Hume defined the problem of the being and spirit as unsolvable ones. In fact, he denied the objective nature of the concept of causality and substance. He developed the theory of association of ideas. In ethics he developed the concept of utilitarianism, where the reason has no influence on human actions, in the political economy Hume revealed shared labor theory of value of Adam Smith. The doctrine of Hume is one of the sources of the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, positivism and neo-positivism.
Criticizing intellectualism, Hume seeks to demonstrate that he was not able to see or explain the peculiarity of the moral sphere. Appealing primarily to the concept of Wollaston, who identified with the virtue of the truth, and vice to its negation with lie, Hume shows to which absurdities and paradoxes leads such a representation. By using the example of adulterous neighbor, Hume emphasized that others will be misled and accept a wife for the wife of a neighbor, who satisfies his lust with her.
It is also essential to differ the demands of reality from some ordinary needs. “Smith has not then established his conceptual claim that, failing the truth of rationalism, moral reasons cannot be not reasons at all. The most he seems entitled to conclude is that, failing the truth of rationalism, moral reasons are not the sort of reasons he thinks they are” (Lenman 173). In contrary, the beliefs could be named as motives, but according to motivational skepticism, reasons and motives are interpreted differently.
It is also useful to mention Smith’s realism as a moral judgment. The idea of a moral judgment thus looks like it may well be incoherent, for what is required to make sense of such a judgment is q queer sort of fact about the universe: a fact whose recognition necessarily impacts upon our desires.
Moral skepticism, known as the denial of the possibility of a rational justification of the social order is based on the rules of human behavior and the best ways of life assumptions. Renford Bambrough, being one of the famous British philosopher, analyzed the concept of legitimacy of moral knowledge. Actually, the proof of legitimacy of moral knowledge lies in its falsification. “Much of Bambrough's project concerns the thesis that logic and fact are an integral part of any moral judgment and cannot be artificially separated from such judgments without destroying the judgment itself” (Bambrough 111).
Works Cited
Bambrough, Renford. Moral Scepticism And Moral Knowledge. Atlantic Highlands, N.J.:
Humanities Press, 1979. Print.
Lenman, James. "Michael Smith And The Daleks: Reason, Morality, And Contingency".
UTI 11.02 (1999): 164. Web.
