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Show Chapter XIV. Hume's Metaethics 570 Hume also characterizes reason as the discovery of truth or falsehood. This consists in the agreement or disagreement to the actual (Hume uses the term "real") relations of ideas, or to actual existence and matters of fact (T 458). Hume's intent in this passage is to argue that our actions, passions, and volitions can disagree with neither. What can agree or disagree, either with the real relations of ideas or with real existence and matters of fact, i.e. what can conform to reason in this way? Hume has already argued that this role is filled by our prior, unreflective ideas and impressions (T 415). These must conform or fail to conform to the ways in which ideas or events are in fact related. Hume charts the relations between demonstrative and probabilistic reasoning in Book II, Section III of the Treatise, and there we find the relation to be essentially one of means to ends: Mathematics, indeed, are useful in all mechanical operations, and arithmetic in almost every art and profession: But 'tis not of themselves they have any influence. Mechanics are the art of regulating the motion of bodies to some design'd end or purpose; and the reason why we employ arithmetic in fixing the proportions of numbers, is only that we may discover the proportions of their influence and operations. ... Abstract or demonstrative reason, therefore, never influences any of our actions, but only as it directs our judgment concerning causes and effects, which leads us to the second operation of the understanding (T 413-14; italics in text). Hume then goes on to describe how, when we are confronted by an object that causes us pleasure or pain, we feel an attraction or aversion to it, which in turn makes us "cast our view on every side, comprehend[ing] whatever judgment, and belief (Miller, pages 40 and 47; op. cit. Note 2). Miller earlier refers to the passage in the Treatise in which Hume states that "[w]hen I oppose the imagination to the memory, I mean the faculty, by which we form our fainter ideas. When I oppose it to reason, I mean the same faculty, excluding only our demonstrative and probable reasonings" (T 117-18). Miller remarks on this passage that "[i]n the last sentence 'reason' is expanded to include the rule-governed imagination, which forms all 'probable' judgments (i.e. judgments concerning matters of fact not immediately present to the senses), and contrasted with the 'fanciful' imagination. In seeking to eliminate one source of confusion, Hume has inadvertently introduced another (the broader sense of 'reason' is frequently used by Hume in expounding his moral philosophy)" (Miller, page 27 fn.). But I fear the muddle here is not Hume's. Surely Hume means to say that imagination is the faculty by which we form our fainter ideas except for our demonstrative and probable reasonings, which are formed by the faculty of reason. Presumably the point of the contrast between reason and imagination is to distinguish between those faint ideas which are formed by nonrational mental processes and those which are formed by "demonstrable and probable reasonings." I do not see that Hume has expanded his use of the term "reason" at all. © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
