Hume Studies

Hume Studies Volume XXIV, Number 2, November 1998, pp. 367-371 Book Reviews SIMON BLACKBURN. Ruling Passions: A Theory of Practical Reasoning. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. vii + 334 pages. ISBN 0198247850 US $29.95 cloth. Ruling Passions is Simon Blackburn's answer to those who doubt that the quasi-realism for which he is best known can offer all we want in an ethical theory. Blackburn is keenly aware that his quasi-realism "smells of sulphur" to some (vi). By taking ethical judgments to be expressions of attitudes rather than apprehensions of moral facts or dictates of reason, doesn't quasirealism threaten to corrode our confidence in the authority of those judgments? Blackburn's strategy is to show that it isn't so builds on his previous work to defend what he advertises as a theory of practical reasoning. The theory attempts to ground decisions about the regulation of our conduct in our sentimental natures while underwriting an ethics that escapes relativist threats and supports categorical ethical demands, features typically regarded as the property of the quasi-realist's more metaphysically suspect opponents. Although presented with the flair and wit that distinguish his work, this book requires of the reader more effort than one might have hoped necessary to bring Blackburn's theory into view. That said, Chapters 1, 3, and 7-9 prove most central for understanding Blackburn's positive position. The main components of his position are: (i) an "input/output" (5) model of ethical sensibility, where inputs are representations of actions, situations, or characters as having certain nonevaluative properties and outputs are attitudes, emotions, or pressures on attitudes formed in response to such input; (ii) an expressivist account of evaluative discourse and thought that interprets ethical judgments as, in propositional disguise, expressions of those "practical states" (68, 77) the speaker has entered into in response to 368 Book Reviews relevant input; and (iii) a Humean theory of practical deliberation intended to illuminate the role of ethical judgments so understood in our decisionmaking . The first two components, as well as the metaphysical and motivational desiderata that drive the quasi-realist to them, will be familiar to those acquainted with Blackburn's previous work. I focus on the more novel third component, the Humean theory of practical deliberation apparently intended to bear the burden of dissipating the sulphur. Although it ignores much in the book that warrants comment, this focus highlights the significance of Blackburn's theory for work in practical reasoning even for those who remain—as I do—queasy about quasi-realism. In light of Hume's claim that "reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions," the Humean option in the theory of practical reasoning (at least, when it is allowed that the Humean has an option other than skepticism here) is typically thought to be restricted to instrumentalism: the view that the role of reason in action is limited to determining means for pursuing ends that are themselves ultimately grounded in desires not open to rational criticism. On the instrumentalist view, although everyone has a reason to pursue the means to his ends, beyond this practical reason is silent; the particular reasons that one has depend on one's desires. Some Humeans are content with this option. Among them are those who happily wield it in arguments denying that rationality requires allegience to morality. Others strain to show how the interactions of instrumentally rational agents can give rise to rationally binding moral demands. Both groups, however, are confronted by a growing chorus of voices challenging the coherence of a strictly instrumentalist theory of practical reasoning altogether. Blackburn's "Hume-friendly" theory of practical reasoning is not Humean in the instrumentalist sense. For one thing, Blackburn appears unwilling to regard even failures of means-end reasoning as cases of true practical irrationality, noting that "failing to adopt means to ends may be just a defect of passion for Hume" (239). The intended import of the claim and the relevant interpretation of the example Blackburn uses to illustrate it remain ambiguous in the text (239). However, in the appendix Blackburn writes of a case where someone claims to have only one...