Moral Phenomenology in Hutcheson and Hume

1. Introduction

Moral phenomenology, as i will use the term in this paper, is the study of our experience of morality. It is the study of morality “as experienced from the first-person point of view,”¹ the study of the “what-it-is-like features of concrete moral experiences,”² the study of introspectively accessible features that can be discerned by “a direct examination of the data of men’s moral consciousness.”³

A crucial part of moral phenomenology is the study of what it is like to make a moral judgment. This part of moral phenomenology seeks to delineate the introspectively accessible mental features that are essentially involved in judging that an act ought or ought not to be performed, and in judging that a person is virtuous or vicious.

An adequate moral theory must account for the phenomenological facts. It must accommodate or explain in some way the introspectively accessible mental features essentially involved in our moral experience. An adequate moral theory must cohere with what it is like to make moral judgments.

It has been common for philosophers to claim that their moral theories are superior to others because their moral theories better account for our experience of moral judgment. In sections 2 and 3 of this paper, I will show how Francis Hutcheson and David Hume used phenomenological claims of this sort to argue that their sentimentalist moral theories were superior to rationalist and egoist rivals.

But Hutcheson’s and Hume’s phenomenological arguments do not succeed, or so I will argue in section 4. They fail to show that the phenomenology of moral judgment constitutes a strong reason for us to accept sentimentalism and reject rationalism and egoism. I think, moreover, that this failure is the typical fate of moral phenomenological arguments in general. This is because I think the introspectively accessible mental features of our moral experiences are not robust and uniform enough to constitute a strong reason to accept one moral theory and reject others. I will not be able to make that larger point here, but I hope that my exposition of Hutcheson and Hume will serve as one illustrative example of the general limitations of moral phenomenology in debates between rival moral theories.⁴

The failure of their phenomenological arguments should not, however, be taken to imply the failure of Hutcheson and Hume’s moral sentimentalism as a whole. For Hutcheson and Hume also advance arguments that do not rely on robust phenomenological claims.⁵ Indeed, as I will try to show in section 5, there are aspects of their sentimentalism (particularly of Hume’s) that not only do not rely on robust phenomenological claims, but in fact seem to evince awareness of the limitations of phenomenology in the development of an accurate account of moral judgment.⁶

2. Hutcheson’s Phenomenological Arguments

Hutcheson claimed that his moral sense theory was superior to the moral rationalism of Clarke and Balguy, and to the moral egoism of Hobbes and Mandeville. Hutcheson advanced many different arguments to show the superiority of his theory. I will not discuss all those arguments here. My goal in this section is to elucidate only the anti-egoist and anti-rationalist arguments Hutcheson made that relied on claims about the phenomenology of moral judgment.

2.1 Hutcheson’s Phenomenological Arguments Against Rationalism

The rationalists held that our moral judgments are, or at least can be and should be, based in reason alone.⁷ When we do math and logic, we are engaged in an activity that is guided entirely by our rational faculty. Similarly, according to the rationalists, when we judge that an action is morally required or forbidden, we are engaged in an activity that is, or at least can be and should be, guided entirely by our rational faculty. The rationalists argued for this view by presenting examples of moral judgments that “force our assent.” Clarke says, for instance, that it is “without dispute more fit and reasonable in itself, that I should preserve the Life of an innocent Man, that happens at any time to be in my...