Hume as a Moral Skeptic

Paper Summary:

This paper examines how in his "Treatise of Human Nature", Hume reduces moral decision making to autonomous conflicting passions motivating the will. He also excludes reason as a guiding entity and therefore appears to be a moral skeptic. It discusses how he fits Marcus Singer's definition of a moral skeptic by determinism. However, it also contends that by J.L. Mackie's definitions, he does not seem to be a normative moral or a meta ethical skeptic.

From the Paper:

"Foremost, partly by divorcing reason from the motivation of the will and partly due to the natural causes of the passions, Hume plainly implicates himself as a moral skeptic by Singer's definition of determinism. According to the Treatise the will is directly motivated only by the direct passions and, in turn, the direct passions arise from good and evil. Reason takes a backseat as its role is simply to connect the passions with their correct objects. However, it is when Hume reduces the definitions of good and evil to sensations of pleasure and pain that he seems to affirm his position as a skeptic by determinism. Furthermore, he states: "the direct passions frequently arise from a natural impulse or instinct which is perfectly unaccountable." "

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