A tale of two fingers
Of Hume, Smith, and sympathy
I don’t know a lot about Scottish Enlightenment. I have read quite a bit of David Hume but very little Adam Smith. I do trust the judgement of people I respect that the latter’s Theory of Moral Sentiments is criminally underrated. The parts I have read strike me as extremely prescient, nuanced, and the mark of a first-rate analytical mind and keen observers of the human psyche.
The first assigned readings in my Effective Altruism class are by Hume and Smith. The point is to notice, with two great Scotsmen, both the power and limits of sympathy. This is not really the point of this post, though. What I want to do here is remark on something I’m having a surprisingly hard time finding much about, a striking similarity between fingers.
Compare these two famous passages. First, Hume writes, in his Treatise of Human Nature (1739-40),
Where a passion is neither founded on false suppositions, nor chuses means insufficient for the end, the understanding can neither justify nor condemn it. 'Tis not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger. 'Tis not contrary to reason for me to chuse my total ruin, to prevent the least uneasiness of an Indian or person wholly unknown to me. 'Tis as little contrary to reason to prefer even my own acknowledg'd lesser good to my greater, and have a more ardent affection for the former than the latter. A trivial good may, from certain circumstances, produce a desire superior to what arises from the greatest and most valuable enjoyment; nor is there any thing more extraordinary in this, than in mechanics to see one pound weight raise up a hundred by the advantage of its situation. In short, a passion must be accompany'd with some false judgment, in order to its being unreasonable; and even then 'tis not the passion, properly speaking, which is unreasonable, but the judgment. (T 2.3.3.6, SBN 415-6)
This is part of what Rachel Cohon dubs the ‘Divide and Conquer’ Argument, where Hume divides reasoning into two types to argue that each fails, on its own, to influence the will. Reason alone cannot for it “is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions” (T 2.3.3.4). All this is well known and understood, though the passage in bold is often misunderstood. Hume is not suggesting that such preferences cannot be the proper object of censure or criticism; only that there is no purely rational basis to condemn them. They are not failures of rationality but instead failures to extend one’s sentiments, in particular sympathy and benevolence, to one’s fellow creatures in proportion to the relative severity of our respective experiences. In passing, however, Hume made a profound point about the difficult demands of impartiality: we are not naturally inclined to apportion our concern for our fellow creatures impartially. Quite the contrary, we tend to overemphasize self-regarding matters at the expense of other-regarding matters.
Now here is a no less famous passage by Smith in The Theory of Moral Sentiments (the whole chapter is fascinating and tremendously insightful; this is but a brief excerpt) (TMS 3.3):
Let us suppose that the great empire of China, with all its myriads of inhabitants, was suddenly swallowed up by an earthquake, and let us consider how a man of humanity in Europe, who had no sort of connection with that part of the world, would be affected upon receiving intelligence of this dreadful calamity. He would, I imagine, first of all express very strongly his sorrow for the misfortune of that unhappy people, he would make many melancholy reflections upon the precariousness of human life, and the vanity of all the labours of man, which could thus be annihilated in a moment. He would, too, perhaps, if he was a man of speculation, enter into many reasonings concerning the effects which this disaster might produce upon the commerce of Europe, and the trade and business of the world in general. And when all this fine philosophy was over, when all these humane sentiments had been once fairly expressed, he would pursue his business or his pleasure, take his repose or his diversion, with the same ease and tranquillity as if no such accident had happened. The most frivolous disaster which could befall himself would occasion a more real disturbance. If he was to lose his little finger to morrow, he would not sleep to-night; but, provided he never saw them, he will snore with the most profound security over the ruin of a hundred millions of his brethren, and the destruction of that immense multitude seems plainly an object less interesting to him than this paltry misfortune of his own. To prevent, therefore, this paltry misfortune to himself, would a man of humanity be willing to sacrifice the lives of a hundred millions of his brethren, provided he had never seen them? Human nature startles with horror at the thought, and the world, in its greatest depravity and corruption, never produced such a villain as could be capable of entertaining it. But what makes this difference? […]
Did you notice the finger? Smith goes on to contrast our “passive feelings” with our “active principles”, filling the gaping hole left by reason in the wake of our natural tendencies to sympathy and benevolence, which are real but weak and diminished by distance and unfamiliarity. Smith, unlike Hume it seems, has more confidence in the abilities of rational creatures to apportion sympathy in proportion to the interests of those affected.
When we are always so much more deeply affected by whatever concerns ourselves than by whatever concerns other men; what is it which prompts the generous upon all occasions, and the mean upon many, to sacrifice their own interests to the greater interests of others?
It is not “that feeble spark of benevolence” that nature implanted in us. A more powerful force is needed to counteract the “impulses of self-love”. Smith, like Hume, Hutcheson, and Rousseau, and unlike Mandeville or Hobbes, did not conceive of human beings as essentially selfish. So what is the stronger, counteracting principle?
It is reason, principle, conscience, the inhabitant of the breast, the man within, the great judge and arbiter of our conduct.
Yes, that’s him, the Impartial Spectator, “he who, whenever we are about to act so as to affect the happiness of others, calls to us, with a voice capable of astonishing the most presumptuous of our passions, that we are but one of the multitude, in no respect better than any other in it”. That’s a nice account of impartiality, of which Smith suggests we are all inherently capable. What’s more, pace Hume, this force does seem capable of swaying our natural passions. Though it’s important to remember that the Impartial Spectator himself, this imagined judge who exerts on us the “influence and authority of conscience” (the title of the chapter) operates by expressing sentiments, as when we judge ourselves worthy of “resentment, abhorrence, and execration”. Moral judgments are sentimental judgments, but that doesn’t mean they can’t aspire to a greater degree of impartiality. If you feel so inclined to sacrifice the many to preserve your own little finger, the Impartial Spectator within you will remind you to calm down, get over yourself, and consider the actual proportions of your apparent misery and that of the many. As Smith writes, “the natural misrepresentations of self-love can be corrected only by the eye of this impartial spectator. It is he who shews us the propriety of generosity and the deformity of injustice”.
Sympathy is the foundation of beneficence (or altruism), but it needs a corrective, or rather a supplemental guide to redirect itself. Apply it to yourself to measure the propriety of your own actions as they reflect on you, and apply it to others to measure the merit of your actions as they affect others. For Smith, then, sympathy, as biased as it may be left unattended, does not presuppose but fosters impartiality. By imaginatively reconstructing the experiences of others, I can form moral judgments. And such judgments can be honed in by the Impartial Spectator towards greater altruism and justice. There is no contradiction between sympathy and impartiality.
So now let me ask: What’s with the fingers?!
