My Objections to Hume

I posted the following in response to a request for my thoughts on Hume:

My main two objections to Hume are his view of induction and his view of morality.

I don’t agree that inductive inferences are merely a matter of habit – we do perceive causality, although we perceive it originally in specific instances and then abstract the concept of causality from those instances. Causality isn’t immediately perceivable like the color red is, but we can learn of its existence by inference from things like pushing a ball and watching it roll, and scientific theories are broader generalizations induced from numerous directly perceivable causal connections like this.

I also don’t agree that morality is a matter of the sentiments rather than of relationships between things. We do originally become aware of moral distinctions by means of the sentiments – I don’t like being hurt, so I conclude that that’s bad, and I like having friends, so I conclude that that’s good. However, there is an objective moral standard that we can infer from these primitive moral beliefs, based on a specific kind of life that it is best for a human being to have, one centered on our own self interest.

So basically, I think Aristotle has better positions on these issues than Hume does. I might do a longer post on Hume later.