Hume argued that people always choose actions guided by emotion. The reason is a tool to help us understand why we feel certain emotions and to show us that they are reasonable given the situation. But when it comes to deciding what to do, we usually act out of passion rather than reason. We try to convince ourselves that we have legitimate reasons for doing whatever we want to do, but our own experience shows us that we often end up justifying our choices with emotional arguments.
If we allow ourselves to feel the full range of emotions, we will see that many of our desires stem from basic instincts like hunger, sex, and self-preservation. These instincts are natural impulses that are hard-wired into our brains, and there is nothing irrational about them. However, we often ignore our feelings and rationalize our desires, saying we need money or status, or that we must love or respect someone else. As a result, we often find ourselves making mistakes and acting irrationally. However, he said, it is better to satisfy our passions than suppress our essential urges since we can not rationally explain them.
