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Home , Objectivity (philosophy)

CHAPTER 10 The of Moral Cognition and

As Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison have shown,1 “objectivity” is a multifac- eted concept, the development of which has a long and rich . In their presentation, objectivity is listed among the cardinal epistemic in modern times that had gone through a complex process of evolution before it emerged in a full-blown version in the 19th century. Several important aspects of this modern concept of objectivity that became dominant in the natural sci- ences derive from 18th-century and moral philosophy, and as such they are partly due to the conceptual work done by .2 Although “objectivity” as a term does not figure in Hume’s writings, its con- ceptual relatives, like “impartiality” and the “common point of view”, do play an important role in them. As I try to show, the idea of a full-blown objec- tivity, i.e. a perspective that is detached from the and distortions of any point of view, is alien to Hume’s . Hume’s aim in his Treatise of Human (1739/40) is to explore the specifically human point of view and its contribution to cognition, , and aesthetic judgment, and there is no room in its framework for a genuinely objective perspective exempt from the constraints of our constitution—and this diagnosis also holds for his An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals (1751). Objectivity in this sense is an unattainable ideal: one main lesson Hume teaches us is that we cannot transcend the boundaries of our sensitivity and cognitive constitution. We can at most aspire to be aware of the limitations inherent in, and possibilities arising from, them—this is the why all the must depend, at least to some extent, on the of human nature (T Intro. 4). Even if genuine objectivity is beyond our reach, we still can abstract from our personal biases and individual perspective by taking the perspectives of others into account, and thereby assuming a common point of view we can exercise impartial judgment. Here I intend to explore how the conceptual relatives of “objectivity” inform Hume’s moral philosophy and his theory of moral cognition. In doing so, I bor- row from Daston and Galison two terms designating epistemic virtues that preceded “objectivity”, namely aperspectival objectivity and -to-nature,

1 L. Daston and P. Galison, Objectivity (New York: Zone Books, 2007). 2 L. Daston, “Objectivity and the Escape from Perspective,” Social Studies of Science 22 (1992), 597–618.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���6 | doi ��.��63/9789004327320_012 184 CHAPTER 10 and I will reconstruct Hume’s position while arguing for the following claims: 1) there is an important distinction to be drawn between moral philosophy and moral cognition as Hume envisages them. Moral cognition, i.e. the process of making moral judgment, is a common part of social practice, while moral philosophy is a theoretical enterprise that, among other things, comprises a theory of moral cognition. 2) Hume maintains that aperspectival objectivity as impartiality is a necessary condition for moral cognition, but this kind of objectivity is intrinsically bound up with the human point of view. 3) Moral philosophy, at least as Hume conceives it, is an enterprise continuous with nat- ural philosophy in its aims of description and explanation. Truth-to-nature is a chief epistemic in the enterprise of Humean moral philosophy, which also indicates its continuity with contemporary , but it is a virtue that does not entail going aperspectival. As Daston puts it, the essence of aperspectival objectivity is commu- nicability, and it is about “eliminating individual (or occasionally group) idiosyncrasies”.3 Daston’s concept will have to be further refined in order to be a useful tool of analysis in the context of Hume’s philosophy. There are at least two different ways of aperspectival. The first and weaker sense of the term is to understand it as detached from any particular human perspective, that is, to be detached from particular interests, points of view, and personal sympathies. For Hume, this stance, the “common point of view”, ensures the possibility of impartial , and it is the essence of moral evaluation (T 2.2.8.6, EPM 5.41): without being impartial, one could only express personal (and thus not moral) sentiments, tastes, and distastes, but not moral ones. Yet, being impartial does not amount to being genuinely aperspectival, because impartiality so understood is still a profoundly human perspective. The stronger or more genuine way of being aperspectival would consist in adopting a “view from nowhere”, as ’s happy phrase has it, i.e. in a perspective detached from our human point of view by leaving “even just human perspective behind”.4 One way of adopting this latter perspective leads through the idea of reason:

Reason, if there is such a thing, can serve as a court of appeal not only against the received opinions and habits of our community but also against the peculiarities of our personal perspective. It is some- thing each individual can find within himself, but at the same time it has universal authority. Reason provides, mysteriously, a way of distancing

3 Daston, “Objectivity and the Escape from Perspective,” pp. 600 and 597. 4 T. Nagel, The View from Nowhere (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), p. 7.