Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments (TMS) was first published in 1759, seventeen years before the Wealth of Nations (WoN) and ran to six editions, the last of which (containing significant new content) is dated 1790, fourteen years later than the WoN. The work is a masterpiece in the Scottish moral sense philosophy of the time and was most heavily influenced by the thinking of his mentor at Glasgow University, Francis Hutcheson and his older, great friend, David Hume.
Like Hume and others of the Scottish literati, Smith’s agenda was to bring scientific methods to the study of man, with a particular stress on the study of human nature. That agenda was clearly announced in the subtitles of Hume’s seminal work A Treatise of Human Nature (Being an Attempt to Introduce the Experimental Method of Reasoning into Moral Subjects) and Smith’s TMS: (An Analysis of the Principles by which Men naturally judge concerning the Conduct and Character, first of their Neighbours, and afterwards of Themselves).
At the time, the experiments required for a more scientific approach were supplied by observations of human behaviour across a very wide variety of contexts, both historical (drawn from accounts of events) and contemporary (Smith’s pin factory in the WoN). These provided the ‘data’. These were the ‘data’ from which patterns can be detected, inferences made, and theories developed.
Today the toolkit for studying human nature is greatly enhanced by developments in neuroscience and in brain science more generally. Reflecting this fact, in a podcast to mark the 300th anniversary of Smith’s birth the financial market strategist and academic Russell Napier expressed the view that ‘if Adam were alive today, he would likely want to spend a lot of time talking to neuroscientists’. It is interesting to speculate what a seventh edition of TMS might say!
Like the WoN, TMS opens bold statement, to get the reader thinking:
“How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it, except the pleasure of seeing it. Of this kind is pity or compassion, the emotion which we feel for the misery of others, when we either see it, or are made to conceive it in a very lively manner. That we often derive sorrow from the sorrow of others, is a matter of fact too obvious to require any instances to prove it; for this sentiment, like all the other original passions of human nature, is by no means confined to the virtuous and humane, though they perhaps may feel it with the most exquisite sensibility. The greatest ruffian, the most hardened violator of the laws of society, is not altogether without it.”
Going beyond Hutcheson and Hume, Smith’s approach in TMS builds heavily on the notion of an observer or ‘spectator’, who first examines what can be known about the conduct and the feelings/emotions of another person in a given set of circumstances. The information to be gleaned here is necessarily limited, but, doing the best he/she can, the spectator imagines how he/she would feel and act, if placed in the circumstances/(‘in-the-shoes’) of the other. It’s an exercise calling on a capacity for empathy or fellow feeling.
Once this imaginative view of things is established, it can be compared with the first-stage information on how the other has actually felt and acted. If the two views are reasonably well aligned/correlated, in Smith’s analysis this will give rise to a feeling of approval on the part of the spectator for the choices of the other, and this is what he calls ‘sympathy’. Further, the feeling of approval enhances the sense of wellbeing of the spectator.
On the other hand, If the two views are poorly correlated, the feeling of the spectator is one of disapproval. In this way, so the analysis goes, the human mind/brain gets to what can properly be described as a moral judgment.
TMS also addresses the effects on well-being of receipt of approval from others, which are likewise positive; and in practice everyone is a spectator who makes judgments about others and is in turn judged by others. It’s easy to see from this how moral communities can develop in the form of groups of people whose judgments are reasonably well aligned within the group, but not with those of other moral communities. Members of a criminal gang, for example, might easily be sympathetic to one another.
We may therefore find ourselves awash with mutual approval and praise, but Smith raises an awkward question for the individual spectator: are her/his own feelings, conduct and judgments themselves worthy of approval and praise? To help answer this question, he introduces the concept of a second spectator who is both well informed and impartial in making judgments about feelings and conduct. This is the Impartial Spectator, another creation of human imagination. Smith refers to this entity as “the man within the breast, the great judge and arbiter of their [humans] conduct”.
Thus, the ordinary spectator seeks the answer to the worthiness question from the Impartial Spectator, and this opens up a route to the development of a much larger moral community. The members of a criminal gang might approve of each other’s conduct, but the Impartial Spectators in their heads could be expected to take a different view, recognising that the approbation is not widely shared.
The theorising surrounding the Impartial Spectator relies on Smith’s strong belief, shared by Hume, that there are aspects of human nature to be found universally, across different societies and different historical periods, and that these include a capacity to make relatively detached judgments about the appropriateness or otherwise of one own’s feelings and conduct. In the 18th century that might have been judged a bold and unverified proposition: today, with the benefits of research in neuroscience and related fields, it increasingly approximates a statement of fact.
So perhaps the core messages are that TMS should be viewed as an early scientific theory of how the human mind develops moral judgments and that today’s neuroscience bolsters, rather than displaces. Smith’s theorising, by providing experimental evidence that was unavailable in the 18th century.