Abstract
Why do we have a moral duty to fulfill promises? Hume offers what today is called a practice theory of the obligation of promises: he explains it by appeal to a social convention. His view has inspired more recent practice theories. All practice theories, including Hume’s, are assumed by contemporary philosophers to have a certain normative structure, in which the obligation to fulfill a promise is warranted or justified by a more fundamental moral purpose that is served by the social practice of promising or adherence to it. Recent practice theories do have this structure, but, I argue, Hume’s own does not. Hume’s account, while it does trace the origin of promises to convention, is instead a causal explanation of the moral sentiments we have toward fulfillment and violation of promises, sentiments he regards as normative in themselves and not susceptible of further warrant. He explains how a collectively-invented social practice becomes (itself) morally obligatory for us to conform to, without deriving its moral authority from a more basic principle. I discuss one objection often made to practice theories that, in its application to Hume, presupposes the incorrect interpretation, and show that while it is telling for Hume’s descendants, for Hume it misses the mark. Instead I make a different challenge to Hume, and suggest how he might meet it.
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Notes
In the notes and text of this paper, ‘T’ followed by a series of numbers refers to David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, book, part, section, and paragraph. The edition I follow is Hume (2007). EPM followed by numbers indicates section and paragraph of David Hume, An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals. The edition used is Hume (1998 reprinted 2004). All italics in the quotations are original unless otherwise noted.
Several conflicting accounts of just what Hume thinks a moral judgment or evaluation is (the noncognitivist interpretation, the sentiment-description interpretation, the moral sensing interpretation, and so on) have been defended. For a brief overview, see Cohon (2018). Here I try to provide a summary with which most interpreters would concur.
In saying that it is pro tanto obligatory to fulfill all our promises I mean to allow two possibilities that some would defend: first, that it may not be obligatory (without qualification) at all to fulfill certain promises, for example because the promised action is morally prohibited (such as a promise to murder); and secondly, that there may be a real obligation to fulfill some promises which is overridden by a conflicting obligation, so that on balance one should break the promise (as when one must act quickly in an emergency in a way that involves reneging on a promise). I take no position on whether either of these two cases is possible, but I wish to allow for them. So I do not say that all promised actions are obligatory, but only that insofar as they are promised, they are to that extent obligatory. I sometimes omit this qualification for stylistic reasons.
Shiffrin (2008) particularly objects to this feature of practice theories, that they regard the moral force of promises as derived from a more fundamental obligation and not directly from an act of commitment by the promisor.
Thus Kolodny and Wallace (2003), p. 123, note 7: “Rawls, by contrast, labels as ‘the practice of promising’ the freestanding practice [involving no moral motivation to comply], which is constituted by compliance with a nonmoral requirement to do X if one has uttered (in relevant conditions), "I promise to do X." But this label seems misplaced; it would imply that one can participate in the practice of promising without signaling any awareness of a moral obligation,” something Kolodny and Wallace deny. On their view “What is distinctive of the social practice of promising… [is that] promisers signal their recognition of these moral obligations as their motivation for adhering to the practice of fidelity that is partly constitutive of the practice” (p. 122). I take no position in this controversy regarding whether the convention or practice incorporates any moral motive or recognition of moral obligation within it. I thank an anonymous referee for inducing me to clarify this issue.
See Scanlon (1998), pp. 295–296, 315–316. His main target there is Rawls, but he discusses Hume and pretty clearly includes Hume’s view as one that is vulnerable to the same objection. This is how Kolodny and Wallace read Scanlon when they echo his criticism (2003, pp. 125–126). A more elaborated version of the objection is lodged explicitly against Hume, Mill, and Rawls in Darwall (2011). I will not address the additional complexities of Darwall’s full objection.
He certainly says that many of its complex features, including its various excusing conditions and exceptions, are all devised to serve the interests of society, T. 3.2.5.14–15.
Annette Baier (2010), for example, says that if we understand Hume to give duty or moral obligation an important role, we “make [Hume’s] virtue ethics resolve into deontology” and even “turn him into Kant” (p. 110).
“Hume is fairly sparing in his use of the term ‘duty’.”.
In treating them as synonyms I concur with Robert Shaver (1992), p. 549, note 10; and I disagree with Baier (1988, pp. 765, 766–167), who argues that Hume limits his use of ‘obligation’ to artificial ethical requirements but uses ‘duty’ more broadly to parallel Cicero’s officii, which attach to social roles both natural and artificial but not to the trait of humanity. See, for example, T. 3.2.5.6, where one example is humanity, a natural sentiment which is alluded to as an obligation.
Past Masters lists 41 occurrences of ‘duty’ and more than 110 for ‘obligation’ used in a moral sense, compared to 162 hits for ‘virtue.’
According to Harris (2010), at least with regard to the so-called artificial virtues, Hume’s moral philosophy is not really a virtue ethic but rather a view like that of Grotius. That may be so. My point here is that even if Hume does take a virtue-ethical approach across the board, duty need not be unwelcome in it. If he does not, of course, it is that much easier for him to accommodate some duties.
For an interpretation of that whole argument, see Cohon (2008), chapter 7.
Baier would disagree. In Baier (2010) she argues thus: “Since Hume says that our characters are no more of our own decreeing than the motion of the heavens, it would be really strange to still say we have a duty to possess all the virtues. Hume does not say this…” (p. 110). [NB: Hume’s remark about the motions of the heavens in fact is not about the impossibility of influencing our own characters, but rather the impossibility of influencing the moral sentiments by means of which we evaluate actions by a pure act of the will alone (T.3.2.5.4).] I think Baier goes wrong here. Hume does think that it is very difficult to alter our own characters (though certainly not impossible, I would argue; in EPM Sect. 9 he seems to think we can do it). It would be strange for Hume to say that we have a duty to possess virtues if he accepts the doctrine that ought (duty) implies can. But I see no reason to suppose he does accept that. And he plainly says that affection for offspring is a duty, as we have seen.
Hume at times contrasts interested obligations with moral obligations (T 3.2.2.23, T 3.2.5.11–12, EPM 9.14). A way to explain this was suggested to me by Hart’s remark, reported by Mendel Cohen (1990), that “we would not say that one had an obligation to turn over his purse to a gunman who threatened him, though we would say he was obliged to do so” (p. 328). I suspect that wherever it would be appropriate to say that one is obliged to do something, Hume (unlike Hart) would use ‘obligation’ as the nominative to refer to that state. Thus if one is obliged by self-interest to turn over one’s purse, one is under an “interested obligation”; and if one is obliged by the moral sentiment to keep a promise, one is under a moral obligation.
Lest readers of Hume’s account of the moral obligations of property, promises, and allegiance to government be unconvinced “with regard to the universal approbation or blame, which follows their observance or transgression, and which some may not think sufficiently explain’d from the general interests of society” (T 3.2.12.1), Hume provides a parallel explanation regarding chastity in women. He shows (so he thinks) how a general disapproval of the sort of sexual behavior by women that prevents knowledge of the paternity of their children (making fathers unwilling to support them) is transformed into specific disapproval on the part of every individual of all nonmarital sexual activity by all women, even those past child-bearing age. That explanation relies similarly on psychological change and general rules to create a sense of duty. This passage shows clearly that Hume is concerned about how a culture can engineer specific, strict, and universal disapproval that perfectly conforms to a set of social rules.
If Korn and Korn (1983) are right that in the Kingdom of Tonga there is no social institution of promises, then, according to Hume, the Tongans actually have no promissory duties. Since the authors grant that Tongans swear oaths to one another and make and uphold legal contracts, however, Hume would probably not be persuaded that Tongans have no practice of promising.
I set aside delicate issues here concerning the status, for Hume, of moral approvals and disapprovals evoked by false beliefs; but see Cohon (2008), chapter 9.
There is much textual evidence for Hume’s commitment to this general claim. One example from EPM: “The hypothesis which we embrace is plain. It maintains, that morality is determined by sentiment. It defines virtue to be whatever mental action or quality gives to a spectator the pleasing sentiment of approbation; and vice the contrary. We then proceed to examine a plain matter of fact, to wit, what actions have this influence” (App.1.10).
The idea for this analogy arose in discussion with Toan Tran, whom I thank.
Adam Smith, in The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1790/1982), II.i.5–6, pp. 75–76, claims that resentment and approval of resentment contribute to our sentiment-based moral judgments. Though he makes somewhat different use of them than I suggest here, his deployment of them in building one of his moral sentiments led me to make the suggestion above. Strawson’s (1963) analysis of moral disapprobation in part in terms of vicarious resentment or indignation is similar to Smith’s.
I am grateful to audiences at the Society for Early Modern Philosophy at Yale, May, 2013, the 42nd annual international Hume Society Conference, Stockholm, Sweden, July 2015, the University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada, March 2016, and Wayne State University, Detroit, MI, October, 2018 for helpful comments on various earlier arguments and drafts that later evolved into this essay.
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Cohon, R. Hume’s practice theory of promises and its dissimilar descendants. Synthese 199, 617–635 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-020-02684-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-020-02684-2