Hume's Account of Moral Sentiment

Abstract

Hume holds that the moral sentiments are distinguished from other passions of the mind by two features among others: (1) that they are caused by the character of an agent, and (2) that they arise only when this character is viewed disinterestedly. this paper is an attempt to discover hume's reasons for believing that these features are true of the moral sentiments, and what i argue is, first, that hume believes that these features are required to account for certain features of our actual moral views but, second, that his arguments are successful only if these features of our moral views are taken as logical and not merely contingent features.