Anda di halaman 1dari 24

CRITIQUE OF HUME’S MORAL PHILOSOPHY

Paul Gerard Horrigan, Ph.D., 2018.

While David Hume (1711-1776) concentrates on the passions in the Book II of his A
Treatise of Human Nature (although ethical questions are dealt here also), he concentrates of the
subject of morality in the third and last book of the Treatise entitled Of Morals. For Hume, the
rules of morality are not the conclusions of our reason but are rather founded upon moral sense
or sentiment. The moral order pertains to the realm of moral sense or sentiment and we say that a
particular human action is good or bad because we feel it is such. Hume the emotivist “rejected
the notion that reason can command or move the human will and insisted that ethics should
concentrate on certain impressions or feelings of approval or disapproval within the agent. In
Hume’s thinking, ‘an action, or sentiment, or character, is virtuous or vicious, because its view
causes a pleasure or uneasiness of a particular kind.’1 He adopted, then, an ethical position which
is subjectivist…”2 Hume, the anti-intellectualist, writes in section 1 of Book III of his Treatise:
‘Those who affirm that virtue is nothing but a conformity to reason; that there are eternal
fitnesses and unfitnesses of things which are the same to every rational being that considers
them; that the immutable measures of right and wrong impose an obligation, not only on human
creatures, but also on the Deity himself: All these systems concur in the opinion, that morality,
like truth, is discovered merely by ideas, and by their juxtaposition and comparison…Since
morals, therefore, have an influence on the actions and affections, it follows, that they cannot be
derived from reason; and that because reason alone, as we have already proved, can never have
any such influence. Morals excite passions, and produce or prevent actions. Reason of itself is
utterly impotent in this particular. The rules of morality, therefore, are not conclusions of our
reason…’ “According to Hume the basic assumptions on which we act, those fundamental
beliefs, that is to say, which are necessary for practical life, are not conclusions drawn by the
understanding from rational argument…he maintains that moral distinctions are derived
ultimately, not from reasoning, but from feeling, from the moral sentiment. Reason alone is not
capable of being the sole immediate cause of our actions. Indeed, Hume goes so far as to say that
‘reason is, and ought to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office
than to serve and obey them.’3”4

“In this same section of the Treatise,” writes Vernon J. Bourke, “Hume introduces the
approbative portion of his theory. To say that an act or character is vicious simply means that one
has a feeling or sentiment of blame in viewing it. Vice and virtue are perceptions in the mind,
just as sensible qualities (sounds, colors, heat) are perceptions and not present in objects. So, in
the second section of Book III, he offers his version of a moral sense theory. This is the function
of feeling pain at the perception of an action which is then called vicious, and of feeling pleasure
in viewing another action which is virtuous. Some such moral feelings are original instincts and

1
H. AIKEN, Hume’s Moral and Political Philosophy, p. 44.
2
V. J. BOURKE, History of Ethics, vol. 2 (Modern and Contemporary Ethics), Image Doubleday, Garden City,
New York, 1970, p. 13.
3
D. HUME, A Treatise of Human Nature, book II, part I, sec. 3.
4
F. COPLESTON, A History of Philosophy, book II, vol. 5, Image Doubleday, Garden City, New York, 1985, p.
319.

1
are ‘natural’; other virtuous feelings arise by means of artifice from the needs of mankind and are
called ‘artificial.’ Justice is an example of such an artificially contrived virtue.”5 Gilson and
Langan explain that “knowing of no way around his own destruction of ‘metaphysical’ reason,
which has no material to build with but phenomenalistic sensations, Hume simply rules out
reason altogether as source of moral conviction. In its place, following Hutcheson and the
English Moral Sense school, he substitutes a feeling which has the merit of suggesting that the
moral reaction is somehow concrete and existential. ‘When you pronounce any action or
character to be vicious, you mean nothing, but that from the constitution of your nature you have
a feeling or sentiment of blame from the contemplation of it.’6 But whereas these moralists had
seemed to suggest a sort of sixth sense common to all men (Hume too must agree that this sense
is roughly the same in all men), Hume integrates the sentiment into his general position on the
passions. Pride and humility, love and hatred were seen to be passions excited ‘when there is
anything presented to us, that both bears a relation to the object of the passion, and produces a
separate sensation related to the sensation of the passion.’7 The feelings of virtue and vice arise
in just such circumstances. These feelings resemble the more general category of feelings of
pleasure and pain but have the particularity of having as their object either ourselves or some
other person: they give rise to any of those four ‘indirect’ passions: pride, humanily, love, or
hate.8 ‘To have the sense of virtue,’ explains Hume, ‘is nothing but to feel a satisfaction of a
particular kind from the contemplation of a character. The very feeling constitutes our praise or
admiration.’ In other words, the good is what awakes in us a feeling of approval—the bad of
disapproval. It is well for Hume to underline feeling, but does that really explain anything—
above all, how will he answer the inevitable question, why the feeling—and you may take why in
any of its possible meanings. Let Hume continue: ‘We go no farther; nor do we inquire into the
cause of the satisfaction. We do not infer a character to be virtuous because it pleases: But in
feeling that it pleases after such a particular manner, we in effect feel that it is virtuous.’9 We go
no farther because, as badly as it is needed now, inquiry into the cause of the satisfaction is no
longer possible. We blew up our bridges in Book I!”10

Hume the anti-metaphysical and anti-intellectual ethical sensist and emotivist thus
destroys the objective normativity of ethics by reducing morality to feeling or sentiment. He was
a subjectivist in ethics: “As an ethical subjectivist, Hume adhered to the theory that morality
consists of principles or values which the individual formulates for himself as a matter of
personal opinion. Hume, furthermore, as a social subjectivist, inasmuch as he also believed that
moral values are based upon the opinions of a particular society. Moral principles are relative to
(determined by and varying with) public opinion. Those ethical standards which the group
approve are called moral, while those which the group disapproves are regarded as immoral.
Whereas moral sentiments are held in common and are widely approved because they enhance
the social good, immoral attitudes are egoistic, detrimental and antisocial. Therefore, according
to Hume, not logic nor reason, but sentiment becomes the foundation of morality. The individual
may choose to approve and accept a specific ethical attitude or moral feeling, or he may find it

5
V. J. BOURKE, op. cit., p 15.
6
D. HUME, A Treatise of Human Nature, Book III, Part I, sec. 1.
7
D. HUME, op. cit., Book III, Part I, sec. 2.
8
Ibid.
9
Ibid.
10
É. GILSON and T. LANGAN, Modern Philosophy: Descartes to Kant, Random House, New York, 1964, p. 272.

2
disagreeable and reject it. He decides what is to be moral conduct for him. But Hume felt that the
best judge of morality would be the disinterested spectator, the innocent bystander who, not
being involved in the social situation, could coldly examine the society and ascertain what its
people as a whole approve or disapprove. Whatever receives social approbation is moral and
whatever encounters widespread disapproval is immoral.”11

Since Hume’s immanentistic sensist phenomenalism led him to agnosticism concerning


the extra-mental, real existence of God as well as the existence and immortality of the human
soul, and as God and immortal human soul do not enter into his system of subjectivistic ethical
emotivism and altruistic utilitarianism, he can be described as an ethical naturalist. As regards
the human will Hume erroneously maintains that it is not an operative power or faculty but rather
“the internal impression we feel and are conscious of, when we knowingly give rise to any new
motion of our body, or new perception of our mind.”12 As regards the question of free-will Hume
firmly belongs in the camp of the determinists. “Nel Trattato sulla natura umana, una volta
abordato il tema delle passioni, Hume inizia lo studio della volontà e della libertà. Per il filosofo
brittanico, la volontà non è una facoltà: è solo un modo di desiderio, il più notabile degli effetti
immediati del dolore e del piacere.13 Più concretamente Hume definisce la volontà come
l’impressione interna che sentiamo e di cui siamo consapevoli quando con piena conoscenza
facciamo sorgere una nuova emozione nel nostro corpo o una nuova percezione nella nostra
mente.14

“In questo senso la volontà viene considerata come impressione interna, e quindi
involontaria. Questo mette un grande ostacolo per affermare la libertà. Hume considera che la
necessità che regna nel mondo materiale regna pure nel mondo delle azioni umane. La libertà è
solo una falsa sensazione dell’indifferenza che abbiamo di fronte alle nostre azioni, che ci porta
ad immaginare che la nostra volontà non è soggetta a nessun’altra cosa. Ma non possiamo
liberarci mai dalla necessità: nonostante il sentimento di libertà che crediamo di sperimentare,
uno spettatore può normalmente inferire le nostre azioni dai nostri motivi e carattere, e, persino
quando non può, conclude in genere che riuscirebbe se conoscesse perfettamente tutte le
circostanze della nostra situazione e temperamento e le più segrete fonti della nostra
disposizione e carattere (…) Questa è l’essenza stessa della necessità.15”16

Answers to Hume’s Emotivist Reduction of Morality to Subjective Feelings or


Sentiments: Critiques of the Moral Sense Theory

Michael Cronin on the Moral Faculty, and a Description and Critique of the Moral Sense
Theory: “The Moral Faculty. By the Moral Faculty is meant that faculty by which we know the
moral character of human acts. The expression ‘moral faculty’ is sometimes, though not
commonly, used to indicate the faculty in which good and evil reside, or that faculty which
elicits good and evil acts—namely, the will. But at present we are dealing with the faculty which
11
W. SAHAKIAN, History of Philosophy, Barnes and Noble, Harper and Row, New York, 1968, p. 163.
12
D. HUME, A Treatise of Human Nature, II, 3, 1.
13
D. HUME, Trattato sulla natura umana, II, 3, 1.
14
Ibid.
15
D. HUME, op. cit., II, 3, 2.
16
M. FAZIO and D. GAMARRA, Introduzione alla storia della filosofia moderna, Apollinare Studi, Rome, 1994,
p. 187.

3
elicits judgments about good and evil—or, as it is called, the faculty of moral judgment. If we
have not headed the present chapter with the title ‘the faculty of moral judgment,’ and thereby
prevented all possibility of ambiguity, the reason is that by such an expression we might seem to
anticipate a conclusion which we shall have to establish in the present chapter—viz., that the
moral faculty is one of judgment and not a sense or instinct. This, we think, is sufficient reason
for speaking of the present chapter as an enquiry into the ‘moral faculty’ simply.

“Now, from what has been already, said on the meaning of the moral ‘good’ and the
nature of the moral criterion, the reader will have no difficulty in surmising what the moral
faculty is. We have said that by moral goodness is meant conformity between the human act and
man’s ultimate end, or between our acts and the law that is imposed upon us by our human
nature. And as the ultimate end of man and the law which our nature imposes are known only
through Intellect, so Intellect or Reason is the faculty by which the human mind judges of
morality. Laws are not presented to the human mind as facts are, immediately and intuitively.
Neither is the human mind directed to the fulfilment of law, as animals are, by the compulsion of
inner instinct. In the case of man, the knowledge of a law and direction of conduct by means of
law always imply reasoning, and, therefore, the moral faculty will be that faculty by which we
are enabled to elicit reasoned judgments about good and evil.

“And the truth of this proposition should be abundantly evident to us even from
experience. For in ordinary life determination of morality involves, as we know, the reasoned
application of one or many general laws to an individual case, and these laws are even quoted in
justification of our action whenever we are questioned about it. The same laws which we give in
justification of our action are the premisses by which we infer that we are right in performing
them. Reason, then, is the faculty by which the human mind determines what is right and wrong
in human action.

“Now, we need not say that in regarding Reason as the moral faculty we are far from
claiming infallibility for this faculty. For Reason may go wrong in the sphere of morals just as it
may in the sphere of Physical Science. But Reason in the sphere of morals is as reliable as in any
other sphere, and can lead the mind to certitude in simple as well as in complex cases, unless,
indeed, the case be exceedingly complex, in which case the fault lies not with Reason, but either
with the way in which the materials of our moral judgments are presented to us, or with the will,
since often the will forces the Reason to issue judgments on only a slender examination of the
case, judgments which of itself the Reason would not have issued.

“The moral faculty is, therefore, the faculty of Reason or Intellect. It is fundamentally
that very faculty by which we carry on our deductions in Mathematics or in any other science
outside the sphere of morals. And what is called Conscience is merely the act which is elicited
when we use this faculty on moral matters—the act, namely, by which we judge whether an act
is good or bad. Moral judgments, therefore, are nothing but the judgments of our ordinary
Reason and intellect. But Conscience is a particular function of our intellect, for in morals we
have to do not with speculative truth but with human actions. Hence, Conscience is called an act
not of the speculative but of the practical intellect. But that practical intellect of which
Conscience is a function is the ordinary practical intellect—the very same intellect which tells a
man what to do or to avoid in ordinary extra-moral questions of the business of life—how, for

4
instance, he ought to invest his money, or carry on a business, or preserve his health. Some
ethicians, indeed, speak of the act of Conscience as if it were a different thing subjectively from
all other acts of the practical intellect, as if Conscience possessed a certain sacredness and
authority based on the nature of the faculty itself which are present in no other intellectual act.
The fact is that the sacredness which attaches to the act of conscience comes to it not from the
faculty which elicits the act but from the object to which the act refers—viz., the ‘good’ and
duty. From the object of the moral faculty, indeed, there comes an element of sacredness which
is not to be found in the object of any other faculty. But the act of conscience, as an act, or the
faculty in which that act resides, and from which it springs, is not more sacred taken in itself than
the common practical or speculative Reason which we use in Mathematics and the other
sciences. Conscience is an act of the ‘sicca lux intellectus’ and no more.

“The moral faculty, then, we repeat, is the faculty of Reason or the practical intellect—
the same faculty as that which guides us in business matters—in matters of ordinary human
prudence.

“We now go on to consider some of the more prominent of those theories on the nature of
the moral faculty which are in direct opposition to the ethical theory of Aristotle and Aquinas.
But before doing so we wish to say that if, as is customary with modern ethicians, and even with
some scholastic writers, we should in the following pages speak of Conscience as a faculty
instead of as an act we are speaking of Conscience only in a loose sense, for, strictly speaking,
Conscience is an act, an act of the practical Reason whereby a man recognises that certain things
are good and to be done, others evil and to be avoided.

“(a) Theory of a Distinct Moral Faculty. That there is a special faculty for the perception
of ethical distinctions amongst acts, and for that end alone, has been the assumption underlying
many ethical theories both ancient and modern. What that faculty is, whether it is a perceptive
sense, a feeling17 or sentiment, a spiritual power, or even a Divine power transcending, yet
dwelling in, human nature, are questions on which schools have been much divided. Jouffroy
claimed that it was a sense akin to the ordinary five; Fichte and Bradley that it was a rational
sentiment or feeling; Reid and Hutcheson that it was a sense of a decidedly spiritual nature, more
affective than perceptive, but distinct from every other faculty within us; More, that it was a
purely spiritual faculty, worthy of a separate name, the ‘boniform faculty’ —to distinguish it off
from the ordinary Reason to which it is allied. But on one matter these theories are all in
agreement—viz., on the originality of the moral faculty —that is, on its separateness from every
other faculty and on the limited character of the function assigned to it—that of cognising moral
distinctions, or rather the moral qualities of acts.

“We shall now adduce some of the arguments on which this theory of a distinct moral
faculty is based.18

17
If we speak of feelings as a faculty, we use the word “faculty” in a very wide sense indeed.
18
The first three arguments here given are taken from Hume’s “Treatise on Human Nature,” the fourth from
Macintosh the fifth from Butler. Hume has other arguments also, but they are too trifling to merit serious attention.
All the arguments here given are intended by their authors to serve a double purpose—first, to show that Reason is
not the moral faculty; secondly, to prove that the function of the moral faculty is distinct.

5
“Argument (1)—The moral faculty has a certain influence over conduct—that is, is itself
a spring of moral action, whilst Reason is not a spring of action. Reason, therefore, and the moral
faculty cannot be one and the same. Hutcheson goes even farther than Hume in this matter, and
declares that not only is Conscience an impulse—that is, a spring of action—but that it is
supreme amongst all impulses commanding and overruling all the rest, so that we have but to
follow this impulse to be sure we are doing the right. Wundt also insists that no intellectual
faculty could be a motive of action, and that consequently Conscience could not be the ordinary
intellectual faculty.

“We reply that if the moral faculty were the speculative intellect19 it could not possibly be
a spring of action. But there is a practical as well as a speculative Reason; and the function of the
practical Reason is to tell a man the means that will lead him to, and are necessary to, any
particular end. Conscience is an act of the practical Reason. It tells us our duty or what will lead
us to our ultimate end. It tells us what acts are good, and good being naturally appetible to the
will, it is thereby indirectly a spring of action. Conscience is, therefore, a spring of action. But it
is a spring of action in a very particular sense. First, it is a spring of action not as Reason simply,
but as practical Reason; and secondly, it moves to action not subjectively as the passions move
one, but objectively—i.e., by putting before the wiil objects to be desired. The spring of action,
then, in the case of Conscience lies rather in the object than in the Reason, for Conscience
merely determines what objects ought to be pursued—that is, what objects should be allowed to
move the will.

“Argument (2)—The second argument for the existence of a distinct moral faculty is that
if virtues and vices (in the sense of good and bad acts) mean respectively agreement and
disagreement with Reason, then, since agreement or disagreement with Reason does not admit of
degrees, virtues and vices could admit of no degrees, and sins should be all equal. But sins are
not all equal. Therefore, virtue does not mean agreement with Reason, and Reason is not the
moral faculty.

“We reply (1)—The question of greater and less in sins and virtues is not a very easy one,
and we shall deal with it in its proper place. Clearly, however, merely positing a new faculty for
the perception of morality does not remove that difficulty. (2) Virtue20 does not, strictly
speaking, mean agreement with Reason, but direction to the ultimate end, and vice, movement
away from it. And as divergence from an end admits of degrees, so there can be degrees of vice,
and, therefore, inequality between sins. But even in the sense of agreement and disagreement
with Reason, virtue and vice may admit of degrees. For since in ordinary commercial and
political affairs ‘rational’ and ‘irrational’ admit of degrees, one action being wiser or more
prudent than another, there is no reason why the same should not be the case in the sphere of
moral action. The only difference between the two spheres is that, whereas morals relate
primarily to the ultimate end of life, commerce and politics refer more directly to intermediate
ends.

19
As Cudworth regarded it.
20
“Virtue” is spoken of by Hume in the sense of the “good,” which meaning we adopt here and in other places in
this work for the sake of argument. The strict meaning of virtue as a habit informing the faculties will be found in
our chapter on the virtues.

6
“Argument (3)—If morality is a relation21 cognised by Reason, then wherever that
relation is discovered it should be recognised as moral. If, for instance, the sin of ingratitude is a
relation cognised by Reason, then wherever that same relation is recognised, even in inanimate
nature, it should be called sinful. So we should call the acorn morally vicious for growing up and
destroying the parent oak, just as sons are morally vicious who prove ungrateful to their parents.
But the action of the acorn is not recognised as morally vicious. Therefore, morality is not a
relation cognised by Reason.

“Reply—It is not true that Reason must judge of the ungrateful son as it judges of the
acorn. For (1) Reason is aware that without freedom there can be no morality. Killing, even in
the case of man, is not regarded as immoral unless it be free; and since the action of the acorn is
determined it cannot be regarded as immoral. (2) Even were the killing of the parent oak tree a
free and imputable action, it need not necessarily be morally evil. Acts that are natural to one
agent may not be natural to another, and nature is the standard of moral good and evil.

“Argument (4)—Objects that are formally different require distinct faculties for their
perception. Thus colour requires one faculty for its perception, sound another. But the good is
distinct from the useful, the beautiful, and all other relations that are perceived by intellect.
Therefore, the ordinary intellect cannot cognise moral good and evil.

“Reply—Pushed to its logical extreme, this means that the beautiful should be perceived
by one faculty, the useful by another, mathematical relations by another, political relations by
another, and so on—a special faculty for each distinct relation. Nay, each distinct moral virtue
should have its own special faculty, and consequently there could, on this theory, be no one
faculty of morality, but an infinite number of faculties. Such a view is evidently extreme. We
may also remark that not every distinction in object requires a distinction in faculty. One faculty
suffices for the perception of red, and green, and yellow. And so, one faculty suffices tor the
perception of all relations, including the moral relation of ‘act to ultmate end.’

“Argument (5)—Butler’s argument is one which we have already referred to, and we
shall have occasion to speak of it later on in the present chapter. We shall, therefore, deal with it
only very briefly here. The moral faculty, he tells us,22 is ‘a faculty in kind and nature supreme
over all others, and one which bears its own authority for being so.’ That is, Conscience
transcends every other natural faculty in man from the special function of direction and
superintendence which it has from nature. Conscience is the source of the categorical imperative,
and in commanding us it proclaims its own authority not only over every other faculty in man,
but over man as a whole. It cannot, therefore, be identified with intellect. It is sui generis and
independent.

“Reply—Butler is not always quite consistent on the question of the function of


Conscience, for he tells us also that the three functions of Conscience are judgment, direction,
and superintendence—and judgment is certainly a function of intellect. Again, he calls
Conscience the faculty of cool self-love. That is, it is a deliberating faculty. But deliberation

21
Hume takes it for granted here that if the moral faculty be Reason, morals must consist in a relation, and vice
versa, if morality is a relation, the moral faculty must be the faculty of Reason.
22
Second Sermon.

7
appertains to intellect. As to the particular argument before us let it suffice to say that
Conscience is not a dictatorial (in Butler’s sense of the term) but a judging faculty. Conscience
points out to me what I ought to do and what acts are good or bad. It tells me that I must do
certain things just in the same way as my Reason tells me I must take a certain road to a town—
with the difference that in the former case the judgment is categorical, in the other case it is
hypothetical. Conscience, therefore, is not supreme over the other faculties. It is simply the
faculty of practical Reason, or, to speak more precisely, it is the act of that faculty.

“These are the main arguments in favour of a distinct moral faculty. They are used to
show that the faculty must be something distinct from Reason, but they do not determine what in
particular the faculty is. We now proceed to discuss some of the several theories that have been
offered on the particular nature of the distinct moral faculty of Conscience.

“(b) Conscience a Moral Feeling or Group of Feelings. ‘Conscience,’ says Mill, ‘is when
the pain attendant on the violation of duty is disinterested, and confined to. the pure idea of duty
and not to any particular form of it.’ ‘Conscience,’ writes Leslie Stephen, ‘is the group of
feelings that makes conformity to the moral law pleasant and non-conformity painful.’ It is, says
Fichte, the feeling of harmony between the pure and the natural impulses in man. ‘Conscience,’
says Hume, ‘is not the work of judgment, but of the heart.’23 Hume also calls Conscience
‘humanity,’ meaning not the universal man or the universal Reason, but ‘humaneness’ or the
‘altruistic feelings.’ Brown tells us that Conscience is not a sense proper but the ‘susceptibility of
moral emotion.’ And even those ethicians who have claimed for Conscience a double
character—namely, that it is a faculty of judgment or of Reason, and also a feehng—yet make it
quite clear that feeling is the primary function, Reason a secondary. This certainly is the view
adopted by Butler and Warburton. In their theories Reason is regarded as something that merely
‘improves upon the dictates of the moral sense,’ either, as Burlamaqui contends, ‘to enable us the
better to discern and comprehend the true rule of conduct,’ or, as Warburton puts it, ‘to show that
the love and hatred excited by the moral sense were not capricious in their operations, but that in
the essential properties of their objects there was a specific difference.’24 All these theories agree
in maintaining that Conscience is a feeling of some sort or other. And in support of this view we
often find adduced certain factors of man’s moral life which, it is said, each of us can discover in
his own inner experience.

“Grounds for This Theory.25 —These facts are (1) that the most prominent element in our
moral consciousness is the feeling of disgust or of liking with which we contemplate acts usually
designated bad or good, and the feelings of sorrow and joy experienced when we ourselves are
the authors of those acts. (2) A certain vagueness in the attestation of Conscience,
notwithstanding the fact that people have the full use of Reason and have a full conviction of the

23
i.e., principally.
24
We would also class under the present theory such explanations of Conscience as make of it an undefined habit or
series of habits, which become conscious on the presence of certain stimuli. Thus Professor Royce defines
Conscience as “a well-knit system of socially acquired habits of estimating acts, a system so constituted as to be
easily aroused into conscious presence by the coming of the idea of a certain act.”
25
It is not easy to find formal written defences of the theory of Conscience now under discussion, nor indeed of any
of the theories of Conscience criticised in the present chapter. Many writers of this school (for instance, M. Lévy-
Bruhl and Leslie Stephen) simply assume that Conscience is a feeling. The above reasons have been given to us for
the most part in controversies on the subject.

8
moral character of an act; thus, men say that they know not why an act is bad, but they firmly
believe it to be so. But vagueness, we are told, is a characteristic of feeling not of Reason. (3)
The fact that Conscience often seems to oppose Reason and all the cognitive faculties. By
Reason men come to the conclusion that such and such an act is lawful for them; still some
power deeper than their Reason, some feeling which refuses to be quelled within them by
Reason, will often proclaim that it is not lawful. This is the ‘still small voice’ of Conscience
which often speaks uncompromisingly and clearly even against our own wellreasoned
judgments. (4) The fact that whereas Conscience grows and declines with feeling, it seems not to
grow with Reason, but rather to lose in sharpness and delicacy; as Reason grows more acute.
Thus, Conscience is much keener in childhood than in later years, and, as a rule, is not at all so
sensitive in the enlightened as in the uninstructed. Reason and Conscience, therefore, do not
seem to grow and decline together. But feeling, like Conscience, is strongest in childhood, and
both feeling and Conscience decline together, one in the sense of becoming more controllable,
the other in the sense of becoming less responsive as Reason develops. Later on again, as Reason
begins to decline, the feelings (of old people) become stronger (for old people are generally more
sensitive), whilst Conscience also seems to grow more sensitive, tending even to the side of
timidity and scrupulosity. Thus Conscience and feeling grow and decline together. (5) Moral
value in acts is unintelligible except in reference to feeling—i.e., to feelings of pleasure and pain.
Consequently the perception of value must be a feeling.

“For these reasons it is held that Conscience is an inner feeling implanted in man
originally by nature and purely independent and self-assertive.

“Disproof of the Theory that Conscience is a Feeling. Against this view we urge the
following arguments: (1) Feelings, as opposed to the attestations of a sense, and the cognitions of
intellect, are wholly unperceptive. Pain is a feeling, and pain is not perceptive of anything; it is
only itself a perceived state of the organism. So the feelings of approbation and of blame that
accompany certain actions are not perceptive. They are merely the tendency of the appetite to
some actions as to suitable—from others as from unsuitable—ends. Now, if Conscience be
anything it is perceptive or cognitive. In no other way than through a cognitive faculty can we
come to know the moral qualities of acts. Cognition is the primary and essential function of the
moral faculty. (2) When ignorant of or in doubt about the moral law we do not seek to remove
our ignorance and our doubt by stirring up the moral feelings within us, or by seeking to sharpen
up our faculty of feeling for its work, but rather by using our reasoning faculty—by arguing from
premiss to conclusion. Moreover, it is worthy of remark that when, after such reasoning we do at
length discover the moral quality of the act, we sometimes experience those very same feelings
of approbation and disapproval which our opponents describe as the fundamental factor in the
perception of good and evil. It is scarcely possible, we maintain, that these feelings should in one
case be the source of our moral judgment and in another case the result of it. (3) Where feelings
dwell in distinct faculties they are easily distinguishable from one another. But where different
feelings belong to the same faculty, then it is not easy to distinguish them in consciousness from
one another. Thus, in the organic feelings, it very hard to say what is the painful and what the
pleasant element, though pleasure and pain are oft present together, making up one confused
mass of organic feelings. Now, in the case of the moral act, there must be innumerable counter-
feelings of pleasure and pain arising out of the various parts of the act—for instance, in the case
of stealing—pleasure that we have grown richer—sympathy for him that is robbed, etc. But out

9
from all these stands the moral judgment, which condemns the act in its totality—even the
pleasurable parts of it, and the force of this moral disapproval within me I know to a nicety—that
is, I know it to be absolute, that it outweighs in value everything else in the way of feeling which
the act excites within me. If, then, the perception of morality is a feeling, how am I able to pick
that element out from the whole mass of feelings which the act excites in me? If moral
perception be a feeling it should follow the laws of feeling. But it certainly is not according to
the laws of feeling that one element in it should stand out, in all cases, quite distinct from the
rest, in the way in which the moral perception stands out. To answer that morality is a feeling sui
generis, and that consequently it need not follow the ordinary laws of feeling, is merely to stick
blindly to an hypothesis and to refuse to submit it to any known scientific test. (4) Often our
most important moral perceptions are not accompanied by any feeling whatsoever. This is the
clear testimony of experience, and it proves that feeling is not the essential factor in moral
perceptions. (5) History shows that men have been known to persist in doing good heroically
even when on their own testimony their feelings were neutral or even opposing.

“However, though Conscience is fundamentally an intellectual act, based chiefly on


intellectual considerations, it is nevertheless guided partly by the feelings which, as we have
already shown, are even a secondary criterion of morality.

“Let us now answer the opposing arguments.

“(1) Disgust and liking the most prominent element in moral consciousness.—The feeling
of disgust and liking, we reply, are not the most prominent element in moral disapproval and
approval, but rather the judgment of disapprobation and of approval. Often, as we have just
pointed out, in approving an act we have very little feeling either of disgust or of liking, and, as a
rule, such feeling becomes prominent only when some person is a beneficiary under our act.
Even, however, were this feeling uniformly prominent, that would not necessarily establish the
priority of feeling in our moral perceptions. For feeling arouses a consciousness of itself more
easily than judgment, because to creatures of flesh and blood the sensuous is more prominent and
more exciting than the coldly rational. But the more prominent element is not always the more
essential.

“(2) Moral consciousness vague.—Vagueness, we reply, can affect a man’s rational


convictions and judgments just as well as it affects his feelings. Vagueness attaches to many acts
that are undoubtedly intellectual, such as our views of business methods and relations.
Vagueness is, in fact, nothing more, generally speaking, than uncertain or badly formulated
knowledge.

“(3) Moral conviction often opposes Reason.—We reply: Reason has power to oppose
and criticise its own work, and, therefore, our moral convictions, though opposed to some acts of
Reason, may still be themselves convictions of our Reason. It is not feeling, for instance, that
revolts against dishonest or plainly insufficient reasoning in science, but rather one’s better
judgment, which clearly belongs to Reason. Reasoning, it should be remembered, is often
dishonest, because the will and passions can exercise a certain control over the reasoning power
and extort judgments from it which the premisses are far from warranting. As a rule, however,
we are not without consciousness of the unfairness done to the reasoning faculty in such cases,

10
and it is this consciousness which enables the reasoning faculty or the conscience still to accuse
us of wrongdoing, even when we have already judged that a certain course of action is lawful for
us. Even, therefore, though Conscience opposes our reasoning, it may still itself be an act of the
reasoning faculty.

“(4) Reason and Conscience do not grow together. Conscience and the feelings do.—We
reply: (a) Even if it were true that as Reason develops Conscience becomes less tender,
Conscience might still be an act of the reasoning faculty, since it is possible for Reason to
develop in one department and at the same time to decline in another. And morals, it should be
remembered, are only one department of Reason. (b) Also the parallelism between the growth of
feeling and Conscience is purely imaginary. The least conscientious man may have the very
deepest feelings. Children are in general much less conscientious than grown people, though they
are more sensitive, and on some points of morals even more scrupulous than grown people. Also
it is untrue that educated people, whose Reasons, it is supposed, are more highly developed, are
less conscientious than others. In matters of Conscience it is difficult to draw conclusions about
large classes of people—everything depends on the individual. If educated people seem as a
body less conscientious than others, this apparent want of moral discernment is to be explained
by the fact that, accustomed as they are to deal in the larger affairs of society, where often it is
not easy to determine a man’s obligation, and where custom has come to recognise and even to
legalise a certain broadness of spirit that has somewhat of the appearance of laxity, they often
seem to border closely upon the unscrupulous when in reality they are well within the moral
boundary.

“Conscience, therefore, though not always developed in proportion to the general Reason,
is not a feeling. It is one special function of the practical intellect.

“(5) Moral value is determined by pleasure and pain.— This argument we have fully
considered in our chapter on Hedonism. Pleasure is not our sole end. And even if pleasure were
our only object of desire all ‘value’ would still not depend on feeling. Some pleasures are
intellectual, not feelings of the senses.26

“(c) Conscience—a sense faculty. ‘Sensistic Morals’ and the theory of a ‘moral sense’ are
not one and the same. As a rule the expression ‘Sensistic Morals’ is applied to the theory that
moral goodness is sensuous pleasure and moral badness sensuous pain. But the theory of a moral
sense, which we are now considering, is the theory that in man there is a special sense faculty for
the perception of good and evil. This moral sense theory is loftier and purer than the hedonistic
system, since whereas in the hedonistic system morality is subjective, selfish, relative, and
alterable, morality on the moral sense theory is regarded as something objective and inherent in
our acts, something that transcends every consideration of advantage or utility whether of the
individual or of the race, something, therefore, worth pursuing in and for itself. But what we
have to discuss now is not the nobility or purity of the moral sense theory, but its truth.

“The ‘moral sense’ theory of Conscience is not always easily distinguishable from the
theory just criticised of ‘Conscience a moral feeling.’ Speaking broadly, the moral sense, as

26
An argument which is sometimes adduced is that conscience is a spring of action and consequently must be a
feeling. We have, however, already shown that Reason as well as feeling can be a spring of action.

11
described by those ethicians whom we are now considering, is as distinct from moral feeling as
the material senses are distinct from material feelings. Thus the senses are primarily perceptive
faculties; the feelings are primarily affective. Whilst, however, the upholders of this present
theory make perception through sense the more original element in Conscience, some of them
hold that it also includes feelings arising out of this sense perception. In so far as this theory
includes a feeling-element in Conscience it is identical with the moral-feeling theory of
Conscience, and stands or falls with that theory. We now limit ourselves to the theory that
Conscience is a sense faculty.

“The theory of ‘Conscience—a moral sense’ has many forms. With Hutcheson the moral
sense is described as a faculty which not only reveals to us the general laws of good and evil, but
also ‘diffuses itself through all the conditions of life and every part of it’27—that is, it recognises
the morality of every particular act. Brown and Reid, on the other hand, consider that the moral
sense is capable of perceiving only general rules of morality.28 Then, too, to emphasise another
point of distinction, with Robinet the moral sense is regarded as purely material—a sixth sense
on a par with the five external senses; whilst with Reid and Hutcheson it is a spiritual sense and
quite different from what are known as the material senses.29 Putting aside now all minor
questions about the particular nature and qualities of the moral sense, we shall confine our
attention to this one question—is the moral faculty a sense faculty—i.e., a non-intellectual
faculty? Can we cognise morality by a sense as we cognise colour by sight and perfumes by
smell? We reply that we cannot; that the moral faculty is not a sense. For:

“1. Every sense has its own particular object, which object is always some corporeal or
material quality. By vision we see colour, by hearing sound. No sense has relation as its formal
object. Now, moral goodness is in its essence a relation—the relation of an act to man’s last end,
and this can be the proper object of an intellectual faculty alone. It may, indeed, be said that sight
perceives the spatial relations of position between one coloured body and another, and hearing a
relation of pitch between different notes. It does not follow, however, that moral relations are
also cognisable by a sense, for local relations are relations between material objects, and if sight
perceives relations of space it is because, primarily and directly, it perceives the bodies as
coloured, space being an attribute of material bodies. But morality is a relation subsisting not
between body and body, but between act and end, or, more precisely still, between the internal
act or act of the will (which sense cannot perceive), and an end which is also unperceivable by
sense. All that the eye, for instance, can see is the dagger plunged into a body, but murder itself,
in so far as it is immoral, lies primarily in the act of the will directing us to kill something which
ought not to be killed. This inner relation the senses cannot perceive. That, therefore, which is
primarily and essentially the seat of morality in human action is out of the reach of the senses
altogether. Consequently, morality cannot be cognised by sense.

“2. Many acts are bad merely because they are forbidden—i.e., they become bad through
a positive law directed against them. Now, such acts, regarded merely as acts, are the very same

27
“On Human Nature,” chapter 1.
28
On the question of the object of the moral sense, these ‘moral sense’ ethicians are as undecided as they are divided
from one another.
29
Curiously enough the moral sense, according to Reid, gives the general principles of morality, Reason gives the
particular conclusion.

12
before and after legislation. Their badness therefore consists in the super-added relation between
them and the prohibitory law; and, so, the faculty that distinguishes between the moral quality of
these acts before and after legislation directed against them must be capable not only of
perceiving the act done but also of appreciating the binding power of legislation. And since this
is impossible to sense, the moral faculty cannot be a sense.

“3. It is as directed against the moral sense theory now under discussion, and not against
the theory of a rational moral faculty, that Hume’s celebrated difficulty assumes importance. If,
Hume argues, immorality be a definite relation cognised by Reason, then wherever that
particular relation happens to be realised, whether in a free or a determined subject, a conscious
or an unconscious one, the Reason should instantly recognise its immorality. Now, we have seen
that this argument does not hold in the case of Reason, since Reason is able to distinguish
between conscious and deliberate violations of a law and mere unconscious action, and,
therefore, though we condemn ingratitude in men we do not condemn the acorn which kills the
parent oak. But, on the other hand, if sense were the faculty by which morality is perceived, it
should be affected in the same way towards the ingratitude of a son who ill-treats his father and
the ingratitude of an acorn which rises up to destroy the parent oak. For a sense could not realise,
as Reason can, that in one case the act was conscious and free and in the other unconscious and
determined. Its judgment, therefore, should be the same in regard to both cases. But we know
from experience that the moral faculty is able to distinguish clearly the merits of the two cases. It
is able to recognise that, whereas the action of the acorn is not a crime, ingratitude is a crime.
Hence, the moral faculty is not a sense.

“4. The senses perceive by direct intuition. All, therefore, that we shall have to say later
against intuitive morals tells equally well against this theory of a moral sense as against the
intuitive theory generally. Thus, if man were endowed with a special sense faculty for the
perception of morality, there is no reason why the morality of certain acts should remain
completely hidden from him whilst the morality of others is knowable. Yet there are acts the
morality of which is not known. The other arguments against the intuitionist theory we need not
anticipate here.

“We see, therefore, that sense is wholly inadequate to the fulfilling of the most essential
functions of the moral faculty. Of course it might be argued that the moral sense is sui generis
and not in anything like the other senses, and that consequently we should not, as in the
foregoing arguments, expect it to follow the laws of the other senses—e.g., that a sense perceives
only what is material, that it perceives only the external element of acts, not the internal, etc. We
answer, as before, that such a form of argument is quite illogical, and that it springs from an
unwillingness to submit a theory to any kind of serious scientific test. There are, if we might
adopt an analogy from Physical Science, arguments that go to prove that electricity is not a fluid,
which arguments, of course, presuppose certain essential characteristics in fluids which are not to
be found in electricity. What would be thought of the scientist who would answer these
arguments by claiming that though electricity is a fluid, it is a fluid sui generis, and has none of
the characteristics of other fluids? The plain answer is—If it has none of the characteristics of
other fluids it is not a fluid. So if the moral faculty be a sense it will exhibit at least those
essential qualities that characterise all the other senses. If it has none of these it is not a sense.”30
30
M. CRONIN, The Science of Ethics, vol. 1, M. H. Gill and Son, Dublin, 1930, pp. 475-491.

13
Austin Fagothey’s Critique of the Moral Sense Theory: “There is no need for a special
moral faculty distinct from the intellect. Moral judgments are not of an essentially different
nature from other judgments, for they are either self-evident truths or reasoned conclusions from
self-evident principles. To understand is the function of the intellect. Any faculty other than the
intellect would not understand why certain actions are good or bad. To make it the norm would
lower man’s moral life to the instinctive and brutish. It is absurd to expect man to use his reason
in the fields of science, business, law, and politics, but not in the realm of his own personal
conduct and in the achievement of his last end…

“Conscience is the norm of subjective, not of objective morality. As we shall see,


conscience is not a special faculty but only the name for the intellect judging the morality of a
particular concrete act here and now. The judgment of conscience is the conclusion of a
syllogism arrived at by a strictly rational process.

“Sentiments, even the noblest such as sympathy, cannot be a reliable guide to right and
wrong. They are constantly varying, depending on our physical condition and emotional mood.
The same act would be good or bad according as one feels. Even if acts be classified by the
feelings they commonly evoke, some objective reason must be assigned why they commonly
evoke such feelings, and this objective reason will be the norm….

“…A norm of morality is a standard to which we compare human acts to determine their
goodness and badness. A proximate norm is immediately applicable to the acts; an ultimate norm
guarantees the validity of the proximate norm.

“The moral sense theory appeals to a faculty distinct from the intellect for judging right
and wrong. There is no need for any such faculty; it would make moral conduct nonrational and
thus unworthy of a rational human being.

“An act is good if it conforms to right reason...The norm of morality…is right reason
concerned with human nature taken completely in all its parts and relations. Parts: 1.
Metaphysical: animality and rationality ; 2. Physical: body and soul ; 3. Integral: members and
faculties. Relations: 1. Created: toward God ; 2. Social: toward fellow man ; 3. Possessive:
toward the goods of the earth.

“God, who directs all things to their ends by the nature He gives them, directs man also to
his end by his nature. God, who gives man his whole nature with all its parts and relations, must
intend for man a kind of activity which preserves the proper harmony in these parts and relations,
and this will be the kind of activity good for man. Hence man’s complete human nature as
manifested to him by right reason is his norm of morality.

“This is the true proximate norm, because nothing else but human nature can fulfill these
functions: (1) It gives the same rules of morality to all men ; (2) It gives all the rules of morality
to each man ; (3) It is immutable yet applicable to all cases ; (4) It is always present and manifest
to all men.

14
“The ultimate norm is the divine nature. As human nature resembles the divine nature,
human activity must resemble the divine activity. Man does right when he does what God does,
wrong when he abuses his freedom to do what God cannot do.”31

Charles Miltner’s Critique of Moral Sensualism: “The theory asserts that the norm of
right actions is the agreement of the act with a certain moral sense, a faculty distinct from the
intellect, by which one discovers as it were instinctively, that is, immediately, without reasoning
about it, what is morally good or bad. This opinion is common to Reid and Hutcheson. Herbart
teaches that morality is a matter of taste, and that the science of Ethics is a department of
Aesthetics.

“Another form of moral sensualism is called sentimentalism. It is the theory put forward
by Adam Smith, and holds that an action is good if it begets sympathy, evil if antipathy. Others
still find the index to moral goodness in the remorse or joy of conscience.

“Criticism. That there is a ‘moral sense’ in man, in the sense of an intellectual habit
which enables him easily to recognize fundamental moral principles and apply them readily to
simple moral situations, we concede. Such judgments may rightly enough be called quasi-
intuitive, just as the primary principles principles of thought may be said to be the result of quasi-
intuition. But this by no means concedes that they are instinctive or non-intellectual. Man
obviously is a moral being because of his intellect and free will. He acts well when he acts
reasonably. To place a man’s moral faculties outside the realm of intellect is therefore
tantamount to denying that he is a man. Sense knowledge – and instinctive knowledge is sense
knowledge – may measure the worth of animal conduct, but not of human conduct.

“At any rate, neither sense intuition nor taste nor sentiment can serve as a basis or
ultimate norm of morality. For all of these are relative and variable. Nothing could be set down
as necessarily good or bad. All would be made relative to the disposition of the agent. One and
the same action could be good, indifferent and evil according as the sentiment of the agent
happened to vary. This would be to make a mockery of morality.”32

Joseph F. Sullivan's Critique of Sentimentalism or Moral Sensism: “Sentimentalism or


Moral Sensism. According to this system, there is in man a special faculty, distinct from intellect
or reason, for the perception of good or evil – a special moral sense which intuitively
distinguishes right from wrong in about the same way that the sense of taste distinguishes bitter
from sweet, and the sense of vision, blue from red. This moral sense is a kind of natural instinct
which reveals what is good and what is bad. Hence, in the opinion of the adherents of moral
sensism, those actions are right and good which agree with and are pleasing to moral sense; those
actions are wrong and evil which disagree with and are displeasing to moral sense. Thus
Shafesbury, Hume, and especially philosophers of the Scottish school, Reid and others.

31
A. FAGOTHEY, Right and Reason, Tan Books, Rockford, IL, 2000, p. 131, 142-143. For an explanation of the
the proximate norm of morality and the ultimate norm of morality, see: A. FAGOTHEY, op. cit., pp. 127-128,132-
142 ; C. BITTLE, Man and Morals: Ethics, Bruce, Milwaukee, 1953, pp. 123-137.
32
C. MILTNER, The Elements of Ethics, Macmillan, New York, 1949, pp. 101-102.

15
“According to Jacobi, man is endowed with a certain feeling by which he distinguishes
between good and bad. Adam Smith proposes the feeling of sympathy as the criterion of
morality. By sympathy is meant the tendency to share the feelings of others, to suffer when they
are afflicted, and to rejoice when they are joyful. In his opinion, therefore, these actions are
morally good which produce in others a certain sympathy or fellow-feeling; those actions are
morally bad which excite antipathy in others. ‘To approve or condemn the actions of others is
simply to recognize that we are, or are not, in sympathy with them, and that we also should feel
right or wrong if we performed the same actions. The sentiment of obligation is simply the fear
of exciting antipathy in others. Hence, one must endeavor to have the sympathy of the greatest
number of men. As those who judge the value of actions may be more or less depraved and
prejudiced, and as the danger of prejudice is greatest when a man passes a judgment on the value
of his own actions, an appeal must be made to an onlooker, disinterested and impartial. It is his
sympathy which man must try to deserve.’ Hence this principle or maxim: ‘Always act in such a
way that the disinterested and impartial onlooker can sympathize with you.’

“Moral Sensism Must Be Rejected. The special moral sense, that is, a special faculty in
man, distinct from intellect or reason, for the perception of what is good and what is bad,
whether it be called sense, feeling, sympathy or taste, is a pure fiction. There is no evidence to
show that man is endowed with any such special faculty. But even if man did possess such a
special faculty, a special moral sense for the perception of good and evil, it could not be the norm
of morality; it would at most be a subjective norm by which to know and discern what is good
and what is bad. The true norm of morality cannot be merely subjective; it must be objective, i.e.,
it must be the objective reason why certain actions are morally good and why certain other
actions are morally bad. Moreoever, even if there were a special moral sense, it could not be the
ultimate norm of morality. For the same action may be both agreeable and disagreeable from
different points of view. In such a case how is the moral sense to decide which of the two
feelings must prevail?

“Thus a physician may have to choose between self-sacrifice in relieving the suffering of
a man having a contagious disease, and the love of his own life and of his family. In such cases
appeal must be made to some other norm and ideal. In other words, we may speak of moral taste
or feeling, but a rational explanation of it must be given. It must be determined why certain
actions are in conformity with, and others in opposition to, the moral sense. Thus it becomes
possible to criticize the actions of others, and to refer them to certain rules which are not, like
individual feelings, subject to endless variations. In fact, all admit that there is a depraved and a
correct moral taste, and, therefore, refer it to some higher norm.”33

Since Hume’s Ethical Emotivism Had a Great Influence on Twentieth Century


Emotivist Ethicians, Such as A. J. Ayer, We Shall Give Brief Critiques of the Latter’s
Ethical Emotivism

The Logical Positivism of Ayer in “Language, Truth and Logic.” Alfred Jules Ayer
(1910-1989) popularized the neo-positivism of the Vienna Circle among English speakers with
his work, Language, Truth, and Logic (1936, second edition 1946). Armand Maurer explains
that, for Ayer, “a proposition is empirical when its validity is determined by the facts of
33
J. F. SULLIVAN, General Ethics, Holy Cross College Press, Worcester, MA, 1931, pp. 80-81, 84-85.

16
experience; in other words, when it is empirically verifiable. But what is meant by ‘verifiable’?
Ayer has written much on this subject without – by his own admission – dispelling all vagueness
from it. He distinguishes between a strong and a weak sense of the term. In the strong sense a
proposition is verifiable if its truth can be conclusively established by experience; it is verifiable
in the weak sense if it is possible for experience to render it probable. The only class of empirical
propositions that admit of strong verification are basic propositions, which refer solely to an
immediate experience such as ‘this is green’ or ‘I feel a headache.’ All other empirical
propositions are only weakly verifiable; for example, general propositions such as ‘all men are
mortal,’ and all statements about the past and future. These cannot be conclusively established; at
best they are highly probable.34

“Ayer does not mean that every significant empirical statement must actually be verified,
but it must at least be able to be verified, either directly or indirectly, by some observations that
would be ‘relevant to the demonstration of its truth or falsity.’35

“In Ayer’s view this rules out metaphysical propositions as meaningless. They are not
intended to express a tautology, like the propositions of mathematics or logic, but rather to assert
something about reality transcending the limits of all possible sense experience. But this means
that in principle they cannot be verified. Ayer argues that the propositions ‘God exists’ and
‘human souls are immortal’ are unverifiable. We cannot conceive of an observation that would
prove them to be true or false; they are in principle unverifiable. Such metaphysical utterances
are neither true nor false; they are literally meaningless.36

“Ayer also uses the verification principle to rule out normative ethical and aesthetic
judgments as true or false. In saying that a certain type of action is right or wrong, or that a work
of art is beautiful or hideous, I am not making a factual statement, not even one about my own
state of mind. I am merely expressing my sentiments or feelings. No objective validity can be
attributed to these statements.37”38

Critique of Logical Positivism’s Principle of Verification. The problem, of course, with


the neo-positivist or logical positivist principle of verification is that the principle itself is
unverifiable in sense experience, it being a metaphysical principle grasped in intellectual
knowing. In his critique of neo-positivism, Mondin quotes thinkers that have criticized neo-
positivism’s canon of the principle of verification as being itself a metaphysical principle:
“Ewing, Lewis, Warnock e altri, si schierarono contro di esso e ne misero in evidenza la
superficialità e le contraddizioni interne. Mostrarono che c’è contraddizione persino in uno dei
canoni fondamentali del sistema, quello che afferma che ha significato teoretico solo ciò che è
traducibile in proposizioni sperimentali. Ora, questo è un canone che non è suscettibile di
verifica sperimentale, e appartiene pertanto a quelle proposizioni metafisiche che i neopositivisti

34
Cf. A. J. AYER, op. cit., pp. 9-12, 36-37.
35
A. J. AYER, op. cit., p. 38.
36
Cf. A. J. AYER, op. cit., pp. 36, 115.
37
Cf. A. J. AYER, op. cit., pp. 107-113.
38
A. MAURER, A. J. Ayer, in E. GILSON, T. LANGAN, and A. MAURER, Recent Philosophy: Hegel to the
Present, Random House, New York, 1962, pp. 540-541.

17
condannano come prive di senso.39”40 William Sahakian writes that “it is interesting to note that
the verification principle of the logical positivists (inasmuch as it is a principle instead of an
observable fact of experience) is not itself verifiable and hence confronts the adherents of this
school with an embarassing self-contradiction.”41

Now, if immanentist phenomenalism of the Humean positivist kind reigns and knowing
is reduced to that of sense knowing, metaphysics as a science is destroyed, for being qua being,
substance qua substance, and cause qua cause, are all grasped by the intellect and not understood
by the senses. Thus, there is an urgent need for the promotion of a methodical philosophical
realism that not only affirms the proper role of sense knowledge (against, for example, the
innatism and apriorism of rationalism), but also the existence and superiority of intellectual
knowing, capable of degrees of abstraction and of the separatio, capable of the resolutio-
compositio, a methodological realism that makes being prior to thought, is respectful of both
gnoseological and ontological transcendence, and does not subordinate or reduce metaphysics,
the science of being qua being, to any one of the particular human sciences discoverable by the
lumen of reason alone (in the case of logical positivism it is the reduction of philosophy to that of
linguistic analysis and logic, centered upon the logic of science).

In his critique of logical positivism, Frederick D. Wilhelmsen writes that logical


positivists have their own first principle and this “is called ‘the principle of verification’ or
‘verifiability.’ For the positivists, all thought is nothing but the way in which we order our sense
experiences: There are no ‘things’ in a realist sense of the term; there are only ‘facts’ which are
the data given sensation. Scientific law and all other ‘meaningful’ discourse rise out of man’s
attempt to order his experience for the sake of his practical mastery over life. A statement has
meaning, makes sense, only if it can be reduced to some sense experience with which it is
directly or indirectly identifiable. Positivists do not mean merely that all human knowledge
begins in sensation which alone confronts existing things; they mean that every affirmation and
negation making sense is composed of a subject and a predicate which symbolize some sensorial
data experienced or capable of being experienced. But the proposition ‘being is being,’ while
including sensible being, transcends the material order; it does not point to sensations or to
‘data,’ but to the truth that things are, that they exist. Therefore, say the positivists, it is
meaningless: not false, not true, just gibberish.

“Through this attack on the primacy of being, the logical positivists sweep away all
metaphysical and religious discourse. The belief that there is a God is not condemned as false; it
is just dismissed as nonsense… In this way, positivism cuts beneath the great debate about the

39
«Il principio di verifica è una proposizione di metafisica e, di conseguenza, se si deve credere al positivismo
logico, priva di senso»(C. E. M. JOAD, A Critique of Logical Positivism, p. 71). «Il criterio della verifica
sperimentale è una riduzione all’assurdo sia della conoscenza che del significato [...] perché l’intenzione di
trascendere l’esperienza immediata è dell’essenza della conoscenza e del significato»(C. I. LEWIS, Experience and
Meaning, in Readings in Philosophical Analysis, a cura di H. Fiegl e W. Sellars, New York, 1949, p. 133). «Anche i
viennesi sono caduti senza accorgersene nella trappola della metafisica da loro tanto detestata»(G. J. WARNOCK,
Criticism of Metaphysics, in The Nature of Metaphysics, London, 1957, p. 141). Cfr. anche A. C. EWING,
Meaningless, “Mind” 46 (1937).
40
B. MONDIN, Corso di storia della filosofia, vol. 3, Massimo, Milan, 1992, pp. 460-461.
41
W. S. SAHAKIAN, op. cit., p. 301.

18
final meaning of human existence that has engaged civilized man since the day he discovered he
had a soul. Positivism is a far more popular philosophy today than idealism…

“If all propositions must be verified in sense experience, then why not the principle of
verification itself? The principle is a complex of meaning, no element of which is identified with
sense experience. ‘Every meaningful proposition is verifiable in sense experience.’ The
predicate, ‘sense experience,’ is not sensible; it is an abstract, intelligible content; it is not
identified with any given sense experience. ‘Meaningful’ is not a sense experience. What is the
‘meaning of meaning’? Whatever it might be, it cannot be identified and understood simply by
pointing at something and punching it. The whole proposition might be said to stand for the
totality of sense experiences and thus to symbolize them all. If this is so, then there is a
‘meaning’ beyond experience, and this ‘meaning’ is meaning itself.

“The amusing thing about positivism is that it proceeds to deny the intelligence by using
the intelligence denied. It sets up an elaborate criterion to destroy the intellect, and the criterion
turns out to be highly intellectual in structure. Positivism is, therefore, self-contradictory, self-
destructive, a system that dissolves from within once it is seen to be what it is.”42

De Finance’s Critique of Ayer’s Ethical Emotivism in “Language, Truth and Logic.” In


his Éthique Générale (1967), Joseph De Finance explains and critiques Ayer’s logical positivist
denial of ethics as a normative philosophical science in Language, Truth and Logic. For the
logical positivist Ayer, “ethical judgments, in common with aesthetical and metaphysical
judgments, have, as such, no meaning. The reason for this is that a meaningful proposition,
which is not also a tautology, has always to be empirically verifiable. Now an ethical (or an
aesthetical, or metaphysical) proposition is not a tautology: if I say: it is evil to lie, I do not
repeat myself, as I would if I were to say: to lie is to lie. But, on the other hand, a proposition of
this kind is not empirically verifiable. There is nothing given in our experienve, nothing
observable and verifiable, which corresponds to the apparent predicate ‘evil.’ Consequently,
propositions of this kind simply express our subjective reaction: aversion, admiration, desire,
fear, etc. Note carefully that they express this reaction; they do not signify it. In saying: it is evil
to lie, I by no means intend to make known my state of conscience: it is of lying that I speak. But
I so speak of it that, literally, I say nothing. My proposition has no more content that a cry of joy
or pain. It is simply a emotive reaction.

“Since they mean nothing, ethical propositions are neither true nor false. Hence, any
investigation concerning them can only be aimed at discovering the subjective, emotional
reasons by which they are explained: ethics, as a science, is entirely reduced to psychology and
sociology.

“Ayer states in Language, Truth and Logic (1946 second ed.): ‘For in saying that a
certain type of action is right or wrong, I am not making any factual statement, not even a
statement about my own state of mind. I am merely expressing certain moral sentiments. And the
man who is ostensibly contradicting me is merely expressing his moral sentiments. So that there
is plainly no sense in asking which of us is in the right. For neither of us is asserting a genuine

42
F. WILHELMSEN, Man’s Knowledge of Reality, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1956, pp. 49-51.

19
proposition.’43 Consequently: ‘There cannot be such a thing as ethical science, if by ethical
science one means the elaboration of a ‘true’ system of morals. For we have seen that, as ethical
judgments are mere expression of feelings, there can be no way of determining the validity of
any ethical system, and indeed, no sense in asking whether any such system is true…It appears,
then, that ethics, as a branch of knowledge, is nothing more than a department of psychology and
sociology.’44”45

“This objection loses its force once it can be shown thay there is a true moral experience,
an authentic grasp of value (nn. 28-31). In addition, the postulate on which the objection is
grounded has at once to be challenged and rejected. To consider every meaningful and non-
tautologous proposition as no more than the description of an experience, presupposes a distorted
analysis of knowledge, of thought, of language. Indeed, not only is the assumption on which the
objection is based, arbitrary: it is also contradictory. The reason for this is that such an
assumption is itself evidently neither tautologous nor empirically verifiable, in the sense intended
by its proponents; and, nevertheless, they would be very irate if one were to retort that, in that
case, it can mean nothing.”46

Fagothey’s Critique of Logical Positivist Ethical Emotivism. Austin Fagothey critiques


logical positivist ethical emotivism in his Right and Reason as follows: “A later variant of the
positivistic approach limits philosophy almost entirely to the field of logic. This is known as
logical positivism or logical empiricism. It holds that there are only two kinds of meaningful
statements: those that can be verified by experience and those that are mere statements of
identity. The latter are true but useless; only the former can contribute to the advancement of
knowledge. What about ethical judgments? Since they are neither empty tautologies nor
verifiable by experience, they are neither true nor false, but meaningless. As in all value
judgments, the only verifiable part of them is the bare fact that I do make such a judgment, not
the content of the judgment itself, which would be its meaning if it had any. The assertion,
‘Stealing is wrong,’ means only this: ‘I disapprove of stealing,’ with perhaps the further
connotation, ‘I hope you will disapprove of it, too.’ Value judgments, aesthetic or moral, are
noncognitive, subjective, and emotive; they are wishes, exhortations, commands, but not
propositions. Only the grammatical form is indicative; they are veiled optatives and imperatives.
The terms good and evil, right and wrong (like the aesthetic terms beautiful and ugly) express
only our emotional reaction, like the grunting and purring of animals.

“This theory, criticism of which belongs to epistemology, concerns the moralist because
it wipes out with one blow all meaning to ethics. The decisive argument against it is that the
emotive theory itself is neither a tautology nor verifiable by experience, and therefore falls by its
own criterion. That emotion may accompany ethical judgments is no reason to deny that ethical
judgments have a cognitive content. Most people are convinced that their value judgments do
have meaning, that they are in fact the most important of all judgments, and no amount of telling
them otherwise alters this fact. Not those who deny this fact but those who acknowledge it and

43
A. J. AYER, op. cit., pp. 107 seq.
44
A. J. AYER, op. cit., p. 112.
45
J. DE FINANCE, An Ethical Inquiry, Gregorian University Press, Rome, 1991, pp. 17-18.
46
J. DE FINANCE, op. cit., p. 19.

20
try to explain it are proceeding in a genuinely scientific manner. The science devoted to this
endeavor is ethics.”47

Hume and Altruistic Utilitarianism

Hume was not only an ethical emotivist but it is clear from his 1741-1742 Essays, Moral
and Political48 and his 1751 An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals49 that he also
advocated a form of altruistic utilitarianism and can be described as a precursor to the nineteenth
century altruistic Utilitarians. “Hume’s ethics is conditioned very largely by positions previously
adopted, and that it contains different lines of thought. The utilitarian element was later
developed by Bentham and the two Mills, while the insistence on feeling has found fresh life in
modern empiricism in the emotive theories of ethics.”50 “Hume’s influence in ethics has been
extensive…His stress on social utility leads into British utilitarianism in its several varieties. His
emphasis on feelings of approval or disapproval is eventually taken up by psychological
approbative ethics and, especially, by the school of emotive ethicians.”51 Joseph F. Sullivan
describes Utilitarianism as follows: “This is the system of those who hold that the essence of
morality consists in the utility of human actions for attaining the temporal welfare or happiness
of man; so that actions are to be regarded as morally good or morally bad, according as they do
or do not contribute towards the attainment of this temporal well-being or happiness. ‘The
principle which is common to all forms of Utilitarianism may be formulated as follows: Utility is
the true standard of morality; if you wish to know whether an action is good or bad morally, find
out whether it is useful or not. If useful, it is good; if hurtful, it is bad. Virtue, no doubt is an
excellent thing in its way; but it is excellent because it gives the greatest amount and the highest
order of pleasure. Here is the whole system, stripped of its accessories and of its sentimental
dress. For the thorough-going utilitarian there is no difference between utility and morality—
they are convertible terms.’52

“Utilitarianism assumes different forms according to the different ways in which its
adherents interpret utility as the test and criterion of morality…1) Individual Utilitarianism or
Egoistic Hedonism.—This theory teaches that the end of each man and that which each ought to
seek is his own greatest personal pleasure; and that consequently those actions are to be regarded
as right and good which promote or increase that personal pleasure of each, and those actions are
wrong and bad which tend to produce the reverse of that pleasure…2) Social Utilitarianism,
Universalistic Hedonism or Altruism.—This is the system of those who maintain that the
ultimate end of the individual and what each ought to seek is the happiness of mankind at large,
or of society—that what we ought to aim at in our actions is the well-being of others.
Consequently, actions are right and good or wrong and bad morally, according as they promote
or hinder the happiness or well-being of human society; and in proportion as an action is
conducive or injurious to the common good of society, in the same proportion is that action
better or worse morally…”53
47
A. FAGOTHEY, op. cit., pp. 24-25.
48
D. HUME, Essays, Moral and Political, “Of the Original Contract.”
49
D. HUME, An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, III, 1.
50
F. COPLESTON, op. cit., p. 342.
51
V. J. BOURKE, op. cit., p. 17.
52
HOLAIND, Natural Law and Legal Practice, p. 118.
53
J. F. SULLIVAN, op. cit., pp. 76-77.

21
Critiques of Utilitarianism

Thomas Higgins’s Critique of Utilitarianism: “Utilitarianism is correct in its contention


that an act is good if it leads to happiness but its notion of happiness is false. 1. Its fundamental
error is its misconception of man’s end. Utilitarianists either hold the ‘happiness now’ theory or
the theory that the individual or humanity is an end in itself. 2. Its second error is confusion of
useful, delectable, and perfective. Happiness is not merely the delectable: good and useful are
not adequately synonymous. 3. It establishes a norm which is inconstant and variable. However,
a standard whereby other things are measured should be unchanging to be reliable. A variable
standard is no standard. The modern heirs of utilitarianism readily admit this acknowledging that
moral values and standards are in a state of perpetual flux, but a relativistic, ever-changing
morality we shall show to be absurd.”54

Celestine Bittle’s Critique of J. S. Mill’s Altruistic Utilitarianism: “James Mill (1773-


1836) was a faithful disciple of Bentham, but his son, John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), revised
Bentham’s doctrine by recognizing qualitative as well as quantitative differences in pleasure.
John Stuart Mill leaves no doubt as to his position. ‘The creed,’ he states,55 ‘which accepts as the
foundation of morals, Utility, or the Greatest Happiness Principle, holds that actions are right in
proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of
happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain, and
the privation of pleasure…It is quite compatible with the principle of utility to recognize the fact,
that some kinds of pleasure are more desirable and valuable than others. It would be absurd that
while, in estimating all other things, quality is considered as well as quantity, the estimation of
pleasure should be supposed to depend on quantity alone…It is better to be a human being
dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.’

“As a proof of the truth of ethical utilitarianism Mill advances the doctrine of
psychological hedonism. Ethical hedonism, of itself, merely claims that pleasure ‘ought to’ be
the only thing desired; psychological hedonism, however, claims that the only thing man ‘can
and does’ desire is pleasure. Here are Mill’s words56: ‘The only proof capable of being given
that an object is visible, is that people actually see it. The only proof that a sound is audible, is
that people hear it; and so of the other sources of our experience. In like manner, I apprehend, the
sole evidence it is possible to produce that anything is desirable, is that people do actually desire
it. If the end which the utilitarian doctrine proposes to itself were not, in theory and in practice,
acknowledged to be an end, nothing could ever convince any person that it was so. No reason
can be given why the general happiness is desirable except that each person, so far as he believes
it to be attainable, desires his own happiness. This, however, being a fact, we have not only all
the proof which the case admits of, but all which it is possible to require, that happiness is a
good: that each person’s happiness is a good to that person, and the general happiness, therefore,
a good to the aggregate of all persons.’ In these words J. S. Mill believes that he has given the
proof that the happiness of the individual and of the race (‘the aggregate of all persons’) is the
supreme good of man and that pleasure-and-pain is the norm of morality.

54
T. HIGGINS, Man as Man, Bruce, Milwaukee, 1949, p. 53. For a detailed explanation of man’s ultimate end, see:
C. BITTLE, op. cit., pp. 99-142.
55
J. S. MILL, Utilitarianism, ch. 2.
56
J. S. MILL, op. cit., ch. 4.

22
“Evaluation. There can be no question about the fact that social or altruistic utilitarianism
is a great improvement on the older system of egoistic hedonism. It at least makes a brave
attempt attempt to bring man’s social nature into the general field of ethical conduct.
Nevertheless, utilitarianism must be rejected as deficient and inadequate.

“First. John S. Mill admits that a distinction must be made between quantitative and
qualitative pleasures and that the latter are ‘preferable’ because they are ‘higher.’ On the mere
basis of ‘pleasure’ there are no such things as ‘higher’ and ‘lower’ pleasures, and Mill has no
right, from a utilitarian standpoint, of making such a distinction; pleasure is simply pleasure. By
making such a distinction, Mill surreptitiously introduces a ‘moral’ classification that has no
foundation in utilitarian principles. If there are ‘higher’ and ‘lower’ pleasures of ‘higher’ and
‘lower’ moral value (and we do not deny this), we admit some other criterion and norm as the
standard which measures the morality of actions, independently of their pleasurable and painful
effects, so as to know which pleasures are ‘higher’ and which ‘lower’ and why they are to be
adjudged in this manner. That, however, is a relinquishment of the fundamental position of
utilitarianism, and utilitarianism collapses as the true interpretation of moral conduct.

“Again. Mill is guilty of two serious logical fallacies in his proof of utilitarianism.
Something is ‘visible’ because people see it, and something ‘audible’ because people hear it.
From this he concludes that something is ‘desirable’ because people actually desire it. There is
an equivocation in the word ‘desirable,’ as used here by Mill. ‘Visible’ means ‘capable of being
seen’ and ‘audible’ means ‘capable of being heard’; hence, Mill should conclude that ‘desirable’
should here mean ‘capable of being desired,’ and that conclusion would be logically correct. But
that is not what Mill intends to infer. The word ‘desirable’ has a twofold meaning, namely,
‘capable of being desired’ and ‘ought to be desired.’ The first meaning represents a
psychological fact, the latter a moral fact, and the two meanings are obviously not identical. The
argument by analogy, which Mill here uses, merely establishes the first meaning; but Mill would
have us believe that it establishes the truth of the second meaning in the sense that ‘desirable’
means ‘ought to be desired.’ This is an illegitimate substitution of meanings. Mill is guilty of the
fallacy of figure of speech,57 and he does not prove his point that man ‘ought to’ desire general
happiness. The second fallacy consists in the manner in which he attempts to prove that ‘general
happiness is desirable (because) each person, so far as he believes it to be attainable, desires his
own happiness.’ Here he argues from the fact that each individual desires his own happiness to
the fact that each individual also desires, or should desire, the happiness of all. The fallacy is
patent. The fact that each individual desires his own happiness merely proves that each
individual in the entire aggregate of human beings desires his own happiness; it does not prove
that he ‘ought to,’ or actually does, desire the ‘general happiness of the aggregate of all persons’
as distinct from his own, and that is precisely the point in question so far as the truth of
utilitarianism is concerned. Due to this double fallacy, Mill has failed to prove that universal
happiness, in the sense of ‘earthly happiness through pleasure,’ is the supreme moral end of man.

“Finally. As a criterion and norm of morality the ‘greatest happiness principle’ is


valueless. Everybody without exception is bound by the law of morality. But how is the average
man to know what actions are conducive to the general happiness of all concerned? The interests
of the various individuals and groups and communities and nations are so different, depending so
57
Cf. C. BITTLE, The Science of Correct Thinking, ch. 21.

23
much on circumstances of time and place and social conditions, that even the wisest statesmen
often are not in a position to decide what course of action is best for the promotion of the general
welfare. The consequences of actions are as a rule so manifold and complex that ‘general
happiness’ as a norm of moral action is undeterminable and inapplicable and therefore useless.”58

Charles Miltner’s Critique of Utilitarianism: “In this theory the moral goodness or
badness of an act is derived solely from its utility. An act is right if it promotes utility, wrong if it
does not. Utility then means the power of an act to confer happiness or pleasure either upon the
individual or upon society as a whole, and since this happiness or pleasure means present
happiness or pleasure, it is to be sought in the possession of purely temporal goods in individual
or social prosperity. It is evident that this theory places man’s final end within the confines of the
present life.

“The theory has two general forms with many minor varieties. Individual utilitarianism,
or what is sometimes called hedonism or epicureanism, calls an act good if it produces pleasure
of a sensual nature to the individual, bad, if annoyance or pain. This is utilitarianism in its
crudest form…Social utilitarianism sets up social well-being or prosperity as the norm of right
conduct…

“Criticism. The point at issue here is not whether utility is a norm in judging of the
morality or the reasonableness of an act. On that score all agree. Nemo ad inutile tenetur is a
Scholastic aphorism. It is plain nonsense for a man to chase his shadow. The sole point in dispute
here is whether utility is the ultimate and exclusive reason why an act is good or bad. This we do
not admit, for: (a) Certain acts, as we have shown, are intrinsically good or bad, and that,
irrespective of their utility in procuring pleasure either to the individual or society as a whole. (b)
From this it follows that there is an objective, necessary, and hence universal norm of morality.
For intrinsic morality is based on the very essences of things, and essences are immutable. But
utilitarianism offers nothing but a relative and variable norm. For since the action viewed in
relation to the various dispositions of one and the same person, or to different persons, may
terminate quite differently so far as pleasure or pain, loss or gain, are concerned, the norm would
vary with each individual, and with the varying circumstances of each individual. It would, in
fact, be no final norm at all. Utility, therefore, cannot be accepted as the basis of objective
morality. Rules are not made for one, but for many. Moreover, they are fixed standards, not
swinging weather vanes. (c) Utility as the exclusive standard of moral conduct would allow of
actions, universally considered as atrocious crimes, becoming good and virtuous acts, provided
that they resulted in the increase of private or public utility or pleasure.”59

58
C. BITTLE, op. cit., pp. 171-173.
59
C. MILTNER, op. cit., pp. 97-98, 100-101.

24

Anda mungkin juga menyukai