The Causes of Motivating Passions

Abstract

Abstract This chapter considers two ways to interpret Hume's understanding of the roles of pleasure and pain, desire and aversion, in the production of motivating passions and so of actions. Its upshot is that even on the most subtle interpretation of the text, the best evidence shows that for Hume beliefs about available pleasure and pain cause new motivating passions and do not merely direct existing passions. Since this is his position, we must rethink what he means when he argues that reason alone is not a motive to the will, and we must reinterpret his arguments to show that moral distinctions are not derived from reason. For on the common reading, those were all based on the claim that no belief can cause a motivating passion without the causal assistance of some prior passion not of its making. And that is not Hume's view.

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