David Hume
(1711-76) 

Empiricism - epistemological doctrine which holds that all knowledge is derived from experience

Types of Experience

Sense
Emotion
Thought

Experience = Perception

"Nothing is ever present to the mind but its perceptions"

Impressions: sense, emotion - the mind is passive/receptive

- immediate

- not true or false

- no knowledge of impression per se; they are simply what they are in their immediacy

Ideas: ideas - the mind is active/constructive

- mediate: reflection

- true or false

- can be knowledge regarding ideas, they are the objects of reason

 

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Source of Moral Distinctions?

Ideas?
    or
Impressions?

If ideas , then ethical distinctions can be true or false and there can be objective knowledge regarding them.

If impressions, then they can be neither true or false and there can be no knowledge with respect to them (= moral skepticism).

Arguments

•Reason is passive and cannot impact conduct
- reason informs us of the existing state of affairs
- reason informs us of the means toward our ends

Without using reason we have moral distinctions

Using reason we do not get moral distinctions

Moral Distinctions

"Morality . . . is more properly felt than judg’d of . . . ."

Good or bad is a feeling of the moral sense

Particular feeling of pleasure or pain (which is an impression)

Neither true or false

Purely subjective

Social Sympathy

From cause we can infer effect

From effect we can infer cause

From these we infer the passion in others

This gives rise to our sympathy and excites in us a similar passion

Thus, while moral distinctions are subjective, given our similar passions via social sympathy, there is to a large extent universal agreement:

- Good/Virtue = beneficial to humanity

- Bad/Vice = detrimental to humanity