1 Moral Sense Theory
1.2 Hutcheson 14
1.2.5 Subjectivity and Objectivity 33
As mentioned, Hutcheson believes that the moral sense is universal in the sense that all human beings possess such a sense, and he is also committed to the view that human beings judge the same things to be morally good and evil. On the one hand, this is relatively clear: according to Hutcheson, in that all human beings have the moral sense they all approve of benevolence and disapprove of its opposite, malice. In a sense, then, we all seem to have the same standard of judgement. But Hutcheson is not naïve and acknowledges that there seems to be much variation among human beings with respect to what they judge to be benevolent. Hutcheson makes an effort to show that this does not mean that all moral evaluation is relative to each individual’s subjective feelings of approval or disapproval. According to Hutcheson, our feelings of approval and
disapproval are linked to the simple ideas raised in us by various objects (see I4 4). What this means, for Hutcheson, is that if the same simple ideas were raised in each individual by the same objects, we would all judge these objects the exact same way. In the case of moral judgements, if the same action, character or affection always raised the same simple idea in us, we would all judge such things as either morally good or evil. However, it is often the case that many other simple ideas come to be associated with others, whether through education, custom, etc., and this causes us to judge things differently both between individuals, and even the same individual can have different judgements at different times. Hutcheson’s position is therefore an interesting one in that, on the one hand, the principle moral evaluation is objective, but variation does occur given the various ways in which different ideas become associated with one another. This picture becomes more complicated once we take into account what was discussed above, namely that both the various simple ideas and what our reason infers to be the case about the objects we are perceiving are relevant to what we judge to be morally good and evil. Things get even more complicated depending on whether one reads Hutcheson as a moral realist or not, i.e. whether or not one takes him to claim that the moral sense perceives moral qualities existing objectively and independently of the
mind in the external world.29 I do not wish to weigh in on this debate here for it is not directly relevant to my project. I do, however, wish to mention how a few commentators have made sense of the way in which Hutcheson is either a subjectivist or an objectivist for it helps illustrate the way in which he thinks about moral judgements.
Scott has a relatively simplistic reading of Hutcheson, according to which the moral sense’s judgements are subjective in the sense that moral evaluation is simply relative to each person’s individual feelings (see Scott 1900, 187). Scott argues that while this position is not especially clear in the Inquiry, Hutcheson begins to lean this way in the Essay, and claims that in his later works Hutcheson was forced to concede this was his position given he made pleasure the mark moral evaluation. Whether this ended up being Hutcheson’s mature position aside, as stated this interpretation seems to be too simplistic, especially with respect to the editions of the Inquiry and Essay I am dealing with here. This is the case because, as discussed above, Hutcheson clearly seems to think that moral judgements are at least in some sense objective. The key, I think, is to
determine in what sense Hutcheson thinks they are objective.
I believe Gill has the most charitable and plausible interpretation of this issue. According to Gill, moral distinctions originate in the moral sense and do not correspond to anything in the external world, but there is a sense in which there is a real distinction between virtue and vice (see Gill 2006, 169). Gill claims that those who reject “mind – independent realism” can be either personal subjectivists or transpersonal subjectivists (see ibid., 297). According to Gill, “[t]ranspersonal subjectivists hold that morality is determined by the responses of people in general” whereas personal subjectivists “hold that morality is relative to each individual” (ibid., 297). Interestingly, Gill claims that Hutcheson is indeed a personal subjectivist, but that his personal subjectivism is
“cognitivist” in the sense that Hutcheson still believes moral judgements can be correct or incorrect, although still without corresponding to external reality (see ibid., 299-300). In that moral judgements are not grounded in anything external, against which we can judge their truth or falsity, Gill notes that in order to preserve real moral distinctions,
Hutcheson must believe, for example, that “mistake-free moral conflict is logically possible but psychologically impossible” (ibid., 174). This seems to fit well with
Hutcheson’s claim that we all already do or would judge in the same way on the basis of the same moral ideas, while at the same time preserving no strong moral realism. For this reason, Gill claims that although it might be best to say Hutcheson is a subjectivist, what Hutcheson tried to accomplish was the “practical equivalent” of objective moral
judgements.30
Hutcheson might therefore be a subjectivist in the sense that moral judgements rest on the feelings of each individual person, but because Hutcheson believes it is psychologically unlikely that there is much variation between the feelings of each individual he can preserve the idea that moral judgement can be right or wrong and that this distinction is real in some substantive sense.