Feelings are emotions that are modified by the central nervous system with the result that emotions become concepts.Veritas Aequitas wrote: ↑Sun Jan 22, 2023 6:09 amHuman nature is only a controversial when it is related to "man is made in the image of God" or there is a fixed essence of what it take to be a human being.Belinda wrote: ↑Sat Jan 21, 2023 12:21 pm David Hume:The virtue of a pleasant act also escapes you.In whichever way you take it, you find only certain passions, motives, volitions and thoughts.
There is no other matter of fact in the case.
The vice entirely escapes you, as long as you consider the object.
We are not wild animals formed by natural selection ;nor are we artificially bred like Darwin's pigeons or pedigree dogs. Human nature is undefined. However one fact, perhaps the only fact, of human nature is we are mammals who nurture. Hume called it "sympathy".
Sympathy is the birthright of every man, and is rooted in biology, in nature not nurture. When a man lacks sympathy that condition is either pathological or is caused by
some false cognition which is often reinforced by a culture of belief.
What is human is a subject of taxonomy of species with no certainty.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Species
Classified as 'human'
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human
Human nature of merely the nature of what is human;
Human nature is a concept that denotes the fundamental dispositions and characteristics—including ways of thinking, feeling, and acting—that humans are said to have naturally
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_nature
Thus human nature comprised whatever features of what is defined as 'human' and most of human features are similar to non-humans with few exceptions between higher primate and humans, example having function and sense of morality.
The point of this thread is, whatever is of human nature is grounded on facts, i.e. physical brain, neurons, algorithms, genes, DNA and quarks.
Hume recognized that feelings of sympathy or empathy are grounded on matter-of-fact of physical elements, i.e. within the anatomy of the brain which he admitted ignorance of [as expected in the 1700s].
Thus what Hume was referring to in this case was not the feelings which are emotions, but he was [indirectly] referring the physical matter of fact that generate those feelings.
At present we are familiar with the relevant physical matter of fact that support empathy [a complicated and complex process], i.e. mirror neurons being one of the elements of the empathy process.
Since the physical grounded empathy is a critical element of morality, thus there are objective moral facts which are denied by Peter & gang [relying merely on Hume's other stand i.e. god-ridden NOFI].
Sympathy is not a modified emotion with no concepts added, but is biological not cultural.I.e. as you say " referring the physical matter of fact that generate those feelings ".
Empathy is not sympathy. Sympathy is, as we agree, biological and needs no learned concepts. Empathy is conceptual and may or may not be sympathetic. Empathy can be done by a machine: sympathy can't be done by a machine. Or in other words, empathy is concept but sympathy is affect.