Ethical Naturalism and the Constitution of Agency

Philosophy, 2009

John McDowell has argued that for human needs to matter in practical deliberation, we must have already acquired the full range of character traits that are imparted by an ethical upbringing. Since our upbringings can diverge considerably, his argument makes trouble for any Aristotelian ethical naturalism that wants to support a single set of moral virtues. I argue here that there is a story to be told about the normal course of human life according to which it is no coincidence that there is agreement on the virtues. Because we are creatures who arrive at personhood only by learning from others in a relation of dependency, we cannot help but see ourselves as creatures for whom non-instrumental rationality is the norm. Those who train others in personhood must view the trainee's interests as having a value independent of their interests and must imbue the trainee with a sense of that value. Extending and preserving the sense of self-worth that we must acquire if we are to acquir...

Aristotelian naturalists may have diverging interpretations of Aristotle's idea that the good life for a human being is a life of activity in accordance with the virtues. Such is the case of John McDowell (McDowell 1998) and Philippa Foot (Foot 1978). One important question here is whether Aristotelian naturalism in moral philosophy commits one to the idea of a good, or goods, which are natural to humans qua humans. Naturalism is a very widespread position in contemporary analytic philosophy yet not always very clearly spelled out. In order to search for clarity regarding what one means by naturalism, I explore several strands of McDowell's case for second-nature naturalism as a position in moral philosophy. I then assess an argument put forward against it by Bernard Williams in Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (Williams 1985). Building on a suggestion by Alan Thomas in Value and Context – The nature of moral and political knowledge (Thomas 2006) and complementing it with a view of rationality inspired by S. Stich (The Fragmentation of Reason, Stich 1990) I end with a proposal on how to keep Aristotelianism in moral philosophy.

My dissertation about ethical naturalism. In it, I defend what I take to be the best version of ethical naturalism on offer -- in which we must understand the term "nature" to refer both to descriptive and to irreducibly normative facts. Philippa Foot (and Michael Thompson, and to a lesser extent, John McDowell) are co-laborers here. My metaethical claim is that a rigidly biological basis for morality is inadequate. I also claim, however, that biology is relevant to morality. And my particular ethical claim is summed up in the idea that practical wisdom, which is excellence in practical reasoning, is the master virtue that enables one to succeed in becoming truly human, despite varying abilities and life circumstances Formal Abstract: Philippa Foot and John McDowell both defend contemporary neo-Aristotelian ethics but each represents a rival expression of the same. They are united in the affirmation that virtue is ‘natural goodness’ for human beings; they are divided in their rival conceptions of ‘nature.’ McDowell distinguishes second nature or the ”space of reasons” from first nature or the “realm of law.” Foot rejects this division. On Foot’s naturalism, natural goodness is a just as much a feature of first nature as health is, even though human practical reasoning is unique in the biological world. I defend Foot’s view by appealing to “generic propositions,” a little-utilized feature of linguistic theory. Life forms and functions described in generic statements are intrinsically normative and yet just as scientifically respectable as other naturalistic concepts. Hence, the generic proposition that ”humans are practical, rational primates” has both descriptive and normative content. It follows that the ethical and rational norms defining a good human life are a subset of natural norms which can be known as such from an “external” scientific point of view as well as from an “internal” ethical point of view. Going beyond Foot’s views, I present a new interlocking neo-Aristotelian account of virtue and practical reason. Virtues are excellences of practical reasoning and rational practice. Virtues enable and partly constitute a good life for human beings. Practical reasoning is the ability to pursue perceived goods and avoid perceived evils in every action. Practical wisdom, which is excellence in practical reasoning, is the master virtue that enables one to succeed in becoming truly human, despite varying abilities and life circumstances. In short, all of us ought to pursue virtue and practical wisdom because of what we are; virtue and practical wisdom are natural ends. I aim to secure the naturalistic credentials of my view by examining three influential conceptions of ‘nature,’ criticizing McDowell’s conception and showing how my view is consistent with the remaining two. The resulting view is called ’recursive naturalism’ because nature recurs within nature when natural beings reason about nature, about themselves, and about their own reasoning.

This paper will contribute to the dialogue between two philosophical views from vastly different intellectual traditions: neo-Aristotelian naturalism and the views Kitarō Nishida describes in his An Inquiry into the Good. The present essay will argue for the following points. Neo-Aristotelian naturalists (NANists) and Nishida agree that the natural goodness and defect that characterize humans result from the capacity of rational choice and that normalcy in developing and exercising this capacity provides criteria for evaluating individuals’ moral statuses. However, for the NANist this normalcy is agent-neutral, and humans have the above capacity as undeveloped potentiality. Thus, the analogy that NANists endorse (i.e., the comparison of natural values to moral ones) prevents them from distinguishing moral disability from vice. In contrast, for Nishida the normalcy in developing and exercising the above capacity is agent-relative; humans, he contends, are actually capable of developing and exercising their moral capacities relative to their personalities. Thus, Nishida’s view is free from the difficulties NANists encounter.

Philosophical writings, 1999

Why is Human Nature still an interesting topic? The answer, I think, lies in the fact that Human Nature is expected to serve both as an anchor of ontological explanation and as a compass for action orientation. In its double role, human nature provides ample room for intellectual manoeuvres, but little prospects for a pleasant philosophical journey.

In this essay I discuss the limits of recent attempts to develop a neo-Aristotelian virtue ethic on the basis of a commitment to ‘ethical naturalism.’ By ‘ethical naturalism’ I mean the view that ethics can be founded on claims about what it is for human beings to flourish qua member of the human species, which is analogous to what it is for plants and other animals to flourish qua member of their particular species. Drawing on Charles Taylor’s account of ‘strong evaluation,’ I argue that there are important features of our ethical life that can only be properly understood from a first-personal or phenomenological standpoint as contrasted with the third-personal standpoint of ethical naturalism: viz., (1) The sense of ‘nobility’ in performing virtuous actions for their own sake as a constitutive part of the good life; (2) The nature and extent of other-regarding concern; and (3) The issue of ‘the meaning of life,’ which also raises the issue of the place of ‘transcendence’ in an account of the good life. While I emphasize the need for a deeper engagement with our first-personal evaluative experience, I also discuss the interdependence of the first-personal and third-personal perspectives in the ethical life.

Interdisciplinary Environmental Review (6:2) pp. 51-61, 2004

In this paper I consider a naturalistic account of what makes a character trait a virtue. After clarifying the account in some detail, I offer replies to several objections to it. I argue that although the account has promise, it also has limitations and areas in need of development that its proponents must address.

2014

Ethical naturalism, the theory claiming that natural facts and especially facts concerning human nature play a justificatory role in ethics, is not very popular amongst moral philosophers. Especially in countries where Kant's influence is large, the charge of naturalistic fallacy is often made against it. The aim of this paper is to show that this charge misses the point: every ethical theory is at a certain level based on pure facts, natural or not, and natural facts concerning human nature are particularly suited for this role. The arguments in favour of ethical naturalism rely on a concept of human nature that includes basic desires related to ends we ought to pursue, as Aristotle and the Scholastics already saw long ago.

Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements, 2020

The central idea of Philippa Foot’s Natural Goodness is that moral judgments belong to the same logical kind of judgments as those that attribute natural goodness and defect to plants and animals. But moral judgments focus on a subset of human powers that play a special role in our lives as rational animals, namely, reason, will, and desire. These powers play a central role in properly human actions: those actions in which we go for something that we see and understand as good. Many readers of Foot resolutely ignore what she says about the human good being sui generis and obstinately continue to read her as advocating a version of naturalism grounded in empirical study of human nature. One might wonder how else it could count as a naturalistic view unless we could square the view with nature as studied by the empirical sciences. In this paper, I propose a metaphysical response to this question: help can come from turning to recent defenses of Aristotelian essentialism. Foot’s naturalism can square with nature as interpreted through the lens of Aristotelian essentialism. On such a view, the virtues are perfections of human powers including reason, will, and desire.

, along with other philosophers, have argued for a metaethical position, the natural goodness approach, that claims moral judgments are, or are on a par with, teleological claims made in the biological sciences. Specifically, an organism's flourishing is characterized by how well they function as specified by the species to which they belong. In this essay, I first sketch the Neo-Aristotelian natural goodness approach. Second, I argue that critics who claim that this sort of approach is inconsistent with evolutionary biology due to its species essentialism are incorrect. Third, I contend that combining the natural goodness account of natural-historical judgments with our best account of natural normativity, the selected effects theory of function, leads to implausible moral judgments. This is so if selected effects function are understood in terms of evolution by natural selection, but also if they are characterized in terms of cultural evolution. Thus, I conclude that proponents of the natural goodness approach must either embrace non-naturalistic vitalism or troubling moral revisionism. "If we try to paint normative life as a part of nature, crucial parts keep looking off shape." (Gibbard 1990, 23)