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Show Chapter XIV. Hume's Metaethics 578 it and has thereby rendered it particularly forceful and vivacious. Again it is the impression and the passion preceding the idea that are motivationally efficacious, not reason. This conclusion is further supported by Hume's claims that belief is merely a certain feeling or sentiment (T 153, 624); that it is not itself an idea (T 184, 623-26) or a simple act of thought (T 184); and that it is more properly an act of the sensitive than the cognitive faculties (T103, 183-5). Hume in the Enquiry makes the point even more strongly: He characterizes belief as "the true and proper name of [an indefinable sentiment or] feeling" (E 40/48-9); he contends that [B]elief consists not in the peculiar nature or order of ideas, but in the manner of their conception, and in their feeling to the mind. I confess, that it is impossible perfectly to explain this feeling. ... But ... we can go no farther than assert, that belief is something felt by the mind, which distinguishes the ideas of the judgment from the fictions of the imagination. It gives them more weight and influence; makes them appear of greater importance; enforces them in the mind; and renders them the governing principle of our actions (E 40/49-50; italics in text). These passages lend support to the thesis that what identifies something as a belief is the passion that imbues it, not the idea that gives it content. Having come to believe something, it may well be that our believing it causally influences the passions that cause us to act. But the source of its causal influence is the passion that infuses it; this in turn influences the passions that directly cause us to act. It is thus false, according to Hume's account, to infer that reason itself has any such influence on action. However, there are two other sets of passages that may seem to engender similar inferences. Hume often claims that reason alone cannot influence the will (T 413, 414, 457); that reason can "excite" a passion only "by informing us of the existence of something which is a proper object of it" (T 459); that an action "may be obliquely caus'd by [a judgment], when the judgment concurs with a passion" (T 459; italics in text); that reason "may, indeed, be the mediate cause of an action, by prompting, or by directing a passion" (T 462); and that "the blind motions of the [affections], without the direction of the [understanding], incapacitate men for society" (T 493). These passages have suggested to some that reason may be at least a necessary (if not sufficient) motivational influence on a passion.15 See Henry David Aiken, "An Interpretation of Hume's Theory of the Place of Reason in Ethics and Politics;" and David Fate Norton, David Hume: Common-Sense Moralist, Sceptical Metaphysician, op. cit. Note 2. As far as I can tell, W. D. Falk (in "Hume on Practical Reason," Philosophical Studies 27 (1975), 1-18) does not make this mistake. 15 © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
