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The Motivation Argument
One of Hume’s strongest arguments is the “motivation argument,” which reasons that morals motivate actions — these actions cannot stem from reason alone. Rachel Cohen, in writing an essay on Hume’s arguments, believes that we should conclude from Hume that people can obtain a sense of morality from factual premises only if these are derived from prior experiences. Some questions she raises about this argument include questions on how the argument should go and how strong it is. She asks: why does Hume think reason is powerless in the absence of passion? Can reason alone govern action in opposition to passions? Are moral evaluations expressions of feeling without propositional content? Does Hume deny ethical realism? How does morality alone influence the motive of the will? Striving to either defend or justify Hume’s argument, Cohen asks these questions because there are gaps in the arguments, and she attempts to answer them herself through his text and through her own beliefs. She finds that reason cannot hold a lot of value in the presence of morality because passions drive our opinions, thus driving our motivation of good or bad. Reason can guide us and can play a role in morality, but reason itself cannot push us to act one way or another. In asking these questions, she also raises opposition to this argument.
A rationalist about ethics and morals would reply to Hume’s “motivation argument” through…
