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    Carmelics

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    LoyalLoyalJusticeJustice
    Made withinDC&Austin
    Statements
    321,452
    Perspectives
    108,905
    Topics
    42
    Home/Original/inverse
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    Inverse View

    It is not the case that Hume must either ground sympathy for public interest in more basic natural sentiments or abandon the claim that all morally good actions have natural, non-moral motives.

    ?Set your confidence on the premises below to see your aggregate.

    Reasons For

    2 perspectives
    Reason for 1 of 2
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    • 1.Hume's account of sympathy is a general communicative mechanism that transmits any sentiment, not a fixed inventory of discrete natural impulses.
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    • 2.If sympathy is a formal psychological process rather than a specific motive, it can generate concern for public interest without requiring a more primitive non-moral foundation.
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    • 3.The dilemma falsely presupposes that Hume's natural/artificial distinction maps onto a non-moral/moral motive distinction, when Hume himself treats sympathy as natural in kind.
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    Reason for 2 of 2
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    • 1.Annette Baier argues that Hume grounds artificial virtues in the natural sentiment of pride and shame cultivated through social convention, dissolving the alleged motivational gap.
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    • 2.If conventional practices can transform and extend natural sentiments without invoking moral concepts, sympathy for public interest can emerge naturalistically from social habituation.
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    • 3.The claim therefore misidentifies an explanatory challenge as a logical dilemma, conflating the genetic origin of a motive with its normative classification.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
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    • 1.Sympathy with public interest is neither obviously non-moral nor inherent in human nature.
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    • 2.Hume's moral theory requires that all morally good actions—including those associated with artificial virtues—have natural, non-moral motives.
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    • 3.If sympathy with public interest cannot be derived from more basic natural sentiments, it cannot satisfy this requirement.
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