HUME'S COMPATIBILIST CONTRIBUTION Tom

Minor

Hume thought that the "...long disputed question concerning liberty and

necessity..."1, which were his terms for what he saw as the compatible notions of free

will and determinism, lay outside the scope of human understanding. This was so,

Hume explains, because such questions regarding human liberty (free will) and

necessity (determinism) had been, thus far, rendered un-instructive and un-

entertaining by the "...labyrinth of obscure sophistry..."2 which philosophers

particularly, had been led into as they attempted to discuss these questions.

Desiring to renew our attention through his novel compatibilist approach, Hume

attempts to resolve the apparent incompatibilism of free will (liberty) and

determinism (necessity) by trying to make it appear "...that all men have ever agreed

in the doctrine of both necessity and of liberty...and that the whole controversy has

hitherto turned merely upon words."3

For Hume, the thesis of determinism was equitable to the 'doctrine of necessity',

which he illuminated as a 'universally allowed' way of thinking about the operations

of cause and effect: the deterministic assumption that every effect (physical or

mental) has antecedent causes and can, in principle, be predicted from

understanding previous conditions and causal laws. Such determinism in the

physical realm could be said to be universally allowed, but the suggestion of it within

the human realm posed a serious threat to the conceptions of freedom and moral

responsibility in Hume's heavily religious era. The question implicit to the

1 David Hume, (1748) An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section VIII. ‘Liberty and Necessity’. Oxford: OU Press (2007) (pp. 59, §2)2 ibid.3 ibid. §3

acceptance of determinism or the 'doctrine of necessity', is how could punishment be

appropriate if all human actions were products of causal laws? This question recurs

throughout a reading of Liberty & Necessity (1748).

" Our idea, therefore, of necessity and causation arises entirely from the uniformity,

observable in the operations of nature; where similar objects are constantly

conjoined together, and the mind is determined by custom to infer the one from the

appearance of the other. These two circumstances form the whole of that necessity,

which we ascribe to matter. Beyond the constant conjunction [I] of similar objects,

and the consequent inference [II] from one to the other, we have no notion of any

necessity, or connexion.”4

Applied to human nature, Hume points out that the uniform conjunction between

motives and voluntary actions is an inference and type of reasoning that is immanent

to the human condition. But an inference is all it is: "... all our faculties can never

carry us farther in our knowledge…than barely to observe, that particular objects are

constantly conjoined together, and the mind is carried, by a customary transition,

from the appearance of one to the belief of the other. But…men still…believe, that

they…perceive…a necessary connexion between the cause and effect..."5 For Hume,

man must relinquish his false belief that he can perceive further into the idea of

necessity or causality than this 'constant conjunction' and 'subsequent inference', in

order to put an end to the dispute between the supposedly incompatible notions of

liberty and necessity, or freedom and determinism.

In true compatibilist style, Hume affirms that both the doctrines of necessity and

liberty "…are not only consistent with morality, but are absolutely essential to its

4 ibid. (pp. 60, §5)5 ibid (pp. 67, §21)

support.”6 With necessity conforming to the two definitions of cause (constant

conjunction of events and inference from one to another), and being founded upon

"...the experiential union of like actions, with like motives, inclinations, and

circumstances."7 The only allowance he gives to the refusal of such necessity is that

people may not give these properties of human action the name of necessity.

Hume believed that human actions were temporary and perishable, and where they

are simply caused by a deterministic chain of antecedents, could not be attributable

to the person's character and therefore speak nothing of his honour of infamy. "The

actions themselves may be blameable; they may be contrary to all the rules of

morality and religion: But the person is not answerable for them...they proceeded

from nothing in him, that is durable and constant, and leave nothing of that nature

behind them..."8 On such an account, punishment and vengeance become obsolete.

This distinction between 'character' and 'action' allows for the invocation of a divine

author, who is the ultimate cause of all that happens, and insofar as Hume had to

subscribe to such a metaphysical absolute, this is certainly what is achieved, at least

partially, by his explication. Upon the doctrine of necessity, criminal actions are no

more proofs of a person being a criminal than being born could be such a proof.

Hume defines liberty as "...a power of acting or not acting, according to the

determination of the will..."9, which he also thinks is universally allowed, except to

the prisoner in chains. Liberty, in Humean sense, is also essential to morality insofar

as human actions indicate the internal character of a person: "...where they proceed

not from these principles, but are derived altogether from external violence.”10—the

attribution of blame or praise would seem to be impossible. Human actions either 6 ibid (pp. 70, §26)7 ibid. (pp. 70, §27)8 ibid. (pp. 70, §29)9 ibid. (pp. 68, §23)10 ibid. (pp. 72, §31)

involve a certain amount of morality or locate the same guilt to the ultimate cause,

the Creator God, who produces the first cause in the chain of causes that

deterministically leads to all human actions, whether they are morally reprehensible

or not. The conclusion therefore, that either man is not criminal for acting immorally

or that the Deity and not man, is accountable to such actions, strike Hume as two

impious options, which in their absurdity, falsify the doctrine from whence they came.

The first objection, that the 'infinite perfection' of the Deity somehow exonerates

man from all his criminal undertakings, because all human action can be traced via a

necessary chain to an ultimate author – is answered, rhetorically, by Hume himself as

he invokes the conciliatory tone of the ancient Stoics, who, in agreement with this

‘ultimate authorship’, understood the whole system of nature and every event within

it (good and bad) as objects of joy and exultation. Such "...specious and sublime..."11

Stoicism, Hume thought to be "...in practice weak and ineffectual..."12 serving only

"...for a moment, [to] please the imagination of a speculative man, who is placed in

ease and security..."13 To establish that everything in regards to the whole system, is

right; either disturbance or benevolence, does not diminish a man's frustrations when

he is the victim of a crime.

The second objection, Hume admits as unsatisfactory, in that it is impossible "...to

explain distinctly how the Deity can be the mediate cause of all the actions of men,

without being the author of sin and moral turpitude."14 Indeed, a reconciliation of

"...the indifference and contingency of human actions with prescience..."15; the

resolution of the falsity of determinism with the maintenance of God's prophetic

omniscience, along with the defense of absolute decrees without a Deified authorship 11 ibid. (pp.73, §34)12 ibid.13 ibid.14 ibid. (pp.74, §36)15 ibid.

of sin "...has been found hitherto to exceed all the power of philosophy."16 Therefore,

man may only live in the mystery, a mystery that Hume implies in order to allow his

compatibilist approach to synthesise the possibility that the doctrine of liberty and

necessity have always been agreed by men and have only ever been disputed as

philosophical meditations which speak to the contrary of human existence.

Hume appeals to two definitions of cause (conjunction and inference) in order to

illuminate his conception of the issue of free will (the doctrine of liberty). His

compatibilism, which is said to have followed on from Hobbes, states that both the

doctrine of liberty and necessity are required by morality, thus he believes in a

deterministic universe, where men are free to choose their actions, even though

these actions spring from causes which eventually lead back to God. Were he not

under the scrutiny of the Roman Catholic Church, one can say that Hume may have

gone a step further and indicated that man is not to held morally responsible for any

of his actions, because determinism (the doctrine of necessity) was true, even

without the necessity of divine authorship. It is arguable that his position could

support this view, but since Hume was in fact liable to be executed on production of

such a statement, he leaves us with a problem yet unsolved, one that implicitly casts

doubt on the authenticity of the invocation of divine responsibility for all human

actions.

From a reading of Liberty and Necessity (1748), one can only conclude that for

Hume, the free will of man is compatible with the possibility of the truth of

determinism: all actions have antecedent causes and man still has liberty to choose

his actions even though all of his actions, nonetheless, belong to previous causes

which at that time, could be conceived as originating from God. Man is not free when

he is physically restrained, but this would refer to freedom of action qua freedom of

16 ibid.

will, which have more recently been delineated as separate issues. Under Hume's

logic, such a prisoner should never have been imprisoned, because his actions came

not from anything inherent in him, but were caused deterministically, by a chain of

events, set in motion by a God that he (Hume) was obliged to pay homage to. In

what seems like a genius twist, however, such admittance, of the doctrines of

necessity and liberty, bring into question the infinite perfection and foreknowledge of

such a God, highlighting the need for man to continue questioning the evidence of

his liberty and the fact of his necessity.