El presente artículo ofrece una solución al problema metaético que florece en la ética humeana a propósito de la conciliación entre el cognitivismo derivado de la exigencia del General Point of View y el internalismo moral que se deriva de su argumento de la motivación. Asumiendo una descripción evolutiva en la construcción de la perspectiva evaluativa representada por el General Point of View, al tiempo que un proyectivismo epistemológico para los juicios causales que conectan las motivaciones, acciones y utilidad de (...) los distintos caracteres que surgen en el origen de la justicia, se puede conciliar -sin riesgo para la consistencia del planteamiento humeano- la existencia de individuos capaces de generar juicios morales cognitivos que derivan en una motivación moral internalista, identificada con el sentido del deber, e individuos con motivaciones claramente externalistas basadas en el uso instrumental de la razón. (shrink)

In this paper I consider the context and significance of the first instalment of Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature , Books One and Two, on the understanding and on the passions, published in 1739 without Book Three. I argue that Books One and Two taken together should be read as addressing the question of the relation between reason and passion, and place Hume's discussion in the context of a large early modern philosophical literature on the topic. Hume's goal is (...) to show that the passions do not require government by reason, and to illustrate various ways in which the passions of social beings regulate themselves. The underlying theme of the first Treatise is thus a new theory of sociability: sympathetic sociability. (shrink)

The idea that the phenomenon of morality and, consequently, our ability to distinguish between vice and virtue can be explained by sympathy has been challenged as a highly controversial hypothesis, since sympathy appears to be easily influenced by proximity and selective, and would therefore seem incompatible with the possibility of taking an impartial, objective point of view. We intend to show that even a sentimentalist moral perspective such as the ‘Humean’ one, which places empathy (or ‘sympathy’, as Hume calls it) (...) at the core of morality, is capable of accounting for and justifying moral responsibility to future generations. Moreover, if we consider things from a Humean perspective, it is immoral not only to harm future generations, but also not to care at all about the extinction of the human species. For in the former case, we perform actions that cause misery, pain and suffering, whilst in the latter, we are not at all concerned about the welfare (i.e., happiness) of possible people who may, in the near future, come into the world and have a life worth or very much worth living. That is, in both cases, we show no ability to empathize with the possible people who will or may be born tomorrow. (shrink)

Two rival approaches to property rights dominate contemporary political philosophy: Lockean natural rights and egalitarian theories of distributive justice. This article defends a third approach, which can be traced to the work of David Hume. Unlike Lockean rights, Humean property rights are not grounded in pre-institutional moral entitlements. In contrast to the egalitarian approach, which begins with highly abstract principles of distributive justice, Humean theory starts with simple property conventions and shows how more complex institutions can be justified against a (...) background of settled property rights. Property rights allow people to coordinate their use of scarce resources. For property rules to serve this function effectively, certain questions must be considered settled. Treating existing property entitlements as having prima facie validity facilitates cooperation between people who disagree about distributive justice. Lockean and egalitarian theories endorse moral claims that threaten to unsettle property conventions and undermine social cooperation. (shrink)