Is Morality Just a Feeling? Exploring Hume’s Theory of Moral Sentiments

Can we derive morality from reason? Or is it simply a feeling people have? Why do so many people disagree on moral questions?

Join Syracuse Philosophy Meetup for our third discussion on morality. This time we’ll be discussing David Hume’s moral philosophy, which proposed that what we call morality is not derived from reason, but is instead based on our emotion-based approval or disapproval of certain kinds of acts. In addition, he thought that morally good acts ultimately derived their “goodness” from how useful or beneficial they were to other people.

We’ll be asking such questions as “Is morality derived from reason?” “What part do emotions play in our moral judgements?” “Why do we consider certain acts to be morally good?” “Can you derive an ought from an is?”

As always, there’s absolutely no need to do any reading or homework beforehand: all the basic ideas will be explained enough that you can jump right into the conversation. But if you are interested in digging in a bit, I recommend the following:

I found this youtube video very good (~42 minutes), I think this guy gives pretty good lectures:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyZhCLogUaA

For the slightly more ambitious, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is solid. I’d recommend parts 4 and 7:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hume-moral/#namoj

Finally, his An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals is an original text by him on morality. I’d just read Section 1: The general sources of morals.
This version is updated with less old-timey language:
https://www.earlymoderntexts.com/assets/pdfs/hume1751.pdf
This is the real version:
https://econfaculty.gmu.edu/klein/Assets/Hume_Morals.pdf

Happy Thinking!