Transcript Reading: Hume Part 3

On the agenda today is Hume's ethics and an introduction to Mr. Kant. So, we have some tall work ahead of us. Let's start with the easiest part, and that's Hume's ethics. As you might imagine, Hume holds that ethics is about feeling, and you might have anticipated that because this has been his approach all along. There is nothing in the mind except sensations. Sensations can be impressions of sights, tastes, touches, smells, and sounds, or they can be emotions. Then there are the copies of these sensations, which we form into concepts—and we would add, into memories as well. But ethics, according to Hume, also has to do with feelings. It’s pretty simple to sum up in that respect.

He says there are feelings that agree with a person—things that a person finds pleasant, either for themselves or for others, if they care about others at all. If someone else is benefited by experiencing some pleasure, then the person who causes it feels pleasure too. And that’s about it. He also argues—unsurprisingly—that there are no fixed rules. We cannot, like Spinoza, deduce all ethical rules from fundamental axioms. Kant thinks that’s ridiculous. This means there’s no certainty in ethics. Someone may act out of kindness, genuinely intending to benefit someone else, and it could turn out to be a disaster for that other person. That’s possible. Ethical rules do not guarantee that practical good will follow, rather than practical evil, where evil is understood as whatever causes pain instead of pleasure.

So, this is another step in the pleasure-pain explanation of ethics, which we saw begin with Locke, continue with Berkeley, and now appear in Hume. However, Hume goes further than his predecessors. He thinks he can show that there’s no certainty in ethics. He believes he can construct an argument that explains why we cannot make definitive statements like “All X’s are good” or “All X’s are evil.” All we can know is the probability that a certain action will produce more pleasure than pain—or the reverse.

I've already mentioned that this idea was developed in its most complete form in the 19th century by John Stuart Mill, who called it utilitarian ethics. According to utilitarianism, an action is useful for producing outcomes that result in pleasure, while another action may mostly result in pain. Therefore, we call it wrong. But utilitarianism holds that there are no real moral properties in the world. Actions don’t possess moral goodness or evilness inherently, and there are no universal prohibitions that function like moral laws. Are there moral laws? Hume’s answer is no.

Let me pause here to make a comment about how I see the Christian view of this. I know it’s come up before, and I’ve mentioned it in passing, but I think the Christian view of morality doesn’t argue for moral laws as rational laws.

In Christianity, we are told, for example, in the Ten Commandments, not to lie, not to steal, not to murder, not to be jealous of other people’s possessions, and to be faithful to our spouse. These are commands from God. Let me pause here because this is important, and we don’t have a separate section in these discussions for Christian ethics. So, let me say a few things about this. The commands—do not steal, do not lie, and so on—are not rational laws; they are moral rules. And they’re not exceptionless. The only exceptionless moral law in the Christian view is the command to love your neighbor as yourself.

Notice that the command doesn’t say not to love yourself. It doesn’t say to always give up your own interests for someone else’s. It says to balance your interests with your neighbor’s. But this balance is done out of real concern. We’re told to love our neighbor because our neighbor is made in the image of God. Let me add that this means you can love people in that sense even if you don’t like them. You don’t have to like someone or seek their company or friendship in order to treat them with love. You balance their interests against your own and try to be as even-handed as possible. So, it doesn’t mean always giving up what’s good for you. It’s not pure altruism, but neither is it egoism, where you always do what’s in your own best interest and disregard the rest of the world. It’s neither.

Our love for God in that commandment is to be unbounded and unlimited: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength,” but love your neighbor as yourself, in equal balance. That’s the only rule that always holds and never goes away. The specific laws—don’t lie, don’t cheat, don’t steal, don’t murder—all have exceptions. Take the command against murder: it has the exception that you have every moral right to defend your own life, and if, in the course of doing so, someone else is killed, that’s unfortunate, but you were defending your life or the life of your spouse or children.

The same thing applies to the command not to bear false witness. Undoubtedly, it refers to lying in a court setting—someone is sworn in, gets on the stand, and lies. Don’t do that. God says that’s wrong. But I once had a professor who lived in Nazi Germany during World War II. He was a Christian who opposed the Nazis, and one of the things he did was help Jewish people escape by hiding them. One night, his basement was full of Jewish families. The Gestapo knocked on his door and asked if he had seen any runaway Jews. He said, “No,” and they left. He did the right thing by lying because the alternative was to turn those people over to be murdered.

So, the individual rules have exceptions, but not the law of love. And when you apply the axiom of love to that situation, he certainly showed love both to the people he was protecting and to their pursuers, who didn’t become murderers. I won’t go on in more detail, but I think you get the idea. There are no fixed rules, but notice that Hume’s position aligns with Locke and Berkeley’s focus on pleasure and pain. Locke, Berkeley, and Hume all agree that ethics is about feelings, and by feelings, they mean pleasure and pain.

Hume’s ethics come with his other acute observations, typical of his thinking. But he doesn’t want to leave it at that. He wants to give an argument that shows he’s right about all this.

Now, what do I mean by “all this”? Well, let’s start with his conclusion that there is no external world—or if there is, we can’t know it.

There are no laws of nature that express necessity. That is, if we see action X always followed by result Y, that doesn’t show us that Y has to follow X. Necessity means it can’t be any other way. Well, observing instances of Y following Xdoesn’t prove that every X was followed by a Y in the past, or that every X will be followed by a Y 1000 years from now. We can’t know that things are necessarily like this. This necessity, of course, is what we call causality. Do we see causality? No. We can’t see, taste, touch, hear, or smell it. Therefore, the term necessity doesn’t refer to anything we can sense. It has no meaning if it can’t refer to any sense perception. That’s been Hume’s argument so far.

Now, he’s about to come up with a new and better argument, one that includes all these points. He’s come up with the view that there is no proof of God. While all the rationalists thought there was a proof—and even his two preceding empiricists, Berkeley and Locke, thought so—Hume says no. He tackles each argument in turn. Remember, he’s the one who said the nearest thing to a successful argument is the argument from design. He concedes that maybe it works in a limited way. What he allows is that there’s no argument from design that shows the God of Judaism, Christianity, or Islam exists.

You may recall what he said about this: if you argue that the world shows features that look as though they were designed—planned, even—he acknowledges that the organs in our bodies do seem to aim at achieving a purpose, and we see more of this in nature. If you want to argue that the world was designed and not accidental, Hume says you get a good, firm “maybe.” You could even argue that design is a bit more probable than not, but that doesn’t get you to the God of the Bible.

It doesn’t prove that this designer created the world, only that it helped “fix it up.” What you’re really arguing for is not a creator, but a cosmic interior decorator. And furthermore, you don’t get any of the other qualities that God is supposed to have according to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. You can’t show that this designer is good, merciful, just, or forgiving—or that it cares about people at all. None of it. You don’t even know if there’s only one designer. You’re just saying the world looks designed—maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. But even if you argue it is designed, you can’t get from there to one designer who also created everything, cares about humanity, is infinitely just and loving, and offers forgiveness and everlasting life. You don’t get any of that.

So, what you’re proving isn’t really the God that Jews, Christians, or Muslims talk about. What you’re left with is something much less, and even that is only a “maybe.” But if you still think that some of the rationalist arguments work, Hume is about to give you an argument that shows that none of them could work. He claims to have an argument that shows no proof of the God of theism is valid.

Now, theism is the term that covers Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—three world religions that hold that there is one being who is both the creator of everything other than himself, is self-existent, and cares about the human race enough to rescue it from sin and promise everlasting life. All these claims, Hume says, can be swept away by one argument—an argument that not only dismisses the external world and laws of nature but also the very existence of God. This is Hume’s “big package.” Nothing the average person believes turns out to be true or proven true according to him.

What is this argument that Hume offers? If he’s right, this argument shows that there is no science, no fixed ethics, and no rationally formulated rules that are always true everywhere and at all times. And these are the two things that catch Kant’s attention in a big way. Kant thinks that ethics and science are the two great accomplishments of Western culture, and he is not going to stand by while someone like Hume comes in and chops their heads off.

Here’s the argument Hume gives that Kant will begin by attacking. Let’s get the argument down first. Hume says that every statement—or the term he and other philosophers would use is proposition—is either about relations of ideas or matters of fact.

In logic, a proposition is a statement, an assertion that something is or is not the case. A statement in English affirms or denies that something is true or false. For example, “The traffic light is green” is a statement. But commands like “Get your muddy boots off that rug” are not statements. They do not assert facts, and neither do questions like “Where’d you get all that mud on your boots?” Commands and questions aren’t true or false—they’re not statements that affirm or deny anything.

There’s also another type of utterance called a performative. A performative is when the utterance itself constitutes an action. For example, if I say, “I apologize,” that is not a statement of fact—it is the act of apologizing. Another example would be a judge saying, “I find you guilty.” The judge is not stating a fact; they are making a ruling.

So, performatives, questions, and commands are neither true nor false. But there’s a whole realm of statements that affirm or deny facts—what Hume calls “matters of fact.”

Every statement, Hume says, either affirms a relation of ideas or a matter of fact. For example, “All bachelors are unmarried” affirms a relation of ideas. The idea of a bachelor is contained within the definition of “unmarried adult male.” These ideas are related in that way. Or a statement might affirm a matter of fact, like “My house is made of bricks.” That’s a fact about the world.

What’s the difference between the two? The problem Hume is up against is that he has proposed that there is nothing in the mind that wasn’t first in the senses. Everything that comes into the mind, Hume says, is a perception or a copy of a perception. He calls perceptions “impressions,” so let’s stick to that term. Impressions are sensory inputs like sights, tastes, touches, sounds, and smells. When we sense them, they are impressions. Later, they become memories, or “copies” of impressions. We can also form concepts from these impressions, but those concepts are still copies of impressions. So, everything in the mind originates from the senses.

The mind can rearrange these impressions—it can, for example, combine the idea of wings and a horse to create the image of a winged horse. But it can only make things up out of what’s already been sensed. It can’t create something entirely new that wasn’t first sensed. So, how then does Hume explain where we get the idea of a law?

Hume has argued that we have no impression of necessity. When we see one thing follow another, we don't see something flash between them that we could call necessity or causality. We don’t perceive cause—causality doesn’t have any color, taste, touch, or smell, and it doesn’t make any sounds. It’s not a perception, so it can’t be an impression. But if ideas are all supposed to be copies of impressions, where do we get the idea of necessity?

Hume is about to answer this with his new argument, which is going to show that he’s right about all that other stuff too. He starts by saying that every statement is either about a relation of ideas or a matter of fact. What he wants to argue is that statements affirming relations of ideas cannot be false, and this is where we get the notion that something is necessarily true. That’s what a law is: a statement like “All S is P” that asserts necessity. The reason all the subjects have to be linked with the predicate is that this is what the subject is—this is a necessary truth, not just a matter of fact. For example, “My house is made of bricks” might be true, but it’s just a matter of fact. It’s not necessary that every house is made of bricks. However, it is necessary that anyone who is a bachelor is unmarried.

Hume says this is where we get the idea of necessity: from statements that affirm relations between ideas. These relations can be such that if you have one, you must have the other. Let’s examine how he draws this distinction to justify all the denials he has made. He argues that the distinction between relations of ideas and matters of fact has not entered into philosophical discourse until now. Kant later gave them different names, which everyone uses today, so I’ll use Kant’s terms: analytic and synthetic.

Analytic statements are relations of ideas. The key characteristic of these statements is that when you say “All S is P,” the meaning of the predicate is contained in the meaning of the subject. For example, if the subject is bachelor, and we break it down into its components, we find that it means “male,” “adult,” and “unmarried.” The predicate “unmarried” is already part of the meaning of the subject. That’s why this can’t be false—it's true by definition. “All bachelors are unmarried” would be true even if there were no bachelors in the world. You could say, “All flying carpets levitate,” and that’s analytic too, because of the way we define flying carpet. It doesn’t mean there are any flying carpets, but the statement would still be necessarily true.

So, these kinds of statements have necessity, but they don’t refer to reality. They are necessarily true, but only because of the way the terms are defined, not because they reflect the real world. For example, a bachelor must be unmarried—if he marries, he’s no longer a bachelor. This is where we get the idea of a law: from statements that are necessarily true.

On the other hand, synthetic statements affirm matters of fact. In a synthetic statement like “My house is made of brick,” you could analyze house forever, but you won’t find brick in the meaning of house. Synthetic means that the subject and predicate are put together. These kinds of statements do not express necessity—they are contingent.

Hume argues that the idea of a law—specifically, a statement of a matter of fact that asserts necessity between its two terms—is the result of illegitimately transferring the necessity of analytic statements to synthetic statements. To be a real law, a statement would have to affirm that the predicate is necessarily true of the subject, and that it’s a matter of fact. But this can’t happen because matters of fact are all contingent—they could have been different. If a statement expresses a necessary truth, it states something that couldn’t have been any other way. That’s where we get the idea of law.

This is Hume’s justification for saying there is no causality. There is nothing called causality between two matters of fact, like lightning and a rock. If lightning strikes a rock and the rock breaks apart, we say the lightning caused it. But Hume asks, “Did you see causality?” No, you saw lightning, and then you saw the rock fall apart. That doesn’t prove it’ll happen the next time. Has it happened every other time lightning struck a rock? No, there’s no necessity here. The physicist thinks there is, believing that the conditions inside the rock and the force of the lightning determine whether the rock will split. Hume says, “There are no laws.”

As I said before, Hume takes the whole of physics, throws it in the trash, and pulls the chain. There is no necessity—Newton’s laws of motion, the law of gravitational attraction, Galileo’s law of free-falling bodies—Hume calls them all ridiculous. He claims they are not laws but only the result of humans fooling themselves.

Hume's key point is the distinction between analytic and synthetic judgments. Analytic judgments are necessarily true, but they are not about reality. Synthetic judgments are about reality, but they are contingent—they are not necessary. Hume says, “If a statement is analytic, it cannot refer to reality.” And this, he claims, is the source of the idea of law, even though we don’t perceive any laws.

So, has he pulled it off? Is this really the end of philosophy? There are still people who think so. They believe that neither Kant nor anyone else after him ever truly answered Hume. They say Hume was the last philosopher, that he destroyed everything, all the sciences, wrecked the whole party, and then went home—leaving no one to clean up.

But Kant thought he had the answer. He takes Hume’s argument seriously and says, “I can show you why and how there are statements that are both necessarily true and about reality.” That’s what you need for a law of nature: a statement that affirms something about reality and is always true in reality. Kant claims that it’s possible to have statements that are both necessarily true and refer to the real world.

Let me sum this up with a little chart:

Analytic statements: The meaning of the predicate is part of the meaning of the subject. Kant says these are a priori, meaning they are known independently of experience. For example, if we know someone is a bachelor, we don’t have to check a marriage registry—we know by definition that they’re unmarried. These statements are necessarily true.

Synthetic statements: The meaning of the predicate is not part of the meaning of the subject. To check if a synthetic statement is true, we need experience. Kant calls this a posteriori, meaning they require confirmation by experience. For example, if you say “This house is made of brick,” you have to go and check to see if it’s true. These statements are contingent—they are not necessarily true.

Hume thought that he had licked the platter clean, but Kant wasn’t about to let him get away with it.

Hume has wiped out any universal statements, so all the laws of all the sciences are gone, and certainly there are no rigid, hard-and-fast ethical laws. If there are no physical laws, how could there be moral ones? He does struggle a bit with mathematics, though, because mathematics seems to offer statements that are necessarily true yet also apply to reality. He dances around this issue, giving one explanation in one work and a different one in another. I think that controversy is beyond the undergraduate level, so I’m not going to take your time going into that in detail.

But regarding the sciences of his day—astronomy, physics, the beginnings of electrical theory, and chemistry—they were all looking for laws. The scientists in those fields wanted to do for their field what Newton had done for physics. And if Hume is right, he has destroyed what Newton did for physics.

Look at it again: the analytic statements are true only because of the way we define the meaning of the predicate and the subject. This means that if we have a concept of a subject, and that concept includes certain properties, and we then look at the predicate, and it includes those same properties, then the meaning of the predicate is part of the meaning of the subject. This is known a priori—the definition makes it true, not facts about reality. It can't be false, but that’s also where we get the idea of necessity: something that can’t be false.

Hume’s point is that this sense of necessity has been illegitimately transferred from analytic statements to synthetic ones. This is one of the most famous arguments in the history of philosophy—right up there with Aristotle’s Third Man Argument. It influenced people for nearly two centuries. Nobody initially saw the flaw in it. Eventually, though, people started to raise doubts: first, a few thinkers said, “I’m not so sure about this,” and then others began saying, “Look, I can show you why this is wrong.”

Professor Dooyeweerd, the Christian philosopher I follow closely, rebutted this in the 1930s. In our next session, I’ll start with that. We’ll ask the question: “Is the analytic-synthetic distinction correct?” The answer I’m going to give is no, it’s not. I’ll give you the criticism that Dooyeweerd made. Other critiques exist, but they’re weaker. They show that we can’t be sure about the distinction—not that it’s outright false. Dooyeweerd shows why it is outright false.

So, that’s the first treat we’re going to get next session, and I’ll see you then.