1 Wednesday, January 10, 2007 For Monday, read section 12 of Hume’s Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding Next Wednesday we’ll start Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion Here are your tutorial questions for this Friday (choose one, and write out a one-page response, due at the start of your tutorial): 1.Summarize Hume’s arguments for the claim that necessity governs ‘every deliberation of our lives, and every step of our conduct and behaviour.’ 2.How does Hume define liberty? How can he maintain that almost all of us have this sort of liberty?

2 Section 8: Of Liberty and Necessity

3 The problem of freedom: Philosophical, not practical Hume contends that in daily life we have a clear understanding of liberty and necessity, and the relation between them Philosophical theories of freedom have left us confused because the terms ‘freedom’ and ‘necessity’ have been misused and poorly defined

4 When we ask whether human beings are really free, what do we mean by the word ‘free’?

5 How we reason about nature If nature kept changing so that every new event was totally different from every past event, we’d never get the idea of necessity or causation.

6 How we reason about nature If nature kept changing so that every new event was totally different from every past event, we’d never get the idea of necessity or causation. Regular, recurring patterns give us the feeling of causation and enable us to reason about nature.

7 Physical nature and human nature We are able to reason about nature because it is uniform and regular; nature is under thorough causal necessity

8 Physical nature and human nature We are able to reason about nature because it is uniform and regular; nature is under thorough causal necessity We are able to reason about human nature because it is uniform and regular; human nature is under thorough causal necessity

9 Human nature is predictable ‘The same motives always produce the same actions; The same events follow form the same causes. Ambition, avarice, self-love, vanity, friendship, generosity, public spirit; these passions, mixed in various degrees, and distributed through society, have been, from the beginning of the world, and still are, the source of all the actions and enterprises, which have ever been observed among mankind.’ (55)

10 Human nature is predictable ‘Would you know the sentiments, the inclinations, and course of life of the Greeks and Romans? Study well the temper and actions of the French and English.’ (55)

11 Character as well as circumstance One’s behaviour is determined not simply by one’s outward setting, but also by one’s internal character (also conceived causally) Custom, education, training, etc. control how we will respond (so men and women might react differently in the same setting; or members of different cultures) (57)

12 Deviations from character? Nice people can sometimes be mean, suddenly Stupid people can sometimes be lively and charming

13 Deviations from character? Nice people can sometimes be mean, suddenly [when they have toothaches] Stupid people can sometimes be lively and charming [when they have just won the lottery]

14 Matter and action Hume argues for a complete parallel between the total causal order we see in physical nature and causal determination of our actions: we expect uniformity in both cases, and we steadily make causal inferences (unsupported objects will fall, people prefer more money to less, etc.)

15 Matter and action Where we see apparent failures of uniformity, or where our inferences go wrong, we don’t suppose that there’s no causal order: we suppose that there are some hidden factors we haven’t yet spotted. Erratic behaviour in humans is treated just as we treat erratic phenomena in geology (we don’t in fact suppose that people act uncaused). See p.60.

16 True or false? If you leave a $50 bill unattended on a table in The Meeting Place for an hour during lunch rush, the odds that it will still be sitting there at the end of the hour are about the same as the odds that the table will have floated into space

17 True or false? If you leave a $50 bill unattended on a table in The Meeting Place for an hour during lunch rush, the odds that it will still be sitting there at the end of the hour are about the same as the odds that the table will have floated into space Human actions obey some ‘laws of gravity’ as much as tables do.

18 What is liberty? Why don’t we want liberty or free action to be ‘uncaused action’?

19 What is liberty? Why don’t we want liberty or free action to be ‘uncaused action’? Notice in particular, that there is a problem if free actions are not connected to our motives or desires

20 What is liberty? ‘a power of acting or not acting, according to the determinations of the will.’ (63) Meaning: if you choose to move, you may, if you desire to stay still, you may do so. We think all people have this kind of freedom unless they are ‘in chains’

21 Are people ever really free? Two ways of understanding this question: (1) The easy way: Are people ever left at liberty to do what they want, or are people always chained and forced to do things? (Q=Is there anyone who’s not in handcuffs? A=Yes, sure, obviously.) (2) The hard way: Do people ever possess a secret power to break the laws of nature and act in a way that isn’t necessitated or determined by anything? (Hume thinks that vision of ‘freedom’ doesn’t even make sense – controlling or determining your actions means they must be necessitated.)

22 Liberty Freedom or liberty, as applied to voluntary actions, is the opposite of constraint, not the opposite of necessity All actions and events happen under necessity Most human actions are free (only rarely are we dragged away in chains)

23 What is liberty? ‘a power of acting or not acting, according to the determinations of the will.’ (63) [=the power to do what you want, a power you have this unless you are physically restrained] (Are there any problems with this definition of liberty?)

24 Why you might feel reluctant to agree with Hume about freedom Hume thinks that in practice we all agree that human actions are necessitated (e.g. we don’t leave cash lying unprotected) But in theory, when it comes to explaining human actions in words, we tend to resist the notion that human actions are necessitated. (WHY?)

25 Why you might feel reluctant to agree with Hume about freedom Looking closely at causation in the natural world, we discover that there is nothing more to it than the constant conjunction of two types of events; repeated exposure to a given (A-B) pattern gives us a feeling that A is causing B. Still, we tend to think we are perceiving a real cause between A and B. When we look at the operations of our minds we notice that we don’t directly feel such a real connection between a given thought and an action, so we suppose that there is no cause there (p.61)

26 How to come to believe Hume Hume thinks that if you follow his reasoning about causation in nature closely, you’ll see that something exactly parallel applies for causation of human action

27 What about morality? Can we praise, blame, or punish people for actions done under necessity?

28 Morality and freedom Just because a theory is dangerous to morality doesn’t mean it’s false, But for what it’s worth, Hume thinks that his theory is in fact VITAL to supporting morality (and not in conflict with it at all)

29 Morality and freedom If systems of morality are right to employ punishments and rewards, we are supposing those punishments and rewards to have pre-determined, predictable effects on human behaviour

30 Morality and freedom Actions deserve moral praise or blame only where they originate from some lasting cause within the agent; to deny necessity is to deny responsibility

31 Morality and freedom ‘According to the principle…which denies necessity…a man is as pure and untainted, after having committed the most horrid crime, as at the first moment of his birth, nor is his character any wise concerned in his actions; since they are not derived from it, and the wickedness of the one can never be used as a proof of the depravity of the other.’ (65-6)

32 The grounds of blame and praise We are not blamed or praised for what we do ‘ignorantly’ or unknowingly/accidentally Why not?

33 A problem involving God, morality and necessity If we think that God is the ultimate cause of everything, it looks like Hume’s theory would force us to choose between 1. saying that our actions can never be wrong, because they were ultimately caused by a good God; or 2. saying that God is not good, because he caused, among other things, murders and so on.

34 A problem involving God, morality and necessity Should we say that our actions can never be wrong, because they were ultimately caused by a good God?

35 A problem involving God, morality and necessity Should we say that our actions can never be wrong, because they were ultimately caused by a good God? Whatever happens when you look at the big, big picture doesn’t matter directly to the moral assessments I make when I look at events close up; I am upset when my wallet is stolen even if this ends up in the long, long run causing larger perfection in the universe. (So the theft is bad.)

36 Moral sentiments ‘The mind of man is so formed by nature, that, upon the appearance of certain characters, dispositions and actions, it immediately feels the sentiment of approbation or blame, nor are there any emotions more essential to its frame and constitution.’ (68)

37 A problem involving God, morality and necessity Should we say that God is not good, because he ultimately caused, among other things, murders and so on?

38 A problem involving God, morality and necessity Should we say that God is not good, because he ultimately caused, among other things, murders and so on? That’s a mystery. We’ll have enough to worry about if we look at smaller, more local problems. (the ‘true and proper province’ of our minds)