Moral Judgments In David Hume's Study

Most individuals generally like to think of themselves as moral human beings. They often directly link their moral judgments to reason alone. However, in the 18th century, Hume made the suggestion that moral judgments could be based on emotions rather than unadulterated reason. In his Moral Philosophy, Hume argues that moral distinctions are not derived from reason, but rather determined by moral emotions: feelings of approval, or disgust felt by spectators who contemplate a moral trait or action (Owen, 1992). Moral judgments find their foundation in an assessment of actions of people with respect to the set of merits ingrained in their society (Haidt, 2001). Keeping this in mind, moral judgments are comparable to judgment of taste. Physical distaste can elicit the thought that something is morally wrong. The study replicated in this experiment, Eskine et al. (2011) tested this idea by investigating whether the …show more content…
Majority of his students refused to do this, and the one that agreed to participate returned within in minutes, refusing to continue for no other reason than being emotionally distraught from this task. Then, Milgram decided himself to conduct the experiment himself. He had many unsuccessful attempts before finally choking out the request to have a random passenger’s seat. He found himself needing to behave in a way that would justify the need and make this request morally correct. He dropped his head between his knees and let his face grow pale, saying he was not role-playing, rather his emotions actually made him behave this way (Bass, 2004). This experiment illustrates a key point to our argument: it is emotionally distressing to violate moral rules. The way the action makes one feel, the emotion it evokes, is what determines the degree of immorality