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Ethical Naturalism

Nicholas L. Sturgeon

David Copp (ed.)

in The Oxford Handbook of Ethical Theory

Ethical naturalism holds that ethical facts about such matters as good and bad, right and wrong, are part of a purely natural world — the world studied by the sciences. It is supported by the ... More

Ethical naturalism holds that ethical facts about such matters as good and bad, right and wrong, are part of a purely natural world — the world studied by the sciences. It is supported by the apparent reasonableness of many moral explanations. It has been thought to face an epistemological challenge because of the existence of an “is-ought gap”; it also faces metaphysical objections from philosophers who hold that ethical facts would have to be supernatural or “nonnatural,” sometimes on the grounds that ethical thought has a practical role that no thought about purely natural facts could have. Its defenders have argued resourcefully against these challenges.Less

Ethical Non-Naturalism and the Metaphysics of Supervenience

Tristram McPherson

in Oxford Studies in Metaethics Volume 7

It is widely accepted that the ethical supervenes on the natural, where this is roughly the claim that it is impossible for two circumstances to be identical in all natural respects, but different in ... More

It is widely accepted that the ethical supervenes on the natural, where this is roughly the claim that it is impossible for two circumstances to be identical in all natural respects, but different in their ethical respects. This chapter refines and defends the traditional thought that this fact poses a significant challenge to ethical non-naturalism, a view on which ethical properties are fundamentally different in kind from natural properties. The challenge can be encapsulated in three core claims which the chapter defends: that a defensible non-naturalism is committed to the supervenience of the ethical, that this commits the non-naturalist to a brute necessary connection between properties of distinct kinds, and that commitment to such brute connections counts against the non-naturalist’s view. Each of these claims has recently been challenged. Against Nicholas Sturgeon’s recent doubts about the dialectical force of supervenience, this chapter defends a supervenience thesis as deserving to be common ground among ethical realists. It is then argued that attempts to explain supervenience on behalf of the non-naturalist either fail as explanations, generate near-identical explanatory burdens elsewhere, or appeal to commitments that are inconsistent with core motivations for non-naturalism. The chapter concludes that, suitably refined, the traditional argument against non-naturalism from supervenience is alive and well.Less

Ethical Non-naturalism

Russ Shafer-Landau

in Moral Realism: A Defence

Defends ethical non‐naturalism. Presents G. E. Moore's open question argument as the basis for drawing a natural/non‐natural divide, and discusses various ways of marking the distinction between the ... More

Defends ethical non‐naturalism. Presents G. E. Moore's open question argument as the basis for drawing a natural/non‐natural divide, and discusses various ways of marking the distinction between the natural and the non‐natural. Includes criticisms of ethical naturalism.Less

Naturalism for Rational Animals

Rosalind Hursthouse

in On Virtue Ethics

Ethical naturalism is not to be construed as the attempt to ground ethical evaluations in a scientific account of human nature; ethical evaluations are disanalogous to non‐ethical ones in various ... More

Ethical naturalism is not to be construed as the attempt to ground ethical evaluations in a scientific account of human nature; ethical evaluations are disanalogous to non‐ethical ones in various ways. Both depend upon our identifying what is characteristic of the species in question. But the other animals’ characteristic ways of going on are many, and ours is just one—a rational way—which introduces a normative aspect.Less

Naturalism

Rosalind Hursthouse

in On Virtue Ethics

Virtues are those character traits that make a human being a good human being— those traits that human beings need to live well as human beings, to live a characteristically human life. Ethical ... More

Virtues are those character traits that make a human being a good human being— those traits that human beings need to live well as human beings, to live a characteristically human life. Ethical evaluations of human beings as good or bad are taken to be analogous to evaluations of other living things as good or bad specimens of their kind, as Foot has argued. This naturalism reveals that several features of ethical evaluation thought to be peculiar to it, and inimical to its objectivity, are present in the quasi‐scientific evaluation, even of plants.Less

Dào as a Naturalistic Focus

Chad Hansen

in Ethics in Early China: An Anthology

Modern ethical naturalism has the challenge of showing how normativity, broadly speaking, is a feature of the natural world—a description, roughly, acceptable in the language of modern natural ... More

Modern ethical naturalism has the challenge of showing how normativity, broadly speaking, is a feature of the natural world—a description, roughly, acceptable in the language of modern natural science. The concept of dào can be used in expressing a positivist traditionalism, social or rational constructivism, or emotivism, among other positions, as well as naturalism. This chapter refines claims about the overall role and value of a concept in normative language that functions as dào does. It discusses Mackie's queerness objection to ethical naturalism and briefly illustrates how it envisions dào-like concepts dispelling it. The chapter also argues that normative claims explicated in natural dào terms would not seem as strange, particularly given other salient features of Chinese normative vocabulary. Furthermore, it briefly sketches a picture of the larger gradations in plausible naturalistic stories illustrating continuity in the emergence of normative from natural dàos.Less

The Boundaries of the Natural World

James Griffin

in Value Judgement: Improving Our Ethical Beliefs

Can values be reduced to facts about nature? There are different forms of ethical naturalism: conceptual naturalism (that value‐terms are definable in natural terms, a view that G.E. Moore famously ... More

Can values be reduced to facts about nature? There are different forms of ethical naturalism: conceptual naturalism (that value‐terms are definable in natural terms, a view that G.E. Moore famously denounced as ‘the naturalistic fallacy’) and substantive naturalism (that certain matters of value in effect come down to certain matters about the natural world). Both these forms of naturalism bring us up against the fuzziness of the notion of the ‘natural’. In this connection, the chapter considers whether values supervene on natural properties, and ends with doubts that they do. The chapter then proposes a third form of naturalism: expansive naturalism, in which the boundaries of the ‘natural’ are pushed outward a bit, in a duly motivated way, with the effect that they now encompass basic human interests and so prudential values.Less

Natural Goodness and ‘Second Nature’: John McDowell and David Wiggins

Angus Ritchie

in From Morality to Metaphysics: The Theistic Implications of our Ethical Commitments

This chapter examines John McDowell's ‘re-enchanted’ naturalism; a position that builds on Foot's and seeks to answer the objection advanced in Chapter 5. After offering an exposition of McDowell's ... More

This chapter examines John McDowell's ‘re-enchanted’ naturalism; a position that builds on Foot's and seeks to answer the objection advanced in Chapter 5. After offering an exposition of McDowell's wider position, the chapter defends the legitimacy of a demand for an explanation of the reliability of human moral cognition against McDowell's quietism. It seeks to demonstrate both that an explanation is required, and that McDowell cannot provide one. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of David Wiggins' weaker conception of objectivity in ethics. It argues that Wiggins' position offers further confirmation of the central thesis of the book: that the explanatory gap is only evaded by positions which fail to do justice to our pre-philosophical commitments.Less

Alternatives to a Divine Command Theory

C. Stephen Evans

in God and Moral Obligation

This chapter considers a number of metaethical accounts which are often regarded as rivals to a divine command account. The chapter argues that some of them, such as ethical naturalism, ethical ... More

This chapter considers a number of metaethical accounts which are often regarded as rivals to a divine command account. The chapter argues that some of them, such as ethical naturalism, ethical non-naturalism, and sensibility theories, are actually not rivals to a divine command account when developed in a reasonable form. Error theory, while certainly a rival, also provides support for a divine command account at key points. The chapter argues that varieties of expressivism fail adequately to account for the objectivity and authority of moral obligations. Some constructivist accounts, such as social contract theories, also have these defects, and fail to explain the universality of moral obligations as well. Other constructivist accounts, such as that of Christine Korsgaard, turn out to be forms of moral realism on close inspection, and are compatible with a divine command view when developed in accordance with Kant's account.Less

Natural Goodness: Philippa Foot’s Moral Objectivism

Angus Ritchie

in From Morality to Metaphysics: The Theistic Implications of our Ethical Commitments

This chapter evaluates Philippa Foot's moral philosophy, applying the three standards she sets for a satisfactory account — namely that it should vindicate our fundamental moral commitments; explain ... More

This chapter evaluates Philippa Foot's moral philosophy, applying the three standards she sets for a satisfactory account — namely that it should vindicate our fundamental moral commitments; explain the epistemic access humans have to moral truths within a secular framework; and provide an adequate explanation of situations where human flourishing is not to be identified with maximising survival — for the individual or the collective. It considers in turn her account of the objective qualities and defects of living things in general; her application of this to human beings and their wills; and her account of why such facts ought to motivate agents to behave well. The chapter argues that her account only meets the first of her three standards — and that what is required is a notion of objective moral correctness which transcends the species-relative property of goodness upon which Foot has to rely.Less

In Defence Of Reductionism In Ethics

Frank Jackson

in Does Anything Really Matter?: Essays on Parfit on Objectivity

A version of ethical naturalism is defended against Parfit’s criticisms. The implications of the grounding of the ethical in the non-ethical and of the supervenience of the ethical on the non-ethical ... More

A version of ethical naturalism is defended against Parfit’s criticisms. The implications of the grounding of the ethical in the non-ethical and of the supervenience of the ethical on the non-ethical play major roles here. Reasons for rejecting Parfit’s triviality argument, and the related argument from real disagreement, against naturalism are given. These reasons are set in the context of discussions of how to understand what is going on when theorists debate, for example, what it takes to be the hypothesis best supported by a body of data or the nature of motion. The version of naturalism defended is a species of reductionism in ethics akin to the doctrine Parfit refers to as hard naturalism, with the difference that the version defended insists on the importance of ethical concepts. However, the author agrees with Parfit that the doctrine he calls soft naturalism is to be rejected.Less

Right Reason in Natural Law Moral Theory: Thomas Aquinas and William of Ockham

Anthony J. Lisska

in Reason, Religion, and Natural Law: From Plato to Spinoza

Recent scholarship argues that William of Ockham was not the radical voluntarist that historians of philosophy sometimes claimed. This “revisionist” account depends upon a reading of “recta ratio”. ... More

Recent scholarship argues that William of Ockham was not the radical voluntarist that historians of philosophy sometimes claimed. This “revisionist” account depends upon a reading of “recta ratio”. Brian Tierney posits Ockham as a “rationalist” while Janet Coleman suggests that Ockham's right action is “objectively rational”. This chapter articulates Aquinas's use of recta ratio, indicates differences with Ockham, and suggests that Ockham is at most a “good reasons philosopher.” Aquinas defines human nature as a natural kind determined by dispositional properties with the final cause rooted in the formal cause. Ockham rejects a cluster of concepts Aquinas uses in spelling out his theory of natural law—natural kind, substantial form, intellect superior to will, final cause—all of which are necessary conditions for Aquinas's Aristotelian-based meta-ethics, which is a form of ethical naturalism. Ockham's use of recta ratio is less robust; if Ockham is a rationalist, it is at best a quite limited version of medieval rationalism.Less

Three Theories of Value: a Kierkegaardian Critique

Anthony Rudd

in Self, Value, and Narrative: A Kierkegaardian Approach

Detailed critical consideration of Frankfurt’s evaluative anti-realism, Korsgaard’s constructivism and Philippa Foot’s neo-Aristotelian naturalism, gives further (negative) support to Kierkegaard’s ... More

Detailed critical consideration of Frankfurt’s evaluative anti-realism, Korsgaard’s constructivism and Philippa Foot’s neo-Aristotelian naturalism, gives further (negative) support to Kierkegaard’s Platonic thesis that a proper relationship to an objective Good is needed for the elements that are constitutive of selfhood to be held in creative tension. Frankfurt’s insistence that our basic cares and loves are brute psychological facts that cannot be further evaluated, unacceptably exaggerates our immanence. Korsgaard’s interpretation of autonomy leads her to reject the idea of objective values to which our choices should be answerable, and her consequent ultimate valuing of the sheer capacity for choice itself exaggerates our capacity for transcendence. And Foot’s naturalism, which tries to understand human goodness by analogy to the ‘natural goodness’ of other animals which realise their biological potentials, fails to fully recognize our capacity to stand back from our given natures, and thus also exaggerates our immanence.Less

Naturalism in Aristotle’s Politics

Sylvia Berryman

in Aristotle on the Sources of the Ethical Life

The use of substantive appeals to human nature to justify slavery and the subordination of women, as well as to argue for the polis as the ideal form of political organization, are prominent features ... More

The use of substantive appeals to human nature to justify slavery and the subordination of women, as well as to argue for the polis as the ideal form of political organization, are prominent features of Book One of Aristotle’s Politics. These appeals seem like evidence for an Archimedean ethical naturalism. I argue against this conclusion, however, on the grounds that the Politics is an early work, and does not exhibit a notion of nature that could be investigated from a value-neutral or descriptive point of view. The notion of phusis found in the Politics is out of step with that of the biological work, adhering closer to the sophistic nomos–phusis distinction, i.e. a stand-in for the notion that certain practices are legitimate and not arbitrary impositions. The chapter concludes that Politics Book One does not support the case for Archimedean naturalism.Less