>But if we are sensible, the pursuit of human happiness, personal and collective, remains the goal of most of what we do. Such a basically utilitarian ideology requires around it a structure of reasoning, not passion, selfish or unselfish.
David Hume's point was that reason alone could not justify the pursuit of human happiness or anything else, because it only lets you go from one statement to another, which means you have to start with something like "I want to be happy" in order to conclude "I want to buy some ice cream." The contributor writing the dissenting opinion didn't say anything that Hume wouldn't have agreed with, because they slipped in Hume's passions with the word "sensible." I think they are debating a non-issue that they don't really disagree about. Although Hume's point was novel when he wrote it (believe it or not there were contemporaneous philosophers who did not realize that you couldn't derive axioms), there is really nobody who thinks anything else today.
It's true that desires aren't justified by reason in and of themselves, but I don't think that's ultimately relevant (morally or otherwise). It's an empirical fact that we must act on our desires; when I examine my actions closely I notice that all of them can be traced back to some desire or combination of desires. From that empirically derived fact I posit that we can say the question "can reason alone justify the pursuit of our desires?" is a non-sensical question, like asking "is gravity justified in making objects fall to earth?"
I think a valid question along this line of inquiry is "are the actions I am taking in pursuit of my desires justified?". Actions are embodiments of ideas about how to act, and like other ideas can be deemed justified or unjustified through rational analysis. If an action embodies an idea that contradicts a known truth, it can be deemed unjustified.
> It's an empirical fact that we must act on our desires;
Is it?
> when I examine my actions closely I notice that all of them can be traced back to some desire or combination of desires.
But when I introspect, the opposite happens. When I examine my desires closely, they disappear and I am left with "well I often engage in X, Y and Z goal-seeking behaviours."
If you grant that motivation for actions have two components, causal and stochastic, and ignore the stochastic element as just error, I could see labeling all causal impetuses as "desires" at some level. Anything you do, you do because the conscious you--or some lower level process that is a part of you--"wanted" it that way, give or take some random noise.
Very few serious philosophers would disagree with Hume. However, I suspect that many non-philisophers are happy to appeal to reason as a source of normative beliefs, thus “facts don’t care about your feelings” (well quite—they are incapable of caring), complaints about the irrationality of populists, &c.
Very few modern philosophers, perhaps. Starting at least with Plato, it was entirely the opposite, that the individual whose passions are completely controlled by reason is ultimately happy. The individual controlled completely by his passions is the most unhappy. This is because Plato believed supreme happiness was found in perceiving the good itself using reason.
Nominalists, such as Hume, don't believe there is such a thing as 'good itself', and believe all mental abstractions are merely labelings of physical things. Thus, mental abstractions cannot be the goal of our desire. Only physical things can be the goal of our desire, and we must necessarily be ruled by our passions. Note, this was not an innovation on Hume's side. A number of philosophers before and during Plato's time proposed similar ideas, such as Epicurus. So, we cannot say Hume came up with a brilliant idea no one had ever considered before. However, for whatever reason, most of the philosophers of the Western canon sided with Plato rather than with Hume. Perhaps because Plato was closer to the truth than Hume.
> Nominalists, such as Hume, don't believe there is such a thing as 'good itself', and believe all mental abstractions are merely labelings of physical things. Thus, mental abstractions cannot be the goal of our desire. Only physical things can be the goal of our desire, and we must necessarily be ruled by our passions.
I don't think this chain of reasoning is consistent with Hume's.
Hume is an empiricist, not a nominalist: he doesn't deny the existence of abstract categories, only their a priori intelligibility. He also makes direct reference to non-physical, desirable things (it's been a while, but I'm pretty sure approbation and praise are his chief examples). We're ruled by our passions not because our ends are always physical, but because (according to Hume) (1) reason alone cannot lead us to action and (2) we clearly are lead to action all the time. Therefore, something else must be driving us.
In that case he seems to not believe in free will. Free will is necessary to choose abstract concepts for their own sake, since as he notes only physical passions can drive us to take involuntary action.
At any rate, it seems to be all part of the same package, at least to me.
As a side point, I've noticed that pretty much all these cutting edge, modern ideas that we believe have overthrown the ideas of the past were all around at the same time as Plato. In fact, a number of dialogues deal with debating concepts such as relativism, scientism, Nietszche's will to power, Kant's idea that we are trapped by mental constructs, etc. Intelligent design was even a big thing, and apparently was what started Socrate's on his philosophic quest.
Reading through modern philosophy strikes me as pretty mundane, and it seems as if these modern philosophers were really myopic and either never read classic philosophy (most probably did) or just picked out the pieces they liked and ignored the counter arguments. Then they get paraded around as if they are brilliant innovators to an audience that doesn't know any better.
> In that case he seems to not believe in free will. Free will is necessary to choose abstract concepts for their own sake, since as he notes only physical passions can drive us to take involuntary action.
Hume argues explicitly for free will via compatibilism. The SEP has an excellent summary of the argument[1], but in sum: what matters for moral responsibility is hypothetical liberty. Our ability to will (undisputed by Hume) grants us HL.
The interplay being passions (physically ended or otherwise) and voluntary/involuntary action in Hume's account is complex and can't be accurately reduced to a deflation of free will.
> As a side point, I've noticed that pretty much all these cutting edge, modern ideas that we believe have overthrown the ideas of the past were all around at the same time as Plato. In fact, a number of dialogues deal with debating concepts such as relativism, scientism, Nietszche's will to power, Kant's idea that we are trapped by mental constructs, etc. Intelligent design was even a big thing, and apparently was what started Socrate's on his philosophic quest.
I think this is a misapprehension of Modern (i.e., 17th to 19th century) philosophy. Modern philosophy is explicitly a rediscovery and re-evaluation of Classicial philosophy, having been largely lost to (or dogmatized within) the Western world. Overarching ideas follow suit; Hume, Kant, et al. make explicit reference to their forebears. And that's not to say that Modern philosophy lacks in innovation: there is no appreciable equivalent to Kantian duty, Millian global happiness, Cartesian skepticism, &c in Classical philosophy. Modern political theory doesn't exist without natural law, &c.
FWIW, I don't think that "scientism" is an intelligible subject within modern philosophy: it's only within contemporary philosophy that we've really begun to develop a formal account of what science actually is. Hume, Kant, and contemporaries don't have a rigorous concept of science discrete from the general practice of philosophy in the natural domain.
Similarly for Socrates and intelligent design: I'm guessing you're referring to his teleological claims. But keep in mind the historical context: the Greek religion was explicitly concerned with dividing the natural world into the domains of anthropomorphic gods, and Hesiod's Theogony was already 200+ years old by Socrates' time. Given this and his reference to pre-Socratic thought on teleology, it's unlikely that he had anything resembling contemporary creationism in mind.
> Reading through modern philosophy strikes me as pretty mundane, and it seems as if these modern philosophers were really myopic and either never read classic philosophy (most probably did) or just picked out the pieces they liked and ignored the counter arguments. Then they get paraded around as if they are brilliant innovators to an audience that doesn't know any better.
What audience? I was educated in philosophy, and I certainly wasn't taught (or primed) to treat Modern philosophers as brilliant innovators in contrast to Classical philosophers. On the contrary: both groups were held in extremely high regard, and Classical philosophy remains central to contemporary ethics (see Anscombe, Arpaly, and other revitalizers of virtue). Formal logic is introduced with Aristotle. Ontology is introduced with Plato.
In any case, it's important to not interpret the different eras of philosophy as existentially clashing with or ignoring the others. The history and development of philosophy is a unified one.
Compatibilism is not libertarian free will, which is what most people mean by "free will".
I've seen quite similar concepts to the ones you mention re: Kant, Mill, Descartes, etc in different Platonic dialogues. So, they are maybe micro innovative, but not in a big picture sense.
By "intelligent design" I mean Socrates began his quest looking for a philosopher that could explain the world in terms of 'why' orchestrated by an overarching mind, instead of 'how'. From Phaedo,
"One day I heard someone reading, as he said, from a book of Anaxagoras, and saying that it is Mind that directs and is the cause of everything. I was delighted with this cause and it seemed to me good, in a way, that Mind should be the cause of all. I thought that if this were so, the directing Mind would direct everything and arrange each thing in the way that was best."
Socrates goes on to find out Anaxagoras is blowing smoke, and in general is displeased with the scientism of his day, where everyone explains the world in terms of 'how' instead of 'why'. So, he then goes about questioning all the contemporary philosophers to see if any are able to articulate the kind of explanation he's looking for, and for the most part (except for Diotima) they are unable to give a satisfactory explanation.
> Compatibilism is not libertarian free will, which is what most people mean by "free will".
I think you've said something similar before, but it's a dubious claim. Philosophers spend their lives figuring out what we "really mean" when we use certain terms, and most of them are inclined towards a compatibilist interpretation.
Going back to when you brought up free will (I'm still not sure why you did!), instead of saying
> In that case he seems to not believe in free will
for clarity, you should have said
> In that case he seems to not believe in libertarian free will
But this is a given. Determinists generally do not believe in libertarian free will.
Libertarian free will goes hand in hand with being able to choose abstract ideals over physical passions. I bring it up because it explains why Hume diverges from classical thought on the proper role of reason and passion.
I think I understand that. Hume didn't (to my mind) advocate that passions are physical, but he did claim that they are at the root of all choices and actions.
Going back to something you said previously, could you point m in the direction of where Epicurus has written similar ideas to Hume's?
Here is a similar point to Hume's, that the mind's function is not to seek abstract ideals, but to optimize for pleasure. This sounds, to me, the same as saying humans are ultimately guided by passions, not by reason.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epicurus/
"The function of the human mind — that part of the soul that is located in our chest — is not to seek higher things, but to maximize pleasure and minimize pain. That is its entire objective; the risk (a substantial one) is that it may miscalculate, since it is subject to false beliefs and errors in cognitive processes."
Thank you. It's fascinating that people used to consider the chest as a seat of higher thought. I guess even now we strongly associate it with emotions.
Based on that article I would say Hume's overall body of work is by a wide margin more contemporary than Epicurus' if not more subtle and sophisticated. The passions-slave-reason quotation is really only a tiny part of his writing. For example, Hume provides an intricate and judicious account of epistemology in which causality is reduced to a kind of anthropic pattern-recognition. This reconciles his account of psychology with the enlightenment understanding of the scientific method, which did not exist at the time of Epicurus.
> Very few serious philosophers would disagree with Hume.
Relatively few serious philosophers disagree with the positive component of Hume's claim: that reason is (for many people, at least) the slave the passions. On the other hand, many philosophers disagree with the normative component: that reason ought to be the slave of the passions, or that it must be so. Hume himself has a thing or two to say about juxtaposing is-ought claims in such a manner ;)
Of course, you're absolutely right about non-philosophers using "reason" and "logic" as a rhetorical cudgels. We should recognize their (poetically) broken and faithless reasoning and point it out as such.
> I don't think you will find Hume actually arguing this. People read this into him because they glide so easily from is to ought.
I don't disagree with the second part. But the ought is explicit in THN, like 'n4r9 says below. I can think of two (definitely not the only two) plausible interpretations:
1. Reason is necessarily the slave of the passions. If so, there is no sensible way in which it ought be, since normative claims require that a thing could be otherwise. If Hume truly means that, then his "ought" is probably more of an admonishment against trying (and inevitably failing) to usurp the passions. This is a different sense, but I think it's close enough in kind to justify the interpretation.
2. Reason't isn't necessarily the slave of the passions. This makes the "ought" clause more intelligible from my position, but isn't really supported by Hume's account of moral action (i.e., how we find ourselves driven to it).
> This is a factual, not a normative claim.
It's normative in the context of the "admonishment" interpretation above. But yeah, not from #2.
> Very few serious philosophers would disagree with Hume.
Well, "very few" is always in the eye of the beholder, but I'd like to challenge this a little bit. The majority is Humean, I agree with that, but there are a number of non-Humean moral philosophers about moral motivation, for example Scanlon and Shafer-Landau. It's actually an ongoing and long-standing debate and with good arguments for both sides.
The SEP article on moral motivation summarizes part of the debate.[1]
Reason as a guidance for beliefs makes perfect sense - they are the constraints for what is possible. When it comes to actions it is the how and not the why.
It isn't wrong to use it in that way as a source of some beliefs. That you won't be able to build a skyscraper just by drawing blueprints is reason.
However it doesn't include the motivations - only how they may be served or if the goals and outcomes are out of alignment.
The crux of the matter is that "reason" is not absolute. People rarely do things that they (at the moment of committing the act) believe to be unreasonable - generally, every action taken seems quite reasonable "at the moment". It is only retrospectively that they realize that their past actions/thoughts were unreasonable.
There is a very nice discussion on the relativity of rationality in the book "Instincts of the herd in peace and war" by Trotter. I copy a relevant paragraph below:
The religious man accuses the atheist
of being shallow and irrational, and is met by a
similar reply ; to the Conservative, the amazing thing
about the Liberal is his incapacity to see reason and
accept the only possible solution of public problems.
Examination reveals the fact that the differences are
not due to the commission of the mere mechanical
fallacies of logic, since these are easily avoided, even
by the politician, and since there is no reason to
suppose that one party in such controversies is less
logical than the other. The difference is due rather
to the fundamental assumptions of the antagonists
being hostile, and these assumptions are derived
from herd suggestion ; to the Liberal, certain basal
conceptions have acquired the quality of instinctive
truth, have become " a priori syntheses," because
of the accumulated suggestions to which he has
been exposed, and a similar explanation applies to
the atheist, the Christian, and the Conservative.
Each, it is important to remember, finds in consequence
the rationality of his position flawless, and
is quite incapable of detecting in it the fallacies
which are obvious to his opponent, to whom that
particular series of assumptions has not been
rendered acceptable by herd suggestion.
This reminds me of schopenhauer will as a representation. Very pessimistic saying that the will to live is primal and intelligence secondary to fulfill the first. I am surprised you talked about Kant and Hume but never mention Schopenhauer (lack of expertise by author?)
It sort of seems like philosophers tend to fetishize either reason or emotion or both, and maybe underestimate some more basic aspects related to attention and caring. I think Heidegger had some critiques like this. When I go about my normal life I am typically not driven by tendencies that are clearly rational or emotional but more kind of a mundane absorption with motivational roots in past decisions and events. I am also absorbed in various structures that shape the "grammar" of my behavior, exemplified by language and society. My capacity for "reason" goes up and down depending on my mental health, my attention span, my general clarity of presence; the same is true for "emotion." And philosophical reason is quite different from everyday planning and executive function. You could argue that dopaminergic activity in the prefrontal cortex is a "passion" while it is also the substrate of the ability to be reasonable. I don't have a clear point here but something seems sort of silly and old-fashioned about this debate.
Reasonable is simply acting in line with whatever mythology your society has adopted. It's reasonable to kill people for insulting a sacred man (an act of passion) while elsewhere it's considered a right to do so (another act of passion). We "reason" using the cultural norms, and those norms are anything but actually norms, they are mythologies that makes societies function. You can not reason outside the cultural norms, like for instance you can't reason within Nazi cultural norms in modern Germany. It's impossible. Reasoning is simply a method to socialize with people with whatever cockamamie idea they currently consider a norm.
Outside of that in certain other domains we have the ability to reason like for instance in engineering or programming, and there is no way to avoid reasoning about these things as they have very specific truth conditions... that are persistent and inescapable.
When your main mode of political reasoning is reasoning about myths that you compartmentalize... It's obvious that in terms of politics there is no reason, it's simply what you or your society want to believe to justify what you want to do... and what you want to do is what you desire. And what you desire is a function of your passions.
David Hume's point was that reason alone could not justify the pursuit of human happiness or anything else, because it only lets you go from one statement to another, which means you have to start with something like "I want to be happy" in order to conclude "I want to buy some ice cream." The contributor writing the dissenting opinion didn't say anything that Hume wouldn't have agreed with, because they slipped in Hume's passions with the word "sensible." I think they are debating a non-issue that they don't really disagree about. Although Hume's point was novel when he wrote it (believe it or not there were contemporaneous philosophers who did not realize that you couldn't derive axioms), there is really nobody who thinks anything else today.