## 1. Life and Works



Born in Edinburgh, Hume spent his childhood at Ninewells, his
family's modest estate in the border lowlands. He came from a
"good family" (MOL 2)--socially well connected but
not wealthy. His father died just after David's second birthday,
leaving him and his elder brother and sister in



> 
> 
> the care of our Mother, a woman of singular Merit, who, though young
> and handsome, devoted herself entirely to the rearing and educating of
> her Children. (MOL 3)
> 
> 
> 



Katherine Falconer Hume realized that David was uncommonly precocious,
so when his older brother went up to Edinburgh University, Hume went
with him, although he was only 10 or 11. There he studied Latin and
Greek, read widely in history and literature, ancient and modern
philosophy, and also did some mathematics and natural
philosophy--what we now call natural science.



The education David received, both at home and at the university,
aimed at training pupils to a life of virtue regulated by stern
Scottish Calvinist strictures. Prayers and sermons were prominent
aspects of his home and university life. At some point, Hume read
*The Whole Duty of Man*, a widely circulated Anglican
devotional tract that details our duties to God, our fellow human
beings, and ourselves.



Hume's family thought him suited for a legal career, but he
found the law "nauseous", preferring to read classical
texts, especially Cicero. He decided to become a "Scholar and
Philosopher", and followed a rigorous program of reading and
reflection for three years until "there seem'd to be
open'd up to me a new Scene of Thought" (HL 3.2). The
intensity of developing his philosophical vision precipitated a
psychological crisis in the isolated scholar.



The crisis eventually passed, and Hume remained intent on articulating
his "new Scene of Thought". As a second son, his
inheritance was meager, so he moved to France, where he could live
cheaply, and finally settled in La Fleche, a sleepy village in
Anjou best known for its Jesuit college where Descartes and Mersenne
had studied a century before. Here he read French and other
continental authors, especially Malebranche, Dubos, and Bayle, and
occasionally baited the Jesuits with arguments attacking their
beliefs. By this time, Hume had not only rejected the religious
beliefs with which he was raised, but was also opposed to organized
religion in general, an opposition that remained constant throughout
his life. In 1734, when he was only 23, he began writing *A
Treatise of Human Nature*.



Hume returned to England in 1737 to ready the *Treatise* for
the press. To curry favor with Joseph Butler (1692-1752), he
"castrated" his manuscript, deleting his controversial
discussion of miracles, along with other "nobler parts"
(HL 6.2). Book I, "Of the Understanding", and Book II,
"Of the Passions", appeared anonymously in 1739. The next
year saw the publication of Book III, "Of Morals", as well
as his anonymous "Abstract" of Books I and II.



The *Treatise* was no literary sensation, but it didn't
fall "deadborn from the press" (MOL 6), as Hume
disappointedly described its reception. Despite his surgical
deletions, it attracted enough of "a Murmour among the
Zealots" (MOL 6) to fuel his lifelong reputation as an atheist
and a sceptic. When he applied for the Chair of Ethics and Pneumatical
("Mental") Philosophy at Edinburgh in 1745, his reputation
provoked vocal and ultimately successful opposition. Six years later,
he stood for the Chair of Logic at Glasgow, only to be turned down
again. Hume never held an academic post.



In 1745, he accepted a position as a young nobleman's tutor,
only to discover that his charge was insane. A year later he became
secretary to his cousin, Lieutenant General James St Clair, eventually
accompanying him on an extended diplomatic mission in Austria and
Italy.



In 1748, *An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding* appeared,
covering the central ideas of Book I of the *Treatise* and his
discussion of liberty and necessity from Book II. He also included
material he had excised from the *Treatise*. In 1751, he
published *An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals*, a
"recasting" of Book III of the *Treatise*, which he
described as "incomparably the best" of all his work (MOL
10). More essays, the *Political Discourses*, appeared in 1752,
and Hume's correspondence reveals that a draft of the
*Dialogues concerning Natural Religion* was also underway at
this time.



An offer to serve as Librarian to the Edinburgh Faculty of Advocates
gave Hume the opportunity to begin another project, a *History of
England*, using the law library's excellent resources.
Published in six volumes between 1754 and 1762, his *History*
was a bestseller well into the next century, giving him the financial
independence he had long sought. But even as a librarian, Hume's
reputation as an atheist and sceptic dogged him. One of his orders for
"indecent Books" prompted an unsuccessful move for his
dismissal and excommunication from the Kirk. Friends and publishers
persuaded him to suppress some of his more controversial writings on
religion during his lifetime.



In 1763, Hume accepted a position as private secretary to the British
Ambassador to France. During his three-year stay in Paris, he became
Secretary to the Embassy, and eventually its *charge
d'affaires*. He became the rage of the Parisian salons,
enjoying the conversation and company of famous European
intellectuals. He was known for his love of good food and wine, as
well as his enjoyment of the attentions and affections of women.



Hume returned to Edinburgh in 1769. He built a house in
Edinburgh's New Town, and spent his autumnal years quietly and
comfortably, dining and conversing with friends, not all of whom were
"studious and literary", for he also found that his
"company was not unacceptable to the young and careless"
(MOL 21). He spent considerable time revising his works for new
editions of his *Essays and Treatises*, which contained his
collected *Essays*, the two *Enquiries*, *A
Dissertation on the Passions*, and *The Natural History of
Religion*, but--significantly--not *A Treatise of
Human Nature*.



In 1775, Hume was diagnosed with intestinal cancer. Before his death
in 1776, he arranged for the posthumous publication of his most
controversial work, the *Dialogues concerning Natural
Religion*, and composed a brief autobiography, "My Own
Life". Although there was much curiosity about how "the
great infidel" would face his death, his friends agreed that he
prepared himself with the same peaceful cheer that characterized his
life.


## 2. The relation between the *Treatise* and the *Enquiries*



In 1775, as he was readying a revised edition of his *Essays and
Treatises* for the press, Hume sent his publisher an
"Advertisement", asking that it be included in this and
any subsequent edition of his works. In it, he complains that his
critics focused "all their batteries" on the
*Treatise*, "that juvenile work", which he
published anonymously and never acknowledged. He urges his readers to
regard the *Enquiries* "as containing his philosophical
sentiments and principles", assuring his publisher that they
provide "a compleat answer" to his critics.



Hume's apparent disavowal of the *Treatise* and his
regard for the *Enquiries* raise a question about how we should
read his work. Should we take his statements literally and let the
*Enquiries* represent his considered view, or should we ignore
his "Advertisement" and take the *Treatise* as the
best statement of his position?



Both options presuppose that the differences between the
*Treatise* and the *Enquiries* are substantial enough to
warrant taking one or the other as best representing Hume's
views, but there are good reasons for doubting this. Even in the
"Advertisement", Hume says, "Most of the principles,
and reasonings, contained in this volume, were published" in the
*Treatise*. He repeats his conviction that he was guilty of
"going to press too early", and that his aim in the
*Enquiries* was to "cast the whole anew ... where
some negligences in his former reasoning and more in the expression,
are ... corrected".



Hume's description of his aims suggests another option. Rather
than repudiating the *Treatise*, perhaps his recasting of it
represents a shift in the way he presents his "principles and
reasoning" rather than a substantive change in what he has to
say. He reinforces this option when he says of the first
*Enquiry* that the "philosophical Principles are the same
in both" and that "By shortening & simplifying the
Questions, I really render them much more complete" (HL 73.2).
He also comments in "My Own Life" that the
*Treatise*'s lack of success "proceeded more from
the manner than the matter"--more from its
*structure* than its content (MOL 8). It is not unreasonable to
conclude that Hume's recasting of the *Treatise* was
designed to address this issue, which suggests that we might
understand him best by reading both works, despite their differences,
together.


## 3. Philosophical Project



As the title of the *Treatise* proclaims, Hume's subject
is human nature. He summarizes his project in its subtitle: "an
attempt to introduce the experimental method into moral
subjects". In his day, "moral" meant anything
concerned with human nature, not just ethics, as he makes clear at the
beginning of the first *Enquiry*, where he defines "moral
philosophy" as "the science of human nature" (EHU
1.1/5). Hume's aim is to bring the scientific method to bear on
the study of human nature.



Hume's early studies of philosophical "systems"
convinced him that philosophy was in a sorry state and in dire need of
reform. When he was only 18 years old, he complained in a letter that
anyone familiar with philosophy realizes that it is embroiled in
"endless Disputes" (HL 3.2). The ancient philosophers, on
whom he had been concentrating, replicated the errors their natural
philosophers made. They advanced theories that were "entirely
Hypothetical", depending "more upon Invention than
Experience". He objects that they consulted their imagination in
constructing their views about virtue and happiness, "without
regarding human Nature, upon which every moral Conclusion must
depend". The youthful Hume resolved to avoid these mistakes in
his own work, by making human nature his "principal Study, &
the Source from which I would derive every Truth" (HL 3.6).



Even at this early stage, the roots of Hume's mature approach to
the reform of philosophy are evident. He was convinced that the only
way to improve philosophy was to make the investigation of human
nature central--and empirical (HL 3.2). The problem with ancient
philosophy was its reliance on "hypotheses"--claims
based on speculation and invention rather than experience and
observation.



By the time Hume began to write the *Treatise* three years
later, he had immersed himself in the works of the modern
philosophers, but found them disturbing, not least because they made
the same mistakes the ancients did, while professing to avoid them.
Why, Hume asks, haven't philosophers been able to make the
spectacular progress in understanding human nature that natural
philosophers--whom we now call
"scientists"--have recently achieved in the physical
sciences? His answer is that while scientists have cured themselves of
their "passion for hypotheses and systems", philosophers
haven't yet purged themselves of this temptation. Their theories
were too speculative, relied on *a priori* assumptions, and
paid too little attention to what human nature is actually like.
Instead of helping us understand ourselves, modern philosophers were
mired in interminable disputes--evident even to "the rabble
without doors"--giving rise to "the common prejudice
against metaphysical reasonings of all kinds", that is,
"every kind of argument which is in any way abstruse, and
requires some attention to be comprehended" (T xiv.3).



To make progress, Hume maintains, we need to "reject every
system ... however subtle or ingenious, which is not founded on
fact and observation". These systems, covering a wide range of
entrenched and influential metaphysical and theological views, purport
to have discovered principles that give us a deeper and more certain
knowledge of ultimate reality. But Hume argues that in attempting to
go beyond anything we can possibly experience, these metaphysical
theories try to "penetrate into subjects utterly inaccessible to
the understanding" (EHU 1.11/11), which makes their claims to
have found the "ultimate principles" of human nature not
just false, but unintelligible. These "airy sciences", as
Hume calls them, have only the "air" of science (EHU
1.12/12).



Worse still, these metaphysical systems are smokescreens for
"popular superstitions" that attempt to overwhelm us with
religious fears and prejudices (EHU 1.11/11). Hume has in mind a
variety of doctrines that need metaphysical cover to look
respectable--arguments for the existence of God, the immortality
of the soul, and the nature of God's particular providence.
Metaphysics aids and abets these and other superstitious
doctrines.



But he insists that because these metaphysical and theological systems
are objectionable, it doesn't mean we should give up doing
philosophy. Instead, we need to appreciate "the necessity of
carrying the war into the most secret recesses of the enemy".
The only way to resist the allure of these pseudo-sciences is to
engage with them, countering their "abstruse ...
metaphysical jargon" with "accurate and just
reasoning" (EHU 1.12/12).



This means that the initial phase of Hume's project must be
*critical*. A prominent part of this aspect of his project is
to "discover the proper province of human
reason"--determining the extent and limits of
reason's powers and capacities (EHU 1.12/12). He believes that
his investigation will show that metaphysics as the quest for
understanding the ultimate nature of reality is beyond reason's
scope.



Scholars once emphasized this *critical phase* at the expense
of the rest of Hume's project, encouraging the charge that he
was just a negative skeptic, who rejects the views of others without
defending any positive position himself. But while he is indeed
skeptical about the possibility of metaphysical insights that go
deeper than science can, investigating the proper province of reason
isn't only a critical activity. His critique of metaphysics
clears the way for the *constructive phase* of his
project--the development of an empirical science of human
nature--and Hume is not at all skeptical about its prospects.



In his "Introduction" to the *Treatise*, Hume
launches the constructive phase of his project by proposing nothing
less than "a compleat system of the sciences, built on a
foundation entirely new" (T xvi.6). The new foundation is the
scientific study of human nature. He argues that all the sciences have
some relation to human nature, "even Mathematics, Natural
Philosophy, and Natural Religion" (T xv.4). They are all human
activities, so what we are able to accomplish in them depends on
understanding what kinds of questions we are able to handle and what
sorts we must leave alone. If we have a better grasp of the scope and
limits of our understanding, the nature of our ideas, and the
operations we perform in reasoning about them, there is no telling
what improvements we might make in these sciences.



We should expect even more improvement in the sciences that are more
closely connected to the study of human nature: "*Logic,
Morals, Criticism, and Politics*". Many longstanding
philosophical debates are about the nature of our
ideas--causation, liberty, virtue and beauty--so getting
clear about their content should help us cut through these
"endless disputes".



As the science of human nature is the only solid foundation for the
other sciences, "the only solid foundation we can give to this
science itself must be laid on experience and observation" (T
xvi.7). Although Hume does not mention him by name, Newton
(1642-1727) is his hero. He accepts the Newtonian maxim
"*Hypotheses non fingo*", roughly, "I do not
do hypotheses". Any laws we discover must be established by
observation and experiment.



Hume is proposing an *empiricist* alternative to traditional
*a priori* metaphysics. His empiricism is *naturalistic*
in that it refuses to countenance any appeal to the
*supernatural* in the explanation of human nature. As a
naturalist, he aims to account for the way our minds work in a manner
that is consistent with a Newtonian picture of the world.



Hume portrays his scientific study of human nature as a kind of
*mental geography* or *anatomy of the mind* (EHU
1.13/13; T 2.1.12.2/326). In the first section of the first
*Enquiry*, he says that it has two principal tasks, one purely
*descriptive*, the other *explanatory*. Mental geography
consists in delineating "the distinct parts and powers" of
the mind (EHU 1.13/3). While everyone can make some sense of the basic
distinctions among the mind's contents and operations, more
fine-grained distinctions are harder to grasp.



Hume, however, wants to go much further. He wants to *explain*
how the mind works by discovering its "secret springs and
principles". He reminds us that astronomers, for a long time,
were content with proving the "motions, order, and magnitude of
the heavenly bodies". But then "a
philosopher"--Newton--went beyond them and determined
"the laws and forces, by which the revolutions of the planets
are governed and directed" (EHU 1.15/14). Newton's example
led other natural philosophers to similar explanatory successes. Hume
believes he will be equally successful in finding the fundamental laws
governing our "mental powers and economy", if he follows
the same caution Newton exhibited in carrying out his inquiries.



Newton's scientific method provides Hume with a template for
introducing the experimental method into his investigation of the
mind. In *An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals*, he
says he will follow "a very simple method" that he
believes will bring about a transformation in the study of human
nature. Following Newton's example, he argues that we should
"reject every system ... however subtile or ingenious,
which is not founded on fact and observation", and accept only
arguments derived from experience. When we inquire about human nature,
since we are asking "a question of fact, not of abstract
science", we must rely on experience and observation (EPM
1.10/173-174).



As the fledgling Newton of the moral sciences, Hume wants to find a
set of laws that explain how the mind's
contents--*perceptions*, as he calls them--come and
go in the mind and how simple perceptions combine to form complex
perceptions in ways that explain human thought, belief, feeling and
action.



Newton's achievement was that he was able to explain diverse and
complex physical phenomena in terms of a few general principles. Like
him, Hume proposes to explain "all effects from the simplest and
fewest causes" (T xvii.8). He predicts that it is likely that
one "principle of the mind depends on another" and that
this principle may in turn be brought under another principle even
"more general and universal" (EHU 1.15/15). But he
emphasizes that while he will try to find the most general principles,
rendering them as universal as possible, all of his explanations must
be based completely on experience.



Although philosophy, as an empirical enterprise, is itself bound by
experience, this is not a defect in the science of human nature. The
same is true for all the sciences: "None of them can go beyond
experience, or establish any principles which are not founded on that
authority" (T Intro 10). Explanations must come to an end
somewhere. When we see that we have "arriv'd at the utmost
extent of human reason, we sit down contented", for the only
reason we can give for our most general principles is "our
experience of their reality" (T 9).



Hume is Newtonian in much more than method. He sees that Newton is
significantly different from John Locke (1632-1704) and the
other Royal Society natural philosophers, because he rejects their
mechanist picture of the world. Newton's greatest discovery, the
Law of Gravitation, is not a mechanical law. Hume explicitly models
his account of the fundamental principles of the mind's
operations--the principles of association--on the idea of
gravitational attraction. By appealing to these same principles
throughout, Hume gives an explanation of these diverse phenomena that
enable him to provide a unified and economical account of the
mind.


## 4. Account of the Mind



To explain the workings of our minds with the economy Newton displayed
in his physics, Hume introduces the minimal amount of machinery he
thinks is necessary to account for the mind's operations. Each
piece is warranted by experience.



The early modern period was the heyday of the investigation of the
ideas of causation, moral good and evil, and many other
philosophically contested ideas. Every modern philosopher accepted
some version of the *theory of ideas*--the view that we
immediately perceive certain mental entities called *ideas*,
but don't have direct access to physical objects. Hume holds an
*empiricist* version of the theory, because he thinks that
everything we believe is ultimately traceable to experience.



He begins with an account of *perceptions*, because he believes
that any intelligible philosophical question must be asked and
answered in those terms. He uses *perception* to designate any
mental content whatsoever, and divides perceptions into two
categories, *impressions* and *ideas*.



*Impressions* include *sensations* as well as
*desires*, *passions*, and *emotions*.
*Ideas* are "the faint images of these in thinking and
reasoning" (T 1.1.1.1/1). He thinks everyone will recognize his
distinction, since everyone is aware of the difference between
*feeling* and *thinking*. It is the difference between
*feeling* the pain of your present sunburn and
*recalling* last year's sunburn.



Hume distinguishes two kinds of impressions: *impressions of
sensation*, or *original impressions*, and *impressions
of reflection*, or *secondary impressions*. Impressions of
sensation include the feelings we get from our five senses as well as
pains and pleasures, all of which arise in us "originally, from
unknown causes" (T 1.1.2.1/7). He calls them *original*
because trying to determine their ultimate causes would take us beyond
anything we can experience. Any intelligible investigation must stop
with them.



Impressions of reflection include desires, emotions, passions, and
sentiments. They are essentially reactions or responses to ideas,
which is why he calls them *secondary*. Your memories of last
year's sunburn are ideas, copies of the original impressions you
had when the sunburn occurred. Recalling those ideas causes you to
*fear* that you'll get another sunburn this year, to
*hope* that you won't, and to *want* to take
proper precautions to avoid overexposure to the sun.



Perceptions--both impressions and ideas--may be either
*simple* or *complex*. Complex impressions are made up
of a group of simple impressions. My impression of the violet I just
picked is complex. Among the ways it affects my senses are its
brilliant purple color and its sweet smell. I can separate and
distinguish its color and smell from the rest of my impressions of the
violet. Its color and smell are simple impressions, which can't
be broken down further because they have no component parts.



Hume initially distinguishes impressions and ideas in terms of their
degree of *force* and *vivacity*. Impressions are more
forceful and vivacious than ideas. My impression of this ripe
tomato's bright red color is as vivid as anything could be. Last
year's tomatoes were just as vivid when I was looking at them,
but now my idea of them is much less vivid than my impressions of the
tomato in front of me. Since last year's tomatoes were the same
color, the difference can't be that they are different shades of
red; the difference must lie in the sharpness, clarity, and brightness
of my impressions--their *force* and *vivacity*. At
various times, Hume tries other ways of characterizing the difference
between impressions and ideas, but he was never completely satisfied
with them. Still, what he says works well enough to give us a handle
on the felt differences between impressions and ideas.



When Hume distinguishes impressions and ideas in terms of their
relative force and vivacity, he is pointing out something that is
generally true of them as a matter of fact. On occasion, in dreams or
a high fever, ideas may approach the force and vivacity of
impressions, but these are exceptions that prove
the--empirical--rule. In general, impressions and ideas are
so different that no one can deny the distinction.



Although nothing seems freer than the power of thought, which
isn't "restrained within the limits of nature and
reality" (EHU 2.4/18), Hume insists that our imagination is in
fact "confined within very narrow limits". We can separate
and combine our ideas in new and even bizarre ways, imagining
creatures we've never seen or faraway galaxies, but all the
materials of thinking are ultimately derived from our impressions.
Since "all our ideas or more feeble perceptions are copies of
our impressions or more lively ones"; we are restricted to
"compounding, transporting, augmenting, or diminishing the
materials afforded us by the senses and experience" (EHU
2.5/19).


### 4.1 The Copy Principle



In the *Treatise*, Hume qualifies his claim that our ideas are
copies of our impressions, making clear that it applies only to the
relation between *simple ideas* and *simple
impressions*. He offers this "general proposition",
usually called the *Copy Principle*, as his "first
principle ... in the science of human nature":



> 
> 
> All our simple ideas in their first appearance are deriv'd from
> simple impressions, which are correspondent to them, and which they
> exactly represent. (T 1.1.1.7/4)
> 
> 
> 



He presents the principle as something that everyone's
experience confirms, but he also gives an argument to establish
it.



He argues first that there is a one-to-one correspondence
between simple ideas and simple impressions. He can't
*prove* that this correspondence holds universally, since he
can't examine every individual impression and idea. But he is so
confident the correspondence holds that he challenges anyone who
doubts it to produce an example of a simple impression without a
corresponding simple idea, or a simple idea without a corresponding
simple impression. Since he is certain they will fail, he concludes
that there is a *constant conjunction* between simple
impressions and simple ideas.



Next, he maintains that this constant conjunction is so universal that
the correspondence can't be a matter of chance. There must be a
causal connection between them, but do ideas cause impressions or do
impressions cause ideas?



Finally, he argues that experience tells us that simple impressions
always precede and thus cause their corresponding ideas. To support
this claim, he appeals to two sorts of cases. First, if you want to
give a child an idea of the taste of pineapple, you give her a piece
of pineapple to eat. When you do, you are giving her an impression of
the pineapple's taste. You never go the other way round. His
other case involves a person born blind, who won't have ideas of
color because he won't have impressions of color.



The Copy Principle is an empirical thesis, which he emphasizes by
offering "one contradictory phenomenon" as an empirical
counterexample to the principle. He imagines someone who has had the
same sorts of experiences of colors most of us have had, but has never
experienced a certain shade of blue. Hume thinks that if he orders all
the shades of blue he has experienced from the darkest to the
lightest, he will see immediately that there is a gap where the
missing shade should be. Then he asks



> 
> 
> Whether 'tis possible for him, from his own imagination, to
> ... raise up to himself the idea of that particular shade,
> tho' it had never been convey'd to him by his senses? I
> believe there are few but will be of opinion that he can; and this may
> serve as a proof, that the simple ideas are not always deriv'd
> from the correspondent impressions; tho' the instance is so
> particular and singular, that 'tis scarce worth our observing,
> and does not merit that for it alone we shou'd alter our general
> maxim. (T 1.1.1.10/6)
> 
> 
> 



Hume repeats the case of the missing shade almost verbatim in the
first *Enquiry*. While scholars have wondered exactly how the
person might supply the missing shade, he seems unconcerned with the
details. For Hume, once again the exception proves
the--empirical--rule.


### 4.2 Hume's Account of Definition



Although Hume's distinctive brand of empiricism is often
identified with his commitment to the Copy Principle, his use of the
principle's reverse in his account of definition is perhaps the
more innovative element of his system.



As his diagnosis of traditional metaphysics reveals, Hume believes
that



> 
> 
> the chief obstacle ... to our improvement in the moral or
> metaphysical sciences is the obscurity of the ideas, and ambiguity of
> the terms. (EHU 7.1.2/61)
> 
> 
> 



Conventional definitions--replacing terms with their
synonyms--merely replicate philosophical confusions and never
break out of a narrow definitional circle. Getting clear about the
content of the ideas and the meanings of the terms we are
investigating requires something else.



Hume argues that we must "pass from words to the true and real
subject of the controversy"--ideas. He believes he has
found a way to accurately determine their content--his account of
definition. He touts it as "a new microscope or species of
optics", predicting that it will produce equally dramatic
results in the moral sciences as its hardware
counterparts--telescopes and microscopes--have produced in
natural philosophy (EHU 7.1.4/62).



Hume's account of definition uses a simple series of tests to
determine cognitive content. Begin with a term. Ask what idea is
annexed to it. If there is no such idea, then the term has no
cognitive content, however prominently it figures in philosophy or
theology. If there is an idea annexed to the term, and it is complex,
break it down into the simple ideas that compose it, and trace them
back to their original impressions. If the process fails at any point,
the idea in question lacks cognitive content. When carried through
successfully, however, it yields a "just
definition"--a precise account of the troublesome
idea's content.



Hume uses his account of definition in the *critical phase*of
his project to show that many of the central concepts of traditional
metaphysics lack intelligible content. He also uses it in the
*constructive phase* to determine the exact meaning of our
terms and ideas.


### 4.3 Principles of Association



Although we are capable of separating and combining our simple ideas
as we please, there is, nevertheless, a regular order to our thoughts.
If ideas occurred to us completely randomly, so that all our thoughts
were "loose and unconnected", we wouldn't be able to
think coherently (T 1.1.4.1/10). This suggests that



> 
> There is a secret tie or union among particular ideas, which causes
> the mind to conjoin them more frequently, and makes the one, upon its
> appearance, introduce the other. (Abstract 35)
> 



Hume explains this "tie or union" in terms of the
mind's natural ability to *associate* certain ideas.
Association is not "an inseparable connexion", but rather
"a gentle force, which commonly prevails", by means of
which one idea naturally introduces another (T 1.1.4.1/10).



In the first *Enquiry*, Hume says that even though it is
obvious to everyone that our ideas are connected in this way, he is
the first philosopher who has "attempted to enumerate or class
all the principles of association" (EHU 3.2/24). He regards his
use of these "universal principles" as so distinctive that
he advertises them as his most original contribution--one that
entitles him call himself an "*inventor*" (Abstract
35).



Hume identifies three principles of association: *resemblance*,
*contiguity in time and place, and causation.* When someone
shows you a picture of your best friend, you naturally think of her
because the picture *resembles* her. When you're reminded
of something that happened in the 1960s--miniskirts, for
example--you may think of the Vietnam War, because they are
*temporally contiguous*. Thinking of Sausalito may lead you to
think of the Golden Gate Bridge, which may lead you to think of San
Francisco, since they are *spatially contiguous*.
*Causality* works both from cause to effect and effect to
cause: meeting someone's father may make you think of his son;
encountering the son may lead you to thoughts of his father.



Of the three associative principles, *causation* is the
strongest, and the only one that takes us "beyond our
senses" (T 1.3.2.3/74). It establishes links between our present
and past experiences and our expectations about the future, so that
"all reasonings concerning matters of fact seem to be founded on
the relation of *Cause* and *Effect*" (EHU
4.1.4/26). Taking aspirin in the past has relieved my headaches, so I
expect that the aspirin I just took will soon relieve my present
headache. Hume also makes clear that causation is the least understood
of the associative principles, but he tells us, "we shall have
occasion afterwards to examine it to the bottom" (T
1.1.4.2/11).



Like gravitational attraction, the associative principles are
*original*, and so can't be explained further. Although
the associative principles' "effects are everywhere
conspicuous" their causes "are mostly unknown, and must be
resolv'd into *original* qualities of human nature, which
I pretend not to explain". Accordingly, we should curb any
"intemperate desire" to account further for them, for
doing so would take us illegitimately beyond the bounds of experience
(T 1.1.4.6/12-13).



Hume doesn't try to explain *why* we associate ideas as
we do. He is interested only in establishing that, as a matter of
fact, we *do* associate ideas in these ways. Given that his
claim that the associative principles explain the important operations
of the mind is an empirical one, he must admit, as he does in the
first *Enquiry*, that he cannot prove conclusively that his
list of associative principles is complete. Perhaps he has overlooked
some additional principle. We are free to examine our own thoughts to
determine whether resemblance, contiguity, and causation successfully
explain them. The more instances the associative principles explain,
the more assurance we have that Hume has identified the basic
principles by which our minds work.



In the *Abstract*, Hume concludes that it should be "easy
to conceive of what vast consequences these principles must be in the
science of human nature". Since they "are the only ties of
our thoughts, they are really *to us* the cement of the
universe, and all the operations of the mind must, in great measure,
depend on them" (Abstract 35). Just what these "vast
consequences" are will become clear when we examine Hume's
revolutionary accounts of our causal inferences and moral
judgments.


## 5. Causation



The medieval synthesis Thomas Aquinas (1224-74) forged between
Christian theology and Aristotle's science and metaphysics set
the terms for the early modern causation debate. Aristotle
(384-322 BCE) drew an absolute categorical distinction between
scientific knowledge (*scientia*) and belief (*opinio*).
Scientific knowledge was knowledge of causes and scientific
explanation consisted in *demonstration*--proving the
*necessary connection* between a cause and its effect from
intuitively obvious premises independently of experience.



Modern philosophers thought of themselves as scientific
revolutionaries because they rejected Aristotle's account of
causation. Even so, they accepted his distinction between knowledge
and belief, and regarded causal inference as an exercise of reason,
which aimed at demonstrating the necessary connection between cause
and effect. Malebranche (1638-1715), and others following
Descartes (1596-1650), were optimistic about the possibility of
demonstrative scientific knowledge, while those in the British
experimental tradition were more pessimistic. Locke was sufficiently
sceptical about what knowledge we can attain that he constructed one
of the first accounts of probable inference to show that belief can
meet standards of rationality that make experimental natural
philosophy intellectually respectable.



When Hume enters the debate, he translates the traditional distinction
between knowledge and belief into his own terms, dividing "all
the objects of human reason or enquiry" into two exclusive and
exhaustive categories: *relations of ideas* and *matters of
fact*.



Propositions concerning *relations of ideas* are intuitively or
demonstratively certain. They are known *a
priori*--discoverable independently of experience by
"the mere operation of thought", so their truth
doesn't depend on anything actually existing (EHU 4.1.1/25).
*That the interior angles of a Euclidean triangle sum to 180
degrees* is true whether or not there are any Euclidean triangles
to be found in nature. Denying that proposition is a contradiction,
just as it is contradictory to say that 8x7=57.



In sharp contrast, the truth of propositions concerning *matters of
fact* depends on the way the world is. Their contraries are always
possible, their denials never imply contradictions, and they
can't be established by demonstration. Asserting that *Miami
is north of Boston* is false, but not contradictory. We can
understand what someone who asserts this is saying, even if we are
puzzled about how he could have the facts so wrong.



The distinction between *relations of ideas* and *matters of
fact* is often called "Hume's Fork", generally
with the negative implication that Hume may be illicitly ruling out
meaningful propositions that don't fit into these two categories
or fit into both of them. To defuse this objection, however, it is
important to bear in mind that Hume's categories are his
translations of a traditional absolute categorical classificatory
distinction, which all his contemporaries and immediate predecessors
accepted.



Hume's method dictates his strategy in the causation debate. In
the *critical phase*, he argues that his predecessors were
wrong: our causal inferences aren't determined by "reason
or any other operation of the understanding" (EHU 5.1.2/41). In
the *constructive phase*, he supplies an alternative: the
associative principles are their basis.



Hume's contributions to the *critical phase* of the
causation debate are contained in *Treatise* 1.3.6 and Section
4 of the first *Enquiry*, appropriately titled "Sceptical
doubts concerning the operations of the understanding". The
*constructive phase* in his *Enquiry* account is the
following section, also appropriately titled "Sceptical solution
of these doubts", while the corresponding sections of the
*Treatise* stretch from 1.3.7 through 1.3.10.


### 5.1 Causal Inference: Critical Phase



Causal inferences are the only way we can go beyond the evidence of
our senses and memories. In making them, we suppose there is some
*connection* between present facts and what we infer from them.
But what is this connection? How is it established?



If the connection is established by an operation of reason or the
understanding, it must concern either *relations of ideas* or
*matters of fact*.



Hume argues that the connection can't involve relations of
ideas. Effects are different events from their causes, so there is no
contradiction in conceiving of a cause occurring, and its usual effect
not occurring. Ordinary causal judgments are so familiar that we tend
to overlook this; they seem immediate and intuitive. But suppose you
were suddenly brought into the world as an adult, armed with the
intellectual firepower of an Einstein. Could you, simply by examining
an aspirin tablet, determine that it will relieve your headache?



When we reason *a priori*, we consider the idea of the object
we regard as a cause independently of any observations we have made of
it. It can't include the idea of any other *distinct*
object, including the object we take to be its usual effect. But then
it can't show us any "inseparable and inviolable
connection"--any *necessary
connection*--between those ideas. Trying to reason *a
priori* from your idea of an aspirin, without including any
information you have of its effects from your previous experience,
yields only your simple ideas of its "sensible
qualities"--its size, shape, weight, color, smell, and
taste. It gives you no idea of what "secret powers" it
might have to produce its usual effects. Hume concludes that *a
priori* reasoning can't be the source of the connection
between our ideas of a cause and its effect. Contrary to what the
majority of his contemporaries and immediate predecessors thought,
causal inferences do not concern relations of ideas.



Hume now moves to the only remaining possibility. If causal inferences
don't involve *a priori* reasoning about relations of
ideas, they must concern matters of fact and experience. When
we've had many experiences of one kind of event constantly
conjoined with another, we begin to think of them as cause and effect
and infer the one from the other. But even after we've had many
experiences of a cause conjoined with its effect, our inferences
aren't determined by reason or any other operation of the
understanding.



In the past, taking aspirin has relieved my headaches, so I believe
that taking aspirin will relieve the headache I'm having now.
But my inference is based on the aspirin's superficial sensible
qualities, which have nothing to do with headache relief. Even if I
assume that the aspirin has "secret powers" that are doing
the heavy lifting in relieving my headache, they can't be the
basis of my inference, since these "secret powers" are
unknown.



Nonetheless, Hume observes, "we always presume, when we see like
sensible qualities, that they have like secret powers, and expect that
effects, similar to those we have experienced, will follow from
them" (EHU 4.2.16/33). Since we neither intuit nor infer *a
priori* that similar objects have similar secret powers, our
presumption must be based in some way on our experience.



But our past experience only gives us information about objects as
they were when we experienced them, and our present experience only
tells us about objects we are experiencing now. Causal inferences,
however, do not just *record* our past and present experiences.
They *extend* or *project* what we have gathered from
experience to other objects in the future. Since it is not necessarily
true that an object with the same sensible qualities will have the
same secret powers that past objects with those sensible qualities
had, how do we project those experiences into the future, to other
objects that may only appear similar to those we've previously
experienced?



Hume thinks we can get a handle on this question by considering two
clearly different propositions:



(1)
I've found
that headache relief has always followed my taking
aspirin;


and



(2)
Taking aspirin
similar to the ones I've taken in the past will relieve my
present headache.


There is no question that "the one proposition may be justly
inferred from the other", and that "it is always
inferred". But since their connection obviously isn't
intuitive, Hume challenges us to produce the "chain of
reasoning" that takes us from propositions like (1) to
propositions like (2) (EHU 4.2.16/34).



(1) summarizes my past experience, while (2) predicts what will happen
in the immediate future. The chain of reasoning I need must show me
how my past experience is relevant to my future experience. I need
some further proposition or propositions that will establish an
appropriate *link* or *connection* between past and
future, and take me from (1) to (2) using either *demonstrative
reasoning*, concerning relations of ideas, or *probable
reasoning*, concerning matters of fact.



Hume thinks it is evident that demonstrative reasoning can't
bridge the gap between (1) and (2). However unlikely it may be, we can
always intelligibly conceive of a change in the course of nature. Even
though aspirin relieved my previous headaches, there's no
contradiction in supposing that it won't relieve the one
I'm having now, so the supposition of a change in the course of
nature can't be proven false by any reasoning concerning
relations of ideas.



That leaves probable reasoning. Hume argues that there is no probable
reasoning that can provide a just inference from past to future. Any
attempt to infer (2) from (1) by a probable inference will be
viciously circular--it will involve supposing what we are trying
to prove.



Hume spells out the circularity this way. Any reasoning that takes us
from (1) to (2) must employ some *connecting principle* that
connects the past with the future. Since one thing that keeps us from
moving directly from past to future is the possibility that the course
of nature might change, it seems plausible to think that the
connecting principle we need will be one that will assure us that
nature is *uniform*--that the course of nature won't
change--something like this *uniformity principle*:



[UP]
The future will be like the past.


Adopting [UP] will indeed allow us to go from (1) to (2). But before
we can use it to establish that our causal inferences are determined
by reason, we need to determine our basis for adopting it. [UP] is
clearly not *intuitive*, nor is it *demonstrable*, as
Hume has already pointed out, so only *probable* arguments
could establish it. But to attempt to establish [UP] this way would be
to try to establish probable arguments using probable arguments, which
will eventually include [UP] itself.



At this point, Hume has exhausted the ways reason might establish a
connection between cause and effect. He assures us that he offers his
"sceptical doubts" not as a "discouragement, but
rather an incitement ... to attempt something more full and
satisfactory". Having cleared the way for his constructive
account, Hume is ready to do just that.


### 5.2 Causal Inference: Constructive Phase



Hume calls his constructive account of causal inference a
"sceptical solution" to the "sceptical doubts"
he raised in the critical phase of his argument.



Since we're determined--*caused*--to make
causal inferences, then if they aren't "determin'd
by reason", there must be "some principle of equal weight
and authority" that leads us to make them. Hume maintains that
this principle is *custom* or *habit*:



> 
> 
> whenever the repetition of any particular act or operation produces a
> propensity to renew the same act or operation ... we always say,
> that this propensity is the effect of *Custom*. (EHU
> 5.1.5/43)
> 
> 
> 



It is therefore custom, not reason, which "determines the mind
... to suppose the future conformable to the past"
(Abstract 16). But even though we have located the principle, it is
important to see that this isn't a *new* principle by
which our minds operate. *Custom* and *habit* are
general names for the principles of association.



Hume describes their operation as a causal process: custom or habit is
the cause of the particular propensity you form after your repeated
experiences of the constant conjunction of smoke and fire. Causation
is the operative associative principle here, since it is the only one
of those principles that can take us beyond our senses and
memories.



Hume concludes that custom alone "makes us expect for the
future, a similar train of events with those which have appeared in
the past" (EHU 5.1.6/44). Custom thus turns out to be the source
of the *Uniformity Principle*--the belief that the future
will be like the past.


### 5.3 Belief



Causal inference leads us not only to *conceive* of the effect,
but also to *expect* it. When I expect that aspirin will
relieve my headache, I'm not just abstractly considering the
idea of headache relief, I *believe* that aspirin will relieve
it. What more is involved in *believing* that aspirin will
relieve my headache than in merely *conceiving* that it
will?



It can't be that beliefs have some additional idea--the
idea of belief, perhaps--that conceptions lack. If there were
some such idea, given our ability to freely combine ideas, we could,
by simply willing, add that idea to any conception whatsoever, and
believe anything we like.



Hume concludes that belief must be some sentiment or feeling aroused
in us independently of our wills, which accompanies those ideas that
constitute them. It is a particular way or manner of conceiving an
idea that is generated by the circumstances in which we find
ourselves.



If constant conjunctions were all that is involved, my thoughts about
aspirin and headaches would only be hypothetical. For belief, one of
the conjoined objects must be present to my senses or memories; I must
be taking, or just have taken, an aspirin. In these circumstances,
believing that my headache will soon be relieved is as unavoidable as
feeling affection for a close friend, or anger when someone harms us.
"All these operations are species of natural instincts, which no
reasoning ... is able either to produce or prevent" (EHU
5.1.8/46-47).



While Hume thinks that *defining* this sentiment may be
impossible, we can *describe* belief, if only by analogy,
although he was never completely satisfied with his attempts to do so.
Belief is a livelier, firmer, more vivid, steady, and intense
conception of an object. Hume intends these characterizations to go
beyond merely recording intensity of feeling to capture how belief



> 
> 
> renders realities ... more present to us than fictions, causes
> them to weigh more in the thought, and gives them a superior influence
> on the passions and imagination. (EHU 5.2.12/49)
> 
> 
> 



But how does an idea come to be conceived in such a manner that it
constitutes a belief?



Hume's explanation is that as I become accustomed to
aspirin's relieving my headaches, I develop a propensity--a
tendency--to expect headache relief to follow taking aspirin. The
propensity is due to the associative bond that my repeated experiences
of taking aspirin and headache relief have formed. My present
impressions of taking an aspirin are as forceful and vivid as anything
could be, and some of their force and vivacity transfers across the
associative path to the idea of headache relief, enlivening it with
enough force and vivacity to give it the "strength and
solidity" that constitutes belief.



Since I don't know how aspirin relieves headaches, it is
fortunate that there is "a kind of pre-established harmony
between the course of nature and the succession of our ideas"
that teaches me to take aspirin when I have a headache. Custom, Hume
maintains, in language that anticipates and influenced Darwin,



> 
> 
> is that principle by which this correspondence has been effected; so
> necessary to the subsistence of our species, and the regulation of our
> conduct, in every circumstance of human life. (EHU 5.2.21/55)
> 
> 
> 



It is far better, Hume concludes, to rely on "the ordinary
wisdom of nature", which ensures that we form beliefs "by
some instinct or mechanical tendency", rather than trusting it
to "the fallacious deductions of our reason" (EHU
5.2.22/55).



In keeping with his project of providing a naturalistic account of how
our minds work, Hume has given empirical explanations of our
propensity to make causal inferences, and the way those inferences
lead to belief.


## 6. The Idea of Necessary Connection



The early modern causation debate revolved around a family of
"nearly synonymous" key ideas, the most prominent of which
were the ideas of *power* and *necessary connection*.
For Hume, "there are no ideas, which occur in metaphysics, more
obscure and uncertain". He showcases the critical and
constructive uses of his account of definition as he attempts
"to fix ... the precise meaning of these terms", in
order to "remove some part of that obscurity, which is so much
complained of in this species of philosophy" (EHU
7.1.3/61-62).


### 6.1 Necessary Connection: Critical Phase



To get clear about the idea of power or necessary connection, we need
to determine the impressions that are its source. Hume identifies
three possible sources in the work of his predecessors: Locke thought
we get our idea of power secondarily from *external
impressions* of the interactions of physical objects, and
primarily from *internal impressions* of our ability to move
our bodies and to consider ideas. Malebranche argued that what we take
to be causes of the motion of bodies or mental activity aren't
causes at all. They are only *occasions* for God, the sole
source of necessary connection, to act in the world. Hume rejects all
three possibilities.



He argues that *external impressions* of the interactions of
bodies can't give rise to our idea of power. When we see that
the motion of one billiard ball follows another, we're only
observing their *conjunction*, never their
*connection*.



Attending to *internal impressions* of the operations of our
minds doesn't help. Although voluntary bodily movements follow
our willing that those movements occur, this is a matter of fact I
learn through experience, not from some internal impression of my
will's power. When I decide to type, my fingers move over the
keyboard. When I decide to stop, they stop, but I have no idea how
this happens. Were I aware of the power of my will to move my fingers,
I'd know both how it worked and its limits.



Our ability to control our thoughts doesn't give us an
impression of power, either. We don't have a clue about how we
call up our ideas. Our command over them is limited and varies from
time to time. We learn about these limitations and variations only
through experience, but the mechanisms by which they operate are
unknown and incomprehensible to us. If I decide to think about
Istanbul, my idea of that city comes to mind, but I experience only
the succession of my decision followed by the idea's appearance,
never the power itself.



When ordinary people can't determine an event's cause,
they attribute it to some "invisible intelligent
principle". Malebranche and other occasionalists do the same,
except they apply it across the board. True causes aren't powers
in the physical world or in human minds. The only true cause is
God's willing that certain objects should always be conjoined
with certain others.



Anyone aware of our minds' narrow limits should realize that
Malebranche's theory takes us into
"fairyland"--it goes so far beyond our experience
that we have no way of intelligibly assessing it. It also capitalizes
on how little we know about the interactions of bodies, but since our
idea of God is based on extrapolations from our faculties, our
ignorance should also apply to him.


### 6.2 Necessary Connection: Constructive Phase



Since we've canvassed the leading contenders for the source of
our idea of necessary connection and found them wanting, it might
*seem* as if we have no such idea, but that would be too hasty.
In our discussion of causal inference, we saw that when we find that
one kind of event is constantly conjoined with another, we begin to
expect the one to occur when the other does. We suppose there's
some connection between them, and don't hesitate to call the
first, the *cause*, and the second, the *effect*. We
also saw that there's nothing different in the repetition of
constantly conjoined cases from the exactly similar single case,
*except* that after we've experienced their constant
conjunction, habit determines us to expect the effect when the cause
occurs.



Hume concludes that it is just this felt determination of the
mind--our awareness of this customary transition from one
associated object to another--that is the source of our idea of
necessary connection. When we say that one object is necessarily
connected with another, we really mean that the objects have acquired
an associative connection in our thought that gives rise to this
inference.



Having located the missing ingredient, Hume is ready to offer a
definition of *cause*. In fact, he gives us two. The first,



> 
> 
> A cause is an object, followed by another, where all the objects
> similar to the first are followed by objects similar to the
> second,
> 
> 
> 



gives the relevant *external impressions*, while the
second,



> 
> 
> A cause is an object followed by another, and whose appearance always
> conveys the thought to the other,
> 
> 
> 



captures the *internal impression*--our awareness of being
determined by custom to move from cause to effect. Both are
definitions on Hume's account, but his "just
definition" of our idea of cause is the conjunction of the two
(EHU 7.2.29/76-77). Only together do they capture *all*
the relevant impressions involved.



Hume locates the source of the idea of necessary connection *in
us*, not in the objects themselves or even in our ideas of those
objects we regard as causes and effects. In doing so, he completely
changes the course of the causation debate, reversing what everyone
else thought about the idea of necessary connection. Subsequent
discussions of causation must confront the challenges Hume poses for
traditional, more metaphysical, ways of looking at our idea of
causation.



Hume's treatment of our idea of causation is his flagship
illustration of how his method works and the revolutionary results it
can achieve. He goes on to apply both his method, and its concrete
results, to other prominent debates in the modern period, including
probable inference, testimony for miracles, free will, and intelligent
design.


## 7. Moral Philosophy



Hume's explanation of morality is an important part of his
efforts to reform philosophy. He takes his primary task to be an
investigation into the origin of the basic moral ideas, which he
assumes are the ideas of moral goodness and badness. As with the idea
of cause and necessary connection, he wants to explain moral ideas as
economically as possible in terms of their "simplest and fewest
causes". Determining their causes will determine what their
content is--what we mean by them. His secondary concern is to
establish what character traits and motives are morally good and
bad.



Hume follows his sentimentalist predecessor, Francis Hutcheson
(1694-1746), in building his moral theory around the idea of a
spectator who approves or disapproves of people's character
traits and motives. The sentiments of approval and disapproval are the
source of our moral ideas of goodness and badness. To evaluate a
character trait as morally good is to evaluate it as virtuous; to
evaluate it as morally bad is to evaluate it as vicious.



As he did in the causation debate, Hume steps into an ongoing debate
about ethics, often called the British Moralists debate, which began
in the mid-seventeenth century and continued until the end of the
eighteenth. He uses the same method here as he did in the causation
debate: there is a *critical phase* in which he argues against
his opponents, and a *constructive phase* in which he develops
his version of sentimentalism. Hume has two sets of opponents: the
self-love theorists and the moral rationalists. He became the most
famous proponent of sentimentalism.



Thomas Hobbes' (1588-1679) radical attempt to derive moral
and political obligation from motives of self-interest initiated the
British Moralists debate. Hobbes, as his contemporaries understood
him, characterizes us as naturally self-centered and power-hungry,
concerned above all with our own preservation. In the state of nature,
a pre-moral and pre-legal condition, we seek to preserve ourselves by
trying to dominate others. Since we are all sufficiently
"equal" in power, this results in a state of "war of
all against all" in which life is "nasty, brutish, and
short" (*Leviathan*, Ch. 13). The way out is to make a
compact with one another. We agree to hand over our power and freedom
to a sovereign, who makes the laws necessary for us to live together
peacefully and has the power to enforce them. While acting morally
requires that we comply with the laws the sovereign establishes, the
basis of morality is self-interest.



Bernard Mandeville's (1670-1733) *The Fable of the
Bees* served to reinforce this reading of Hobbes during the early
18th century. According to Mandeville, human beings are
naturally selfish, headstrong, and unruly. Some clever politicians,
recognizing that we would be better off living together in a civilized
society, took up the task of domesticating us. Realizing that we are
proud creatures, highly susceptible to flattery, they were able to
dupe many of us to live up to the ideal of virtue--conquering our
selfish passions and helping others--by dispensing praise and
blame. Moral concepts are just tools clever politicians used to tame
us.



Two kinds of moral theories developed in reaction first to Hobbes and
then to Mandeville--rationalism and sentimentalism. The
rationalists oppose Hobbes' claim that there is no right or
wrong in the state of nature, that rightness or wrongness is
determined by the sovereign's will, and that morality requires
sanctions to motivate us. The sentimentalists object to Hobbes'
and Mandeville's "selfish" conceptions of human
nature and morality. By the mid-eighteenth century, rationalists
and sentimentalists were arguing not only against Hobbes and
Mandeville, but also with each other.



Hume opposes both selfish and rationalist accounts of morality, but he
criticizes them in different works. In the *Treatise*, Hume
assumes that Hobbes' theory is no longer a viable option, so
that there are only two possibilities to consider. Either moral
concepts spring from reason, in which case rationalism is correct, or
from sentiment, in which case sentimentalism is correct. If one falls,
the other stands. In the second *Enquiry*, Hume continues to
oppose moral rationalism, but his arguments against them
appear in an appendix. More importantly, he drops the assumption he
made in the *Treatise* and takes the selfish theories of Hobbes
and Mandeville as his primary target. Once again, he thinks there are
only two possibilities. Either our approval is based in self-interest
or it has a disinterested basis. The refutation of one is proof of the
other.


### 7.1 Moral Rationalism: Critical Phase in the *Treatise*



Hume thinks that "systems and hypotheses" have also
"perverted our natural understanding" of morality. The
views of the moral rationalists--Samuel Clarke (1675-1729),
Locke and William Wollaston (1660-1724)--are prominent
among them. One distinctive, but unhealthy, aspect of modern moral
philosophy, Hume believes, is that it allies itself with religion and
thus sees itself as serving the interests of "popular
superstition". Clarke's theory and those of the other
rationalists epitomize this tendency.



Clarke, Hume's central rationalist opponent, appeals to reason
to explain almost every aspect of morality. He believes that there are
demonstrable moral relations of fitness and unfitness that we discover
*a priori* by means of reason alone. Gratitude, for example, is
a fitting or suitable response to kindness, while ingratitude is an
unfitting or unsuitable response. He believes that the rational
intuition that an action is fitting has the power both to obligate us
and to move us. To act morally is to act rationally.



Hume's most famous and most important objection to moral
rationalism is two-pronged. In *Treatise* 2.3.3, "Of the
influencing motives of the will", he rejects the rationalist
ideal of the good person as someone whose passions and actions are
governed by reason. In T 3.1.1, he uses these arguments to show that
moral ideas do not spring from reason alone.



In the first prong of his objection, Hume begins by remarking that
nothing is more common than for philosophers, as well as ordinary
people, to talk about the "combat" between reason and
passion. They say we ought to be governed by reason rather than
passion, and if our passions are not in line with reason's
commands, we ought to restrain them or bring them into conformity with
reason. Hume counters that "reason alone can never be a motive
to any action of the will" and that by itself it can never
oppose a passion in the direction of the will.



His first argument rests on his empiricist conception of reason. As we
saw in his account of causation, demonstrative reasoning consists in
comparing ideas to find relations among them, while probable reasoning
concerns matters of fact. He considers mathematical reasoning from the
relation of ideas category and causal reasoning from the category of
matters of fact. He asks us to look at instances of actions where
these two types of reasoning are relevant and says that when we do, we
will see that reason alone couldn't have moved us.



No one thinks that mathematical reasoning by itself is capable of
moving us. Suppose you want to stay out of debt. This may move you to
calculate how much money comes in and how much goes out, but
mathematical reasoning by itself does not move us to do anything.
Mathematical reasoning, when it bears on action, is always used in
connection with achieving some purpose and thus in connection with
causal reasoning.



Hume, however, argues that when causal reasoning figures in the
production of action, it always presupposes an existing desire or
want. On his view, reasoning is a process that moves you from one idea
to another. If reasoning is to have motivational force, one of the
ideas must be tied to some desire or affection. As he says,



> 
> 
> It can never in the least concern us to know, that such objects are
> causes, and such others effects, if both the causes and effects are
> indifferent to us. Where the objects themselves do not affect us,
> their connexion can never give them any influence; and 'tis
> plain, that as reason is nothing but the discovery of this connexion,
> it cannot be by its means that the objects are able to affect us (T
> 2.3.3.3/414).
> 
> 
> 



Noticing a causal connection between exercise and losing weight will
not move you to exercise, unless you want to lose weight.



It immediately follows that reason alone cannot oppose a passion in
the direction of the will. To oppose a passion, reason must be able to
give rise to a motive by itself, since only a motive can oppose
another motive, but he has just shown that reason by itself is unable
to do this.



Having exposed reason's pretensions to rule, Hume inverts the
rationalist's ideal of the good person, and concludes that
"Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and
can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey
them" (T 2.3.3.4/415).



The second prong of Hume's objection, the argument from
motivation, is directed primarily against Clarke and concerns the
source of our moral concepts: either they spring from reason or from
sentiment. Couching this debate in terms of his own version of the
theory of ideas, he reminds us that to engage in any sort of mental
activity is to have a perception before the mind, so "to approve
of one character, to condemn another, are only so many different
perceptions" (T 3.1.1.2/456). Since there are only two types of
perception--ideas and impressions--the question between
rationalism and sentimentalism is



> 
> 
> *Whether 'tis by means of our ideas or impressions we
> distinguish betwixt vice and virtue, and pronounce an action blameable
> or praise-worthy?* (T 3.1.1.3/456)
> 
> 
> 



The argument from motivation has only two premises. The first is that
moral ideas have pervasive practical effects. Experience shows that we
are often motivated to perform an action because we think it is
obligatory or to refrain because we think it is unjust. We try to
cultivate the virtues in ourselves and are proud when we succeed and
ashamed when we fail. If morality did not have these effects on our
passions and actions, moral rules and precepts would be pointless, as
would our efforts to be virtuous. Thus "morals excite passions,
and produce or prevent actions" (T 3.1.1.6/457).



The second premise is that by itself reason is incapable of exciting
passions or producing and preventing actions, which Hume supports with
the arguments we just looked at about the influencing motives of the
will. The argument from motivation, then, is that if moral concepts
are capable of exciting passions and producing or preventing actions,
but reason alone is incapable of doing these things, then moral
concepts can't spring from reason alone.



Reason for Hume is essentially passive and inert: it is incapable by
itself of giving rise to new motives or new ideas. Although he thinks
the argument from motivation is decisive, in T 3.1.1 he offers a
battery of additional arguments, which are intended to show that moral
concepts do not arise from reason alone.



Hume takes the defeat of rationalism to entail that moral concepts
spring from sentiment. Of course, he was not the first to claim that
moral ideas arise from sentiment. Hutcheson claimed that we possess,
in addition to our external senses, a special moral sense that
disposes us to respond to benevolence with the distinctive feelings of
approbation. Hume, however, rejects the idea that the moral sentiments
arise from a sense that is an "*original* quality"
and part of our "*primary* constitution".



He first argues that there are many different types of virtue, not all
of which are types of benevolence--respecting people's
property rights, keeping promises, courageousness, and
industriousness--as Hutcheson maintained. If we agree with Hume,
but keep Hutcheson's idea of a moral sense, we would have to
believe that we have many different "original" senses,
which dispose us to approve of the variety of different virtues
separately. But he complains that this is not only highly implausible,
but also contrary to the



> 
> 
> usual maxims, by which nature is conducted, where a few principles
> produce all the variety we observe in the universe. (T
> 3.1.2.6/473)
> 
> 
> 



Instead of multiplying senses, we should look for a few general
principles to explain our approval of the different virtues.



The real problem, however, is that Hutcheson just
claims--hypothesizes--that we possess a unique, original
moral sense. If asked why we have a moral sense, his reply is that God
implanted it in us. Although in his critical phase Hume freely borrows
many of Hutcheson's arguments to criticize moral rationalism,
his rejection of a God-given moral sense puts him on a radically
different path from Hutcheson in his constructive phase. One way of
understanding Hume's project is to see it as an attempt to
naturalize Hutcheson's moral sense theory. He aims to provide a
wholly naturalistic and economical explanation of how we come to
experience the moral sentiments that also explains why we approve of
the different virtues. In the course of explaining the moral
sentiments, Hutcheson's idea of an original moral sense
disappears from Hume's account of morality.


### 7.2 Sentimentalism: Constructive Phase



In *Treatise* 3.3.1, Hume turns to his constructive task of
providing a naturalistic explanation of the moral sentiments. He
refers to them as feelings of approval or disapproval, praise or
blame, esteem or contempt. Approval is a kind of pleasant or agreeable
feeling; disapproval a kind of painful or disagreeable feeling. In
several key passages, he describes the moral sentiments as calm forms
of love and hatred. When we evaluate our own character traits, pride
and humility replace love and hatred.



Hume's project is "to discover the true origin of morals,
and of that love or hatred, which arises" (T 3.3.1/575) when we
contemplate our own or other people's character traits and
motives. He traces the moral sentiments to *sympathy*. Sympathy
is a psychological mechanism that explains how we come to feel what
others are feeling. It is not itself a feeling or sentiment and so
should not be confused with feelings of compassion or pity. Hume
appeals to sympathy to explain a wide range of phenomena: our interest
in history and current affairs, our ability to enjoy literature,
movies, and novels, as well as our sociability. It is central to his
explanations of our passions, our sense of beauty, and our sense of
what is morally good and bad.



Sympathy is a process that moves me from my idea of what someone is
feeling to actually experiencing the feeling. There are four steps to
this process. I first arrive at the idea of what someone is feeling in
any of the usual ways. I next become aware of the
*resemblances* between us, so we are linked by that principle
of association. While we resemble every human being to some extent, we
also resemble some individuals more than others--for instance,
those who share our language or culture or are the same age and sex as
we are. The associative principles of *contiguity* and
*causality* also relate individuals who are located closely to
us in time or space or who are family members or teachers. According
to Hume, we are able to sympathize more easily and strongly with
individuals with whom we have strong associative ties. The stronger
the associative relations, the stronger our sympathetic responses.
Hume then claims--controversially--that we always have a
vivid awareness of ourselves. Finally, he reminds us that the
principles of association not only relate two perceptions, but they
also transmit force and vivacity from one perception to another.



Suppose my friend recently suffered a devastating loss and I realize
she is feeling sad. The associative principles transmit force and
vivacity from my vivid awareness of myself to my idea of my
friend's sadness. Since for Hume the difference between
impressions and ideas is that impressions are more lively and
vivacious than ideas, if an idea of a passion is sufficiently
enlivened, it becomes the very passion itself. I now feel sad too, but
not quite as strongly as my friend.



The way Hume uses the idea that the associative principles transmit
force and vivacity in his explanation of sympathy is parallel to the
way he uses it in his explanation of causal inference. In the case of
causal inference, if we have an impression of an effect (smoke), the
associative principles give rise not only to the idea of its cause
(fire), but they also transmit some of the impression's force
and vivacity to the idea of its cause, so that we come to believe that
fire is the cause of the smoke. A belief is an idea that is so lively
that it is *like* an impression, and influences us in the way
impressions do. Similarly, my lively awareness of myself enlivens by
association my idea of my friend's sadness. But the result in
the case of sympathy is even stronger: when an idea of a passion is
sufficiently enlivened, it becomes the very passion itself.



One advantage Hume's explanation of the moral sentiments in
terms of sympathy has over Hutcheson's claim that we possess a
God-given moral sense is that it enables him to provide a unified
theory of the mind. He explains the moral sentiments by appealing to
sympathy, which, in turn, he explains in terms of the same associative
principles he invoked to explain causal beliefs. Without sympathy, and
the associative principles that explain it, we would be unimaginably
different than we are--creatures without causal or moral
ideas.



Hume develops his account of moral evaluation further in response to
two objections to his claim that the moral sentiments arise from
sympathy. The first is the "sympathy is variable"
objection. Sympathy enables us to enter into the feelings of anyone,
even strangers, because we resemble everyone to some extent. But it is
an essential feature of his account of the natural and spontaneous
operation of sympathy that our ability to respond sympathetically to
others varies with variations in the associative relations. I am able
to sympathize more easily and strongly with someone who resembles me
or is related to me by contiguity or causation. The objection is that
the moral sentiments can't be based in sympathy because the
loves and hatreds that result from the natural and spontaneous
workings of sympathy vary, but our moral approval doesn't vary.
The second objection is that "virtue in rags" still evokes
our approval. Sympathy works by looking at the actual effects of a
person's character traits, but sometimes misfortune or lack of
opportunity may prevent an individual from exercising their good
character traits, yet we still admire them.



Hume argues that moral love and hatred spring from sympathy, but only
when we regulate our sympathetic reactions by taking up what he calls
"the general point of view". There are two regulatory
features to the general point of view. The first is that we survey a
person's character from the perspective of the person and his
usual associates--friends, family, neighbors, and co-workers. We
sympathize with the person and the people with whom that person
regularly interacts and judge character traits in terms of whether
they are good or bad for these people. Second, we regulate sympathy
further by relying on general rules that specify the general effects
and tendencies of character traits rather than sympathizing with their
actual effects.



By putting together these two regulatory features, we arrive at
Hume's idea of the general point of view, which defines a
perspective from which we may survey a person's character traits
that we share with everyone. When we occupy the general point of view,
we sympathize with the person herself and her usual associates, and
come to admire the person for traits that are normally good for
everyone. The general point of view is, for Hume, the moral
perspective. We do not experience the moral sentiments unless we have
already taken up the general point of view. The moral sentiments and
the concepts to which they give rise are products of taking up that
standpoint.



Hume offers the claim that we admire four sorts of character
traits--those that are useful or immediately agreeable to the
agent or to others--as an empirical hypothesis. While he provides
support for it in his discussion of the individual virtues, he also
uses his fourfold classification to undermine Christian conceptions of
morality. He makes pride a virtue and humility a vice. He throws out
the "monkish" virtues--celibacy, fasting, and
penance--on the grounds that they are not pleasant or useful to
anyone. He also rejects the distinction between virtues and natural
talents, which legislators, "divines" and modern moralists
defend by claiming that the moral virtues are voluntary, whereas
natural talents aren't. Their goal is to reform us--or at
least our outward behavior--making us better, when understood in
Christian terms. They accordingly restrict the domain of the moral to
actions that proceed from character traits because they believe only
they can be modified, shaped, and controlled by sanctions, while
talents can't. Hume, however, rejects the distinction along with
the dubious function these reformers assign to morality.



Hume identifies both what has value and what makes things valuable
with features of our psychology. Our first-order sentiments, passions
and affections, as well as actions expressive of them, are what have
moral value. Our second-order reflective sentiments about our own or
other people's sentiments, passions and affections are what give
them value. On his view, morality is entirely a product of human
nature.



In the "Conclusion" of the second *Enquiry*, Hume
summarizes his explanation of morality with a definition of virtue or
merit:



> 
> 
> every quality of mind, which is *useful* or *agreeable*
> to the *person* *himself* or to *others*,
> communicates a pleasure to the spectator, engages his esteem, and is
> admitted under the honourable denomination of virtue or merit. (EPM
> 9.1.12/277)
> 
> 
> 



This is a precise parallel of his two definitions of cause in the
first *Enquiry.* Both sets of definitions pick out features of
events, and both record a spectator's response to those
events.


### 7.3 Self-Interest Theories: Critical Phase in the *Enquiry*



Hume's second *Enquiry* is a sustained and systematic
attack on the "selfish" or "self-love"
theories of Hobbes and Mandeville. He follows Hutcheson in thinking
that they assign two distinct roles to self-interest in their accounts
of morality: first, moral approval and disapproval are based in a
concern for our own interest and, second, the motive of which we
ultimately approve is self-interest. Although many people during this
period understood Hobbes' theory through Mandeville's
lens, Hume believes it is important to distinguish them. As he sees
it, Mandeville's theory is superficial and easily dismissed.
Hobbes is his main opponent.



Hume's rejection of Hobbes' selfish account of approval
and disapproval begins in Section II and ends in Part I of the
"Conclusion" of the *Enquiry*. Like Hutcheson, he
mistakenly supposes that Hobbes was offering a rival theory of
approval and disapproval. We approve of people's character
traits when they benefit us and disapprove of them when they harm us.
Hume looks at each of the four types of virtue and argues that in each
case, our approval does not spring from a concern for our own
happiness, but rather from sympathy.



In Section II, Hume argues that one reason we approve of benevolence,
humanity, and public spiritedness is that they are useful to others
and to society. In Sections III and IV, he argues that the sole ground
for approving of justice and political allegiance is that they are
useful to society. In Section V, he asks: But useful for whom? Since
it is obvious that it has to be "for some body's
interest", the question is "Whose interest then?" He
assumes there are only two possibilities: approval and disapproval
spring either from sentiments that are interested or from a
disinterested source.



According to Hume, Hobbes' "deduction of morals from
self-love" begins with our realization that we cannot subsist
alone. A social order provides security, peace, and mutual protection,
conditions that allow us to promote our own interests better than if
we lived alone. Our own good is thus bound up with the maintenance of
society. Although Hume agrees with Hobbes up to this point, he rejects
his explanation that we approve of justice, benevolence, and humanity
because they promote our own happiness.



Hume is confident that "the voice of nature and
experience" will show that Hobbes' theory, understood in
this way, is mistaken. Borrowing many of Hutcheson's arguments,
he points out that if approval and disapproval were based on thoughts
about the possible advantages and disadvantages to us of
people's characters and actions, we would never feel approval
and disapproval of people from "very distant ages and remote
countries", since they cannot possibly affect us. We would never
admire the good deeds of our enemies or rivals, since they are hurtful
to us. We would also never approve or disapprove of characters
portrayed in novels or movies, since they are not real people and
cannot possibly help or harm us. We approve of character traits and
actions that are useful not because they benefit us, but because we
sympathize with the benefits they bestow on others or society.



Hume next examines the remaining three types of character
traits--those that are useful to the agent (industriousness, good
judgment), agreeable to the agent (cheerfulness) or agreeable to
others (politeness, decency). Why, for example, do we approve of
industriousness and good judgment, character traits that are primarily
advantageous to the possessor? In most cases they are of absolutely no
benefit to us and, in cases of rivalry, they counteract our own
interest. We approve of these character traits not because they are
beneficial to us, but because we sympathize with the benefits they
confer on others. Hume takes this as further evidence against
Hobbes' explanation in terms of self-interest and in support of
his sympathy-based account.



In Part I of the "Conclusion", Hume complains that
Hobbes' self-love theory is unable to explain two important
features of our moral sentiments: we tend to approve of the same sorts
of character traits and we are able to morally evaluate anyone, at any
time or place. If our approval and disapproval were based on thoughts
about our own benefits and harms, the moral sentiments would vary from
person to person and for the same person over time. We wouldn't
have moral feelings about most people, since most people don't
affect us. The moral sentiments spring from our capacity to respond
sympathetically to others.



Hume is equally adamant that any explanation of the motives that
prompt us to virtuous actions in terms of self-interest is mistaken.
He opposes them in Appendix II of the *Enquiry*, which was
originally part of Section II, "Of Benevolence". He
follows Hutcheson in thinking that the issue is whether the various
benevolent affections are genuine or arise from self-interest. Once
again he distinguishes Mandeville's from Hobbes'
explanations of benevolence and takes Hobbes to be his main opponent.
On Hume's reading of Hobbes, while we approve of kindness,
friendship, and other benevolent affections, any desire to benefit
others really derives from self-interest, although we may not always
be conscious of its influence on those desires.



Hume offers two arguments against this selfish view. He first asks us
to consider cases in which people are motivated by a genuine concern
for others, even when such concern could not possibly benefit them and
might even harm them. We grieve when a friend dies, even if the friend
needed our help and patronage. How could our grief be based in
self-interest? Parents regularly sacrifice their own interests for the
sake of their children. Non-human animals care about members of their
own species and us. Is their concern a "deduction" of
self-interest? He concludes that these and "a thousand other
instances ... are marks of a general benevolence in human nature,
where no interest binds us" (EPM App 2.11/300).



Hume supplements this argument from experience with a highly
compressed sketch of an argument he borrows from Butler. Happiness
consists in the pleasures that arise from the satisfaction of our
particular appetites and desires. It is because we want food, fame,
and other things that we take pleasure in getting them. If we did not
have any particular appetites or desires, we would not want anything
and there would be nothing from which we would get pleasure. To get
the pleasures that self-love aims at, we must want something other
than happiness itself.


### 7.4 Justice: Constructive Phase



Hume rightly showcases his pioneering account of justice. In the
*Treatise*, he emphasizes the distinction between the natural
and artificial virtues. The natural virtues--being humane, kind,
and charitable--are character traits and patterns of behavior
that human beings would exhibit in their natural condition, even if
there were no social order. The artificial virtues--respecting
people's property rights, fidelity in keeping promises and
contracts, and allegiance to government--are dispositions based
on social practices and institutions that arise from conventions.



Hume believes that nature has supplied us with many
motives--parental love, benevolence, and generosity--that
make it possible for us to live together peacefully in small societies
based on kinship relations. One of his important insights is that
nature has not provided us with all the motives we need to live
together peacefully in large societies. After arguing in
*Treatise* 3.2.1 that justice is artificial, in T 3.2.2, he
asks two different questions: What motivates human beings to establish
the rules of justice that give rise to property rights, and why do we
approve of people who obey these rules of justice? The first question
concerns justice as a practice constituted by its rules. The second
concerns justice as a virtue, a person's disposition to obey the
rules of justice.



Hume argues that we enter into a series of conventions to bring about
practices, each of which is a solution to a problem. Each convention
gives rise to new problems that in turn pressure us to enter into
further conventions. The convention to bring about property rights is
only the first of several into which we enter. After property rights
are established, we enter into conventions to transfer property and to
make promises and contracts. According to him, we are by nature
cooperators, although at first we cooperate only with members of our
own family. But it is also advantageous for us to cooperate with
strangers, since it allows us to produce more goods and to exchange
them. All three conventions are prior to the formation of government.
On Hume's view, it is possible for there to be a peaceful
society of property owners who transfer and exchange material
possessions before there is government.



Hume argues that the practice of justice is a solution to a problem we
naturally face. The problem is that since we care most about our
family and close friends, but material goods are scarce and portable,
we are tempted to take goods from strangers to give to our family and
friends. Disputes over these goods are inevitable, but if we quarrel
we will forfeit the benefits that result from living together in
society--increased power, ability, and security. The solution to
the problem is to establish property rights. We make rules that
specify who has a right to what, and agree to follow the rules and to
keep our hands off the property of others. Hume was one of the first
to see that what is useful is the practice of justice, rather than
individual acts of justice. Like Hobbes, he believes that it is in our
interest to have the practice of justice in place.



As we just saw, Hume parts company with Hobbes when he answers the
second question about why we approve of people who obey the rules of
justice. If Hobbes' answer in terms of self-interest is
excluded, he thinks only one possibility remains. We approve of just
people not because they benefit us but because we sympathize with the
benefits they bestow on others and society as a whole. Hume thus
explains our approval of justice by appealing to the same principle he
invoked to explain our approval of the natural virtues. Thus



> 
> *self-interest is the original motive to the* establishment
> *of justice: but a sympathy with public interest is the source of
> the* moral approbation, *which attends that virtue*. (T
> 3.2.2.24/499-500)
> 



In Part 2 of the "Conclusion" of the *Enquiry*,
Hume raises a serious problem with his account of justice. While it is
in our interest to have the practice of justice in place, it may not
always be in our interest to obey its rules in every case. This is the
free rider problem. The free rider, whom Hume calls the sensible
knave, wants to get the benefits that result from having a practice in
place without having to always follow its rules. He knows that the
only way to obtain the advantages of social cooperation is for the
practice of justice to be in place, but he also realizes that a single
act of injustice will not significantly damage the practice. Most
people will obey the rules of justice, so if he commits one act of
injustice, the institution will not be in any danger of collapsing.
Suppose he has the opportunity to commit an act of injustice that will
benefit him greatly. Why shouldn't he?



Hume confesses that if the sensible knave expects an answer, he is not
sure there is one that will convince him.



> 
> 
> If his heart rebel not against such pernicious maxims, if he feel no
> reluctance to thoughts of villainy or baseness, he has indeed lost a
> considerable motive to virtue.... (EPM 9.2.23/283)
> 
> 
> 



There is no general agreement about whether Hume actually provides an
answer to the sensible knave and if he does, whether it is
adequate.


## 8. Philosophy of Religion



Hume wrote forcefully and incisively on almost every central question
in the philosophy of religion, contributing to ongoing debates about
the reliability of reports of miracles, the immateriality and
immortality of the soul, the morality of suicide, and the natural
history of religion, among others. All his work excited heated
reactions from his contemporaries, and his arguments still figure
centrally in discussions of these issues today.



Hume's greatest achievement in the philosophy of religion is the
*Dialogues concerning Natural Religion*, which is generally
regarded as one of the most important and influential contributions to
this area of philosophy. While all Hume's books provoked
controversy, the *Dialogues* were thought to be so inflammatory
that his friends persuaded him to withhold them from publication until
after his death.



Hume's philosophical project, and the method he developed to
execute it, dictates his strategy in all the debates he entered. In
the debates about causation and ethics, there is an initial
*critical phase*, where Hume assesses the arguments of his
predecessors and contemporaries, followed by a *constructive
phase*, where he develops his own position. In the natural
religion debate, however, the situation is very different.
Hume's critique of the central concepts of natural religion in
the *critical phase* shows that these concepts have no content,
so there is nothing for the *constructive phase* of his
argument to be about. Instead of *resolving* this debate, Hume
effectively *dissolves* it.



The *Dialogues* are a sustained and penetrating critical
examination of a prominent argument from analogy for the existence and
nature of God, the argument from design. The argument from design
attempts to establish that the order we find in the universe is so
like the order we find in the products of human artifice that it too
must be the product of an intelligent designer.


### 8.1 The Characters



The *Dialogues* record a conversation between three characters.
*Cleanthes*, a self-proclaimed "experimental
theist", offers the argument from design as an empirical proof
of God's existence and nature (DCNR 5.2/41). *Demea*
opposes him, maintaining that the argument's merely probable
conclusion demeans God's mystery and majesty. He believes that
God's nature is completely inscrutable. Cleanthes dubs Demea a
*mystic*, while Demea derides Cleanthes'
*anthromorphism*--his human-centered bias in
comparing the creator of the universe to a human mind.



Cleanthes and Demea represent the central positions in the
eighteenth-century natural religion debate. Cleanthes embodies
its dominant, progressive strain, consisting primarily of theologians
in the British Royal Society, who were fascinated by probability and
the previous century's impressive successes in experimental
natural philosophy. Convinced that the new science gave witness to
God's providence, they rejected traditional *a priori*
proofs, which purported to demonstrate God's existence with
mathematical certainty and without appeal to experience. Instead, they
used the order and regularity they found in the universe to construct
a probabilistic argument for a divine designer.



Holdouts clung to demonstrative proof in science and theology against
the rising tide of probability. Demea is the champion of these
conservative traditionalists. Since he trots out a lame version of
Samuel Clarke's cosmological argument in Part 9, some have
thought that Hume models Demea on him. But Demea lacks Clarke's
rigid rationalism. It is more likely that he epitomizes a group of
minor theologians such as William King, who stressed God's
incomprehensibility and resorted to *a priori* arguments only
when they absolutely needed them.



There was no genuinely sceptical presence in the
eighteenth-century natural religion debate. This makes
*Philo*, who both Cleanthes and Demea characterize as a
*sceptic*, the ringer in the conversation. Although all three
characters say very Humean things at one time or another,
Philo's views are consistently the closest to Hume's.
Philo's form of scepticism is the *mitigated scepticism*
of the first *Enquiry*, which makes him the most likely
candidate for Hume's spokesman.



As the *Dialogues* begin, all three characters agree that their
subject is God's *nature*, since everyone agrees that he
*exists*. Parts 1-8 concern God's *natural
attributes*, his omnipotence, omniscience, and providence, while
Parts 10 and 11 consider his *moral attributes*, his
benevolence and righteousness.


### 8.2 God's Natural Attributes



Demea holds that God is completely unknown and incomprehensible; all
we can say is that God is a being without restriction, absolutely
infinite and universal. Cleanthes is adamant that the argument from
design establishes all of God's traditional attributes. Natural
objects and human artifacts resemble one another, so by analogy, their
causes also resemble each other. God is therefore like a human mind,
only very much greater in every respect.



Demea objects that the argument's conclusion is only probable,
but Philo responds that the real problem is that the analogy is so
weak. He launches a battery of arguments to show just how weak it is.
The dissimilarities between human artifacts and the universe are more
striking than their similarities. We only experience a tiny part of
the universe for a short time; much of what we do experience is
unknown to us. How can we legitimately infer anything about remote
parts of the universe, much less the universe as a whole?



Philo, however, moves quickly away from chipping at the
argument's *strength* to questioning the intelligibility
of its conclusion. We have no *experience* of the origin of a
universe. Since causal inference requires a basis in experienced
constant conjunction between two kinds of things, how can we
legitimately draw any conclusion whatsoever about the origin of the
universe? Does it even require a cause? One or many? Does the cause of
the universe itself require a cause? The problem, then, is not just
that the analogy is weak; the real problem is that it attempts to take
us beyond what we can know.



Meanwhile, Demea derides Cleanthes' *anthropomorphism*
while remaining smugly satisfied with what Cleanthes disparagingly
calls his *mysticism*. The barbs they throw at each other, and
the speeches Philo goads them to make, help create a dilemma that
Philo uses them to construct. He directs the dilemma at Cleanthes, but
it affects both characters, although Demea is slow to realize this. He
thinks Philo is in league with him in detailing the problems with
Cleanthes' anthropomorphism.



Challenging Cleanthes to explain what he means by God's mind,
Philo pushes him to admit that he means "a mind like the
human". Cleanthes, taking the bait, responds, "I know of
no other" (DCNR 5.4/42). He argues that mystics like Demea are
no better than *atheists*, since they make God so remote and
incomprehensible that he bears no resemblance to human
characteristics. Philo adds that although we regard God as perfect,
perfection--as we understand it--is relative, not absolute,
so we can't conclude that we grasp God's perfections.
Since all God's attributes involve perfection--perfect
knowledge, perfect power, perfect goodness--we shouldn't
think that *any* of his attributes resemble or are even
analogous to ours. But this means that we don't know what
we're talking about when we talk about God using the familiar
terms we apply to human minds.



Demea adds that giving God human characteristics, even if they are
greatly magnified, denies him attributes theists have always ascribed
to him. How can an anthropomorphic God have the *unity*,
*simplicity*, and *immutability* of the God of
traditional theism?



Philo continues to detail just how *inconvenient*
Cleanthes' anthropomorphism really is. If he accepts the
argument from design, he must be committed to a God who is finite in
all respects. But what does it mean to say that God is *finitely
perfect*? Once you admit that God is finite, you've opened a
can of worms, for there are all sorts of equally probable alternatives
to intelligent design. Why think that the universe is more like a
human artifact than an animal or a vegetable? To illustrate, Philo
throws out a number of outlandish alternative hypotheses. For
instance, if you were a spider on a planet of spiders, wouldn't
you naturally believe that a giant spider spun an immense web to
create the world?



Cleanthes' design hypothesis is so underdetermined by the
evidence that the only reasonable approach is to abandon any attempt
to adjudicate among it and its many alternatives. Total suspension of
judgment is the only reasonable response. Otherwise, we go beyond the
bounds of anything to which we can give specific content.



The dilemma Philo has constructed encapsulates the issue about the
content of the idea of God that is central to the *critical
aspect* of Hume's project in the *Dialogues*. If you
accept that God's attributes are infinitely perfect, you are
using ordinary terms without their ordinary meaning, so that they do
not have any clear meaning. If you deny God's infinite
perfection, you can give him understandable attributes, but only
because they are amplified human characteristics. The closer Cleanthes
comes to regarding God's mind as like a human mind, the closer
he comes to regarding God's attributes as being like human
attributes, and the less Godlike his "God" is. We can only
give the idea of God intelligible content at the perilously high cost
of denying that he is really God. To do so is to abandon God for some
kind of superhero.



At the end of Part 8, which concludes their discussion of God's
natural attributes, Demea still thinks that Philo and he are partners.
He remains clueless about Philo's strategy until the very end of
Part 11, when he finally realizes that he too is caught in the trap
Philo has sprung.



Demea offers an *a priori* alternative to the design argument
in Part 9. As noted earlier, it is an abbreviated, watered-down
version of Clarke's cosmological argument. Although Cleanthes
quickly scotches his lame efforts, Part 9 serves as an interlude
between the previous discussion of God's *natural
attributes* and the consideration of his *moral attributes*
in Parts 10 and 11.


### 8.3 God's Moral Attributes



Demea begins the discussion in Part 10. Attempting to save face from
his recent drubbing, he suggests that we don't accept the truths
of religion as a result of reasoning, but from what we *feel*
when confronted with how helpless and miserable we are. Religion is
based on feelings of fear and anxiety that arise from awareness of our
"imbecility and misery" (DCNR 10.1/68). Our forms of
worship are attempts to appease unknown powers that oppress and
torment us.



Philo joins in, claiming he is convinced that



> 
> 
> the best and indeed the only method of bringing everyone to a due
> sense of religion is by just representations of the misery and
> wickedness of men. (DCNR 10.2/68)
> 
> 
> 



They proceed with a joint litany of the misery and melancholy of the
human condition, topping each other with catalogues of woes. Demea
does not realize that Philo may mean very different things by
"just representation" and "due sense of
religion" than he does, so he fails to realize that Philo is
just egging him on.



Philo maintains that we can't evade the facts of disease,
famine, and pestilence, except by "apologies, which still
farther aggravate the charge" (DCNR 10.16/72). These apologies
are *theodicies*--systematic attempts to reconcile
God's goodness with the existence of evil. Demea is also
scornful of theodicies, blissfully unaware that all too soon he will
be offering his own.



Cleanthes finally breaks in to say that *he* doesn't feel
oppressively anxious or miserable, and hopes that anguish isn't
as common as they claim. But *hoping* that the extent of human
misery is not so widespread is not the same as *proving* that
it is. Cleanthes is on weak ground. Philo capitalizes on it,
challenging Cleanthes to explain how God's mercy and benevolence
can possibly resemble human mercy and benevolence. Given God's
omnipotence, whatever he wills happens, but neither humans nor animals
are happy, so God presumably does not will their happiness.



Cleanthes--"smiling"--grants that if Philo can
*prove* that mankind is "unhappy or corrupted", he
will have succeeded in doing in religion (DCNR 10.28/74). He thinks he
finally has Philo on the ropes. In forcing a sceptic to prove a
positive thesis, he must not only succeed at a difficult task, but
violates his scepticism in the process. Cleanthes fails to realize
that Philo will make his case without needing to prove anything, nor
does he realize that *he* will soon be the one who needs a
proof.



Demea objects that Cleanthes exaggerates the dire consequences of
acknowledging the human condition, and, despite his earlier vehement
rejection of theodicies, offers his own. Sometimes called "the
porch view", Demea's theodicy compares our experience of
the world to the world as a whole, including the afterlife, to trying
to determine the structure of a large building from what little we can
see from its porch. From our perspective, we suffer, but from a longer
view, either we don't suffer at all, or else our suffering is
for our greater good or for the greater good of the world.



Cleanthes retorts that Demea denies the facts, and offers only empty
hypotheses, which, if intelligible at all, could only establish their
bare possibility, but never their reality. The only way to respond to
challenges to God's benevolence is to deny that the human
condition is really so miserable.



Cleanthes has now put himself in the position in which he thought he
had put Philo. He must establish that the facts are as he claims, and
Philo is quick to stress how difficult this will be. By resting his
case on such an uncertain point, any conclusion he draws will be
equally uncertain.



Philo then ups the ante by granting for the sake of argument that
human happiness exceeds human misery. But if God is infinitely
powerful, wise, and good, why is there any misery at all? There is no
answer that preserves all God's attributes, except to grant that
the subject exceeds the limits of our understanding.



Philo, however, refrains from pressing the question of
*intelligibility*; he is more interested in building an even
stronger case against Cleanthes' inference to God's
*benevolence*. Raising the ante higher still, he grants that
pain and suffering are *compatible* with God's infinite
power and goodness. Cleanthes, however, must prove from the
"mixed and confused phenomena" that God's
benevolence is *actual*, not merely *possible*. Doing so
is doubly difficult, since any inference from finite to infinite is
shaky at best, even when the data are "pure and unmixed"
(DCNR 10.35/77).



Philo concludes by admitting, with less than complete sincerity, that
while he was hard pressed to make his case against Cleanthes when the
discussion concerned God's natural attributes, where his moral
attributes are concerned, he is at ease. He challenges Cleanthes
"to tug the laboring oar" and explain how he can infer
God's moral attributes from the facts about the human condition
(DCNR 10.36/77).



Cleanthes "tugs", but only for one short paragraph. He
admits that if we go beyond their usual meanings when we apply human
terms to God, what we say is indeed unintelligible. Abandoning all
human analogy is thus to abandon natural religion, but preserving it
makes it impossible to reconcile evil with an infinite God.



Cleanthes realizes he has painted himself into a corner, but once
again he thinks there is a way out. Abandon God's infinity;
think of him as "finitely perfect". Then
"benevolence, regulated by wisdom, and limited by necessity, may
produce just such a world as the present" (DCNR 11.1/78).



Cleanthes doesn't realize that his new theory is worse than his
old one. He also doesn't seem to remember Philo's earlier
question about what "finitely perfect" might possibly
mean. Instead of God, he is now committed to some kind of superhero.
Besides, the story he is telling is itself a theodicy. His
superhero's limitations explain why he cannot eliminate evil, or
create an evil-free world.



In any case, Cleanthes is no better off than he was before.
Conjectures may show that the data are *consistent* with the
idea of God, but are never sufficient to prove that he actually
exists.



Philo then proceeds to outline four possible hypotheses about the
cause of the universe: it is perfectly good; it is perfectly evil; it
is both good and evil; it is neither good nor evil. Given the evil we
know exists, the data is at best *mixed*, so we can't
establish either of the first two hypotheses. The regularity and
uniformity of the general laws we find in experience is sufficient to
discount the third, so the fourth seems the most probable. On that
hypothesis, the cause of the universe is entirely indifferent to the
amount of good and evil in the world.



These points about *natural* evil also apply to *moral*
evil. We have no more reason to think that God's righteousness
resembles human righteousness than we have to think that his
benevolence resembles human benevolence. We have even less reason, in
fact, since moral evil outweighs moral goodness more than natural evil
outweighs natural goodness.



In addition, Cleanthes' new form of anthropomorphism is saddled
with tracing moral evil back to God. Since every effect must have a
cause, either the chain of causes goes back infinitely, or it stops
with the original principle that is the ultimate cause of all
things--God.



At this point, Demea, who has become increasingly agitated during
Philo's speech, interrupts. He finally realizes that the case
Philo is making cuts against his own view as much as it cuts against
Cleanthes'. Although it might appear that Demea can retreat to
some form of the theodicy he sketched earlier, the extent to which
Philo's argument upsets him suggests that he now realizes it is
inadequate. If he leans on the mystery-mongering he has
professed until now, Philo has shown that, because of its lack of
specific content, it does not point exclusively to a good God. It may
just as well commit him to a supreme being who is "beyond good
and evil" and is totally indifferent to morality. Commitment
without content turns out to be no commitment at all. Demea realizes
this, dimly at least, as he leaves the conversation.


### 8.4 The Conclusion: Part 12



With Demea's departure, Cleanthes and Philo are left to finish
the conversation. Their tone is conciliatory, so conciliatory that
Philo says he must "confess" that although he is less
cautious about natural religion than any other subject,



> 
> 
> no one has a deeper sense of religion impressed on his mind, or pays
> more profound adoration to the divine Being, as he discovers himself
> to reason, in the inexplicable contrivance and artifice of nature.
> (DCNR 12.2/89)
> 
> 
> 



Philo's "confession" paves the way for a blockbuster
that has puzzled generations of readers. Philo seems to reverse field,
apparently recanting what he has argued for so forcefully. He grants
Cleanthes that "a purpose, an intention, a design, strikes
everywhere the most careless, the most stupid thinker" (DCNR
12.2/89).



His remarks are, however, by no means straightforward. Some take
Philo--and, by implication, Hume--to be outing himself as a
closet theist. Others conclude that, since he holds all the cards at
this point, he can afford to be conciliatory. Read ironically, Philo
could be saying that while "careless and stupid" observers
are struck by purpose, intention, and design in the universe, careful,
critical, intelligent ones are not. But there is no need to force the
irony here. Read straight, nature's "contrivance and
artifice" is "inexplicable" precisely because reason
can discover nothing about God's natural or moral attributes.
Everyone--even the stupid and careless--can see that the
parts of animals and plants have *functions*, and so can easily
understand why "an anatomist, who discovered a new organ or
canal, would never be satisfied until he had also discovered its use
and intention" (DCNR 12.2/90).



Recognizing that an organism's parts have
*uses*--*functions*--says nothing about
whether their uses or functions are due to a designer's plan, so
Philo's acknowledgement implies nothing about whether he now
accepts the design hypothesis. In fact, what he says here reiterates
his position in Part 8, that function alone is no proof of divine
design:



> 
> 
> it is in vain ... to insist on the uses of the parts of animals
> or vegetables and their curious adjustment to each other. I would fain
> know how an animal could subsist, unless its parts were so adjusted?
> (DCNR 8.9/61)
> 
> 
> 



No one should deny design *in this sense*, so long as they do
so "without any religious purpose" (DCNR 12.2/90). Far
from reversing himself, then, Philo's position is continuous
with the line he has taken throughout the *Dialogues*.



As the conversation continues, Philo provides a diagnosis of the
dispute. While the works of nature do bear "a great
analogy" to the products of human artifice, as its proponents
claim, there are also considerable differences. He suspects that this
may be the source of the intractability of the controversy, which
suggests that it may be at bottom "somewhat of a dispute of
words" (DCNR 12.6/92).



But verbal disputes can be resolved--or
*dissolved*--by providing clear definitions. However, the
dilemma about the content of our idea of God that Philo has
constructed clearly implies that such a *constructive* solution
is not possible here.



Philo explains why only a *critical* solution is possible by
offering a deeper diagnosis of the problem. Although the dispute may
appear to be merely verbal, it is in fact "still more incurably
ambiguous", for



> 
> 
> there is a species of controversy, which, from the very nature of
> language and of human ideas, is involved in perpetual ambiguity, and
> can never, by any precaution or any definitions, be able to reach a
> reasonable certainty or precision. These are the controversies
> concerning the degrees of any quality or circumstance. (DCNR
> 12.7/92)
> 
> 
> 



This is exactly what the dispute over intelligent design is about.
Analogies are always matters of degree, and the degrees of the
qualities involved in the design argument aren't capable of
exact measurement. The controversy thus "admits not of any
precise meaning, nor consequently of any determination" (DCNR
12.7/93). The dispute about design is actually *worse* than a
verbal dispute.



That is why anyone, even an atheist, can say, with equal plausibility,
that "the rotting of a turnip, the generation of an animal, and
the structure of human thought" all "probably bear some
remote analogy to each other" (DCNR 12.7/93). That is why Philo,
without renouncing any of his previous claims, can assent to the
"somewhat ambiguous, at least undefined", and, as we have
seen, *indefinable* proposition into which



> 
> 
> the whole of natural theology ... resolves itself ...
> *that the cause or causes of order in the universe probably bear
> some remote analogy to human intelligence*. (DCNR 12.33/101)
> 
> 
> 



Anything is like anything else in *some* remote respect. So the
ordering principle of the universe, if indeed there is one, can be
*absolutely anything*.



If this is all there is to "the whole of natural
theology", then we can certainly conclude that the
argument's conclusion has no religiously significant content.
But it has no religiously significant content because Philo's
critique has drained it of any content whatsoever. Cleanthes'
design hypothesis is not just false; it is unintelligible.



The conversation began with all three participants agreeing that their
topic was to discuss only God's *nature*, not his
*existence*. As it concludes, it is no longer clear that these
questions are really so distinct as originally assumed. We don't
know what we're talking about when we talk about a God whose
nature is inconceivable, incomprehensible, indeterminate, and
indefinable. What, then, are we to make of the claim about his
existence?



The *Dialogues* draw out the consequences of Hume's
statement, in the first *Enquiry*, that



> 
> 
> the idea of God, as meaning an infinitely intelligent, wise, and good
> Being, arises from reflecting on the operations of our own mind, and
> augmenting, without limit, those qualities of goodness and wisdom.
> (EHU 2.6/19)
> 
> 
> 



If we insist on "augmenting without limit", we let loose
the moorings that give intelligible content to God's
intelligence, wisdom, and goodness. If we stop short of the limit, we
may have content, but we have also lost God.