Kant’s Response on Hume’s Scepticism

David Hume is a philosopher whose reputation and importance in philosophy owes to his very brave critical approach to a number of philosophical issues. Hume challenged existing notions of causality and suggested that in the real world itself the human interpretation of relationship of cause and effect is affected by thought patterns, but not the perception of causal forces (Gilgen, 2011). He additionally argued his sceptical stance that a person's thinking is fundamentally inconsistent and can only navigate his way through ordinary life through those values that are naturally inculcated. In the philosophy of religion, Hume in contradiction argued that it is not reasonable to believe the testimonies of the alleged miraculous events. He, accordingly, hints that the doctrines that are founded on miracle testimonies should be rejected. Consequently, he offered compelling criticism of the standard theistic proof against the time that people commonly believe that the existence of God can be proven through a causal or design argument. Also, he advanced the theories on the origin of the popular beliefs of religion, grounding the notions in the psychology of human beings rather than in a divine revelation or a rational argument. Pointedly, Hume's primary aim during these critiques was to disentangle religion from philosophy to avoid logical, psychological corruption or over-extension in philosophy's pursuit of its ends (Kemps, 2017). In the moral theory, he offered purely secular moral theories grounding morality in the useful consequence and pleasing that result from one's actions. This argument is opposed to the conventional view that an important role is played by God in both creation and the reinforcement of the moral values. Moreover, he introduces the utility term into the ethical theory that later led to the classical utilitarian views. Hume also had a stance that there cannot be a deducing of the statement of moral obligation from the statements of fact. Outstanding contributions to the aesthetic theory were also made by Hume with his view that the human nature has a uniform standard of taste. The critical contributions also extended to the political philosophy due to his critique of the social contractarianism and the economic theory with his views of anti-mercantilist. Hume defended the conservative view supporting that the British governments were best when running through strong monarchy. In essence, Hume's epistemological issues have driven the consideration of philosophically important things like space and time, external objects, cause-effect, free will, and personal identity (Millican, 2014). In Treatise, he analyses the issues by repeatedly doing three things. First, Hume skeptically argues about the inability of people to gain complete knowledge of some of the philosophical notions that are under consideration. Secondly, Hume displays how people's understanding provides an insufficient idea on the idea in question. Thirdly, he explains how some of the views of that notion are erroneous regarding what they are grounded upon and accordingly recommends the rejection of those ideas. For instance, according to Hume, the notion of cause-effect is an idea that is complex and is made up of three more ideas that are foundational. These three foundational concepts include the proximity in space, proximity in time, and necessary connection. In fact, he says the only proximity and priority do not make up a person's entire notion of causality. On the flip side, Kant credited and respected Hume's skepticism but offered solutions to the critiques by the latter. Notably, Kant's response to uncertainty has been epitomized in philosophy by an appeal to an argument of transcendental (Smith, 2017). The mentioned form of argument provides a precise way believed by Kant to deal with the skeptic by exposing that the questions are in fact conditions for the ability of humans to raise the same. Besides, the argument introduced by Kant is widely felt to show the wrong aspects of Kant's response to the skepticism. The comparison of the respective approaches of Hume and Kant to both moral and theoretical philosophy provide the opportunity for clarification and assessment of some views in meta-ethics, normative ethics, and moral psychology. As Hume's method of the moral philosophy is empirical and experimental, Kant counters the same with his emphasis on the necessity of grounding the morality in priori principles. Further, Kant counters Hume's belief that reason is a proper slave to passion by basing morality in the conception of the reason that is practical in itself. Hume identifies the feelings as generosity and benevolence as appropriate moral motivations. Pointedly, Kant tends to see the motive of duty as uniquely expressing the commitment put by an agent towards morality and thus as conveying amoral worth to action, a purpose which Hume conversely views as a fallback motive or as a second best (Millican, 2014). Kant argues that the empirical moral can only tell how people act but cannot tell how they ought to behave. He says that the commands of morality are unconditional hence there can never be a discovery of a principle that commands all the rational beings with an absolute authority by use of the empirical moral philosophy method, however, his priori method can be applied in the same.According to Kant, there should be a clear distinguishing of the pure and the empirical parts of philosophy to avoid possible confusion of conditional truth like the things prudentially suitable for particular species or individuals with the absolute truth about the moral requirements that are fundamental (Thielke, 2015). In his attempt to respond to skepticism, Kant develops a notion of autonomy that is one of the distinct, influential, and central, aspects of his ethics. By definition, he says autonomy as the property of the will that makes it a law to itself. Therefore, the moral agent's will is autonomous such that the will gives itself moral code and also either motivates or constrains itself from following the law. However, the source of the law according to Kant is not in the feelings, inclinations, or the natural impulses of the agent but the rational will, pure, or the agent's noumenal self that is the proper self.Kant states that only autonomous legislation may yield an imperative that is categorical whereas the law that is heteronomous can only yield imperatives that are hypothetical. He, besides criticizes the assumption of the heteronomous by all the theories that are used in the location of the ground of the moral obligation or of the proper moral motivation in the things such as sympathy, self-love, and the hope of divine reward or even the fear of divine punishment. Notably, it is the autonomous way of acting that depicts an agent's capacity while the heteronomous way of acting fails to show the ability of the same. Besides, there are no consistent right actions in the agents who are self-legislating due to their commitment to morality (Gilgen, 2011). Hume's account of necessity where he posits that the very concept of a cause contains the idea of necessary connection with both an effect and the strict universality of the rule is rejected by Kant. For the latter, the judgment that every single alteration has to have a cause is a priori judgment and the very concept of reason that is necessary for the possibility of experience.As opposed to Hume, Kant posits that morality presents itself to the human agents as a categorical imperative. The postulation is that the rational agent, from the categorical imperative together with other our embodied agency and the world that human beings derive all the specific moral duties. In fact, Kant postulates that the supreme moral principle is a categorical imperative for the rational people who do not ineluctably follow the law. The policy is a categorical imperative since it commands and restrains human beings with an ultimate authority and with no regards to the preferences or the circumstances or the empirical features of the people. In contrast, hypothetical imperative expresses a command that is of reason about a specific end that is already set by the agent.Markedly, Kant rejects the view given by Hume that natural and moral actions have to be viewed part and parcel of a chain of effects, causes, and explanations. Indeed, the freedom of the moral philosophy that Kant is after would be thwarted if the natural causal laws would be accepted as deterministic and also universal. By distinguishing the two worlds of which humans are members, Kant tends to render determinism and freedom consistent. Consequently, pure deterministic terms that are by the natural causal laws, the human actions can be understood when considered members of the phenomenal world (Millican, 2014). On the flip sides, when recognized as the members of a noumenal world, human beings are free. Thus Kant in his argument endorses the compatibility of determinism and freedom and also the compatibility of incompatibilism and compatibilism. In the case of reason and motivation, the moral anti-rationalist Hume holds that reason is and should always be the slave of the passion and can never fail to obey the same. One of Hume’s implication is that morality cannot be grounded in the reason due to the inertness of reason and his assumption that morality is capable of motivating people. The claim is that reason is just an auxiliary role in the actions of people. The second implication is that reason can never be the motive to the moral effects because reason cannot motivate any action. His stance is that the motivating force that is behind every human move must come from passion. Another position taken by Hume is that reason cannot discover morality. He stated that virtue and vice and other aspects of morality are past the purview of the demonstrative reasoning (Thielke, 2015). Demonstrative rationale according to him concerns the relations of contrariety, resemblance, proportions in the quality and number, and the degree of quality. Hume's position that passion plays the dominant role in the motivation of action and that reason plays a subsidiary function and cannot resist or even control passion's motivational influence. However, Kant's belief is that reason not feeling is the source of morality, our grasp of moral obligation, and of moral motivation. In the latter's view, morality can only be categorical, universally, and necessarily bind all the rational beings if the pure and practical reason is the morality's source. In essence, the moral epistemology for Kant is not a matter of discovering of an external, set of rules created independently, but it involves the recognition of rationally self-legislated moral laws. He believes that reason commands what people should do and puts emphasis on the notion that we are subjects as well as co-legislators in the kingdom of ends.When addressing the issue of moral motivation, Kant says that feelings enable reason to motivate finite rational beings like the humans into acting rightly. He further describes the unique moral sense for them as experiencing both a painful aspect and that which involves the humiliation of the sentiments of the agent. The law strikes down a pleasurable, self-conceit since the law comes from the being's pure reason and represent the person on higher vocation and self (Gilgen, 2011). Kant goes ahead to list the conscience, moral feelings, respect and the love of human beings as exceptional kinds of emotions that unfold in our awareness only through the consciousness of the moral law.Therefore Kant's response appears convincing because he regards all the moral theories before his as the failure to explain the categorical nature of the moral obligation, and to articulate the supreme moral principle that can capture the categorical essence of morality. Importantly, he responds with the transcendental arguments that provide a defense to the foundations of knowledge. Kant also provides a broad view that the possibility of metaphysics as a science depends on the problem and it either stands or falls with the solution that is offered to the problem or on proof that is satisfactory that the possibility it requires does not do not in fact obtain. ReferencesGilgen, P. (2011). Kant and Skepticism, and: Knowledge, Reason, and Taste: Kant’s Response to Hume. Monatshefte, 103(2), 293-297. http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/mon.2011.0043Kemp, S. (2017). From A Treatise of Human Nature.Millican, P. (2014). Skepticism about Garrett’s Hume: Faculties, Concepts, and Imposed Coherence. Hume Studies, 40(2), 205-226. http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/hms.2014.0015Smith, K. (2017). Kant's Critical Philosophy: Critique of Pure Reason (2nd ed.).Thielke, P. (2015). Turnabout is Fair Play: A New Humean Response in the Old Debate with Kant. Hume Studies, 41(2), 263-288. http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/hms.2015.0011