24/10/2009

Reason in Ethics
Reading
[Hume, 1978], bk. ii, part 3, section 3 [Stroud, 1977], ch. 8 [McDowell, 1978]. [Mackie, 1980], chs. 3 & 4. [Nagel, 1970], chs. 1, 2 & 3. [Williams, 1981].

Essay
Is Hume right to say that reason alone cannot move us to action? How good are Humes own arguments for this thesis? If Hume were right about this, would it follow that morality is in some sense subjective? (If so, in what sense of subjective ?)

References
[Hume, 1978] Hume, D. (1740/1978). Treatise of Human Nature. Oxford University Press, Oxford, second edition. L. A. SelbyBigge (ed.). [Mackie, 1980] Mackie, J. L. (1980). Humes Moral Theory. Routledge & Kegan Paul, London. [McDowell, 1978] McDowell, J. (1978). Are moral requirements hypothetical imperatives? Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 52 (suppl):1329. [Nagel, 1970] Nagel, T. (1970). Princeton. The Possibility of Altruism. Princeton University Press,

[Stroud, 1977] Stroud, B. (1977). Hume. Routledge & Kegan Paul, London. [Williams, 1981] Williams, B. (1981). Internal and external reasons. In Moral Luck, pages 101113. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.