PHL275H5 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Causal Reasoning
Document Summary
Hume is expressing his opponent"s view when he says men are only so far virtuous as they conform themselves to reaons" dictates . There is a combat between reason and passion. Hume will try to show that: reason alone cannot be the motive to any action of the will, reason can never oppose passion in the direction of the will . Always leaves us in the world of ideas . It can be useful in showing certain things that we already care about (but cannot motivate on itsown) According to hume, learning that smoking causes cancer can motivate us to act in a certain way only if we already care about something like avoiding cancer. We have thus proven that (1) reason alone cannot motivate. But it follows from (1) that (2) reason cannot oppose a passion. There are two cases in which passions can be loosely called unreasonable. I. e. (desire to ride a unicorn (not going to happen) )
