Sunday Sermonette: David Hume

This week's Sunday Sermonette comes from the Scottish philosopher David Hume:

Reason is, and only ought to be, the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.

Update: I think I should offer a bit more context for this quote. Hume isn't saying that passion should override reason when the two are pulling in opposite directions. He's saying that reason is a tool for getting what you want, i.e., that reason can't dictate ultimate ends.

Comments

[StealthBadger]

Um.... >.>

Brrr.

That's how you get people like the lovely examples of human compassion across the street from us at the Walter Reed Vigil, whose reason is absolutely subsumed by their passion for a hyper-state based on 'murican "values."

*shudder*

I do understand the point that Reason must not supplant human emotion, else you get things like mandatory minimum sentencing (well, not really, because both reason and emotion tell you that that isn't really going to help much if you don't remove the incentives for crime) but human emotion, misdirected, can get you in some pretty whacked positions that reason would get you out of pretty quickly, if applied. Call me overly enamored of flexibility.

[John]

Emotions are part of what make us human, so I would never want them permanently relegated to playing second fiddle to reason. However, I would neither want reason to always take a backseat to emotion. People who can't make calm, rational decisions generally cannot be trusted to act responsibly when it is needed most. My background is psychology, not philosophy, so perhaps I am misinterpreting his statement. Taking it at face value, I would say that's too far out there.

[epistemology]

Flexibility is a virtue in many spheres of life.

But Hume's passions are what we desire and love. We think the limbic system to be the seat of our desires. Our brains subsume their rational functions (largely placed in the cerebral cortices) to the cause of keeping us happy as our limbic system dictates.

If reason and experience dictate delaying a self-gratifying impulse for the greater overall happiness, well, I'll leave that to each individual brain to calculate.

"The daughters belong to the man," said the mother of Mwaka Simbye who had been sold by her father at 11 to repay a $16 loan, says this NYT article. This is what we are fighting for. Freedom and equality. All the civilized world admits, de jure if not de facto, that people of different cultures are fully human, but much of the world does not believe it of women. Shame.

In this fight, religion has made itself part of the problem. And not just Islam. Read the 4th Commandment: son, daughter, male slave, female slave, stranger, livestock, yourself...everyone in thy gates must rest on the Sabbath...but not the wife. The wives are the slaves to the slaves and the livestock. Or is it just that somebody has to fetch dinner. Shame.

The dominant moral issue of this century. Equality for women. That's my sermon for the day.

[Lindsay Beyerstein]

I just want to emphasize that Hume isn't making a Romantic argument about the good life being ruled by passions. He isn't encouraging people to be impulsive or drama-seeking.

He's just saying that reason is a tool for satisfying desires, the content of which are not ultimately determined by reason. Hume was all for calm rational decision-making and jovial equanimity.

[John Stith]

Immanuel Kant was a real pissant
Who was very rarely stable
Heidegger, Heidegger was a boozy beggar
Who could think you under the table
David Hume could out-consume
Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
And Wittgenstein was a beery swine
Who was just as schloshed as Schlegel

Actually, I believe in equality for women too but I also believe the human condition is it's own creation. What I mean by this is that throughout history, women are no more downtrodden then they, on the whole, have allowed themselves to be. Lives are what people make of them and while I certainly don't condone the mistreating of anyone, if a culture, ours or any other, is patriarchal or matriarchal, it is because that's how it chose to be. A couple of decades could be written off as oppression, millenia could not.

I believe all human beings are absolutely equal. I also believe that if one's conditions become intolerable, then they change it. Some may not be strong enough to make the change, but someone will, eventually. The case mentioned of a father selling her daughter is horrible, but women have just as much say in cultural development as males do. Lysistrata comes to mind.

[epistemology]

John Stith:

Millenia of inequality for women existed for the same reason that millenia of uncivilized violence characterized our forebears. Reason has the germ of equality in it. It is stronger than the brute force of anarchy.

A couple of decades could be written off as oppression, millenia could not.

John, this could be used to justify slavery 200 years ago. Things change. Don't be on the wrong side of history. Lindsay is archiving your comments for the tsk, tsking of future generations of enlightened Stiths.

Join us in the inevitable assertion of reason, which dictates equality of the sexes, that is slowly transforming the feral Islamic, Christian, Hindu, etc. worlds into the civilized.

[Hume's Ghost]

Lest anyone get the wrong idea, Hume is, IMO, the most reasonable philosopher in history. Here's my favorite skeptic quote from Hume

"When we run over libraries, persuaded of these principles, what havoc must we make? If we take in our hand any volume of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance, let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames, for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion."

Sorry, this wasn't really on topic but I couldn't resist commenting ... Hume is probably my favorite philosopher.

[gordo]

"Lindsay is archiving your comments for the tsk, tsking of future generations..."

Whoa. I hadn't thought of that. I'm going to have to start being more careful about what I write, or come up with a more anonymous handle.

[david]

Lots of people would say that this is a Romantic argument.btw. No that there's anything wrong with that.

[StealthBadger]

He's just saying that reason is a tool for satisfying desires, the content of which are not ultimately determined by reason. Hume was all for calm rational decision-making and jovial equanimity.

Considering that it is with emotions that we first build an understanding the world, and then and only then with reason... I can get behind that. ^.^

[Gary Sugar]

As usual with Hume, there's ultimately no real reason to believe anything. It's a welcome relief from strident ideology. But I think that's really all it is.

[John Stith]

Epistimology said :Join us in the inevitable assertion of reason, which dictates equality of the sexes, that is slowly transforming the feral Islamic, Christian, Hindu, etc. worlds into the civilized.

There are two issues I guess I have here. At the base level, the genders have always been equal. In that respect, I don't believe in fate, kismet, destiny etc. Life is what one makes of it, period. Certainly there are feral aspects to those religions, but in many cases, women agreed with the conditions estabilished as much as the men did.

As far as civilization, the more I think and watch humans on the whole, the more I think civilization is pretense. Humans live in groups like the prides of lions or packs of wolves but we've not progressed any further at a basic level. What we do, we do to survive. Some of the conditions have changed, adapted, but it's still basically the same. Basic instinct rule the human existance, much like most other animals. WE use reason, but that's merely a tool like one's fingers or the wolf's teeth. It gets us what we need, want etc. The more I think about it, the more I think this to be the case. The difference I suppose is that we realize our condition but have no capacity to reach beyond it.

[Neil the Ethical Werewolf]

My entire dissertation could be regarded as a defense of that remark.

[Squashed Lemon]

He's just saying that reason is a tool for satisfying desires, the content of which are not ultimately determined by reason. Hume was all for calm rational decision-making and jovial equanimity.
Posted by: Lindsay Beyerstein | November 27, 2005 at 04:12 PM

sort of like sociopath serial killer? hmmm....

[1984 Was Not a Shopping List]

WE use reason, but that's merely a tool like one's fingers or the wolf's teeth. It gets us what we need, want etc.

John, this question really fucks me up. Why DO we use reason?

It's easy enough for me to see the reptilian impulses at play in a Cheney, or a (pick your favorite arrogant, bellowing CEO). They're simply tools for their own egos, or their desires for money, which were bred into their forebears for good reason (it helped them survive).

But why does a Socrates use reason? He willingly died, rather than save himself (according to Plato, at least--and if untrue, we know of enough examples that are demonstrably true). Is his altruistic pursuit of a reasoning society just a similar perversion of his own survival instinct, which rewarded his forebears for working cooperatively, but led to his downfall, as an Ivan Boesky's selfishness led to his?

Briefly, is altruism bullshit?

[Richard]

Cutting through some of this crap (there are some cogent things also - but...) I think most people are missing that Hume wants you to decide what your values (passions) are before you start thinking about your arguements. Once we substitute the words we can start to get to Hume's point that pure reason... Oh well I'll stop there.

Good Sermonette.

R

[Patrick]

Richard, Hume is NOT making a normative claim here.

He isn't saying that reason ought to be ruled by the passions. He is arguing that reason has no motivational power as a matter of human psychology.

Hume is responding to the idea propagated by the Rationalists (like Clarke and Price) that our rational perception of the moral nature of an action (its to-be-doneness) can motivate us to act without an accompanying non-rational emotions or desires.

And I have to agree with Gary Sugar, I don't think that there is anything like normativity in Hume's theory even though he makes a lot of claims that appear normative.

[epistemology]

John Stith:

Life is what one makes of it

we realize our condition but have no capacity to reach beyond it.

Well, yes and no.

Slaves were complicit in their slavery like women are complicit in their subjugation. We do inherit the system we are in. And it evolves. As Hume points out, reason, not sharp tooth or claw, is our evolutionary edge. Use it wisely.

[Squashed Lemon]

Reason/passion categorisation.

I think this is another one of those idiotic philosophical invention. Its enlightenment age way to explain the structure of human thought. Just like body/soul in the middle age seek to describe structure of being or Ancient Greek's fire, Water, Wind and Earth trying to describe basic structure of matter.

It's a bunk. It only describes the surface apparence instead of the real structure of thought.

examples:

- like I say. sociopathic serial killer. Perfectly calm and collected, rational and methodical. But deep down he doesn't know why he is doing it. He just have to do it.

- psycho active substances. Try to do some rational exercise after taking it. And tell me why you can't be rational and that myserious 'passion/emotion' takes over your thought.

- Same with music. try to do some perfectly light rational activity. eg. writing down shopping list for next month. Play two different songs with deep memory ties. (eg. friendship, memory of fun party in the past, traveling song) and compare the two shopping lists. Why are they different?

- quick/reflextive action. This specially in highly trained sportsman/fighters pilot/etc. Clearly their action is too fast for extended rational thinking. They just do it. And they can't explain why they take such action in that particular moment. Because they have been trained to react quickly to certain condition.

-All the modern knowledge about subconscious structure, limit of observability, incompleteness theorem of a system(logic system included)

bla bla... etc etc...

So, I deeply suspect there is no such thing as "passion vs. rational thinking". Hume is just making a nice guess. Pretty darned good for a person in his era.

But friggin move on already.

... that question can't be answered until we know how brain functions. What exactly trigger certain thought pattern, be it passion/rational thinking/asshat opinion... etc.

It's more complex than simplistic passion/rational. Just like the structure of matter is more complex than 'Fire, Water, Wind and Earth.'

move on peeps, do serious physical sciences research/discussion. there is no easy answer what it the structure of human thought being generated yet.

[Squashed Lemon]

Hume can shove his passion/rationale up his. (caffeine overdose day for me today. grrrr..... *outrage overdrive*)

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Gene Knockout Scores a Fearless Mouse

Knocking out a gene in the brain�s fear hub creates mice unperturbed by situations that would normally trigger instinctive or learned fear responses, researchers funded in part by the National Institutes of Health have discovered. The findings may lead to improved treatments for anxiety disorders (http://www.nimh.nih.gov/healthinformation/anxietymenu.cfm), they suggest.

The scientific team, led by National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) grantee and Nobel Laureate Dr. Eric Kandel, Columbia University, Dr. Vadim Bolshakov, Harvard University, a grantee of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) and the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), and Dr. Gleb Shumyatsky, Rutgers University, report on their study in the November 18, 2005 issue of Cell.

Fear memories are so essential for survival that they are easily formed and rarely lost. The workings of fear circuitry, centered in the amygdala, an almond-shaped structure deep in the brain, are well understood. But relatively little is known about fear�s molecular basis, note the researchers.

The gene in the current study codes for stathmin, a protein that appears to be critical for the amygdala to rearrange connections and form fear memories. Stathmin normally controls this process by regulating the supply of microtubules, building materials that amygdala cells use to make structural adaptations that encode the memories. Runaway production of these building materials stymied construction of fear memories in a mouse strain molecularly engineered to lack stathmin, the researchers found.

[ajay]

I think it's Steven Pinker in 'How the Mind Works' who makes the point that people without emotions (and some do exist, after brain injury) are terribly indecisive. They still have all their reasoning ability, but they just don't want anything. Desires aren't rational. Even the desire to live isn't rational. There's nothing in the laws of physics to say 'should' or 'should not'. Pinker points out that, if we create AIs, they would have to have needs/desires/emotions, whatever you want to call them. You use reason to get what you want: the good of humanity, money, knowledge, power, friendship, pleasure... but reason doesn't give rise to your wants.

Which raises the interesting moral question: Is it moral to make a human-level intelligence and wire it up permanently to a backhoe? Isn't this atrocious slavery? Now, is it moral if you deliberately build an AI to love digging ditches, so that its life running the backhoe will be one of immense pleasure?

[Gotham Image]

Lindsay - Hume is saying Passion is the SUBJECT, while reason is the OBJECT.

He is saying we are passionate beings, who sometimes use reason. If you say we are Reasonable beings, who sometimes are ruled by Passions, then that's just an unreasonable passion to be uber - empirical.

[Xboy]

Have you ever tried to convince a suicidal friend to go on living by using rational arguments?
On the other hand, once someone begins wanting to live they can find lots of good reasons.

[Squashed Lemon]

Now, is it moral if you deliberately build an AI to love digging ditches, so that its life running the backhoe will be one of immense pleasure?
Posted by: ajay | November 28, 2005 at 12:34 PM

I thought we have women for that?

heee..... *ducks from all flying rotten tomato*

I'll be here all week. don't forget to try the veil.

[1984 Was Not a Shopping List]

With this:

Have you ever tried to convince a suicidal friend to go on living by using rational arguments?
On the other hand, once someone begins wanting to live they can find lots of good reasons.

Xboy has perfectly summed up this:

He isn't saying that reason ought to be ruled by the passions. He is arguing that reason has no motivational power as a matter of human psychology.

Hume is responding to the idea propagated by the Rationalists (like Clarke and Price) that our rational perception of the moral nature of an action (its to-be-doneness) can motivate us to act without an accompanying non-rational emotions or desires.