Hutcheson Moral Sense Analysis

While Hobbes reduces moral motivations to the sensible qualities of pain and pleasure, Hutcheson makes the case that moral motivations are basic sensible qualities themselves. Hutcheson has a much more holistic concept of sense than Hobbes does, defining sense as a power of receiving objects external to our will.17 He specifically refers to this as: "every determination of our mind to receive ideas of pleasure and pain.18 This "moral sense" is just one of six separate faculties for sensation: the five traditional senses, the internal aesthetic sense, the "public sense" related to pleasing others, our sense of honor and our sense of dignity.19 Each of these senses are particular and basic in their own right, instead of being reducible to …show more content…
For Hutcheson, the pleasures and pains associated with the senses, are not necessarily egoistic in nature, and pleasure and pain are not necessarily connected with self-interest. Instead Hutcheson makes a key and important distinction between physiological and psychological desires. Physiological desires refer to a an aptitude or anticipation towards a particular type of pleasure, such as hunger or thirst.22 These desires may not necessarily be consciously articulated, but are still phenomenologically apparent. Psychological desires, on the other hand, refer to an attentive approach of anticipating a previously experienced pleasure. We consciously anticipate and associate a future pleasure, and we choose to do pursue said object, knowing we may receive the associated pleasure.23 When we act in accordance with these psychological desires, we can be said to be acting egoistically. Hutcheson's account also differs in that we can act in accordance to certain desires, without said desires being reduced to …show more content…
For Hutcheson, we have desire to act in a way that is morally right, in accordance to our moral sense, that precedes our hedonistic self-interest; we are compelled to help the sufferer even when we know that it would be in our self-interest to act otherwise.29 Instead of the convoluted process of imaginary substitution, Hutcheson instead argues that the sympathy is sensible due to its immediacy and passivity, and not reducible to merely the external senses with the addition of substitution. The content between egoistic thought and sympathy is also apparent by a clear phenomenological analysis: when we are thinking egoistically we are obviously aware of an interest or advantage, while virtuous thought requires a calmness and disinterestedness that does not lend itself well to a particular Hobbesian analysis. Hutcheson makes the case that the imaginary, mediated process model of sympathy is problematic precisely due the immediacy and disinterestedness of