Hume on ethics

VIII. Hume’s Ethics
Hume complains that we don’t make the kind of progress in our ethical knowledge that we have made in physics and geometry.
Hume approaches ethics like a psychologist or a anthropologist rather than as a moral reformer or advocate.
IX. Limiting the role of reason
We can see that even in matters like cause and effect, reason doesn’t provide us with the rational justification that we would like to have. This goes doubly for ethics. For people like Plato, Aristotle, and Aquinas, it is irrational to be immoral. For Plato, the rational understanding of the good undergirds the moral life. For Aristotle, finding the mean between extremes is determined by reason, and Aquinas agrees with him. For Hume, reason is and ought always to be the slave of the passions.
X. What are moral judgments? How are they justified
Are moral judgments known a priori, that is, independently of experience? If that were so then they would be relations of ideas, and to deny them would be to contradict oneself. But do you contradict yourself if you say “It is perfectly OK morally to invite someone over for dinner, and then shove them into the oven and cook them as dinner.” It doesn’t look like that is true.
XI. Reason and moral judgments
Hume uses this argument against the claim that moral judgments are grounded in reason:
Moral judgments guide action and conduct.
Reason cannot guide action and conduct. It is used to discover truth and falsehood, not to guide action.
Therefore, moral judgments are not grounded in reason.
XII. What about matter of fact reasoning?
That won’t support moral judgments, either. Let’s take a cold-blooded murder. Add up all the facts that you possibly can concerning it: the physics of the murder, the chemistry, the biology of the death that it involved, the psychology of the murderer and the victim, the sociological facts about who is most likely to be murdered in this way and who is likely to commit such a murder—take all of these facts and put them together, and you will not be able to logically draw the conclusion that the action was morally wrong.
XIII. So What’s Wrong with, let’s say, killing you spouse for the insurance money?
Our sense of wrongness is found in our own breast, in the sentiment of disapprobation we feel when we are told, say, of the crimes of Ted Bundy or Hannibal Lecter.
Feelings, therefore, are the source of morality.

I. Plato in reverse
Plato: Reason should command, spirit and appetite obey
Hume: Reason is and ought always to be the slave of the passions.
Even empiricist predecessor Locke thought that we could reason from experience to what we ought to do. Hume says no.
II. Is there a universal moral sentiment implanted by God?
A. That’s what some British moralists thought. But Hume thought otherwise. As we are going to see, Hume is a religious skeptic who doesn’t base anything on the idea of God.
III. Are morals objective for Hume?
I’ve puzzled about this some myself.
Some moral principles are correct and other incorrect not in the sense that mathematical sums are true or false, but in the sense that some moral principles offend against desires that are universal in human beings.
IV. Two sources of moral duties
Social Utility
Sympathy
V. Social Utility
Some moral rules are go against our natural inclinations, but are nevertheless socially useful. Ex: promise keeping, allegiance to one’s government, and chastity. These are artificial virtues. They serve everyone’s interest if we follow them. I am better off for example, if everyone obeys the law and keeps their promises.
My calculating self-interest leads me to follow rules that benefit society as a whole. (Question for Hume: Even when people aren’t watching?)

VI. Sympathy
We feel more sympathy for those close than those far away. Thus, we felt more sympathy for the victims of Hurricane Katrina than for the victims of the Asian Tsunami, even though the tsunami claimed more victims than did Katrina.
But I can be disgusted by the actions of the Emperor Nero, even though he lived in the first century A. D. and I do not know any of his victims.
VII. Is sympathy for others really selfish?
Hume says no. If we observe human nature, we see that humans have a natural interest in the welfare of others. Of course we feel satisfaction if our actions succeed in benefiting others, but that does not mean that the satisfaction is what we were aiming at.
VIII. The moral bedrock
This feeling of sympathy is the moral bedrock, the basis of right and wrong. We need not look further to discover the basis of morality (to God or to reason, for example).
Question for Hume: What if our feelings of sympathy are weak, but other desires, such as lust, or desire for control, or just rank sadism, are stronger. On what basis do we prefer our sympathetic feelings to these other feelings that are stronger?