How Modern Life is Wrong Because of David Hume
Monday, 7 May 2007 - 20:05
I used to think that David Hume was a big silly goose, but he's not: he's terrifying because he's what's wrong with modern life. Well, not so much him, since he died rather a while ago, but the fact that he's taken seriously.
There was a programme on the radio last night suggesting that politicians should stop making economic decisions and give control to a panel of experts because the electorate make irrational decisions. Another this morning was about the rise of cosmetic surgery and the numbers of women convinced that they need it. A Dutch academic who interviewed patients over eighteen months only once managed to guess the procedure they wanted. In both these cases, and many, many more in modern politics and the media, a Humean picture of rationality is assumed, and that's a very bad thing.
Hume thought that reason was purely theoretical, not practical: we don't decide what's good for us, we just have to work out how to achieve it. What is good is given to us as a fixed matter of fact, whether it's what we desire, what society thinks best or just The Truth.
Our beliefs, he thinks, can't give reasons to do anything, since two people can both happily believe that slumping in a chair will give them bad posture, but only someone who wants good posture will sit up. Our ideas about what is good and bad do motivate us to act, so they can't report beliefs, and that means they're not subject to rational criticism. For Hume, a reason to do something must motivate, it must make someone want to do that thing.
We tend to agree in our moral judgements simply because of the sort of creatures we are. Proto-humans needed to get along with at least their mate and offspring, so couldn't be utterly selfish. Living in society provides great benefits compared to the law of the jungle, but only for people who are able to co-operate with each other. There will then be a powerful selection pressure for people who want to be sympathetic and moral.
All well and good, but we can act against our inclinations, just as a woman can reject any evolutionary impetus to have children by becoming a nun. More seriously, someone might just really want to fly aeroplanes into skyscrapers, without any concern for the people he would kill. For Hume, there is nothing irrational about this person since he is simply trying to best achieve what he thinks is best. And that is very disturbing view to take, since we think there is something wrong with people who want to kill, and we think that they should care about others.
That's just it: we do subject normative opinions to rational criticism. Reason doesn't just assess the truth of our beliefs but also makes sure they're consistent. What we want to do isn't just a fact about us but an assertion about what is valuable: if I want to be an astronaut, I am saying there are benefits to that profession that make it worthwhile. But we can have other beliefs about what is worthwhile and these can conflict with what happens to motivate us. I might want to eat cream cakes all day long, but I also believe doing so would be bad because of my future health. Moreover, it would be more rational to reject an unsupported desire over a conclusion logically derived from beliefs, since we think we have good reasons for those beliefs.
There are two different kinds of answers to "why do that?" and Hume conflates the two. One is a motivation, a historical explanation giving a series of mechanical steps to lead to an action. The other is a justification, a reason to think it is worth doing. These aren't the same at all: there's a justification for a child to eat his greens because they're nutritious even if he really doesn't want to.
Hume is also what's behind Isaiah Berlin's influential idea of negative liberty, which have been political orthodoxy at least since Thatcher. For Berlin, a person is free to the extent that she is left alone to get on with what she wants to do, so the government should interfere as little as possible. But as we've seen, I don't have to think everything I want is a good thing. I might be a very talented musician and want to play a concert, but suffer from overpowering stage fright; my overpowering motivation would be to stay backstage, but I think that would be very bad indeed. For others to leave me alone to get on with things myself wouldn't help me get what I want but callously abandon me to my own weakness of will.
Instead, because we think we decide what's best to do by weighing up reasons, each of us must think that our choices are valid for everyone else who's rational. Whatever is a good reason for me is also a good reason for you, and I have to think my reasons were good or I wouldn't have picked them. So, we don't choose just what's the best thing to do in a particular situation, but rules and principles for everyone to act by.
This means a panel of economists deciding policy would be very bad indeed. People are not in the least bit irrational when choosing governments who don't maximise economic growth or whatever on particular occasions. For that to be irrational, we would have to choose principles which said it was always best to do that, no matter the consequences. And while such a rule may benefit most people, it would also have drastic consequences for some, for instance those at the bottom who would lose any job security. I would not be happy if I was in their position and the rest of the public worsened my situation, so I cannot endorse this rule in all situations. It would be irrational to endorse any principle that didn't say everyone must be treated decently, because in that case, you'd endorse someone abusing you. Economic growth is usually a good thing, but only because it's a good way to make everyone better off and better able to do what they really want to do.
The same can be said for the cosmetic surgery case. Just because you feel like you need cosmetic surgery, it doesn't mean you really would be better off if you had it. What's more, you just don't need to think that anyone has any right to make you feel that you need an operation to get ahead in life. It's always up to you to choose what you value, and can quite happily conclude that it's better to be less famous but have more self-respect.
Why anyone would even want Hume to be right is completely beyond me: his views are just bad faith. He would remove any power of choice from the individual, making him just a passive vehicle for some external force to get what it wants. Instead, a person is empowered, able to decide what he wants and subject to no one else's whim, not forced to strive after something he doesn't even value.
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