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write a essay on Hume's view voluntary action.I'm having a hard time developing how to write an objection and response.The "complex" version of Hume's conception of freedom is this: an action is free, only if it is voluntary and only to the extent that the choice to perform this action flows from the agent's character. This seems to imply that if I just choose to act out of character, my action is not free and my responsibility for it is diminished. This cannot be right, can it? Doesn't this implication refute Hume's view? (Would the claim that "I just chose to act out of character" get one off the hook in a murder trial?)
1. Aristotle defines a voluntary action as an action that is done with knowledge of what one is doing (i.e., not in factual ignorance), and which has its 'moving principle' inside the agent. In other words, Aristotle specifies a (1) knowledge and (2) a control condition on voluntariness, and hence on praise and blame. In illustration of how the 'knowledge condition' (non-ignorance) undermines responsibility, Aristotle mentions Aeschylus' defence against the charge of revealing the rites of the Mysteries; this was that he did not know that the "he was divulging a secret". This is a clear case of the ignorance of a bit of information or ignorance of fact. Although Aeschylus voluntarily revealed the information, his act is not correctly described as 'voluntarily revealing a secret'. This is the sense in which he was ignorant of what he was doing. This constitutes ignorance of the particulars, and according to Aristotle renders his act involuntary. In illustration of the 'control condition' Aristotle mentions a scenario in which a man is carried off by the wind. In this sort of case, Aristotle says, the moving principle is outside of the agent, he does not move himself at all; he does not really do anything. As a result, his action, if it can be called that, is involuntary and he is not praise or blameworthy for what he has done.
2. You can see from the above, the voluntariness includes a control condition. This means that a voluntary action is one that the agent controlled in some way. I think it is helpful to understand Hume's position in relation to this. You can understand the free will condition on moral responsibility as a specification of what it means for someone to control and action.
Hume is one of the main developers and defenders of a classical compatibilist position in the free will debate. In brief, Hume thinks that freedom is opposed to constraint, and not to causation. Freedom here refers to the control aspect of voluntariness mentioned above.
In general, being caused to act does not undermine one's free will; rather only certain types of causes or impediments do so. Hume's point is that everyone recognizes that a prisoner held in chains is not free. But this has nothing to do with a thesis of determinism but simply because he is chained up.
Moreover, Hume says, the key difference between the prisoner in chains and someone who is not bound in this way, is that the latter is able to determine his conduct by his own desires.
This generates a conception of free will which is compatible with determinism. Transposing this into the language of voluntariness, the prisoner in chains in not free because he cannot control his actions. Consequently, the prisoner does not voluntarily remain in the chains.
In Section VIII of the ''Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding'', Hume defines freedom as follows:
By liberty [freedom], then, we can only mean a power of acting or not acting, according to the determinations of the will; that is, if we choose to remain at rest, we may; if we choose to move, we also may. Now, this hypothetical liberty is universally allowed to belong to everyone who is not a prisoner and in chains.
Essentially Hume is saying that freedom means being able to govern our actions by means of our choices. That is, if we choose to do something, and we are not prevented from doing it, then we are free. More specifically, freedom amounts to our being able to act from our own motives rather than (say) as a result if being coerced. This account of freedom links up neatly with Hume's conception of moral responsibility, which is that of the utilitarian theory.
Consider this passage, again from Hume's ''Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding'' (Section VIII):
It will be equally easy to prove, and from the same arguments, that liberty, according to that definition above mentioned, in which all men agree, is also essential to morality, and that no human actions, where it is wanting, are susceptible of any moral qualities...for actions are objects of our moral sentiment, so far as they are indications of our internal character; it is impossible that they can give rise either to praise or blame, where they proceed not from these principles, but are derived altogether from external violence.
Hume's point here is that agents' are susceptible to praise and blame when their actions reflect upon their character. Moreover, there is some plausibility in thinking that only in cases where the agent had free will in Hume's sense (defined above), will his actions reflect upon his character. Hume says that only actions which represent someone's character give rise to praise and blame. Hume's position is then to combine a utilitarian theory of responsibility with a compatibilist analysis of free will in terms of being able to act from one's own desires.
According to his analysis of free will, a person is free only when he governs his action by his own desires (something which the prisoner in chains cannot do). Praise and blame then have a point only when this condition is fulfilled because only in this case is there a reason to actually try to reinforce or reform someone's character. There is no reason to (e.g.) blame the prisoner in chains for not helping to save a drowning person, because the prisoner's omission is not due to his choices, or necessarily due to his lack of desire to help. Rather, his omission is due to the chains, and hence not a reflection on his character.
Section 2:
From the above, let's look again at what you've written.
an action is free, only if it is voluntary and only to the extent that the choice to perform this action flows from the agent's character.
This is roughly correct. For Hume, an action is free only if the person knows what he is doing, and controls his behavior by his choices. However, Hume also thinks that controlling behavior by choices means acting from the motives or desires which one has. Furthermore, the motives and desires of a person constitute his or her character. This is the sense in which Hume thinks a free action is one which comes from the agent's character.
This seems to imply that if I just choose to act out of character, my action is not free and my responsibility for it is diminished. This cannot be right, can it? Doesn't this implication refute Hume's view?
The first thing to note here is that Hume subscribes to a certain sort of responsibility. This view of responsibility is sometimes called the Utilitarian theory. On this view, it makes sense to blame someone only when he acted freely because only free actions reflect his character. The reason why it makes sense only in this circumstance is that Hume thinks that the point of praise and blame is to influence people's behavior for the best.
Consider an example in which someone is overcome by a compulsion (say as a result of mental illness). Hume could say that a person is not blameworthy because he did not act freely. He did not act freely because his action did not reflect any real motives he had, but rather some deviant motive which comes from mental sickness.
This seems to imply that if I just choose to act out of character, my action is not free and my responsibility for it is diminished. This cannot be right, can it? Doesn't this implication refute Hume's view?
You need to be a little careful here. On Hume's view one doesn't choose to act out of character. Rather, one chooses to act as a result of a desire or motive. (Perhaps even more accurately, the desire or motive moves one to action.) Your concern is that someone may not be responsible for an action if the motive upon which he or she acts is not typical. So for example, someone who is generally peaceful may not be responsible when he acts violently because this motivation is not typically part of his character. You are right to point out this problem.
The real trouble for Hume is to say when desires count as the person's own (i.e. reflect his/her character, and when they do not.) For example, in some case of mental illness, we would think that a person is not responsible because he did not act out of his genuine motives (i.e. his real character). By contrast, when someone who is not mentally ill loses his temper, even though he is not normally violent, this does not seem to undermine responsibility. But on Hume's account it does undermine responsibility, unless Hume can find some way of tying this tendency to violence to a person's real character. You should think a bit more about how Hume could respond to your objection. Your paper will be deepened by considering how Hume could fix or adapt his theory to overcome your objection.