This study examines Hume's attempt, in the Treatise and the Second Enquiry, to treat moral philosophy as a branch of the science of human nature. Hume's effect to naturalize moral philosophy includes more than a causal inquiry into the workings of the human mind. He takes moral practices to originate both in psychological sources and in social conventions . His naturalism thus includes a 'natural history' of morality; a causal inquiry into the likely origins of the complex social practices which…
Read moreThis study examines Hume's attempt, in the Treatise and the Second Enquiry, to treat moral philosophy as a branch of the science of human nature. Hume's effect to naturalize moral philosophy includes more than a causal inquiry into the workings of the human mind. He takes moral practices to originate both in psychological sources and in social conventions . His naturalism thus includes a 'natural history' of morality; a causal inquiry into the likely origins of the complex social practices which we call morality. He considers some moral practices--those which he calls 'artificial'--to be more dependent than others upon the development of social conventions; however, even the 'natural' elements of morality are inextricably bound up with social conventions. ;The artificial virtues require special explanation, since they embody forms of social cooperation that are not 'natural'. Yet Hume rejects the contract view: conventional regularites in behavior bound up with the artificial virtues could not have arisen from explicit promise alone. He also rejects the contractarian claim that there is a standpoint independent of our practices from which we can assess their rational acceptability. He would reject, on similar grounds, any utilitarianism on which the standard of utility provides a tool for social reform. ;Hume's natural history of morality, and the 'science of man' of which it is a part, are consistent with his scepticism because he is not a radical inductive sceptic. He accepts a 'mitigated scepticism' on which knowledge of nature is comprised of probable claims about experience. His mitigated scepticism might have led to an 'epistemology naturalized' analogous in important ways to moral philosophy naturalized. However, as a mitigated sceptic, Hume is prepared to treat inductive practices as revisable, whereas mitigated scepticism in morality leads him to view moral practices as too fragile to withstand revision. This view raises doubts about the capacity of moral philosophy naturalized to provide an adequate understanding of moral practices
