Question

Hume, “Ethical Judgments and Matters of Fact”

1. How does Hume employ the fact of animal incest to advance his argument that morality does not consist merely of "matters of fact" and that morality is not merely an "object of reason"?

2. Explain Hume's idea that morality is matter of feelings and sentiments.

3. Why does Hume have a problem with deducing an ought from an is?

Answer 1

Answer:

1. Hume was one of the most important sceptics and philosopher in the history.

according to Hume, we cannot know about relations of cause and effect via “a priori reasoning” (reasoning without information from experience) because he believed that generally our perception and prediction about observation without been observed it is known as inductive references.

For example: if one says that cake he eats is nourishing justify the expectation that other cake will be nourishing and also claim that all cake is nourishing. He also asks the basis of our perception about unseen or unobserved things on the inductive references basis. He proposed an argument as a dilemma in which any possibility of reasoning rules out to results induction e reference.

According to him two types of arguments demonstrative and probably not solve this problem because demonstrative create wrong results and probable arguments are circular. Hence, according to him, it is impossible to know the cause and effect via only reasoning without any knowledge from experiences because our perception may be different from the reality due to the lack of information.

Hence, he was the sceptic in that whether the presence of "i" is real or imaginary.

2. Morality may not be derived from the reasoning but they are derived from moral sentiments like praise, esteem or blame that is felt by the individual who contemplates action or trait.

3. According to Hume, the knowledge that is given of universe is and in what way we tell it out to be are different.

According to him two types of arguments demonstrative and probably not solve this problem because demonstrative create wrong results and probable arguments are circular. Hence, according to him, it is impossible to know the cause and effect via only reasoning without any knowledge from experiences because our perception may be different from the reality due to the lack of information.

Hence, he was the sceptic in that whether the presence of "i" is real or imaginary.

All knowledge is based on definition or logic or observation.