David Hume’s Emotivism and Kant’s Transcendental Idealism
1. David Hume: Emotivism and Morality
Emotivism and the Ethics of Hume
Hume emphasizes the role of emotions and feelings in human behavior. Against those who consider reason responsible for our decisions and actions, Hume argues that any action is upheld by emotion and feelings. While it is true, Hume says, that we reflect before making decisions, these arguments are motivated by emotions. Actions are motivated by the pleasure or pain they cause us because, according to him, we seek pleasure and reject what causes us pain.
This feeling of pleasure is not to be understood in a selfish sense, even when we are not looking for a particular benefit. When pleasure and happiness affect the maximum number of people, it gives us as much pleasure as our own benefit. Hume’s ethics is a utilitarian ethics, as it provides pleasure and is most useful.
2. Kantian Program: Theoretical Reason
Kant believes that rationality is not limited to the field of knowledge but is also present in the area of action. Reason, on the one hand, is the instrument that we use to know, and on the other, it is the faculty that guides our action. He distinguishes between two types of reason:
- Theoretical reason: Refers to the field of knowledge.
- Practical reason: Refers to the area of ethics.
Kant, having a rationalist background, acknowledged that rationalists maintained that reason could achieve universal knowledge, while empiricists argued that reason operates only within experience. Kant was dissatisfied with both. He asked:
- How is knowledge possible?
- Is the objectivity of knowledge possible?
- What are the limits of knowledge?
He sought a solution in a conception of knowledge that synthesized the two currents (empiricism and rationalism).
Background Knowledge
Kant analyzes the capabilities of human reason to obtain objective knowledge and also wants to know if metaphysics can achieve these requirements of objectivity. This is discussed as Kant’s Copernican Revolution or the Copernican turn. Copernicus, seeing the difficulties in explaining planetary movements in a universe where everything revolved around the Earth, reversed the perspective, with human beings and the Earth orbiting the Sun. This provided a simpler explanation.
Kant did the same to justify the universal value and necessity of science, making the object adapt to the peculiarities of the subject. Knowledge can be universal and necessary because it results from the imposition of the subject on the object. This philosophy is known as Transcendental Idealism. Idealism posits mental structures because only the subject (space/time) allows for transcendental knowledge, and mental structures are universal because they have an a priori character (relations of ideas).
Synthetic A Priori Judgments as the Basis of Science
- Analytic judgments: Do not extend knowledge. They tell us nothing we do not already know. Ex: Singles are not married.
- Synthetic judgments: Expand our knowledge. Provide new information. Ex: Singles play a sport.
- A priori judgments: Truth does not depend on experience; therefore, they have universal validity.
- A posteriori judgments: Truth depends on experience; we have to verify them.
Kant introduces a third kind of judgment: synthetic a priori judgments, and argues that they make science possible. He wants to broaden knowledge and, because it is a priori, it must be universal and necessary.