bowl.”
“But one day the chicken doesn’t get its food?”
“No, one day the farmer’s wife comes over and wrings the chicken’s neck.”
“Yuck, how disgusting!”
“The fact that one thing follows after another thus does not necessarily mean there is a causal link. One of the main concerns of philosophy is to warn people against jumping to conclusions. It can in fact lead to many different forms of superstition.”
“How come?”
“You see a black cat cross the street. Later that day you fall and break your arm. But that doesn’t mean there is any causal link between the two incidents. In science, it is especially important not to jump to conclusions. For instance, the fact that a lot of people get well after taking a particular drug doesn’t mean it was the drug that cured them. That’s why it’s important to have a large control group of patients who think they are also being given this same medicine, but who are in fact only being given flour and water. If these patients also get well, there has to be a third factor—such as the belief that the medicine works, and has cured them.”
“I think I’m beginning to see what empiricism is.”
“Hume also rebelled against rationalist thought in the area of ethics. The rationalists had always held that the ability to distinguish between right and wrong is inherent in human reason. We have come across this idea of a so-called natural right in many philosophers from Socrates to Locke. But according to Hume, it is not reason that determines what we say and do.”
“What is it then?”
“It is our sentiments. If you decide to help someone in need, you do so because of your feelings, not your reason.”
“What if I can’t be bothered to help?”
“That, too, would be a matter of feelings. It is neither reasonable nor unreasonable not to help someone in need, but it could be unkind.”
“But there must be a limit somewhere. Everyone knows it’s wrong to kill.”
“According to Hume, everybody has a feeling for other people’s welfare. So we all have a capacity for compassion. But it has nothing to do with reason.”
“I don’t know if I agree.”
“It’s not always so unwise to get rid of another person, Sophie. If you wish to achieve something or other, it can actually be quite a good idea.”
“Hey, wait a minute! I protest!”
“Maybe you can try and explain why one shouldn’t kill a troublesome person.”
“’That person wants to live too. Therefore you ought not to kill them.”
“Was that a logical reason?”
“I don’t know.”
“What you did was to draw a conclusion from a descriptive sentence—That person wants to live too’—to what we call a normative sentence: ‘Therefore you ought not to kill them.’ From the point of view of reason this is nonsense. You might just as well say ‘There are lots of people who cheat on their taxes, therefore I ought to cheat on my taxes too.’ Hume said you can never draw conclusions from is sentences to ought sentences. Nevertheless it is exceedingly common, not least in newspaper articles, political party programs, and speeches. Would you like some examples?”
“Please.”
“ ‘More and more people want to travel by air. Therefore more airports ought to be built.’ Do you think the conclusion holds up?”
“No. It’s nonsense. We have to think of the environment. I think we ought to build more railroads instead.”
“Or they say: The development of new oilfields will raise the population’s living standards by ten percent. Therefore we ought to develop new oilfields as rapidly as possible.”
“Definitely not. We have to think of the environment again. And anyway, the standard of living in Norway is high enough.”
“Sometimes it is said that ‘this law has been passed by the Senate, therefore all citizens in this country ought to abide by it.’ But frequently it goes against people’s deepest convictions to abide by such conventions.”
“Yes, I understand that.”
“So we have established that we cannot use reason as a yardstick for how we ought to act. Acting responsibly is not a matter of strengthening our reason but of deepening our feelings for the welfare of others. “Tis not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger,’ said Hume.”
“That’s a hair-raising assertion.”
“It’s maybe even more hair-raising if you shuffle the cards. You know that the Nazis murdered millions of Jews. Would you say that there was something wrong with the Nazis’ reason, or would you say there was something wrong with their emotional life?”
“There was definitely something wrong with their feelings.”
“Many of them were exceedingly clear-headed. It is not unusual to find ice-cold calculation behind the most callous decisions. Many of the Nazis were convicted after the war, but they were not convicted for being ‘unreasonable.’ They were convicted for being gruesome murderers. It can happen that people who are not of sound mind can be acquitted of their crimes. We say that they were ‘not accountable for their actions.’ Nobody has ever been acquitted of a crime they committed for being unfeeling.”
“I should hope not.”
“But we need not stick to the most grotesque examples. If a flood disaster renders millions of people homeless, it is our feelings that determine whether we come to their aid. If we are callous, and leave the whole thing to ‘cold reason,’ we might think it was actually quite in order that millions of people die in a world that is threatened by overpopulation.”
“It makes me mad that you can even think that.”
“And notice it’s not your reason that gets mad.”
“Okay, I got it.”
Berkeley
…like a giddy planet round a burning sun…
Alberto walked over to the window facing the town. Sophie followed him. While they stood looking out at the old houses, a small plane flew in over the rooftops. Fixed to its tail was a long banner which Sophie guessed would be advertising some product or local event, a rock concert perhaps. But as it approached and turned, she saw quite a different message: HAPPY BIRTHDAY, HILDE!
“Gate-crasher,” was Alberto’s only comment.
Heavy black clouds from the hills to the south were now beginning to gather over the town. The little plane disappeared into the grayness.
“I’m afraid there’s going to be a storm,” said Alberto.
“So I’ll take the bus home.”
“I only hope the major isn’t behind this, too.”
“He’s not God Almighty, is he?”
Alberto did not reply. He walked across the room and sat down again by the coffee table.
“We have to talk about Berkeley,” he said after a while.
Sophie had already resumed her place. She caught herself biting her nails.
“George Berkeley was an Irish bishop who lived from 1685 to 1753,” Alberto began. There was a long silence.
“Berkeley was an Irish bishop ...” Sophie prompted.
“But he was a philosopher as well...”
“Yes?”
“He felt that current philosophies and science were a threat to the Christian way of life, that the all-pervading materialism, not least, represented a threat to the Christian faith in God as creator and preserver of all
