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This 6 page paper looks a Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature and talks about where morality comes from. The idea that morality can come from reason is disputed. No additional sources cited.
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6 pages (~225 words per page)
File: RT13_SA315THN.rtf
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that moral judgments or perceptions could ever arise by the rational or cognitive faculty of our minds all by itself. Hume states: " Since morals, therefore, have an influence
on the actions and affections, it follows, that they cannot be derivd from reason; and that because reason alone, as we have already provd, can never have any such influence.
Morals excite passions, and produce or prevent actions. Reason of itself is utterly impotent in this particular. The rules of morality. therefore, are not conclusions of our reason" (PG).
He then explains how such judgments or perceptions do arise. In the course of the argument, one is led to conclude that since vice and virtue are not discoverable through
reason, or the comparison of ideas, it has to be by means of an impression or sentiment so the people are able to mark the difference between them (Hume
PG). While Hume throws out possibilities of reason, he admits that there must be an explanation for how morality is derived. He explains that decisions are based on perceptions
and all perceptions are either impressions or ideas (PG). Morality then is more properly felt than judgment (PG). Hume probes deeper and ask just what the nature of
these impressions are, and how they operate (PG). The impression may after all arise from virtue, or to be agreeable, and that proceeding from vice is to be
uneasy (PG). Hume does equate pleasure with virtue and pain with vice. Of course, not everyone would agree with this sentiment. After all, many people derive pleasures from their
vices and are criticized morally for it. So, the question that continues to loom, for which Hume tries to answer, goes to where morality comes from. Hume goes on to
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