Our reading in my ethics class for Hume was from his Treatise of Human Nature-- Book 3, Part 1, Section 1.
I've struggled with this text. I think i've pin-pointed the key issues to these two points
- Hume claimes that nothing is ever present to the mind but its perceptions
- If this is true how can impressions ever lead to more complex ideas
For some reason I can only read this [everything is perception] to only lead to pure automatons.
But Curtis Cate in his biography on Nietzsche noted that Hume's interest/focus was in morals and history--and that his empiricism "could be absolutely fatal for science."
Which then sent me back to Hume:
Morality is a subject that interests us above all others: We fancy the peace of society to be at stake in every decision concerning it; and 'tis evident, that this concern must make our speculations appear more real and solid, than where the subject is, in a great measure, indifferent to us.
I think i've been falling into a trap of focusing on some kind of Humeian theory of mind at the expense of understanding Humeian questioning of Morals. Not that Hume doesn't have a theory of mind, or that Hume's theory of mind isn't deeply connected to his theory of morals. I just seem to be struggling with this text a whole lot and i'm trying to back my way into a better understanding.
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