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David Hume: Moral and Political Theorist

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This book presents a new explication of David Hume's moral and political theory. With Hume, the book holds that our normative views can be scientifically explained but they cannot be justified as true. Hume argued for the psychological basis of such views. In particular, he argued for sympathy as the mirroring of the psychological sensations and emotions of others. By placing Hume in the developing tradition of social science, as a strong forerunner of his younger friend Adam Smith, the book demonstrates Hume's strong strategic sense, his nascent utilitarianism, his powerful theory of convention as a main source of social and political order, and his recognition of moral and political theory as a single enterprise.

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... 77 Nicholas Capaldi (1990) says, "Hume was concerned about . . . the liberty that arises from justice" (197). Russell Hardin (2007) speaks of Hume's liberty "in the sense of political freedom to do as one pleases with one's life and to engage in whatever economic activity one wishes" (185). Thomas Merrill (2015) writes that "the object or purpose of political institutions, Hume suggests, is individual liberty" (137, see also 118). ...
... No one can doubt, that the convention for the distinction of property, and for the stability of possession, is of all circumstances the most necessary to the establishment of human society, and that after the agreement for the fixing and observing of this rule, there remains little or nothing to be done towards settling a perfect harmony and concord. (T 3.2.2.12; italics added) As Hardin (2007) and Sabl (2012) richly appreciate, Hume had uncanny insight into focal points, mutual coordination, and convention, prefiguring Thomas Schelling (1960) and David K. Lewis (1969). Hume made a crucial part of the arc from natural jurisprudence to what Smith would express as "the liberal plan of equality, liberty, and justice" (WN 664). ...
... The drift of Hume's essays about commerce and the jealousy of trade are clearly and consistently opposed to the governmentalization of social affairs. As Russell Hardin (2007) put it: "he thinks that government should be kept small and not intrusive, as he argues in his varied essays on economics" (200). ...
... So, the public good is unintentionally promoted because individuals promote laws that will protect their interests and in promoting and accepting those laws, they commit themselves to obey them (even when obeying them is against their interest). He claims that social institutions such as justice, maintenance of social order and conventions of promise-keeping, have evolved over time through individual actions following naturalistic rather than rational or teleological mechanisms (Hardin 2007). For instance, according to Hume, "[the justice] system, comprehending the interest of each individual, is, of course, advantageous to the public; …[though] it be not intended for that purpose by the inventors" (Hume, 2006, p. 119-20). ...
Article
This article critiques the account of the invisible hand theory that individual actions bring about macro-level social benefits. The standard account of the invisible hand theory asserts that individual actions, motivated mostly by self-interest, advance the common good inadvertently and unknowingly. The invisible hand theory provides explanation how social reality, such as emergence of language, social morality and culture, evolve through individual actions. The account of the invisible hand embedded in self-interest is generally attributed to Adam Smith. Adam Smith's account of the invisible hand is centred on self-interest and freedom. In the invisible hand theory, freedom unfetters individual actions based on self-interests and promotes a kind of competition in an economic sense, which is known as capitalism. Certainly, the account of the invisible hand theory, which is based on only self-interest is un-Smithian. I argue that although the invisible hand theory provides an adequate explanation for the evolution of language, morality, culture, and market, it promotes an unbridled capitalism, which, in an economic sense, may cause malign consequences. In qualitative research methodology, I adopt the empirically informed philosophical analysis method to documentary resources, including journal papers, academic books, and proceedings of conferences and congresses.
... So, the public good is unintentionally promoted because individuals promote laws that will protect their interests and in promoting and accepting those laws, they commit themselves to obey them (even when obeying them is against their interest). He claims that social institutions such as justice, maintenance of social order and conventions of promise-keeping, have evolved over time through individual actions following naturalistic rather than rational or teleological mechanisms (Hardin 2007). For instance, according to Hume, "[the justice] system, comprehending the interest of each individual, is, of course, advantageous to the public; …[though] it be not intended for that purpose by the inventors" (Hume, 2006, p. 119-20). ...
Article
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This article critiques of the account of invisible hand theory that individual actions bring about macro-level social benefits. The standard account of the invisible hand theory asserts that individual actions, motivated mostly by self-interest, advance the common good inadvertently and unknowingly. The invisible hand theory provides explanation how social reality, such as emergence of language, social morality and culture, evolve through individual actions. The account of the invisible hand embedded in self-interest is generally attributed to Adam Smith. Adam Smith’s account of the invisible hand is centred on self-interest and freedom. In the invisible hand theory, freedom unfetters individual actions based on self-interests and promotes a kind of competition in an economic sense, which is known as capitalism. Certainly, the account of the invisible hand theory, which is based on only self-interest is un-Smithian. I argue that although the invisible hand theory provides an adequate explanation to evolution of language, morality, culture, and market, yet it promotes an unbridled capitalism, which in economic sense, may cause malign consequences. In qualitative research methodology, I adopt the empirically informed philosophical analysis method to documentary resources, including journal papers, academic books, and proceedings of conferences and congresses.
... Las costumbres y el aparataje de convenciones surgen de manera histórica y azarosa, y se mantienen en tanto generan utilidad social, entendida como orden y estabilidad (Hume, 2018;Sabine, 1994;Vanderschraaf y Valls, 2018). Debido a que las costumbres surgen de manera histórica, no se puede decir que exista un único conjunto de costumbres que den utilidad social, sino que existirá una variedad de convenciones que cumplan ese propósito en diferentes comunidades y contextos históricos (Hardin, 2007). ...
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En América Latina se ha levantado la demanda del reconocimiento de las labores de cuidado. Este artículo argumenta que el feminismo decolonial, en contraposición al liberalismo y al conservadurismo, ofrece el mejor sustento teórico para darle fundamento a esta demanda. Mientras que el liberalismo y el conservadurismo, como consecuencia de sus perspectivas teóricas, relegan los cuidados al ámbito privado, el feminismo decolonial entrega herramientas teóricas y metodológicas que permitirían generar reflexiones más completas respecto a cómo el cuidado se enmarca dentro de sociedades poscoloniales con instituciones liberales.
... For further discussions on Hume and contractarianism, seeWhelan (1994);Hardin (2007); Salter(2012).21 On the relationship between what Forbes calls Hume's "establishment political philosophy" with his presumption of liberty in political economy, seeMatson (2019, 44-47).Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. ...
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David K. Lewis published his brilliant PhD dissertation in 1969, Convention; A Philosophical Study. With a lag, scholarship on David Hume has come to elaborate the similitude between Lewis and Hume on convention. Reading Hume along the lines of Lewis gives us a vocabulary with which we can better appreciate and articulate the innovativeness of Hume’s theory of convention. This study contributes to that appreciation and to rearticulates Hume’s innovative analytical framework for thinking about the unformalized duties and obligations—sometimes glossed as institutions or culture—underlying social interaction and economic behavior. After summarizing Lewis, we treat Hume’s account of the emergence of the conventions of language, justice, and political authority in broadly Lewisian terms. Another purpose is to draw on Hume to develop a concept of “natural convention.” A natural convention is a social practice whose concrete form in time and place is conventional in a Lewisian sense, but whose generalized form is necessary, and hence natural, for more advanced social organization. In the final section of the paper, we consider the semantic originality of Hume’s convention talk. Drawing from a largescale textual search, we find scant evidence that the English word “convention” was used in a Lewisian sense—that is, in a sense that did not entail a literal convening—prior to Hume.
... And our new sovereign cannot enter office with any 63 power worth having for the awesome tasks ahead". 66 The contractarian story is deemed unworkable because individuals cannot literally transfer their natural faculties or their instrumental power to a sovereign. Accordingly, the very idea of a transfer of power is merely a derivation by fiat given the impossibility of transferring faculties. ...
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... And our new sovereign cannot enter office with any 63 power worth having for the awesome tasks ahead". 66 The contractarian story is deemed unworkable because individuals cannot literally transfer their natural faculties or their instrumental power to a sovereign. Accordingly, the very idea of a transfer of power is merely a derivation by fiat given the impossibility of transferring faculties. ...
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I sketch a reception of Russell Hardin’s critique, appropriation, and creative redeployment of Hobbesian insights. I highlight the central tenets of his rereading of Hobbes as he reconstructs the structure of his arguments to determine their epistemological status within a broader lineage of social-scientific thinking on political order. The result, I suggest, is a critique of Hobbes, that is, an examination of the possibilities and limits of the conceptual framework that grounds his theory of government. In Hardin’s interpretation, Hobbes is characterized as articulating a “holistic normative principle” that justifies mutually advantageous institutions. He is said to subscribe to a welfarist vision of order derived uniquely from self-interest with no prior normative commitment. Finally, his contractarian justification of institutions is rejected as a “lousy theory” that mischaracterizes the structure of the problem of maintaining orderly government.
Article
Hume devised a third way between Hobbes and Locke that bolstered the former’s defense of stability and the latter’s defense of rebellion. This feat remains underappreciated. Hume’s third way rests on the idea of the public conscience, which, like Hobbes’s idea of the public conscience, derives from communication and consensus. The public conscience orients us toward the public interest, which, in Hume’s theory, is the authoritative standard by which individuals and government alike must abide. In this paper, I elaborate on the moral psychological principles that underlie Hume’s concept of the public conscience, which is liable to both conservative liberal and progressive liberal interpretations. And I argue that Hume’s third way provides valuable insight into the logic of public political discourse in liberal societies.
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This paper interprets the interaction between Protestantism and commercial spirit in David Hume’s account of English development, mostly drawing from The History of England . Hume saw Protestant theology—especially the more enthusiastic strains of English Puritanism—as having fortuitously shifted the landscape of political and economic sensibilities in England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries by affecting believers’ political, social, and economic psychologies. Those shifting psychologies exhibited affinities with concurrent developments, especially the decline of feudalism, the rise of consumerism, and the creation of an independent middle class of merchants. The peculiar synergy between such changes and Protestant theological innovations led to the emergence of England, by the eighteenth century, as a polite and commercial people—a people for whom commerce became, Hume claimed, more honorable than in any other nation. Hume, like Max Weber, saw a distinctive Protestant spirit as having contributed to the modern commercial order.
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In its original, Aristotelian meaning, ethics meant the study of character; politics was seen as a comprehensive activity aiming at perfection of character. In a modern, pluralistic context, ethics as applied to politics includes debates over whether and how the old, Aristotelian model might still apply; political ethics in a narrow sense, involving questions of ends and means, leadership and responsibility; the question of civic ethics or the virtues and practices required of ordinary citizens; and questions of corruption, involving problems of enforcement and institutional design. In all these cases, contemporary normative disputes reflect larger historical debates about the ends of politics, the nature of political leadership, the demands of collective action, and the structure of political value.
Article
Siyasal yükümlülük problemi felsefe tarihinin birçok cevaplama girişimi içeren önemli tartışmaları arasındadır. Birey ve siyasal varlık arasındaki ilişkiye dair yüklü bir içeriği olan bu tartışma bağlamında filozofların önemli bir bölümü siyasal otoriteye itaat etmekle yükümlü olduğumuzu ilan etmişlerdir. Bununla birlikte filozoflar arasında siyasal otoriteye itaatin mahiyeti noktasında bir görüş birliği yoktur; aksine onlar, siyasal otoriteye itaatin kökeni ve sınırları hususunda oldukça farklı görüşler ileri sürmüşlerdir. İşte bu çalışmada, söz konusu görüşlerden birini, deneyimci bir bakış açısının ürünü olarak öne süren David Hume ele alınmış ve böylece onun üzerinden siyasal otoriteye itaatin gerekçesini ve sınırlarını göstermek amaçlanmıştır. Dolayısıyla çalışmada Hume’un siyasal yükümlülükle ilgili argümanlarına dayanılarak birbiriyle bağlantılı iki temel sorunun cevabı aranmıştır: “Siyasal otoriteye itaatin gerekçesi nedir?” ve “İtaat yükümlülüğü hangi koşullarda ortadan kalkar?” Sonuç olarak bu soruları izleyen araştırma göstermiştir ki Hume’a göre siyasal otoriteye itaat yükümlülüğü, bireysel ve toplumsal çıkar/fayda gerekçesi ile temellenir ve siyasal otoritenin, bu çıkarı/faydayı garanti eden işlevlerinin ikna edici bir şekilde ortadan kalkması durumunda ise sona erer.
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Tanulmányomban David Hume tulajdonnal foglalkozó téziseit elemzem, különös tekintettel a John Locke-kal szemben megfogalmazott kritikájára. Amellett érvelek, hogy Hume elmélete nem egyszerűen Locke tételeinek cáfolata akart lenni, hanem az eredeti teória egy sajátos, modernizált változata is. Írásom első részében bemutatom, miért nyújtanak szignifikáns segítséget Hume érzelmekről szóló fejtegetései társadalomfilozófiájának alaposabb megértésében. A második részében ismertetem Locke és Hume tulajdonelméleteinek legfontosabb hasonlóságait és ellentéteit. A harmadik részében pedig felvázolom Hume gazdaságfilozófiai teóriájának azon alapvetéseit, melyek kora úttörő elképzelései voltak.
Article
For the first time, in Hume and Smith, ‘sympathy’ occupies a central position as the principle of moral judgment. The key to solving the relationship between sympathy and economic thought lies in the theory of justice. Hume and Smith inherited Hutcheson’s criticism of the Hobbesian selfish system and considered humans selfish and social. For both, the relationship between selfishness and sympathy is neither a contradiction nor a subordinate structure in which selfishness ultimately dominates sympathy. In this joint project, Hume’s institutional utilitarianism could justify Smith’s economic theories and provide Smith’s theory of government with a proper philosophical foundation. I argue that this is particularly significant because Smith himself failed to provide the foundation in areas where the idea of public utility plays a vital role, such as in the critical case of national defence and the decline of martial spirit.
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El sentido de la propia valía es uno de los caracteres morales más indispensables que configuran la personalidad de un individuo. En este trabajo retomo la idea del orgullo natural en el correcto sentido que le otorgó David Hume. Se recorre el camino que muestra cómo el orgullo, con su componente individual de autoestima y su elemento social de reconocimiento, genera consecuencias positivas para los lazos humanos que conforman el tejido social. El mecanismo que explica este funcionamiento es la psicología de la simpatía que termina por abarcar las relaciones de la sociedad. La pasión del orgullo y la simpatía como dispositivo de comunicación de emociones entre semejantes tienen efectos beneficiosos para la cohesión de nuestra vida en comunidad
Thesis
This study examines the models that include the minimum income guarantee in order to develop an income-based solution to child poverty, which is an entrenched problem in Turkey. In order to understand child poverty in Turkey, a detailed analysis of child poverty for the years 2006-2020 was made through the TurkStat Income and Living Conditions micro data set. In the related literature, it has been tried to gain a broad perspective on child poverty with other analyzes carried out for the first time on three subjects. First of all, the deprivations experienced by children are included according to years (2006-2020) and material deprivation criteria, and the dimensions of child poverty are revealed. In the second analysis, Beckerman's (1979) poverty reduction efficiency model and Kim's (2000) decomposition analysis were used to analyze the effects of social expenditures on poverty on an individual basis in Turkey. In the light of these analyses, social expenditures made through the public sector in Turkey can reduce child poverty by an average of 0.7% over the years (2006-2020). On the other hand, it has been determined that the inability to reduce poverty and child poverty in Turkey is due to the ineffectiveness of social expenditures. Finally, as a social policy tool to combat child poverty, which is the focus of the thesis, 45 different minimum income assurance models of universal and selective nature have been created. Seven of these models were found to be the most effective models. Effective models were compared among themselves in terms of inclusiveness, cost and additional effects, and the preferred model or models were left to policy makers. The B16 model eliminates child poverty with 0.003% among the effective models. Effective models have been found to eliminate not only child poverty but also general poverty in Turkey. Keywords: (Child poverty, child material deprivation, minimum income guarantee, social expenditures)
Chapter
This chapter suggests that the emphasis on self-regarding motives in Thomas Hobbes's political writings results from a judgement about which image of human nature it is most useful to present. It deals with a brief consideration of some pertinent forms of psychological egoism, and aims to relate these to Hobbes's theory of motivation. According to Hobbes, an appetite, or an aversion, is an internal bodily movement, distinguished by whether it has a positive or negative effect on the functioning of the body. Hume's idea of “sympathy” provides an obvious example of a natural capacity to feel another's pleasure or pain. Hobbes's treatment of how men work upon each other's minds focuses mainly on the transmission of honor and contempt. The chapter provides the possibility that Hume avoids “Hobbesian” selfishness by stepping outside a psychological hedonist framework: that is, benevolent desires are not always caused by one's own pleasure or pain.
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Adam Smith's impartial spectator and David Hume's general point of view have much in common, as do their moral theories more generally. However, this paper argues that a distinctive feature of Smith's theory—the pleasure of mutual sympathy—allows Smith to better explain a number of important features of norms. In particular, it provides Smith with a more plausible mechanism for explaining how norms emerge, and offers him a richer set of resources for explaining both why we are attracted to norms and why norms are often characterized by local similarity and global diversity. Rather than merely being a matter of historical interest, though, this paper argues that this aspect of Smith's theory warrants attention from contemporary social scientists interested in the nature of norms, as well as from philosophers interested in how we might look to our sentiments to ground our normative practices.
Article
Debates between realists and idealists in contemporary political theory have been confused by a tendency to conflate several distinct methodological theses. This article distinguishes between four dimensions of realism and shows how a novel reading of Hume’s politics can help us make sense of the importance of these theses and the relationships between them. More specifically, we argue that a theory we call normative conventionalism can be distilled from two of Hume’s more surprising and controversial essays, “The Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth” and “That Politics May Be Reduced to a Science.” This theory views norms and institutions as conventional solutions to problems of coordination and conflict that are historically contingent, but also provides us with an approach to gaining leverage on our practices so that we can say something about which norms and institutions are worth emulating.
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We draw on David Hume's essays on happiness to extend ideas about welfare, preferences, and the social role of behavioral welfare economists in Mario Rizzo and Glen Whitman's (2020) Escaping Paternalism. Through literary dialogue, Hume illustrates that individuals have different perspectives on the good life. These perspectives cannot be resolved by the philosopher or the economist. Hume's sensibilities dovetail with Rizzo and Whitman's notion of inclusive rationality, which implies an open-ended conception of welfare. Hume's dialogical treatment of the good life has political implications. We take these implications to be a useful expression of Rizzo and Whitman's "paternalism-resisting framework." The paper concludes with a discussion of Hume's vision of the proper role of the philosopher in society. That vision extends Rizzo and Whitman's sense that the behavioral economist ought to view herself as a friendly social advisor in conversation with fellow citizens.
Article
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Hume's theory of preferences would, from a contemporary point of view, be labelled an endogenous theory. He sees preferences largely as comparative desires that are formed and affected by the psychological process of sympathy. His view of preferences relates to his economic philosophy. Despite his understanding of preferences, Hume is, unlike some other thinkers with related perspectives like Thorstein Veblen, optimistic about the prospects of commercial society, claiming in one of his essays that the ages of commerce and refinement are both the happiest and the most virtuous. An important reason for his optimism lies in the fact that he understands happiness or well-being to largely consist in the process of actively pursuing one's preferences, not simply in the state of having one's preferences satisfied.
Article
Thomas Hobbes was seen by his contemporaries and successors as a rational egoist, as was Bernard Mandeville several decades later. Subsequent British philosophers beginning with Richard Cumberland rejected Hobbes's egoism. This was true of rationalists such as Ralph Cudworth and Samuel Clarke and moral sense theorists including the Earl of Shaftesbury, Francis Hutcheson, Joseph Butler, David Hume, and Adam Smith. Meanwhile, Germans such as Samuel Pufendorf, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Christian Wolff, Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten, and Georg Friedrich Meier worked within a perfectionist framework, although some such as Christian August Crusius remained within an Augustinian, divine‐command approach. Kant synthesized elements of rationalism, perfectionism, and moral sense theory, although the full development of his approach lies beyond the terminus of this entry.
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Chapter four develops the evolutionary framework with which to assess the postulates of public choice theory on markets and liberal democracy and to assess the evolutionary desirability of the liberal satisfaction of preferences. Specifically, this chapter theorises about how to apply multilevel selection to social groups and explains how morality is a fundamental element to understand preferences. It also describes how morality/culture can be adaptive or maladaptive, discussing the interdependence between moral/cultural evolution and genetic evolution through the logic of gene-culture coevolution. Finally, chapter four examines the process of moral and political framing to show that preferences are not well defined a priori because of largely depending on group morality.
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This chapter assesses if the free market is a suitable alternative to the shortcomings of liberal democracy from an evolutionary perspective, namely from the perspective of multilevel selection. This section scrutinises the hypothetical superiority of free markets over liberal democracies regarding preference satisfaction. The chapter focuses on the impact that free markets and their adjacent liberal satisfaction of preferences have on the evolutionary fitness of groups. To analyse such an impact, this chapter appraises the most relevant evolutionary defence of the institutional superiority of the market order: F. A. Hayek’s model of cultural group selection. Overall, chapter six answers to another central question of the book: what is the desirability of the liberal satisfaction of preferences concerning institutional sustainability?
Article
Due especially to the work of Friedrich Hayek, “spontaneous order” has become an influential concept in social theory. It seeks to explain how human practices and institutions emerge as unintended consequences of myriad individual actions, and points to the limits of rationalism and conscious design in social life. The political implications of spontaneous order theory explain both the enthusiasm and the skepticism it has elicited, but its basic mechanisms remain elusive and underexamined. This article teases out the internal logic of the concept, arguing that it can be taken to mean several different things. Some are forward-looking (defining it in terms of present-day functioning), whereas others are backward-looking (defining it in terms of historical origins). Yet none of these possibilities prove fully coherent or satisfactory, suggesting that spontaneous order cannot bear the analytical weight that has been placed on it.
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Until recently, little attention has been paid to the consequences of Hume’s theory of action for intertemporal decision. Yet in view of the recurring discussion concerning situations of conflicting choice between a close and aremote objective, which run from Book 2 of the "Treatise", to the second "Enquiry", to the "Dissertation", intertemporal decision appears, at least in part, to be an outcome of the role of the natural relation of contiguity in the formation of the structure of desires, and thus different from the structure of pleasure. This paper shows, and expresses formally, that Hume’s approach provides alternative conditions which explain time-consistency on the onehand, and dynamic time-inconsistency on the other, when the link betweencontiguity and the "violence" of the passions is taken into account. The possibility of time-inconsistency is acknowledged by Hume as giving rise to general aversion, therefore constitutes a key argument in explaining the origin of government.
Article
As geopolitical warfare intensified in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, free individuals of African heritage increasingly disputed European ideologies that condemned them as naturally inferior and lacking in humanity. With the onset of the Haitian Revolution (1791-1804) and the Latin American wars for independence (1810-1825), individuals and groups of African descent circulated their own views. I argue that free Blacks from colonial Saint Domingue, Jamaica, and Cuba employed similar rhetorical strategies across the French, British, and Spanish empires. Their speeches, petitions, and declarations forged distinct Afro-Atlantic counter-discourses that proclaimed their equality and advocated for their human and civil rights.
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[straipsnis ir santrauka lietuvių kalba; santrauka anglų kalba] Straipsnyje analizuojama Hume’o giljotinos – tezės, jog iš fakto teiginių negali būti išvedami normatyviniai teiginiai, – įtaka teisinio pozityvizmo filosofijai. Teisinio pozityvizmo teorijos pabrėžia, jog teisė yra socialinėmis konvencijomis pagrįstas reiškinys, apibrėžiamas ir paaiškinamas remiantis vien socialiniais faktais. Todėl teisės analizė turi apsiriboti deskriptyviais teiginiais, o rėmimasis normatyviniais argumentais lemia samprotavimo klaidas. Pavyzdžiui, kaip nurodoma teisinio pozityvizmo teorijose, iš samprotavimų, koks teisinis reguliavimas yra pats tinkamiausias, negalima dedukuoti, jog jis turėtų būti privalomas. Todėl rėmimasis Hume’o giljotina buvo vienas iš svarbiausių veiksnių formuojantis pamatinėms teisinio pozityvizmo nuostatoms. Straipsnyje siekiama pagrįsti, jog vis dėlto teisinis pozityvizmas, siekdamas paaiškinti teisės normatyvumą, susiduria su teoriniais prieštaravimais, kurie lemia, jog Hume’o giljotina gali būti pritaikoma ir pačioms teisinio pozityvizmo nuostatoms.
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This chapter argues that individuals have a personal obligation to take action against climate change and other defining problems of the Anthropocene. Specifically, individuals ought to engage in self-starting stewardship practices that entirely offset their personal contribution to these problems. The practices in question should be capable of prompting systemic reform when interpersonally coordinated and networked, and it is part of the obligation of individuals to foster such coordination and networking. Urban gardening, as understood in this book, is one practice though which such obligation can be fulfilled.
Article
Recent work by party scholars reveals a widening gap between the normative ideals we set out for political parties and the empirical evidence that reveals their deep and perhaps insurmountable shortcomings in realizing these ideals. This disjunction invites us to consider the perspective of David Hume, who offers a theory of the value and proper function of parties that is resilient to the pessimistic findings of recent empirical scholarship. I analyze Hume's writings to show that the psychological experience of party informs the opinions by which governments can be considered legitimate. Hume thus invites us to consider the essential role parties might play in securing legitimacy as that ideal is practiced or understood by citizens, independent of the ideal understandings of legitimacy currently being articulated by theorists. My analysis contributes to both recent party scholarship and to our understanding of the role of parties in Hume's theory of allegiance.
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In a number of works, I have argued that social morality—a system of internalized “social-moral rules”—is fundamental to human social cooperation. Russell Hardin disputed this, arguing instead for the primacy of conventions, based largely on self-interest, in developing cooperative social order. This chapter considers three challenges for my view raised by Hardin. The chapter commences by considering small-scale cooperation; I believe that the evidence indicates that even in very small groups of face-to-face cooperators, the internalization of moral rules is fundamental to their cooperation and cheater suppression. I then consider Hardin’s charge that accounts of social cooperation based on moral rules, in which individuals act on the rules despite their interests, are stuck with invoking a variety of somewhat dubious and weak “claims of moral commitment or shared values through [to] Rawls’s magical ‘addition of the sense of justice and moral sentiment’ to make justice work at a large scale.” I argue that the evidence in support of internalized rule compliance, even in the face of high costs to personal interests, is impressive, and the underlying mechanisms are not mysterious. Lastly, I briefly turn to the fundamental issue of how social morality functions in large-scale settings and, importantly, whether it is largely displaced by formal legal and political institutions.
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Russell Hardin’s theory of constitutions as conventions implies several conclusions that are striking, deep, important, counterintuitive, and very hard to deny. Nevertheless, they have had little influence on the field of political theory. This chapter seeks to explain that through two theses. (1) The theory embarrasses the prevailing schools of political thought (participatory and/or deliberative democracy, “high” or rationalist liberalism, and Cambridge historicism) not just by denying their doctrines but by suggesting the irrelevance of many of their favorite questions. (2) The theory seems, as Hardin presents it, more pessimistic and quietist than it needs to be. This chapter suggests that the theory contains within it under-stressed resources that make room for constant institutional progress and political reform.
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David Hume’s theory of social and political order as represented in Russell Hardin’s dual coordination theory seems to conflict with the idea of political liberty as defined in Benjamin Constant’s concept of the ‘liberty of the ancients’. In this chapter, I argue that the apparent tension vanishes once the role of moral approbation in Humes’s theory of the conventional foundation of social and political order is adequately taken into account.
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This article explores an alternative to the established dichotomy between philosophical (natural law) accounts of human rights, characterized by a foundationalist tendency, and political (practice-based) accounts of human rights, which aspire to be non-foundationalist. I argue that in order to justify human rights practice, political accounts of human rights cannot do without the support of theoretical foundations, although not necessarily of the natural-law variety. As an alternative to natural-law metaphysics, a deflationary theory of human rights, based on a deflationary account of truth, is put forward. Starting from a distinction between ‘extreme’ and ‘moderate’ forms of deflationism, this article defends a constructivist theory of human rights grounded on the Humean notion of conventionalism. This innovative approach to human rights provides political conceptions of human rights with the foundations (or quasi-foundations) they need, but are currently lacking.
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This chapter discusses coordination in dynamic networks, focusing on efficiency and heterogeneity of emergent behavior, and on the influence of information availability. New simulation models are developed in the chapter to generate precise hypotheses for the very specific experimental settings that are used in the chapter. In addition, some variations of the basic model are presented and new hypotheses are presented. In particular, the effect of information availability on coordination is discussed. The chapter briefly reiterates the more general problem of coordination in dynamic networks and provides new assumptions about information. Often, coordination problems are resolved by conventions, that is, behavioral patterns that are mutually expected and self-reinforcing. This implies that social networks also change in the feedback process between influence and selection. Behavioral dynamics can be expected to differ when networks are dynamic.
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This paper examines David Hume’s concept of justice as a social convention and its relation to public goods. It points out that it is one of two distinct types of public good discussed in A Treatise on Human Nature. These goods are indeed treated separately in modern economic theory. We examine the assertion that the “justice” type of public good, which is provided by discrete actions performed by individuals over time, is less likely to be sustainable by individual action in a large community, formalising ideas clearly outlined by Hume himself. We find, consistent with Hume’s own ideas, that in a large community agents might be more likely to provide “justice”, but that this outcome may depend critically on the assumption of complete information.
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Radikalität, heißt es, sei ein ›Vorrecht der Jugend‹. In der Welt der Bücher ist eine Erscheinungsform des radikal-unbekümmerten jugendlichen Selbstvertrauens das Erstlingswerk. Das erste Buch kann ein Dokument glücklicher Unbeirrbarkeit sein, jedenfalls solange es nicht ein in konformistischem Jargon verfasster Bestandteil akademischer Karriereplanung ist. Es kann hochfl iegende Pläne enthalten oder sich als Aufräumarbeit an Jahrhunderten verstehen, einem jungen Erben gleichend, der ein lange unbelebtes Haus betritt und zunächst einmal die Fenster aufstößt. Zu den Vorzügen der literarischen Form des Erstlings gehört es, dass der Blick auf die Sache und die Gedankenführung weder von der Sorge getrübt werden, bereits früher einmal Gesagtem zu widersprechen, noch von der Absicht, einer community zu gefallen, die es für Professionalität hält, sich daran gewöhnt zu haben, das eigene Wohlgefallen mit der Natur der Sache zu verwechseln.
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Hume’s philosophical-policy suggests a definition of the international system diametrically opposed to the common positivist assumption of a violent and chaotic Hobbesian state of nature. Justice-As-Sovereignty maintains coordination through the systematic policy precept of reciprocal cooperation which acts as a “universal” rule of recognition and offers the possibility of an international law that is much more than merely the establishment and protection of the state. Next, game theory extrapolates the legal design elements of Hume’s concept of law, defining the international system as an unstable, but not anarchic, coordination game, built on a stratified foundation of solved municipal prisoner’s dilemmas. Lastly, the evolution of this strategic context is verified through international case law.
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In the later Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, which sticks close to common sense and derives morality from utility, Hume writes that objections to his theory are likely to come from those who have acquired, from habit and education, the unreflective approval of justice and disapproval of injustice. What alone will beget a doubt concerning the theory, on which I insist, is the influence of education and acquired habits, by which we are so accustomed to blame injustice, that we are not, in every instance, conscious of any immediate reflection on the pernicious consequences of it. The views the most familiar to us are apt, for that very reason, to escape us; and what we have very frequently performed from certain motives, we are apt likewise to continue mechanically, without recalling, on every occasion, the reflections, which first determined us.2 This “mechanical” theory of moral practice is an important part of the theory of practice of the Treatise. In Book 1 of the Treatise, Hume indicates how important habit is for our basic reasoning. In Book 2, on the passions, the same “mechanical” habits develop (via a “double relation of ideas and impressions”) from the direct feelings of pleasure and pain into the indirect passions of pride, humility, love, hatred and the communicative process Hume calls sympathy.
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This book has argued that the problem of the relationship between theory and practice is central to Hume’s philosophy and political theory. As a young man, Hume was attracted to philosophy and literature, discovered a “new scene of thought” and worked himself so hard that he suffered some sort of nervous breakdown (which a doctor diagnosed as “the disease of the learned”). In a letter to another physician, Hume described how he had inculcated an air of philosophical superiority over bodily and material affairs and had fortified himself with Stoic maxims concerning the shortness of life and the vanity of worldly pleasures.2 As he noted, these maxims were more appropriate to a life of action in which they reminded the actor not to get too involved in what he was doing. To the solitary thinker, they simply reinforced his mental isolation. Hume overcame his “disease of the learned” through exercise, a change of diet, and a brief sojourn working for a merchant. Throughout his life Hume displayed a practical side, made necessary because of his meager inheritance. His letters, many of which are to publishers, reveal his interest in the commercial success of his writings. He also was generous in promoting new writers who he met. He decided to go on the two diplomatic missions not only for the money, but to acquaint himself personally with politics and military affairs. He spent a lot of time in the “world” of “conversation.”
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Nowadays, the term liberalism can mean one thing or its opposite; therefore it is necessary to take time to introduce “classical liberalism.” It may perhaps appear odd to start a book on IR theory with a description of “domestic” classical liberalism. However, this is both logical and necessary. Classical liberalism is a “bottom-up” theory, which regards international relations as an outgrowth of politics in the domestic or national political arena. Only by looking at the classical liberal idea “behind the border,” are we able to move closer to comprehending its meaning “beyond the border.”1
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My main goal in this paper is to vindicate Hume’s belief that morality is exclusively a matter of sentiment, when it is apparent that the reflective or general perspective necessary to making a moral judgment requires reason. My solution to the supposed inconsistency is to show that reason is understood in two ways: in the preliminary understanding, reason is opposed to sentiment; in the final understanding, reason is actually reduced to sentiment, or explained away in favor of it. In this final sense, when reason affects morality, it consists in bringing to the mind imaginary sensations and sentiments to which we react sympathetically.
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David Hume’s essays were “the cradle of economics,” suggested John Hill Burton, in his important biography of Hume. Although this may be a biographer’s exaggeration, there can be no doubt that Hume’s work provided an important contribution to political economy as a discipline, together with a significant critique of the “mercantile” system that was later attacked by his friend Adam Smith. ECONOMICS: THE BACKGROUND Mercantilism is difficult to define. As the historian P.J. Thomas put it: “Mercantilism has often been described as a definite and unified policy or doctrine, but that it has never been. In reality it was a shifting combination of tendencies which, although directed to a common aim - the increase of national power - seldom possessed a unified system of policy, or even a harmonious set of doctrines. It was a very complicated web of which the threads mingled inextricably.” In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the object of policy was the enhancement of the power of the nation state, a strategy that was to be attained in a number of ways, at least one of which was economic. The power of this state was to be enhanced by the accumulation of treasure through trade, the maximization of employment, and the encouragement of population growth.
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We can observe in the progression of the work of Thomas Hobbes through David Hume to John Rawls a development from a focus on severe disorder to order under law and then to concern with distribution. This striking development is not due simply to changes of normative views, but is in large part about the technical or virtually technological capacities of government. There are also non-normative theoretical and significant developments in their theories. Hence, much of the difference between these philosophers, who superficially appear to disagree deeply, is essentially social scientific. If so, they should all be willing to revise conclusions to fit better social science. This is not the whole story, perhaps, or if it is, then we have to conclude that all of them make big scientific mistakes that vitiate their theories. On this view, Hume comes closest to having the theory right in his time and his account is more compelling as a social scientific account of our issues than are the accounts of Hobbes or Rawls.
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Until 1883 local time was used in the US. In that yr most of the railroads began to operate on Standard Railway Time. The new system met with opposition in many parts of the country. Beginning in 1918, the Interstate Commerce Commission modified the boundaries of the 4 time zones. Daylight-saving time was used in both world wars. The benefits were expected to be a reduction in use of energy, more time in the evening for recreation, reduction in crime and car accidents. The Uniform Time Act of 1966 established a 6 month period for daylight time, from the last Sunday in April to the last Sunday in October. States, or parts of states could be exempted. This 6 month period has been used except in 1974 when yr round daylight time was used and 1975 when an 8 month period was used. -Forrest McElhoe Jr
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Nicholas L. Sturgeon is Professor of Philosophy, Sage School of Philosophy, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853-3201, USA. e-mail: nls6@cornell.edu Earlier versions of some of the material included here—Section II and some of the points in Sections IV and VI—were presented to a conference on the Scottish Enlightenment at Cornell University's Society for the Humanities in 1976, and to the Philosophy Department at the University of Pittsburgh in 1980. A version much closer to this one was presented to a workshop on Hume's Ethics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1993. I am grateful for discussion on those occasions. I have also benefited from specific comments by Stephen Ferg, Richard W. Miller, and Kenneth Winkler, and from more extensive discussion of earlier drafts with John Carriero, Michael Condylis, Paul Hoffman, Terence Irwin, and Abe Roth. I have learned most from conversations with Elizabeth Radcliffe. 1. References in the text prefaced by "T" are to David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge, 2nd ed., revised by P. H. Nidditch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978). References prefaced by "EHU" are to An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, and those prefaced by "EPM" are to An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, as they appear in David Hume, Enquiries concerning Human Understanding and concerning the Principles of Morals, ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge, 3rd ed., revised by P. H. Nidditch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975). 2. Barry Stroud, Hume (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1977), 265 (n. 7 to p. 187). 3. A point first noted in recent discussion, so far as I am aware, by Geoffrey Hunter in "Hume on Is and Ought," Philosophy 37 (1962), repr. in The Is-Ought Question, ed. W. D. Hudson (London: St. Martin's, 1969), 59-63. 4. As pointed out by A. C. MacIntyre, "Hume on 'Is' and Ought'," The Philosophical Review 68 (1959), repr. in Hudson, 42-3; by Hunter, 60-1; and more recently by Annette Baier, A Progress of Sentiments (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991), 176-7. 5. As Jonathan Harrison notes in Hume's Moral Epistemology (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), 69-70. 6. In section 1 (EPM 169-75) and Appendix 1 (EPM 285-94), especially the latter, of the Enquiry concerning Morals. 7. E.g., T 296, 300-1, 475-6, 546-7, 574-5, 614; EPM 289; and see also, in Essays Moral, Political, and Literary, ed. T. H. Green and T. H. Grose, 2 vols. (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1889), 2: 173, the note concerning the wording of section 1 of the Enquiry concerning Morals in editions G through N. On whose feelings: In the matter-of-fact paragraph and in the text at T 546-7 they appear simply to be the assessor's current feelings, whatever her circumstances. But other passages (T 372, 472, 536, 581-5, 593; and see 547n) offer grounds for discounting some actual feelings as a ground for evaluation: that one lacks the appropriate (and equal) "distance" from the objects judged, that one is influenced by "comparison," that one's imagination is not influenced by the right "general rules." And at T 581-5 and 603 (and at EPM 227-8) Hume is explicit that the relevant feelings need not even be actual: they are the ones one would have under conditions idealized by the removal of these distortions. In the Enquiry the relevant sentiments are those of "a spectator" (EPM 289) or of the generality of mankind (in editions G through N of section 1). I discuss the importance of these differences in Section III. On which feelings: In the matter-of-fact paragraph it is disapprobation or blame (for vice; and so, surely, approbation, for virtue) that matter. Hume more often says, however, simply that the relevant feelings are a particular kind of pleasure and pain (T 470-3, 575-6). I return to issues about moral feelings in Section VI. 8. For noncognitivist suggestions, see for example A. G. N. Flew, "On the Interpretation of Hume," Philosophy 38 (1963), repr. in Hudson, 68-9; W. D. Hudson, "Hume on Is and...
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Refutes an article by J. Elster (1979) who argues that functionalist explanation is of little value in the social sciences. Instead, this article illustrates that the contrary is the case, for such explanations make sense of certain collectively deficient outcomes in complex situations, of the creation and maintenance of various norms and norm systems, and of the institutionalization of conventions. (26 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
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Discusses the logic of exchange, iterated Prisoner's Dilemma game and contract by convention, explicit contract vs contract by convention, commitment (a reformulation of sanctions), and contracts and norms. It is concluded that when issues are narrowly defined, narrow rationally motivated collective action may, therefore, be more prevalent at the small group level at which social exchange works best than at the societal or national level. (25 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
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Whereas in philosophy David Hume was long regarded as a negative thinker to be criticized rather than read, many thinkers interested in social and economic theory from Adam Smith onwards found key concepts, distinctions and problems as developed by Hume useful and inspiring. This applies not only to his seminal contributions to technical problems in economics. It is argued that the way in which Hume employed 'utility as a positive principle' (most notably in his 'experimental' moral theory) is of pivotal importance in this context. It allows for: distinguishing between internal motifs and external circumstances and constraints; and for making explicit the abstract logic of social interaction structures, mechanisms and processes. Both are necessary conditions for employing the logic of social situations and mechanisms in the explanation of social institutions and economic processes. It moreover prepares the ground for the use of simplified or cartoon-like models of individual agency in economic and social theory, but also for its critique. On this basis, Hume's influence on various strands of social and economic thought, but also the specific differences with regard to more 'rationalistic' approaches (such as Hobbesianism or important versions of neoclassical economics) can be assessed more clearly.
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An economic theory of knowledge makes sense of much of the phenomenon of religious belief as merely a form of knowledge. Such a theory must, in general, address the incentives for and costs of coming to discover some bit of knowledge and with the happenstance availability of relevant knowledge in moments of decision. But it must also address the causing and maintaining of belief, especially the way incentives actually bring one to come to believe some range of knowledge, not merely the incentives for coming across the content of that knowledge.
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The beginning of political and economic liberalism is distrust. This claim is clearer for economic liberalism than for political liberalism because it is overtly foundational in economic liberalism, which was directed against the intrusions of the state in economic affairs. Those intrusions typically had the obvious purpose of securing economic advantages for some by restricting opportunities for others, although some of them may have been merely capricious or ignorantly intended. The hostility to such economic intrusions led to the form of the American constitution, with its principal purpose to restrict government and its actions in the economy or, in the lexicon of the time, in commerce. James Madison saw the creation of an open economy or untrammelled commerce as the main achievement of the new constitution.