In thinking about Hume, I can’t help but wonder at his notion of the “intercourse of sentiments.” This is his phrase for what happens in conversation when conversation leads us to a clearer moral awareness of the world. It’s as if we have not simply a conversation of particular people but rather of the very sentiments of those people, which happens as each person, in conversation, comes to more fully under what others want and feel. Hume explains all this in a long passage from his An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (from an earlier chapter from which we did not read):
The more we converse with mankind, and the greater social intercourse we maintain, the more shall we be familiarized to these general preferences and distinctions, without which our conversation and discourse could scarcely be rendered intelligible to each other. Every man's interest is peculiar to himself, and the aversions and desires, which result from it, cannot be supposed to affect others in a like degree. General language, therefore, being formed for general use, must be moulded on some more general views, and must affix the epithets of praise or blame, in conformity to sentiments, which arise from the general interests of the community. And if these sentiments, in most men, be not so strong as those, which have a reference to private good; yet still they must make some distinction, even in persons the most depraved and selfish; and must attach the notion of good to a beneficent conduct, and of evil to the contrary. Sympathy, we shall allow, is much fainter than our concern for ourselves, and sympathy with persons remote from us, much fainter than that with persons near and contiguous; but for this very reason, it is necessary for us, in our calm judgments and discourse concerning the characters of men, to neglect all these differences, and render our sentiments more public and social. Besides, that we ourselves often change our situation in this particular, we every day meet with persons, who are in a situation different from us, and who could never converse with us, were we to remain constantly in that position and point of view, which is peculiar to ourselves. The intercourse of sentiments, therefore, in society and conversation, makes us form some general unalterable standard, by which we may approve or disapprove of characters and manners. And though the heart takes not part entirely with those general notions, nor regulates all its love and hatred, by the universal, abstract differences of vice and virtue, without regard to self, or the persons with whom we are more intimately connected; yet have these moral differences a considerable influence, and being sufficient, at least, for discourse, serve all our purposes in company, in the pulpit, on the theatre, and in the schools. (emphasis added)
So Hume grants that desires differ among people – we pursue, in Mill’s parlance, different goods. However, he (Hume) believes that we are able to look at things from a less subjective point of view when talk to others. Occupying this point of view makes us act and feel in a “more public and social” manner. We are thus more in tune with other people. And Hume’s argument here is grounded not simply in the idea that we get together and talk and change our opinions in order to find some common ground. Rather, in order to converse over matters of good and evil, those words must have some content that transcends particular differences; this must be so in order for such conversation to be possible. Thus, stored in this moral vocabulary, in these particular words, is the whole history of human experience with respect to what is agreeable and useful, and when we use language to talk to others, we are brought out of our own limited experience and put in touch with something larger than ourselves.
This speaks to a problem I have with Hume’s notion of the “intercourse of sentiments” (his idea that conversation with the members of my social group will bring my sentiments more in line with the universal moral sentiment shared by all people). The problem I have with it is that such dialogue works to calibrate people’s moral sensibilities, but this seems to only happen successfully in relatively homogenous groups. Indeed, the history of Western thought is often in part the history of relatively like-minded white men getting together and coming to some sort of agreement over what is right and wrong; females, the poor, non-whites, and those of different religions and even nationalities are often left out of these conversations. Also, such conversations can easily lead to conformity (meaning that they can push people to conform to a limited ideal that is really not so good). Hume might argue that, in such conforming conversations, people are not really working together to find the proper point of view from which the moral sentiment can be exercised. However, how can one tell? How can one be sure that s/he has all the facts and is fully imaginatively sensitive and is fully disinterested (from a personal point of view)? There is no authority who can step in an adjudicate conflicts; the group must work together to find consensus.
And this seems to be Hume’s point: Yes, there is no higher authority in such discussions, and we must work to find consensus, and the fact that we can work toward consensus and sometimes even find it is because of how language works. In other words, if the words we use to describe moral experience – words such as good and bad and evil, liberty and rights and happiness, virtue and vice and ends – didn’t have some minimally similar meaning for all people, we wouldn’t be able to carry on conversations at all (at least, not about those things that matter to us). And Hume today could point out to me just how much ground historically oppressed groups have gained through the power of conversation. Such groups have spoken up and in doing so have made the dominant groups realize that they had not in fact entered a state that is factually informed, imaginatively sensitive, and truly disinterested from a personal point of view.
So conversation can work to free as much as it can push to conform. And you might at this point say, “Well duh!”
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