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According to Michael Smith, the big issue in metaethics (what he calls "The Moral Problem") is how to accept the seemingly true premises of Hume's Motivation Argument while fending off its non-cognitivist conclusion, a conclusion that Smith takes to be both repugnant and false (Smith, 1994, The Moral Problem, henceforward MP). This presupposes two claims: (A) that Hume was arguing for non-cognitivism; and (B) that the Motivation Argument (as construed by non-cognitivists) is a good one, so good indeed that it can only be evaded by some very fancy footwork. I shall argue that both claims are false. Hume was not arguing for non-cognitivism since he was not a non-cognitivist. For Hume, moral properties are akin to secondary qualities, a view he derived from his sometime hero Francis Hutcheson. "Vice and virtue, therefore, may be compar"d to sounds, colours, heat and cold, which, according to modern philosophy, are not qualities in objects, but perceptions in the mind" (T, 3.1.1.26/469). We don't attribute to Hume a non-cognitive theory of colors. Why then should we attribute to him a non-cognitivist theory of vice and virtue? Thus the non-cognitivist argument that has been extracted from Hume's work is not the argument that he intended. But whether he intended it or not, the non-cognitivist argument is a failure. So too is the argument he actually advanced. Hume fails to show what he intended to show, that our moral distinctions are derived from a moral sense.

DOI: 10.1057/9780230281158_4

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