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Hume a subjectivist and an objectivist?

Posted: October 10th, 2014, 10:10 am
by MarcxRany
I am relatively new to Hume's work and although have always seen him as a subjectivist, I recently came across an few essays which have argued the opposite. I don't think anyone could call him an objectivist, but would you say there were some objectivist elements, or at least elements that don't conform strictly to the relativist standpoint, that are present in Hume's meta-ethical theories? I know there are arguments for him being neither subjectivist or objectivist in his aesthetics, would you say this also applies to his arguments regarding morality, as his theories for both are very similar?

Re: Hume a subjectivist and an objectivist?

Posted: October 10th, 2014, 11:34 pm
by Spectrum
Hume is basically a subjectivist, i.e. no 'ought' from 'is'.
However at some point whatever is subjective becomes normative and if there is lasting common consensus, that becomes inter-subjective, thus is in a way 'objective' to a degree in one sense.

Re: Hume a subjectivist and an objectivist?

Posted: September 13th, 2017, 9:03 pm
by Maffei
I'm reading Hume's Treatise and your point os very interesting.

Hume is worried about that classic question: "What we can know?", and I see this as radically objective, that is, our knowledge as humans is relied on all experience we have accumulated and repetedly comproved. Maybe it can be frustrating and apparently subjectivist because it's based only in what we can grasp based on habits. We are not grasping the truth.

So I can say x about my experience and you can say y, but what he would do in this case is underline that this is the moment to find a more definitive relation of cause and effect, because if I don't admit that is just a relation based on experience, I can start building a metaphysical explanation as if my experience applies to everything. Won't this be a subjectivism, with "ism", a personal delirium raised to the truth status?

So empiricism tries to find objective knowledge as well as rationalism, but in a more safe way.

Re: Hume a subjectivist and an objectivist?

Posted: September 15th, 2017, 9:28 pm
by Spectrum
Hume is notably an 'empiricist' in opposition to the 'rationalists'.
see:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rati ... mpiricism/