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David Hume's Influence The Will

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David Hume's Influence The Will
Hume is responding to traditional views that right action can and should be determined by reason and Reason cannot influence the will. This is shown by the following: firstly, reason can never motivate action and secondly, reason can never oppose or prevent actions motivated by passions or emotions. Reasons are of two kinds: demonstrative and probabilistic. Demonstrative reasoning is deductive; it allows us to draw specific claims from general ideas. Probabilistic (or causal) reasoning is inductive; it allows us to make general claims from specific ones. Neither kind capable of motivating. Hume draws a distinction between the world of ideas and the world of realities. Our motivation to act is concerned with realities, with specific ends and purposes (like wanting to clear a debt). Contrastingly, our reason is concerned with the world of ideas, with means for those ends (like aggregating numerical sums to calculate the …show more content…
He explains two types of calm passions that may be commonly mistaken for reason, providing an explanation for human kindness and charity as well as a general propensity to seek goodness. Violent passions have a powerful influence on the will and may make people act in ways that are threatening to other people - this could seem a problem for Hume seeking to ground a theory of morality in emotions. So he illustrate that calm passions is associated with good and moral behavior that can constrain other more violent passions. Hume argues that these violent passions can actually be sensible (in a self-defense situation) and that when they are not sensible, calm passions can counteract them. When an agent is observed to have a conflict of will to act in a violent or calm way, and chooses the calm, Hume is arguing that this is the effect of their calm passion rather than
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