In the Eighth Section of the First Enquiry, Hume takes on the matter of Free Will and Determinism. The section takes on the problem of how the science of his time implies the world, and consequently human beings, is deterministic, while at the same time people’s own understanding of their lives implies that they have free will. Hume makes an argument using his ideas about knowledge and causation, to claim that determinism and free-will are compatible with each other.
This section makes use of claims Hume had made in previous section of the Enquiry. Hume is an empiricist, and claims that human knowledge comes from relations of ideas (a priori analytic notions) and matters of fact (synthetic a posteriori notions). He criticizes the notion of …show more content…
The notion of hard determinism reduces human beings to passive objects, while attributing active power to many other objects. This goes against the active power we regard ourselves as having. It also appears to undermine the qualitative power which is crucial to causal operations. The maintenance of internal causal elements within the world causal system are crucial to its operations. At the same time, the notion of free will as something acting without relation to causal factors is problematic. In many instances, it can be seen that there are things in the world which influence the decisions of the will and the capacity of it to be acted upon. These things do not necessarily nullify the freedom of the will, but do effect the form which it may take. Thus, attempting to find a way in which free will can fit into a world of causal connections, can be useful for trying to tackle this …show more content…
While he may have some point in stating that connecting actions to character and recognizing the responsibility of choice are an important part of discerning moral responsibility, he overdoes this. Moral responsibility in actions is not the whole of moral matters. There is a qualitative moral value for the things themselves, and ultimately all aspects of moral value, including moral character, are qualitative matters. Hume’s claim of morality being a matter of social interests is a confusion of terms. What he refers to are mores (socially common notions of morality, which do necessarily reflect the actual moral value of things). Humanity does not actually equate the two, as activists for moral views other than the common view and for changes in the common views evidence. As for the religion aspect, I am not convinced his denial of knowledge of God as a good answer to the objection. His early answer of dismissing the negative implications of the explanation on common religion as insignificant to its validity seems more compelling. Though even then, it seemed to need to more justification for the
This section makes use of claims Hume had made in previous section of the Enquiry. Hume is an empiricist, and claims that human knowledge comes from relations of ideas (a priori analytic notions) and matters of fact (synthetic a posteriori notions). He criticizes the notion of …show more content…
The notion of hard determinism reduces human beings to passive objects, while attributing active power to many other objects. This goes against the active power we regard ourselves as having. It also appears to undermine the qualitative power which is crucial to causal operations. The maintenance of internal causal elements within the world causal system are crucial to its operations. At the same time, the notion of free will as something acting without relation to causal factors is problematic. In many instances, it can be seen that there are things in the world which influence the decisions of the will and the capacity of it to be acted upon. These things do not necessarily nullify the freedom of the will, but do effect the form which it may take. Thus, attempting to find a way in which free will can fit into a world of causal connections, can be useful for trying to tackle this …show more content…
While he may have some point in stating that connecting actions to character and recognizing the responsibility of choice are an important part of discerning moral responsibility, he overdoes this. Moral responsibility in actions is not the whole of moral matters. There is a qualitative moral value for the things themselves, and ultimately all aspects of moral value, including moral character, are qualitative matters. Hume’s claim of morality being a matter of social interests is a confusion of terms. What he refers to are mores (socially common notions of morality, which do necessarily reflect the actual moral value of things). Humanity does not actually equate the two, as activists for moral views other than the common view and for changes in the common views evidence. As for the religion aspect, I am not convinced his denial of knowledge of God as a good answer to the objection. His early answer of dismissing the negative implications of the explanation on common religion as insignificant to its validity seems more compelling. Though even then, it seemed to need to more justification for the