at all cross, if we
had a fuller perspective, and Kames anticipates the time when that
perspective will be granted us.



This latter position did not raise the hackles of the zealots among
the Presbyterian clergy in Scotland, but Kames's position on
free will caused a furore and he had to defend himself from attempts
to expel him from the Kirk. Kames, accepting the concept of history,
natural and human, as the gradual realisation of a divine plan,
believed in universal necessity. The laws ordained by God
"produce a regular train of causes and effects in the moral as
well as material world, bringing about those events which are
comprehended in the original plan, and admitting the possibility of
none other" (*Essays*, p. 192). On the other hand, if we
are to fulfill our role in the grand scheme we must see ourselves as
able to initiate things, that is, to be the free cause of their
occurrence. God has therefore, according to Kames, concealed from us
the necessity of our acts and he is therefore a deceitful God. Kames
sought to explain how this divine deceit enables us to live as morally
accountable beings, but this latter part of his philosophy did nothing
to placate those in the Kirk for whom the affirmation of a deceitful
God was a sacrilege. Kames, however, could not see any difference
between the deception by which we believe ourselves to be free when in
fact we are necessitated and the deception by which we believe
secondary qualities, such as colours and sounds, to be in the external
world and able to get along without us, when in fact they depend for
their existence upon the exercise of our own sensory powers.


## 6. George Campbell on miracles



Kames did not dedicate an entire book to an attack on Hume on
religion, but George Campbell (1719-1796) did. This interesting
man, a student at Marischal College, Aberdeen, of which in 1759 he
became Principal, was a founder-member of the Aberdeen Philosophical
Society, the 'Wise Cub', which also included Thomas Reid,
John Gregory, David Skene, Alexander Gerard, James Beattie and James
Dunbar. It is probable that many of Campbell's writings began
life as papers to the Club. In 1763 he published *A Dissertation on
Miracles* which was intended as a demolition of Hume's essay
'On miracles', Chapter Ten in *An Enquiry Concerning
Human Understanding*. Miracles were commonly discussed in
eighteenth century Scotland. On the one hand the Kirk required people
to accept miracle claims on the basis either of eyewitness reports or
of reports of such reports, and on the other hand the spirit of
Enlightenment required that claims based on the authority of others be
put before the tribunal of reason. Hume focuses especially on the
credibility of testimony, and argues that the credence we place in
testimony is based entirely on experience, the experience of the
occasions when testimony has turned out to be true as against those
experiences where it has not. Likewise it is on the basis of
experience that we judge whether a reported event occurred. If the
reported event is improbable we ask how probable it is that the
eyewitness is speaking truly. We have to balance the probability that
the eyewitness is speaking truly against the improbability of the
occurrence of the event. Hume held that the improbability of a miracle
is always so great that no testimony could tell effectively in its
favour. The wise man, proportioning his belief to the evidence, would
believe that the testimony in favour of the miracle is false.



Campbell's opening move against this argument is to reject
Hume's premiss that we believe testimony solely on the basis of
experience. For, according to Campbell, there is in all of us a
natural tendency to believe other people. This is not a learned
response based on repeated experience but an innate disposition. In
practice this principle of credulity is gradually finessed in the
light of experience. Once testimony is placed before us it becomes the
default position, something that is true unless or until proved false,
not false unless or until proved true. The credence we give to
testimony is much like the credence we give to memory. It is the
default position as regards beliefs about the past, even though in the
light of experience we might withhold belief from some of its
deliverances.



Because our tendency to accept testimony is innate, it is harder to
overturn than Hume believes it to be. Campbell considers the case of a
ferry that has safely made a crossing two thousand times. I, who have
seen these safe crossings, meet a stranger who tells me solemnly that
he has just seen the boat sink taking with it all on board. The
likelihood of my believing this testimony is greater than would be
implied by Hume's formula for determining the balance of
probabilities. Reid, a close friend of Campbell's, likewise gave
massive emphasis to the role of testimony, stressing both the innate
nature of the credence we give to testimony and also the very great
proportion of our knowledge of the world that we gain, not through
perception or reason, but through the testimony of others.
Reid's comparison of the credence we naturally give to the
testimony of others and the credence we naturally give to the
deliverances of our senses, is one of the central features of his
*Inquiry into the Human Mind* (1764).


## 7. George Campbell and the rhetorical tradition



A number of eighteenth century Scots, including James Burnett (Lord
Monboddo), Adam Smith, Thomas Reid, Hugh Blair and James Dunbar, made
significant contributions in the field of language and rhetoric.
George Campbell's *The Philosophy of Rhetoric* (London
1776) is a large-scale essay in which he takes a roughly Aristotelian
position on the relation between logic and rhetoric, since he holds
that convincing an audience, which is the province of rhetoric or
eloquence, is a particular application of the logician's art.
The central insight from which Campbell is working is that the orator
seeks to persuade people, and in general the best way to persuade is
to produce perspicuous arguments. Good orators have to be good
logicians. Their grammar also must be sound. This double requirement
of orators leads Campbell to make a sharp distinction between logic
and grammar, on the grounds that though both have rules, the rules of
logic are universal and those of grammar particular. Though there are
many natural languages there is but one set of rules of logic, and on
the other hand different languages have different rules of grammar. It
is against a background of discussion by prominent writers on language
such as Locke and James ('Hermes') Harris that Campbell
takes his stand with the claim that there cannot be such a thing as a
universal grammar. His argument is that there cannot be a universal
grammar unless there is a universal language, and there is no such
thing as a universal language, just many particular languages. There
are, he grants, collections of rules that some have presented under
the heading 'universal grammar'. But, protests, Campbell,
"such collections convey the knowledge of no tongue
whatever". His position stands in interesting relation to
Reid's frequent appeals to universals of language in support of
the claim that given beliefs are held by all humankind.


## 8. Common sense



Campbell was a leading member of the school of common sense
philosophy. For him common sense is an original source of knowledge
common to humankind, by which we are assured of a number of truths
that cannot be evinced by reason and "it is equally impossible,
without a full conviction of them, to advance a single step in the
acquisition of knowledge" (*Philosophy of Rhetoric*, vol.
1, p. 114). His account is much in line with that of his colleague
James Beattie: "that power of the mind which perceives truth, or
commands belief, not by progressive argumentation, but by an
instantaneous, instinctive, and irresistible impulse; derived neither
from education nor from habit, but from nature; acting independently
on our will, whenever its object is presented, according to an
established law, and therefore properly called Sense; and acting in a
similar manner upon all, or at least upon a great majority of mankind,
and therefore properly called *Common Sense*" (*An
Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth*, p. 40). We are
plainly in the same territory as Reid's account: "there
are principles common to [philosophers and the vulgar], which need no
proof, and which do not admit of direct proof", and these common
principles "are the foundation of all reasoning and
science" (Reid [EIP]).



These philosophers do however disagree about substantive matters. In
particular, Reid lists as the first principle of common sense:
"The operations of our minds are attended with consciousness;
and this consciousness is the evidence, the only evidence which we
have or can have of their existence" (Reid [EIP], p. 41).
Campbell on the other hand lists three sorts of intuitive evidence.
The first concerns our unmediated insight into the truth of
mathematical axioms and the third concerns common sense principles.
The second concerns the deliverances of consciousness, consciousness
being the faculty through which we learn directly of the occurrence of
mental acts -- thinking, remembering, being in pain, and so on.
What is listed as a principle of common sense by Reid is, therefore,
according to Campbell, to be contrasted with such principles. Aside
from this, however, it is clear that Campbell is philosophically very
close to Reid, even if Reid is unquestionably the greater
philosopher.


## 9. Smith on moral sentiments



Reid and Hume both owed an immense debt to Hutcheson. So also did Adam
Smith (1723-1790) who, unlike the others, studied under
Hutcheson at Glasgow University. In 1751 Smith was appointed to the
chair of logic and rhetoric at Glasgow and the following year
transferred to the chair of moral philosophy that Hutcheson had
occupied. Smith's *An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of
the Wealth of Nations* appeared in 1776. *Essays on
Philosophical Subjects* appeared posthumously in 1795. He also
published an essay on the first formation of languages, and student
notes of his lectures on rhetoric and belles lettres, and on
jurisprudence have survived. But much his most important work in
philosophy is the *Theory of Moral Sentiments* which appeared
in 1759 and of which six authorised editions appeared during
Smith's lifetime. The second and sixth editions contain
significant revisions and additions. Smith sets out to provide a
theory that will address the weaknesses of existing systems of moral
philosophy (critcised in Part VII of the *Moral Sentiments*).
He does so by rejecting attempts to reduce morality to a single
principle and instead seeks to provide an account of the operation of
ordinary moral judgment that recognises the central role of
socialisation.



The concepts of sympathy and spectatorship, central to the doctrine of
*TMS*, had already been put to work by Hutcheson and Hume, but
Smith's account is distinct. As spectator of an agent's
suffering we form in our imagination a copy of such 'impression
of our own senses' as we have experienced when we have been in a
situation of the kind the agent is in: "we enter as it were into
his body, and become in some measure the same person with the
agent" (Smith 1790, p. 9). Smith gives two spectacular examples
of cases where the spectator has a sympathetic feeling that does not
correspond to the agent's. The first concerns the agent who has
lost his reason. He is happy, unaware of his tragic situation. The
spectator imagines how he himself would feel if reduced to this same
situation. In this imaginative experiment, in which the spectator is
operating on the edge of a contradiction, the spectator's idea
of the agent's situation plays a large role while his idea of
the agent's actual feelings has a role only in that the
agent's happiness is itself evidence of his tragedy. The second
of Smith's examples is the spectator's sympathy for the
dead, deprived of sunshine, conversation and company. Again Smith
emphasises the agent's situation, and asks how the spectator
would feel if in the agent's situation, deprived of everything
that matters to people.



Smith relates sympathy to approval. For a spectator to approve of an
agent's feelings is for him to observe that he sympathises with
the agent. This account is used as the basis of the analysis of
propriety. For a spectator to judge that an agent's act is
proper or appropriate is for him to approve of the agent's act.
The agent's act lacks propriety, in the judgment of the
spectator, if the spectator does not sympathise with the agent's
performance.



Propriety and impropriety are based on a bilateral relation, between
spectator and agent. Smith attends also to a trilateral relation,
between a spectator, an agent who acts on someone, and the person who
is acted on, the 'recipient' of the act. There are several
kinds of response that the recipient may make to the agent's
act, and Smith focuses on two, gratitude and resentment. If the
spectator judges the recipient's gratitude proper or appropriate
then he approves of the agent's act and judges it meritorious,
or worthy of reward. If he judges the recipient's resentment
proper or appropriate then he disapproves of the agent's act and
judges it demeritorious, or worthy of punishment. Judgments of merit
or demerit concerning a person's act are therefore made on the
basis of an antecedent judgment concerning the propriety or
impropriety of another person's reaction to that act. Sympathy
underlies all these judgments, for in the cases just mentioned the
spectator sympathises with the recipient's gratitude and with
his resentment. He has direct sympathy with the affections and motives
of the agent and indirect sympathy with the recipient's
gratitude; or in judging the agent's behaviour improper the
spectator has indirect sympathy with the agent's resentment
(Smith 1790, p. 74).



We have supposed, in each of these cases, that the recipient really
does have the feeling in question, whether of gratitude or resentment.
However, in Smith's account the spectator's belief about
what the recipient actually feels about the agent is not important for
the spectator's judgment concerning the merit and demerit of the
agent. The recipient may, for whatever reason, resent an act that was
kindly intentioned and in all other ways admirable, and the spectator,
knowing the situation better than the recipient does, puts himself
imaginatively in the shoes of the recipient while taking with him into
this spectatorial role information about the agent's behaviour
that the recipient lacks. The spectator judges that were he himself in
the recipient's situation he would be grateful for the
agent's act; and on that basis, and independently of the
recipient's actual reaction, he approves of the agent's
act and judges it meritorious. Here the spectator considers himself as
a better (because better informed) spectator of the agent's act
than the recipient is.



As regards judgments of merit and demerit, Smith sets up a model of
three people, but the three differ in respect of the weight that has
to be given to their work, for the recipient does almost nothing. He
is acted on by the agent, but apart from that he is no more than a
place holder for the spectator who will imaginatively occupy his shoes
and make a judgment concerning merit or demerit on the basis solely of
his conception of how he would respond to the agent if he were in the
place of the recipient. He does not judge on the basis of the actual
reaction of the recipient, who might approve of the agent's act
or disapprove or have no feelings about it one way or the other.



Up to this point we have attended to the spectator's moral
judgment of the acts of others. What of his judgment of his own acts?
In judging the other the spectator has the advantage of disinterest,
but he may lack requisite information and much of the work of creative
imagination goes into his rectifying the lack. In judging himself he
has, or may be presumed to have, the requisite information but he has
the problem of overcoming the tendency to a distorted judgment caused
by self-love or self-interest. He must therefore factor out of his
judgment those features that are due to self-love. He does this by
setting up, by an act of creative imagination, a spectator, an
*other* who, *qua* spectator, is at a distance from
him.The point about the distance is that it creates the possibility of
disinterest or impartiality, but it is still necessary to ask how
disinterest or impartiality is achieved if it is the agent himself who
imagines the spectator into existence.



Let us move to an answer by wondering who or what it is that is
imagined into existence? Is it the voice of society, representing
established social attitudes? At times in the first edition of *The
Theory of Moral Sentiments* Smith comes close to saying that it
is. In the second edition Smith is clear that this is not the role of
the impartial spectator for the latter can, and occasionally does,
speak against established social attitudes. Nor can the judgment of
the impartial spectator be reduced to the judgment of society, even
where those two judgments coincide. Nevertheless the impartial
spectator exists because of real live spectators. Were it not for our
discovery that while we are judging other people, those same people
are judging us, we would not form the idea of a spectator judging us
impartially.



Smith's account of justice is built upon his account of the
spectator's sympathetic response to the recipient of an
agent's act. If a spectator sympathises with a recipient's
resentment at the agent's act then he judges the act
demeritorious and the agent worthy of punishment. In the latter case
the moral quality attributed to the act is injustice. An act of
injustice "does a real and positive hurt to some particular
persons, from motives which are naturally disapproved of" (Smith
1790, p. 79). Since a failure to act justly has a tendency to result
in injury, while a failure to act charitably or generously does not, a
distinction is drawn by Smith, in line with Humean thinking, between
justice and the other social virtues, on the basis that it is so much
more important to prevent injury than promote positive good that the
proper response to injustice is punishment, whereas we do not feel it
appropriate to punish someone who does not act charitably or
gratefully. In a word, we have a stricter obligation to justice than
to the other virtues.



Though there are important points of contact between Smith's
account of justice and Hume's, the differences are considerable,
chief of them being the fact that Hume grounds our approval of justice
on our recognition of its utility, and Smith does not. We do sometimes
take it into account in coming to a judgment, but more often than not
it is something of a quite different nature that wells up in us:
"All men, even the most stupid and unthinking, abhor fraud,
perfidy, and injustice, and delight to see them punished. But few men
have reflected upon the necessity of justice to the existence of
society, how obvious soever that necessity may appear to be"
(Smith 1790, p. 89). There are a few cases where utility is plainly
involved in our judgment, but they are few, and they are in a distinct
psychological class. Smith instances the sentinel who fell asleep
while on watch and was executed because such carelessness might
endanger the whole army. Smith's comment is: "When the
preservation of an individual is inconsistent with the safety of a
multitude, nothing can be more just than that the many should be
preferred to the one. Yet this punishment, how necessary soever,
always appears to be excessively severe. The natural atrocity of the
crime seems to be so little, and the punishment so great, that it is
with great difficulty that our heart can reconcile itself to it"
(Smith 1790, p. 90). And our reaction in this kind of case is to be
contrasted with our reaction to the punishment of 'an ungrateful
murderer or parricide', where we applaud the punishment with
ardour and would be enraged and disappointed if the murderer escaped
punishment. These very different reactions demonstrate that our
approval of punishment in the one case and in the other are founded on
very different principles.



Smith extends the discussion of merit and demerit into a naturalised
account of the development of religious belief. In his *Essays on
Philosophical Subjects* Smith provides an account of early
religious belief as a precursor to science and philosophy. In the
case of both, the desire to explain the world is driven by anxiety
created through novel experience. Here the appeal to heaven is a
psychological coping mechanism that we develop to address injustices
that go unrecognised in this world. Smith then argues that our views
on the rules of justice more generally come to be associated with
religion and this lends a further social sanction to morality.


## 10. Blair's Christian stoicism



Smith devotes considerable space to the Stoic virtue of self-command.
Another eighteenth century Scottish thinker who devotes considerable
space to it is Hugh Blair (1718-1800), minister of the High Kirk
of St Giles in Edinburgh and first professor of rhetoric and belles
lettres at Edinburgh University. Blair's sermons bear ample
witness to his interest in Stoic virtue. For example, in the sermon
'On our imperfect knowledge of a future state' he wonders
why we have been left in the dark about our future state. Blair
replies that to see clearly into our future would have disastrous
consequences. We would be so spellbound by the sight that we would
neglect the arts and labours which support social order and promote
the happiness of society. We are, believes Blair, in 'the
childhood of existence', being educated for immortality. The
education is of such a nature as to enable us to develop virtues such
as self-control and self-denial. These are Stoic virtues, and
Blair's sermons are full of the need to be Stoical. In his
sermon 'Of the proper estimate of human life' he says:
"if we cannot control fortune, [let us] study at least to
control ourselves." Only through exercise of self- control is a
virtuous life possible, and only through virtue can we attain
happiness. He adds that the search for worldly pleasure is bound to
end in disappointment and that that is just as well. For it is through
the failure of the search that we come to a realisation both of the
essential vanity of the life we have been living and also of the need
to turn to God and to virtue. For many, the fact of suffering is the
strongest argument there is against the existence of God. Blair on the
contrary holds that our suffering provides us with a context within
which we can discover that our true nature is best realised by the
adoption of a life-plan whose overarching principle is religious.


## 11. Ferguson and the social state



One of Blair's colleagues at Edinburgh University was Adam
Ferguson (1723-1816). He succeeded David Hume as librarian of
the Advocates' Library in Edinburgh and then held in succession
two chairs at Edinburgh University, that of natural philosophy
(1759-1764) and of pneumatics and moral philosophy
(1764-1785). His lectures at Edinburgh were published as
*The* *Institutes of Moral Philosophy* (1769) and
*Principles of Moral and Political Science* (1792). Ferguson
advocates a form of moral science based on the study of human
beings as they are and then grounds a normative account of what they
ought to be upon this empirical basis. His most influential work
is *An Essay on the History of Civil Society* (1767). There
Ferguson attended to one of the main concepts of the Enlightenment,
that of human progress, and expressed doubts about whether over the
centuries the proportion of human happiness to unhappiness had
increased. He believed that each person accommodates himself to the
conditions in his own society and the fact that we cannot imagine that
we would be contented if we lived in an earlier society does not imply
that people in earlier societies were not, more or less, as happy in
their own society as we are in ours. As against our unscientific
conjectures about how we would have felt in a society profoundly
unlike the only one we have ever lived in, Ferguson commends the use
of historical records. He talks disparagingly about boundless regions
of ignorance in our conjectures about other societies, and among those
he has in mind who speak ignorantly about earlier conditions of
humanity are Hobbes, Rousseau, and Hume in their discussions of the
state of nature and the origins of society.



Hobbes and Rousseau in particular had a good deal to say about the
pre-social condition of humankind. Ferguson argues, against their
theories, that there are no records whatever of a pre-social human
condition; and since on the available evidence humankind has always
lived in society he concludes that living in society comes naturally
to us. Hence the state of nature is a social state and is not
antecedent to it. Instead of state of nature and contract theory,
Ferguson advocates the use of history, of the accounts of travellers,
and the literature and myths of societies to build an account of types
of human society. Ferguson's discussion of types of society, ideas
of civilisation and civil society has seen him credited with an
influential place in the development of sociology. This method is
ubiquitous across the thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment, with a
particularly influential discussion of the method to be found in
John Millar's *The Origin of the Distinction of Ranks*
(1779).


## 12. Dugald Stewart on history and philosophy



One colleague of Blair and Ferguson at Edinburgh University was Dugald
Stewart (1753-1828), who was a student first at Edinburgh, and
then at Glasgow where his moral philosophy professor was Thomas Reid.
Stewart succeeded his father in the chair of mathematics at Edinburgh,
and then in 1785 became professor of pneumatic and moral philosophy at
Edinburgh when Ferguson resigned the chair. Stewart shared with
Ferguson an interest in the kind of historical inquiry that explored
how societies operate. In his *Account of the Life and Writings of
Adam Smith LL.D.* Dugald Stewart says of one of Smith's
works, the *Dissertation on the Origin of Languages* (Smith
[LRB], pp. 201-26), that "it deserves our attention less,
on account of the opinions it contains, than as a specimen of a
particular sort of inquiry, which, so far as I know, is entirely of
modern origin" (Smith 1795, p. 292). Stewart then spells out the
'particular sort of inquiry' that he has in mind. He notes
the lack of direct evidence for the origin of language, of the arts
and the sciences, of political union, and so on, and affirms:
"In this want of direct evidence, we are under a necessity of
supplying the place of fact by conjecture; and when we are unable to
ascertain how men have actually conducted themselves upon particular
occasions, of considering in what manner they are likely to have
proceeded, from the principles of their nature, and the circumstances
of their external situation" (Smith 1795, p. 293).



For Stewart such enquiries are of practical importance, for by them
"a check is given to that indolent philosophy, which refers to a
miracle, whatever appearances, both in the natural and moral worlds,
it is unable to explain" (Smith 1795, p. 293). Stewart uses the
term 'conjectural history' for the sort of history
exemplified by Smith's account of the origin of language.
Conjectural history works against the illegitimate encroachment of
religion into the lives of people who are too quick to reach for God
as the solution to a problem when extrapolation from scientifically
established principles of human nature would provide a solution
satisfying to the intellect. Knowing what we do about human nature,
about our intellect and will, our emotions and fundamental beliefs, we
ask how people would have behaved in given circumstances. Love and
hate, anger and jealousy, joy and fear, do not change much through the
generations. Much the same things, speaking generally, have much the
same effect first on the emotions and then on behaviour. Dugald
Stewart formulates the principle underlying conjectural history: it
has "long been received as an incontrovertible logical maxim
that the capacities of the human mind have been in all ages the same,
and that the diversity of phenomena exhibited by our species is the
result merely of the different circumstances in which men are
placed" (Stewart 1854-58, vol. 1, p. 69).



As regards the credentials of Stewart's 'incontrovertible
logical maxim', if the claim that human nature is invariant is
an empirical claim, it must be based on observation of our
contemporaries and on evidence of people's lives in other places
and at other times. Such evidence needs however to be handled with
care. The further back we go the more meagre it is, and so the more we
need to conjecture to supplement the few general facts available to
us. Indeed we can go back so far that we have no facts beyond the
generalities that we have worked out in the light of our experience.
But to rely on conjecture in order to support the very principle that
forms the first premiss in any exercise in conjectural history is to
come suspiciously close to arguing in a circle. The incontrovertible
logical maxim of Dugald Stewart should probably be accorded at most
the status of a well-supported empirical generalisation.



Conjectural history is certainly not pure guesswork. We argue on the
basis of observed uniformities, and the more experience we have of
given uniformities the greater credence we will give to reports that
speak of the occurrence of the uniformities, whether they concern dead
matter or living people and their institutions. In a famous passage
Hume writes: "Whether we consider mankind according to the
difference of sexes, ages, governments, conditions, or methods of
education; the same uniformity and regular operation of natural
principles are discernible. Like causes still produce like effects; in
the same manner as in the mutual action of the elements and powers of
nature" (Hume [T], p. 401).



For Hume the chief point about the similarity between ourselves and
our ancestors is that histories greatly contribute to the scientific
account of human nature by massively extending our otherwise very
limited observational data base. Hume writes: "Mankind are so
much the same, in all times and places, that history informs us of
nothing new or strange in this particular. Its chief use is only to
discover the constant and universal principles of human nature, by
showing men in all varieties of circumstances and situations, and
furnishing us with materials from which we may form our observations
and become acquainted with the regular springs of human action and
behaviour. These records of wars, intrigues, factions, and
revolutions, are so many collections of experiments, by which the
politician or moral philosopher fixes the principles of his science,
in the same manner as the physician or natural philosopher becomes
acquainted with the nature of plants, minerals, and other external
objects, by the experiments which he forms concerning them"
(Hume [E], pp. 83-84). On this account of history, it is perhaps
the single most important resource for the philosopher seeking to
construct a scientific account of human nature. Among the historians
produced by eighteenth century Scotland were Turnbull, Hume,
Smith, Ferguson and William Robertson. In light of Hume's
observation it is not surprising that so much history was written by
men prominent for their philosophical writings on human nature.