http://dx.doi.org/10.15801/je.1.101.201505.101 Philippa Foot’s Ethical Naturalism
Philippa Foot’s Ethical Naturalism: A Defense
Chung, Hun(PhD, Philosophy, Cornell University)* 1
Abstract
The main purpose of this paper is to defend Philippa Foot’s ethical naturalism from D.Z. Phillips and H.O. Mounce’s criticisms. The paper as a whole consist of two main parts. In Part I, I will introduce and explain Foot’s ethical naturalism. In Part II, I will defend Foot’s ethical naturalism from Phillips and Mounce’s several criticisms.
Key words - Philippa Foot; Ethical Naturalism; Emotivism; Non-Cognitivism; Phillips and Mounce
* Postdoctoral Fellow in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics, University of Arizona (from Aug 2015) Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy, Rochester Institute of Technology PhD Candidate in Political Science, University of Rochester Main Areas: Ethics, Political Philosophy, Rational Choice Theory (viz. Decision, Game, Social Choice Theory), Philosophy of Science/Social Science, Comparative Politics
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INTRODUCTION: OUTLINE OF THE ENTIRE PAPER
The purpose of this paper is to defend Philippa Foot’s ethical naturalism; the theoretical stance that claims that moral and certain evaluative terms are, not just externally or contingently, but also internally and logically related to appropriate facts and objects. The paper as a whole consists of two main parts: Part I: Foot’s Project: Defending Ethical Naturalism; and Part II: A Reply to Phillips and Mounce’s Reply. The main objective of the first part, which is titled “Foot’s Project: Defending Ethical Naturalism”, is to introduce and explain, in rather detail, Foot’s metaethical stance that she expressed in her early papers; “Moral Argument” and “Moral Beliefs”. The first part is, again, divided into two sections. In the first section of Part I, titled, “Non-cognitivism: The Refutation of Naturalism”, I explain the modern trends of non-cognitivism and emotivism and its main characteristics, which is expressed in the philosophical views of philosophers such as Charles Stevenson1 and R. M. Hare2. According to modern non-cognitivism, the essential nature of evaluative terms is in its practical and action-guiding function rather than its cognitive function of stating facts about the world. It can be said that Foot’s ethical naturalism was mostly a reaction against this dominant view in contemporary ethical theory. In the second section of Part I, titled, “Foot’s Project: How Moral Terms are Internally Related to Facts”, I explain how Foot reacted against the emotivist’s views and how she tried to establish what the non-cognitivist theorists virtually denied: the internal relation between value terms and facts. Foot’s main strategy was to work from analogy. That is, Foot starts out with ordinary value terms such as ‘rude’ and ‘dangerous’ and tries to show how they can be internally related to certain factual states. After showing that this kind of internal relation is possible, Foot extends the points she had made to these other evaluative terms and generalizes it to moral terms and human virtues. Foot concludes that moral goodness and human virtues are internally related to the facts about human good and flourishing. Part II, which is titled “A Reply to Phillips and Mounce’ Criticisms”, introduces several criticisms that Phillips and Mounce raise against Foot’s ethical naturalism. The main objective of Part II is to defend Foot’s view from these several attacks by
1 See Charles Stevenson, “The Emotive Meaning of Ethical Terms” 2 See R. M. Hare, The Language of Morals
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Philippa Foot’s Ethical Naturalism showing where Phillips and Mounce had gone wrong. Part two is divided into three sections, which each deals with one of the specific criticisms that Phillips and Mounce raises. In the first section of Part II, titled, “Counterexamples to the internal relation to ‘Rude’”, I introduce Phillips and Mounce’s argument that the term ‘rude’ cannot be internally related to facts, and then argue back that, given that the specific context is fixed the term, ‘rude’ is always internally related to specific facts. In the second section of Part II, titled, “Counterexamples to the Necessary Badness of ‘Injury’”, I introduce Phillips and Mounce’s attempt to rebut Foot’s claim that injury is necessarily a bad thing. To this, I claim that injury is necessarily a bad thing in the sense that it always gives a person a defeasible reason to avoid it, and Phillips and Mounce did not understand Foot’s claim in a proper way. In the last section of Part II, titled, “Contestable Views of Human Good and Harm”, I introduce Phillips and Mounce’s argument that moral disagreements cannot be resolved by appealing to the facts about the human good and flourishing, since two people who agree on all of the non-evaluative facts, can, nonetheless, have different views about what constitute the human good and flourishing itself. To this, I contend that it is not obvious whether the two people in Phillips and Mounce’s example really had agreed on all of the non- evaluative facts that were relevant. So, it might turn out that their moral disagreement was essentially due to their disagreement in facts rather than due to their disagreement in their evaluative judgments. I then propose a distinction between the objective human good and the subjective human good, and argue that whenever there is a conflict between the two views about a certain matter’s goodness the correct answer would be the answer provided by the objective human good.
PART I: FOOT’S PROJECT: DEFENDING EHTICAL NATURALISM
I-1. Non-Cognitivism: The Refutation of Naturalism
A lot of works in contemporary ethics have been devoted to what might be called the “refutation of naturalism”. Arguing against naturalism, or more specifically, arguing against ethical naturalism, has a long history that goes way back to David
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Hume who tried to show the impossibility of deducing an ‘ought’ from an ‘is’.3 The modern version of this stance has found its expression in the works of G. E. Moore4, who thought that if goodness cannot be a natural property, it must be a non-natural property. However, the most powerful version of contemporary anti-ethical naturalism was developed in the mid-20th century by philosophers such as R. M. Hare5, A. J. Ayer 6 and Charles Stevenson 7 . The position is now widely known as “Non- cognitivism”. According to non-cognitivism, moral judgments, and evaluative terms in general, have a very special function in our language that ordinary factual statements lack: namely, expressing one’s own feelings and attitudes about the matter in question. According to non-cognitivism, to judge that a certain behavior is morally good is simply to express one’s pro-attitude towards the behavior in question and to commend the person who has displayed such behavior. It is obvious that different people can have different attitudes towards the same subject matter: one person might enjoy heavy metal music, while another person abhors it. However, in such cases, neither of them could be said to be right or wrong. Each is simply entitled to his or her own musical tastes. According to non-cognitivism, the same thing applies to moral judgments and moral arguments in general. That is, two people who agree in all of the factual premises (about a certain behavior or a certain character trait) in a moral argument can, nonetheless, disagree in the final evaluative conclusion (that the behavior is morally good or that the character trait is a virtue) without any one of them committing a logical error. The non-cognitivist theorists contend that this never happens in a non-moral argument that deals with strictly factual matters. For example, if there is somebody who accepts all of the factual evidences that support the conclusion that the Earth is round, but denies this conclusion and rather contends that the Earth is flat, then we are justified in saying that this person is simply wrong and that this person doesn’t understand what the descriptive terms ‘round’ and ‘flat’ mean and uses them in his own peculiar way. In other words, for factual statements, it is already laid down by
3 This is not to deny that many people regard David Hume as an ethical naturalist himself. See David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, book III, part I, section I. 4 See G. E. Moore, Principia Ethica 5 See R. M. Hare, The Language of Morals 6 See A. J. Ayer, Language, Truth, and Logic 7 See Charles Stevenson, “The Emotive Meaning of Ethical Terms”
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Philippa Foot’s Ethical Naturalism the meaning of the factual terms themselves on what can and what cannot count as evidence: that is, not anything can count as evidence that can support a factual statement saying that something is round, and, when proper evidence is shown, one cannot simply deny the conclusion by saying that he/she does not think that the proposed facts should count as evidence for the conclusion simply by pointing out that he/she has different standards. To say this is to simply commit a logical or a linguistic error. However, this is not the case with moral judgments and evaluations. One person might think that a certain fact about a behavior counts as evidence that supports the evaluative conclusion that the behavior is morally good, while another person refuses to count the same fact as evidence that supports the evaluative conclusion as such, without any one of them committing a logical or a linguistic error. In other words, there is no logical or necessary connection between evaluative terms and facts. Different people can arrive at different evaluative conclusions even if they agree entirely on all of the factual matters in question, since it is not determined by the meaning of evaluative terms themselves on whether or not a certain set of facts should count as evidence for its correct application. In other words, it is entirely up to the person who uses the evaluative terms themselves to decide whether or not they should count the proposed facts as evidence that supports a certain evaluative conclusion. The logical gap between fact and value also allows the possibility of a “moral eccentric”, a person who judges extremely idiosyncratic things, such as clasping one’s hands three times in an hour, which nobody would consider to be morally good in an ordinary sense, to be morally good, without committing himself of any logical or a linguistic error. In short, the logical gap between fact and value allows people to apply the same evaluative terms to different (and even opposing) sets of facts, and also to apply opposing evaluative terms to the same set of facts , without committing a logical or a linguistic fallacy. The reason why this is possible is because, according to the non- cognitivists, the essential role of evaluative terms is in its “practical” or “action- guiding” function rather than its “descriptive” function of stating facts about the world.8 That is, the main function of evaluative terms is to express one’s positive or negative attitudes towards certain things and to indicate one’s inclination to perform
8 See Foot, “Moral Belief”, p.111
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certain actions such as choosing what he/she thinks to be good and avoiding what he thinks to be bad. And, according to the non-cognitivist, as long as the person expresses these kinds of practical attitudes by his/her use of evaluative terms, we cannot say that the person was mistaken simply because he/she had applied the evaluative terms to different set of facts than ordinary people usually do. We can see that, despite their idiosyncrasies, both people – that is, the person who refuses to accept the same evaluative conclusion as everyone else, as well as the moral eccentric who thinks very strange things to be morally good – express the same practical attitudes as everyone else when they use the evaluative terms such as ‘good’ or ‘bad’. That is, both people express a pro-attitude towards the things which they think as good and are inclined to choose those things when the circumstances allow them to do so, while expressing a negative attitude towards the things which they think as bad and will be inclined to avoid those things when the circumstances allow them to do so. The only difference of the two people is that they do not attach their use of evaluative terms to the facts in a way that everybody else does. However, given that they express the proper attitudes that are associated with the evaluative terms, none of them can be wrong. Foot’s main aim was to show that the two people can, indeed, be wrong in their proper use of evaluative terms, and to generally refute non-cognitivism that contends evaluative terms are nothing more than expressions of one’s attitudes. According to Foot, the two main assumptions of non-cognitivsm that I have been explaining so far are the following:
(1) One can draw certain moral (or evaluative) conclusions from his own peculiar evidence that nobody accepts without committing any logical or linguistic error. (The case of the moral eccentric) (2) One can refuse to draw the same moral (or evaluative) conclusions from the same evidence that everybody accepts without committing any logical or linguistic error.9
We can see that assumption (1) is basically denying that certain factual evidences can be a necessary condition for a particular evaluative conclusion to follow. Also, assumption (2) is basically denying that certain factual evidences can be a sufficient
9 Foot uses slightly different wordings for these two assumptions. See Ibid. p.111
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Philippa Foot’s Ethical Naturalism condition for a particular evaluative to follow. If one can prove that both of these assumptions are false, then one will be able to establish that certain factual evidence can be a necessary and sufficient condition for a particular evaluative conclusion. And if this so, then this means that particular evaluative conclusions can be logically deduced from certain factual premises meaning that there is no incorrigible logical gap between fact and value. This was the exact strategy that Foot was trying to make. By showing that neither of the two assumptions are true, Foot wanted prove that, contrary to non-cognitivism, there is a very strong internal or logical connection between value terms and facts, and that there is no incorrigible gap between fact and value that makes it impossible to deduce evaluative conclusions from factual premises. In other words, Foot wanted to show that the meaning of value terms themselves determines which fact can and which fact cannot count as evidence for a certain evaluative conclusion. That is, according to Foot, it is not possible for one to just randomly pick any kind of fact in his favor to count as evidence for a certain evaluative conclusion, and that after all of the relevant facts have been laid out, anybody who denies the evaluative conclusion that is inferred from the factual premises will be simply committing a logical or a linguistic error.
I-2. Foot’s Reaction: How Moral Terms are Internally Related to Facts
Foot’s main strategy was to argue from analogy. That is, in order to show that the two assumptions stated above were incorrect and prove that moral terms in general are internally related to their objects and facts, Foot tried to show how other evaluative terms, such as ‘rude’ and ‘dangerous’, which have analogous practical and action-guiding functions to that of general moral terms, can be internally related to their objects and to appropriate facts.
I-2-1. The Case of “Rude” Let’s first consider the word ‘rude’. It is quite uncontroversial that the word ‘rude’ is an evaluative word. It expresses disapproval and mild condemnation to the person to whom the speaker attributes ‘rudeness’. In this way, the term ‘rude’ has a practical or an action-guiding function similar to that of an ordinary moral term. However, according to Foot, there is something else about the word ‘rude’ besides the fact that it
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expresses fairly mild disapproval and condemnation; namely that it can only be used where certain descriptions are satisfied.10 That is, a behavior can be called ‘rude’ if and only if it causes offence by indicating lack of respect. The offence which is caused and which warrants the proper use of the word ‘rude’ might be merely conventional as it is in the case of not taking off one’s hat in somebody else’s house. Or, the behavior might be thought as naturally offensive and disrespectful, as it is in the case of pushing somebody out of the way. In either case, the word ‘rude’ cannot simply apply to just any type of behavior. It must be shown that the behavior has caused offence in a disrespectful way, either naturally, conventionally, or by the overall context of the situation in order for the behavior to be properly called ‘rude’. If it is obvious that the behavior didn’t cause any sort of offence that indicated lack of respect in the situation, then the behavior simply cannot be called ‘rude’. For example, if somebody thought that it was generally rude to say “hello” in a lively manner with a big smile on his face when he encounters his friends, then we must say that the person has simply committed a linguistic error and doesn’t really understand what the word ‘rude’ means. Of course, there might be certain situations where one might be justified in saying that it was rude for you to say “hello” in a lively manner to your friend with a big smile on your face. For example, your friend might have recently lost one of his very close relatives and that it was obvious from the situation that this fact was known by everybody around including you. In this kind of situation, saying “hello” to the friend in a very lively manner with a big smile on one’s face can be regarded as an indication that one doesn’t even care about what had happened to his or her friend and that one feels totally apathetic towards the sorrows and miseries that one’s friend is currently going through. In this way, saying “hello” in a very lively manner with a big smile on one’s face to one’s friend can be regarded as having ‘caused offense by indicating disrespect’ in this situation. So, given that a special background is provided, one can be justified in calling a behavior, which is normally considered to be a friendly behavior in ordinary circumstances, to be ‘rude’. However, without a special background, it is simply not open for one to regard a behavior such as saying “hello” to one’s friend with a big smile, to be ‘rude’ just because he wants to do so. If he does do so, he will be simply committing a linguistic error and will be using the word ‘rude’
10 See Foot, “Moral Arguments”, p.102
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Philippa Foot’s Ethical Naturalism in a totally different sense. In short, not just anything can count as evidence that can support the evaluative conclusion that ‘the behavior is rude’. This is because the meaning of the term, ‘rude’, itself strictly restricts what can and what cannot count as evidence for the term to be correctly applied and used. In order to correctly apply the term ‘rude’ to a certain kind of behavior, it must be shown how the behavior has caused offence by indicating lack of respect. Without a reference to this descriptive state of offence, the term ‘rude’ simply cannot be used correctly. Therefore, assumption (1), which denies that certain factual evidences can be a necessary condition for certain evaluative conclusions to be drawn, is false. That is, it is not open for one to draw just any kind of evaluative conclusion from one’s own peculiar evidences without committing any kind of logical or linguistic error. Now, we can formalize the points that have been made for the term ‘rude’ in the following way. It turned out from the discussion above that not just anything can count as ‘rude’. In order for its correct application, certain descriptive conditions, which are indicated by the meaning of the term itself, must be met: that is, the condition that an offence which indicates lack of respect has taken place. Let’s say these conditions to be O. So, whenever condition O is satisfied, an offence which indicates lack of respect has taken place. Now, let’s say the evaluation that the behavior is rude to be R. Now, what is the relation between O and R? Is it possible for someone to accept that a certain behavior satisfied condition O, while denying that the behavior is R? According to Foot, this cannot happen unless one totally refuses to use the term ‘rude’ from the start. For example, there might be a person who just plainly denies that there is such a concept of rudeness, and rejects the whole practice of blaming somebody’s behavior by calling it ‘rude’. If there really is such a person, then the person might be able to deny that a certain behavior is rude even if the behavior satisfied condition O, since, to him, (by lacking the very concept of rudeness itself), nothing can possibly be rude. If this is the case, then, as Foot herself puts it, “arguments with him about what is rude would not so much break down as never begin.”11 However, as long as one wants to use the term ‘rude’ to refer to certain types of
11 Foot, “Moral Arguments”, p.104
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behavior, then it is simple not open for him to accept that a certain behavior has satisfied condition O while denying that the behavior was rude. This is because to say that the behavior satisfied condition O is equivalent to saying that the behavior has caused offense in a way which indicates lack of respect, and to deny that this behavior is ‘rude’ is to simply show that one does not understand what the term means. In short, if one accepts that the correct descriptive conditions, which are normally counted as evidence that supports a certain kind evaluative conclusion, are met, it is not open for one to simply deny the evaluative conclusion without committing a logical or a linguistic error. Therefore, assumption (2), which denies that certain factual evidences can be a sufficient condition for a particular evaluative conclusion to be drawn, is false. In other words, one cannot just simply reject an evaluative conclusion that follows from a certain set of factual premises that everybody regards as providing evidence for that particular evaluative conclusion without committing a logical or linguistic error. From this, we can see that there are factual evidences that serve as necessary and sufficient conditions for the evaluative term ‘rude’ to be correctly used. This means that although ‘rude’ is an evaluative term, which expresses a negative attitude towards the behavior which the speaker attributes rudeness, there can be determinate truth conditions that tells us whether or not a certain speaker has correctly applied the term ‘rude’ to describe a certain behavior. Whenever, the speaker applies the term to behaviors that do not meet these conditions, we can say that he has judged falsely. Now, it must be worth mentioning that Foot wasn’t explicit in saying that the descriptive condition, O, is both a necessary and a sufficient condition for rudeness. Some passages suggest that she was thinking of it as a necessary condition, and other passages suggest that she was thinking of it as a sufficient condition. However, it seems plausible to think that she was regarding it as both a necessary and a sufficient condition; since she says that the term ‘rude’ ‘can only be used where certain descriptions apply (Foot 2002: p.102)’ which suggests that O is a necessary condition, and only two pages later, she says that, given that a person agrees to use the term ‘rude’, ‘it is impossible for him to assert O while denying R’ which suggests that O is a sufficient condition as well. The reason why Foot moved back and forth; thinking condition O as a necessary condition for rudeness at one time, and thinking it as a sufficient condition for rudeness at another, is because she did not initially analyze the emotivists’ basic assumptions into the two separate assumptions that we have seen
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Philippa Foot’s Ethical Naturalism above, (of which one denied that factual evidences can be necessary conditions for evaluative conclusions and the other denied that factual evidences can be sufficient conditions for evaluative conclusions) and didn’t deal them separately in “Moral Arguments”. However, in “Moral Beliefs”, she clearly distinguishes the two assumptions and tries to give separate answers to each of them. And this is what she does when she analyzes the term ‘dangerous’ and ‘injury’.
I-2-2. The Case of “Dangerous” and “Injury” We have just seen that the term ‘rude’, despite its being an evaluative term, has a determinate truth condition that tells us whether or not the term is being correctly used. Foot stresses that a similar point can be made for the term ‘dangerous’. ‘Dangerous’ is an evaluative term that has a similar practical or action-guiding function that the non-cognitivists normally attribute to moral terms. Just as the moral statement ‘this is good’ expresses a pro-attitude about the subject matter and has the practical function of ‘commending’, the statement ‘this is dangerous’, too, expresses a certain kind of attitude, i.e. a negative attitude about the subject matter and has the practical function of ‘warning’.12 Even though the term ‘dangerous’ is, in this way, closely related to its practical function of warning and to the negative attitude it expresses, this doesn’t’t alter the fact that the statement ‘this is dangerous’ describes a certain factual property of the world and is capable of being assessed of either truth or falsehood. In other words, not just anything can count as dangerous. That is, something cannot count as dangerous just because somebody wants to use the word ‘dangerous’ by his own standards. In order for something to count as ‘dangerous’, it must be shown how that thing can cause ‘injury’ or ‘death’ to the people who can be affected. In other
12 It should be noted that something dangerous is, (it seems), always dangerous to something. And it can be said that the term ‘dangerous’ expresses a negative-attitude only if the speaker is concerned with the overall well-being of that something that is being threatened. For example, the spread of democracy was dangerous to the institution of slavery. But by saying that the spread of democracy was dangerous, it is likely that one is not expressing a negative attitude towards democracy unless one happens to advocate and feels sympathy towards the institution of slavery. Therefore, when Foot is saying that the term ‘dangerous’ expresses a negative attitude, Foot is clearly assuming that the term applies to those things that threaten the general well-being of human beings. However, Foot does not mention this complication. I owe this insight to Nicholas Sturgeon’s personal comments on an earlier draft of this paper.
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words, something cannot count as dangerous, no matter how much one intends to warn other people about that something, and no matter how much one possesses the associated attitudes and feelings that people normally have when they encounter something that is considered to be dangerous, unless that it can be shown that that something can cause injury or death. Now, to this, Foot is aware that somebody might propose the following objection: even if we grant that only the things that can cause injury or death can be properly called ‘dangerous’, anything can count as dangerous, since anything can count as an injury. However, according to Foot, this is not so, since it is not the case that anything can count as an ‘injury’. For example, natural decay doesn’t count as an injury. So, it will simply be a case of misusing words if somebody said that his grandfather was ‘injured’ because while his grandfather was able to bench press 200 pounds when he was in his 20s, he can now only bench press 100 pounds. Also, something that doesn’t occur in a biological creature’s body doesn’t count as an injury. So, it will simply be a case of misusing words if somebody said that his car was ‘injured’ because it got a flat tire. So, then, what is an injury? According to Foot, an injury is a damage that happens to a body part which impairs the body part from performing its ordinary function, which makes it harder for the individual to satisfy his or her normal needs and which deters the individual from obtaining what he or she wants. (Foot contends that, construed in this way, it turns out that injury is necessarily something bad, and anyone who thought that something can cause an injury will always have a reason to avoid it.13) So, there is a strict restriction on the range of facts which the term ‘injury’ can be properly applied to and not just anything can count as an injury just because somebody wants to use the term ‘injury’ in his or her own peculiar way. Therefore, not just anything can be properly called to be ‘dangerous’ since the term ‘dangerous’ can only be applied to the things that can cause injury, and the term ‘injury’ can only be applied to a damage that happens to a person’s body part which dysfunctions it. And whenever factual evidences show that a damage which dysfunctions a certain body part had occurred to somebody, nobody, without committing himself of a logical or a linguistic error, can deny that the person was injured and the thing which caused the injury was dangerous to that person. In this
13 Foot, “Moral Belief”, p.122
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Philippa Foot’s Ethical Naturalism way, the term ‘dangerous’ and ‘injury’ are logically or internally related to certain factual evidences which form a necessary and a sufficient condition for the two terms to be correctly used and applied. So, once again, the assumptions (1) and (2) are false. It is worth mentioning that, construed in this way, the term ‘dangerous’ is internally related to factual evidences in a more higher order way than the term ‘injury’; that is, the term ‘dangerous’ is internally related to certain factual evidences in virtue of its being related to the term ‘injury’ which itself is internally related to those factual evidences. We can formalize this in the following way
[Formula A] Something is dangerous = it causes injury = it causes damage that dysfunctions a person’s body part → Hence, it is determined by certain factual evidences
I-2-3. Generalizing to Moral Terms and Virtues Now the points that have been made about evaluative terms so far can be naturally extended to moral terms such as ‘good’, ‘bad’, ‘right’, ‘wrong’, etc. It is true that, in many cases, moral judgments such as ‘this is good’ and ‘this character trait is a virtue’ express a pro-attitude and have a special kind of practical function which is similar to that of commending. But this doesn’t mean that the moral term ‘good’ and ‘virtue’ can apply to just anything that the speaker has a pro-attitude towards or to anything that the speaker wishes to commend. In other words, the practical function of commending and the pro-attitude that is being expressed do not exhaust the meaning of moral terms. Just as one cannot count just any behavior to be ‘rude’ or just anything to be ‘dangerous’, one cannot count just anything to be ‘morally good’ or count just any character trait to be a ‘virtue’ just by the very fact that one has a positive attitude and wants to commend such a thing. This is because, just as with other evaluative terms, the meaning of the moral terms themselves provide a determinate criterion from which we can judge whether or not something can count as evidence that can support such moral conclusions as ‘this is morally good’ and ‘this character trait is a virtue’. In other words, just as the evaluative terms ‘rude’ and ‘dangerous’ are internally (or logically) related to their objects and facts, moral terms such as ‘moral goodness’ and ‘virtue’ are also internally (or logically) related to their objects and facts as well. According to Foot, the object or fact that moral terms such as ‘moral goodness’ and
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‘virtue’ are internally related to, are the facts about human good and human flourishing. In other words, in order to call something ‘morally good’ or some character trait a ‘virtue’, it must be shown how the thing or the character trait in question can lead to human good and how it can help us avoid human harm. Anything that cannot be shown how it leads to human good and how it can help us avoid human harm cannot be counted as morally good or a human virtue, no matter how much one wants to express pro-attitude or commendation towards it. And what counts as human good and harm is strictly a factual matter. That is, one cannot just randomly pick out any fact and use it as evidence to support the conclusion that the fact is conducive to human good any more than one can just randomly pick out any bodily symptom and use it as evidence to determine a certain physical ailment. In this sense, one cannot just randomly pick out any fact and use it as an evidence to support a certain moral conclusion that ‘it is morally good’ or ‘it is a virtue’. Conversely, if a certain behavior or a certain character trait has been shown how it is both indispensable in promoting human good and avoiding human harm, one cannot, without committing a logical or a linguistic error, deny the resulting moral conclusion that the behavior is morally good and that the character trait is a human virtue. Now we are able to make sense of why Foot thought that injury was something that is necessarily bad. According to Foot’s definition, an ‘injury’ is a damage that happens to a body part which impairs the body part from performing its ordinary function preventing the individual from satisfying his or her normal needs and wants that depend on that specific body part for its satisfaction. Now it is obvious that human good and flourishing cannot be achieved by failing people to fulfill their most basic biological needs. So, anything that deters people from fulfilling this kind of basic need should be regarded as detrimental to achieving human good itself. So, it can be contended that anything that deters people from fulfilling this kind of basic need is necessarily bad. Therefore, injury, which is one of the very causes that deter people from fulfilling their most biological needs, is necessarily bad viewed from the perspective of human good and flourishing, and in this way, injury always gives a reason to the person to avoid it. We can now complete our formalization of the relations between the term ‘dangerous’ and the term ‘injury’ by connecting it with the notions of the human good and flourishing and the moral evaluations that are internally connected to it.
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[Formula B] Something is dangerous = it causes injury = it causes damage that dysfunctions a person’s body part → it is determined by certain factual evidences Something is an injury = it is a damage that dysfunctions a person’s body part = it makes it harder for the person to achieve his normal needs and wants = it is detrimental in achieving human good and flourishing = it is necessarily bad = it always gives reasons to avoid it
PART II: A REPLY TO PHILLIPS AND MOUNCE’S CRITICISMS
As we have seen so far, Foot wanted to combat against the trend of non- cognitivism and wanted to prove that, contrary to what non-cognitivists think, moral terms and moral judgments can be, not merely externally or contingently related, but also internally and conceptually related to their objects and facts. In other words, Foot wanted to show that not just anything can count as morally good or bad and not just any character trait can count as a human virtue, just the same as not just any fact can count as evidence that confirms that the Earth is round. According to Foot, in order for something or some character trait to be ‘morally good’ or a ‘human virtue’, it must be shown how that something and that character trait can contribute to the achievement of human good and flourishing. And whether or not something contributes to human good and flourishing is a factual matter. Furthermore, if it is shown that something or some character trait really does contribute to human good and to the avoidance of human harm, and if one accepts this fact, it is not open for him to deny that that something is morally good nor that that character trait is a human virtue without committing himself of a logical or a linguistic error. In other words, there are certain factual evidence that work as necessary and sufficient conditions for certain moral and evaluative terms to be correctly applied and used. This makes it possible for us to logically deduce moral and evaluative conclusions from factual premises, and therefore, there is no incorrigible logical gap between fact and value. However, in “On Morality’s Having a Point”, Phillips and Mounce question the entire project of establishing an internal or logical connection between evaluative
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terms and facts. According to Phillips and Mounce, “the whole enterprise is misconceived almost from the start.” 14 Phillips and Mounce provide several compelling counterexamples that are all intended to refute Foot’s entire project and to support their claim that “there are no theories of goodness.”15 I think it is worth examining these examples one by one very closely.
II-1. Counterexamples to the Internal Relation of ‘Rude’
As we have seen from our previous discussion, Foot contends that there is a logical connection between the evaluative term ‘rude’ and the specific behavior to which the term ‘rude’ is applied. Not just any behavior can be called ‘rude’; that is, only the behaviors that cause offence by indicating lack of respect can be properly called ‘rude’. And whether a behavior has caused offence or not is a purely factual matter. Foot formalized this point by calling the conditions that need to be fulfilled in order for a behavior to cause offence by indicating lack of respect, O, and argued that whenever a behavior satisfies condition O, one cannot deny that the behavior was rude without committing a logical or a linguistic mistake. In normal circumstance, ‘pushing somebody out of the way’ meets condition O. So, in normal circumstances, it is impossible to deny that ‘pushing somebody out of the way’ is rude without making a logical or a linguistic mistake. If somebody does deny that ‘pushing somebody out of the way’ is rude, this just indicates that the person just doesn’t properly understand what the term ‘rude’ means. To this, Phillips and Mounce reply as follows:
Someone might think that pushing someone roughly is rude, and that anyone who denies this is simply refusing to face the facts. But this example, as it stands, is worthless, since it tells one nothing of the context in which the pushing took place. The reference to the context is all important in giving an account of the action, since not any kind of pushing can count as rudeness. Consider the following examples: (a) One man pushing another person violently in order to save his life (b) A doctor pushing his way through a football-match crowd in response to an urgent
14 D.Z. Phillips and H.O. Mounce, “On Morality’s Having a Point”, Philosophy, Vol. 40, No. 154. (Oct., 1965), p. 313 15 Ibid. 319
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appeal (c) The general pushing which takes place in a game of rugby (d) A violent push as a customary form of greeting between close friends In all these cases, pushing someone else is not rude. [Phillips and Mounce 1965: 311]
What Phillips and Mounce are saying is that there is no logical or internal connection between ‘pushing roughly’ and ‘rudeness’, since there are several contexts where pushing somebody roughly is not deemed to be rude. However, it is clear that Foot takes this kind of possibility into account; that is, Foot is obviously aware that in certain contexts and in certain backgrounds the usual standard that determines the correct application of evaluative terms can change. For example, in normal conditions, the term ‘pride’ cannot be correctly applied to such trivial and pointless actions such as ‘laying one of one’s hands on the other three times in an hour’; that is, in normal conditions one simply cannot be proud of conducting such a trivial act. However, Foot allows that if a special background is filled in, and in that special context one is recovering from a fatal illness, then it might be perfectly legitimate to say one is proud of laying one of his hands on the other three times in an hour, since it might be considered to be a big achievement for the person just to even do such a thing!16 So, it is clear that Foot takes into considerations that different contexts and different backgrounds can influence the standards of the correct usage of an evaluative term such as ‘rude’. However, this doesn’t change the fact that the term ‘rude’ is internally or conceptually connected to behaviors that cause offence by indicating lack of respect. The main reason why the examples from (a) to (d) are not instances of ‘rudeness’ is because in each of the specific contexts none of the behaviors of ‘pushing roughly’ had caused offence by indicating lack of respect. That is, the main reason why the examples from (a) to (d) are not instances of ‘rudeness’ is because none of the behaviors of ‘pushing roughly’ satisfied condition O. And without satisfying condition O, a behavior cannot be properly called to be rude. It should be noted that when Foot argued that the term ‘rude’ is internally or logically related to its objects, Foot didn’t mean that the term ‘rude’ is internally or logically related to any kind of specific behavior such as ‘pushing roughly’, but rather meant that the term ‘rude’ is internally
16 See Foot, “Moral Belief”, p.114
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or logically related to whatever act that causes offence by indicating lack of respect in a given context. And it is clear that a certain act, which obviously causes offence in a disrespectful way in one specific context, can, nonetheless fail to cause any offence in another. Of course, there is a part where Foot says that pushing somebody out of the way is naturally disrespectful.17 But, here, we should interpret Foot as saying that pushing somebody out of the way causes offence in a disrespectful way (and so is deemed to be rude) in normal contexts, not that the term ‘rude’ is internally related to the specific act of pushing itself so that pushing somebody out of the way should be regarded as rude regardless of what kind of context in which the behavior has taken place. So, different behaviors are deemed to cause offence in different contexts. And there might not be one specific behavior that can cause offence in all possible contexts. But this doesn’t mean that the term ‘rude’ can be freely used and that any kind of behavior can count as rude. Nor does this mean that whether or not a certain behavior has caused offence by indicating lack of respect cannot be a factual matter that can be judged to be either true or false. Nor does this mean that when two people disagree about whether or not a specific behavior was rude in a given context, neither of them could be wrong but both are entitled to their own opinion. Now, there is a complicated issue of something having a definite truth-value and thinking that, therefore, that something is factual.18 I have been talking as if the two things coincide; that is, I was talking as if, something having a definite truth-value just meant that that thing is factual and vice versa. However, the two issues must be kept distinct. In other words, having a definite truth-value and being factual (or non- evaluative) are two separate issues. Somebody might agree that the statement “Behavior X caused offense by showing lack of respect” has a definite truth-value in a given context, while denying that the statement itself is factual. The person might say that even if we grant that whether or not a behavior has caused offense in a given situation is a factual matter, it is still an evaluative judgment whether or not that offense should be regarded as disrespectful. And even this would make trouble for Foot’s position that the evaluative term ‘rude’ is internally connected to appropriate facts, since, then, the evaluative conclusion that a certain behavior is rude would not be derived from factual evidences that serve as a necessary sufficient condition, but
17 Foot, “Moral Arguments”, p.102 18 I owe this insight from Nicholas Sturgeon’s personal comments on an earlier draft of this paper.
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Philippa Foot’s Ethical Naturalism rather from another evaluative judgment. However, this does not show that the term ‘rude’ is not internally related to appropriate facts. Even if we grant that the sentence “Behavior X caused offense by showing lack of respect” is an evaluative judgment, it must be emphasized that not just any behavior can be regarded as having caused offense in a disrespectful way in a given context. This is because whenever a specific context is fixed, the overall context provides us with a strict standard from which we can objectively determine what kind of behaviors cause offense by showing lack of respect and what kind of behaviors don’t. For example, ‘punching somebody in the face’ might be regarded as a very offensive behavior that shows disrespect in the context of a soccer game, while it obviously would not be judged to be that way in the context of a boxing match. So, it is true that ‘punching somebody in the face’ would not be judged to be offensive in a disrespectful way universally in all possible contexts. However, whenever the specific context is fixed, there is always an objective standard that determines whether ‘punching somebody in the face’ should be regarded as a behavior that causes offense in a disrespectful way in that specific context. The standard that is adopted in the specific context of a soccer match tells us that the behavior is offensive in a disrespectful way, while the standard that is adopted in the specific context of a boxing match tells us that the behavior is not offensive in a disrespectful way. In other words, we can imagine that there is an imaginary list that states all of the specific behaviors that would cause offense in a disrespectful way in that specific context. Let’s call this list: List*. List* will vary among different contexts. However, whenever the context is fixed, there would be only one determinate List* that states only a determinate number of different types of behaviors. A judgment that “Behavior X caused offense by showing lack of respect” would be true only if Behavior X is contained in List*; it would be false if it was not. So, even if we grant that the judgment “Behavior X caused offense by showing lack of respect” is an evaluative judgment, it should be noted that it has a definite truth-value within a given context, and the reason why the judgment has a determinate truth-value is because the (evaluative) terms “offense” and “disrespect” are internally or logically related to the specific behaviors that are contained in List* of that specific context. And it is tedious to point out that specific behaviors are strictly a factual matter. So, even if one regards the sentence “Behavior X caused offense by showing lack of respect” to be an evaluative judgment, this doesn’t show that the evaluative
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conclusion that “Behavior X was rude” that is derived from it, cannot be internally or logically related to certain factual evidences. The evaluative conclusion that “Behavior X was rude” can be still internally related to certain factual evidences, since, the evaluative premise “Behavior X caused offense by showing lack of respect”, from which the evaluative conclusion is derived, itself, is internally related to specific factual evidences in the specific context. In this way, the evaluative term “rude” is internally related to factual evidences in a higher-order way that is similar to how “dangerous” is internally related to the appropriate factual evidences. In short, Behavior X is rude if and only if it causes offense by showing lack or respect, and Behavior X causes offense by showing lack of respect if and only if Behavior X is contained in List* that is adopted in the given context, and whether or not Behavior X is contained in List* is strictly a factual matter. So, whenever the context is fixed, the judgment that “Behavior X caused offense by showing lack of respect” would have a definite truth-value according to the standards that prevail in that specific context. So if two people disagreed on whether or not a certain behavior was offensive in a given context, either one of them must have judged falsely. In other words, the clause ‘causing offense by showing lack of respect’ is internally related to the specific behaviors that are listed in List* of that specific context, and it is in this way that the evaluative term ‘rude’ is internally related to facts. This allows that the term ‘rude’ can be internally related to different sets of facts whenever the overall context changes. This point is not apparent in Foot’s work, since Foot has vaguely formalized and fused all of the conditions that need to be satisfied in order for some behavior to cause offence in a disrespectful way into one big letter, O. So it is not clear from the apparent structure of Foot’s formalization on whether or not Foot was considering ‘the specific context’ where the behavior has taken place to be one of the parameters that determine whether or not a certain behavior has fulfilled condition O, and therefore should be regarded as rude. This is why Phillips and Mounce thought that the examples from (a) through (d) could count as counterexamples to Foot’s notion that the term ‘rude’ is internally related to its objects. That is, Phillips and Mounce thought that if ‘rude’ is internally connected to its objects, then a certain behavior that is considered to be rude in one context should be considered to be rude in all contexts. However, it is clear that Foot thought that the specific context can make a difference on whether or not a certain behavior has satisfied condition O, and should thereby be
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Philippa Foot’s Ethical Naturalism regarded as rude or not. So, I propose the following formulation that makes the reference to the specific context explicit from the structure of the formulation itself.
[When a behavior is ‘rude’] (1) In context (______), behavior X causes offence by indicating lack of respect (2) Behavior X is rude, if and only if (1) is true.
It should be noted that (1) has a definite truth-value of either being true or false. That is, if a specific context is fixed, then whether or not a certain behavior has caused offence is determined by the standard (i.e. List*) that is employed in that specific context. Now, let’s apply this to one of our previous examples, the behavior of ‘not taking off one’s hat in somebody else’s house’, and let’s set the context to ‘ordinary life in northern America’. In the context of ordinary life in northern America, if somebody is invited to somebody else’s house and doesn’t take off his hat, then conventional etiquette tells us that this kind of behavior causes offense by showing disrespect to the host. In other words, ‘not taking off one’s hat in somebody else’s house’ is a behavior that is contained in List*. So, the sentence “In context (ordinary life in northern America), behavior ‘not taking off one’s hat in somebody else’s house’ causes offence by indicating lack of respect” is true. And since this sentence is true, it turns out that the behavior of ‘not taking off one’s hat in somebody else’s house’ is rude in this specific context based on our formulation. Now let’s alter the context to ‘participating in an indoor hat party’. If one is participating in an indoor hat party, everybody is expected to wear hats indoors. So, based on the special rules that apply to this specific context, a behavior of not taking off one’s hat indoors does not cause any sort of offence in this context. In other words, now, ‘not taking off one’s hat in somebody else’s house’ is not contained in List*. So, the sentence “In context (participating in an indoor hat party), behavior ‘not taking off one’s hat in somebody else’s house’ causes offence by indicating lack of respect” is false. And since the sentence is false, it turns out that the behavior of ‘not taking off one’s hat in somebody else’s house’ is not rude in this specific context based on our formulation. From this, we can see that the behavior ‘not taking off one’s hat in somebody else’s house’ can be either rude or not rude depending on what kind of context the behavior is being performed. However, whenever the context is fixed, it is not open for one to randomly decide whether the behavior ‘not taking off one’s hat in somebody else’s
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house’ is rude or not. This is because given that the context is fixed, it is determined by the context itself whether or not a certain behavior is rude. So, given that the context is fixed, one cannot count just any behavior to be rude, and if the context determines that a certain behavior has caused an offence in a disrespectful way, then one cannot deny that that behavior was rude without committing himself of a logical or a linguistic error. And it is in this way how the evaluative term ‘rude’ is internally related to its objects. Now, from this formulation, it becomes clear where Phillips and Mounce went wrong when they claimed that ‘whenever anyone says, ‘That action is rude’, there is no logical contradiction involved in denying the assertion (1965: 312)’. To support their claim, Phillips and Mounce presents a story of an incident that happened between Wittgenstein and Moore contained in Malcolm’s Memoir of Wittgenstein.
Wittgenstein had lost his temper in a philosophical discussion with Moore, and would not allow Moore sufficient time to make his point. Moore thought that Wittgenstein’s behavior was rude, holding that good manners should always prevail, even in philosophical discussion. Wittgenstein, on the other hand, thought Moore’s view of the matter absurd: philosophy is a serious business, important enough to justify a loss of temper; to think this rudeness is simply to misapply the judgment. [Phillips and Mounce 1965: 312]
The point Phillips and Mounce wanted to make from this example was that although Moore and Wittgenstein disagreed on whether or not Wittgenstein’s behavior was rude, neither of them had judged falsely, since each of them applied the term ‘rude’ in his own fashion and there was no logical contradiction in doing so. However, provided from our previous discussion, this is not a correct analysis. Given that the context is fixed, it is always a determinate fact whether a certain behavior is rude or not in that particular situation. So, either Moore or Wittgenstein has judged falsely. Then, who is the one who had judged falsely? We can see that the context that we are talking about is ‘within a philosophical discussion’. And the main purpose of any type of discussion, whether it is a philosophical discussion or any other type of discussion, is, not merely to profess one’s own opinion, but to listen to other people’s opinion as well, and arrive at a conclusion that has some basis in mutual consensus. In this way, it is one of the most
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Philippa Foot’s Ethical Naturalism basic rules of any type of discussion to let every participant have an equal opportunity to speak without being abruptly interrupted by the other participants. If somebody constantly interrupts and doesn’t allow sufficient time (or even a chance) for somebody else to make his or her point, this would naturally be considered to be a disrespectful behavior that causes offence to the speaker as well as to other participants in the context of a discussion. In other words, ‘not allowing other participants sufficient time to speak by losing one’s temper’ is contained in List* that applies to the context of a philosophical discussion. Therefore, the sentence “In context (within a philosophical discussion), behavior ‘not allowing other participants sufficient time to speak by losing one’s temper’ causes offence by indicating lack of respect” is true. Therefore, Wittgenstein, who had displayed such a behavior, was unquestionably rude. Somebody might object to this by saying that there might be cases where the type of behavior that Wittgenstein had displayed would not count as rude even when the context is fixed to a philosophical discussion; for example, Wittegenstein’s behavior would not count as rude if he interrupted Moore in order to save someone from choking to death.19 However, this objection misses the point in the same way that Phillips & Mounce had missed the point. If somebody present in the philosophical discussion was starting to choke, this would itself shift the overall context. Now, the context would be, not ‘within a philosophical discussion’, but instead, ‘within a philosophical discussion when somebody present started to choke’. In this type of situation, ‘interrupting somebody who was talking’ would not be contained in List*. Therefore, the sentence “In context (within a philosophical discussion when somebody present started to choke), behavior ‘interrupting somebody who was talking’ causes offence by indicating lack of respect” is false. Therefore, the behavior ‘interrupting somebody who was talking’ would not count as rude in that situation. Or we can reply to the objection in a different way by saying that ‘interrupting somebody who was talking in order to notify that somebody was choking’ is a completely different behavior than ‘not allowing other participants sufficient time to speak by losing one’s temper in order to make his own point’, which Wittgenstein himself had displayed. Therefore, even if we fix the overall context to ‘within a philosophical discussion’, the behavior ‘not allowing other participants sufficient time
19 This point has been suggested by Nicholas Sturgeon in his personal comments in an earlier draft of this paper.
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to speak by losing one’s temper in order to make his own point’ will be contained in List*, while the behavior ‘interrupting somebody who was talking in order to notify that somebody was choking’ will not. This will make the sentence, “In context (within a philosophical discussion), behavior ‘not allowing other participants sufficient time to speak by losing one’s temper in order to make his own point’ causes offence by indicating lack of respect”, true, while making the sentence, “In context (within a philosophical discussion), behavior ‘interrupting somebody who was talking in order to notify that somebody was choking’ causes offence by indicating lack of respect”, false. Therefore, there are two possible ways to make sense of why Wittgenstein’s behavior should count as rude, while a similar behavior that was performed in order to save someone’s life should not; we may consider the two behaviors themselves to be intrinsically different or we may say that the same behavior was performed in a totally different context. However, given that the context is fixed within a philosophical discussion, it is objectively true that Wittgenstein’s behavior was rude. And if somebody judged that “Wittgenstein’s behavior was not rude”, then he had simply judged falsely. One might say that, considering the seriousness of the philosophical point that Wittgenstein was trying to make, Wittegenstein was justified in being rude. Yes, it is possible to think that Wittgenstein was justified in being rude. But this doesn’t change the fact that Wittgenstein was, in fact, rude in the philosophical discussion with Moore.
II-2. Counterexamples to the Necessary Badness of ‘Injury’
Foot defines an ‘injury’ to be a damage that occurs in any of the body parts that impairs the body part to perform its ordinary function, which makes it harder for the individual to satisfy his normal needs and wants whose fulfillment depend on the specific function of that body part to work properly. Foot contended that, construed in this way, not only is it impossible to count just anything as an injury, but injury, in this sense, is necessarily a bad thing. To this, Phillips and Mounce presents two counter examples which they think show that injury is not necessarily a bad thing: the story of Saint Paul, and the story of Brentano.
…consider how Saint Paul does not think ‘the thorn in the flesh’ from which he suffered to be a bad thing. At first, he does so regard it, and prays that it be taken away.
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Later, however, he thanks God for his disability, since it was a constant reminder to him that he was not sufficient unto himself.
Another example is worth quoting. Brentano was blind at the end of his life. When friends commiserated with him over the harm that had befallen him, he denied that his loss of sight was a bad thing. He explained that one of his weaknesses had been a tendency to cultivate and concentrate on too many diverse interests. Now, in his blindness, he was able to concentrate on his philosophy in a way which had been impossible for him before. [Phillips and Mounce 1965: 316]
The point that Phillips and Mounce wanted to make from these examples was this: although both Saint Paul and Brentano were injured in the appropriate way that matches Foot’s definition of ‘injury’, neither of them thought that their injury was a bad thing, since their injury has made it possible for them to serve some higher purpose, and in this way, they thought that their injury was, in some significant sense, good. And even though Saint Paul and Brentano thought that their injury was in some sense good, which strictly defies Foot’s notion of ‘injury’ defined as a necessarily bad thing, neither of them can be properly accused of making a logical or a linguistic mistake. Now, in order to properly assess Phillips and Mounce’s point, we need to make sure of ourselves about in exactly what sense Foot thought that an injury was necessarily a bad thing. When Foot contended that an injury was necessarily a bad thing, what she meant was that an injury always gives a reason for the person to avoid it. Foot makes it explicit that this reason to avoid injury doesn’t have to be an overriding reason.20 In other words, the negative reason that injury provides is defeasible; it can be offset by other strong reasons that the person happens to have in that particular circumstance. Foot allows that in peculiar circumstances, an injury might actually bring more incidental gain than necessary harm, and if this incidental gain is reliably foreseen, a man might actually have better reason to seek injury rather than to avoid it.21 This kind of thing is not so much bizarre in South Korea, where all men are required to serve 2 years in mandatory military service. There were several incidents in South Korea where perfectly healthy men purposely broke one of their bones or
20 Foot, “Moral Belief”, pp.122-123 21 Ibid. p. 123
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inflicted some other kind of injury to themselves right before their official heath check-up in order to get exempted from being drafted to the Army. To them, the gain that they had expected to receive by not going to the Army and not spending 2 years of their life in Army barracks outweighed the necessary harm that resulted from the injury that they had inflicted on themselves. So, by their own rational (or rather selfish) calculations, these men chose to seek injury rather than to avoid it. But this doesn’t mean that these men lacked reasons to avoid injury or that their injury was not something necessarily bad in the first place. The injury was obviously bad for them and the men had perfectly legitimate reasons to avoid inflicting injury on themselves, but these reasons were just not strong enough to override other reasons that were based on their own subjective interpretation of self-interest. So, saying that injury is something that is necessarily bad doesn’t necessarily mean that one will always try to avoid injury in real life, nor does it mean that one will never think of one’s injuries as something good that serves some other purpose. All it means is that whenever there is injury one will always have some defeasible reason to avoid it. And this applies to both of the cases of Saint Paul and Brentano as well. That is, although both of them thought that their injury was in some sense good which served some other significant purpose, it is hard to deny that both of them had, nonetheless, very strong reasons to avoid it if it were possible for them to do so. This can be shown from the fact that Saint Paul prayed to God to take away the thorn in his flesh when it was initially inflicted. Also, even if we grant that Brentano was perfectly sincere when he said that his blindness wasn’t a bad thing since it made him concentrate on matters of philosophy more than before, I doubt that Brentano would have voluntarily chosen to make himself blind given that he had a choice not to do so. That is, let’s say somebody approached Brentano before he got blind when Brentano retained his normal visual capacities, and said, “Hey Brentano, I think that you have too many diverse interests that hinder you from concentrating on philosophical matters alone. So, I think you would be better off doing philosophy if you were actually blind. So, I brought you a pill that will make you blind within couple of hours after you take it. I strongly recommend you to take this pill, and I am sure that you would agree. So, do you want to take it?” I doubt that Brentano would have said “Sure! That’s a terrific idea!” and made himself blind by taking the pill in this scenario. So, if neither Saint Paul nor Brentano would have voluntarily inflicted the injury
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Philippa Foot’s Ethical Naturalism upon themselves if they actually had a chance to avoid it, what explains their thinking of their injury as something good, or at least not something necessarily bad, after they were inflicted? I think that there is a change in the dynamics of what kinds of reasons are available to one before and after the injury is taken place. Before an injury takes place, one always has a reason to avoid the injury if it is in one’s capacity to do so. However, if an injury has already taken place, and if this is an incontrovertible fact that cannot be undone or cancelled, then one always has a reason (or an incentive) to justify and make the best of his injuries no matter how bad it is. That is, if one cannot change the fact that one has been injured, it is always better for one to find some kind of positive aspect about one’s current predicament than to just stay all day feeling totally miserable about one’s entire life. If the situation cannot be converted, then it is always in one’s best interest to think of the positive side about the situation, rather than to agonize about the negative side of the situation. This is because agonizing about the situation will not make the situation any better, and will only make the person feel more depressed. Therefore, after one has been inflicted of a certain kind of irreversible injury, there is always reason to think that the injury is not so bad, and, in some sense, even good for some other purposes. However, just because it is in the person’s own self-interest to think that the injury that he is currently suffering has some positive point, this doesn’t change the fact that the injury was in fact something necessarily bad for him and that he had plenty of reasons to avoid it if he were able to do so before he got injured. The whole thing is similar to the case of a school boy who missed the bus on the very day of the school’s picnic, which he was very much looking forward to go, saying to himself ‘That’s OK. I’m sure that the picnic would not have been that great after all. Now, I can go back home and play my favorite video games!’22 Although we can admit that it was perfectly reasonable and rational for the school boy to react in this way, (since what has been done, cannot be undone, and it is always in one’s best interest to make the best of one’s situation), it is still true that missing the bus on the very day of the school’s picnic, which he was very much looking forward to go, was bad for the school boy. In the same way, although it was perfectly rational (and even in some sense very admirable) for Saint Paul and Brentano to react in the way
22 The standard name for this kind of attitude is called ‘sour grapes’ which is derived from one of the Aesop’s fables.
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they reacted towards their own misfortunes, this doesn’t change the fact the injuries they suffered were necessarily bad for them, and that they had reasons to avoid it if it were possible.
II-3. Contestable Views of Human Good and Harm
The counter examples that Phillips and Mounce have been suggesting so far was only the prelude to undermining Foot’s main thesis: that moral goodness and human virtue are internally or logically connected to the facts about human good and flourishing. That is, according Foot, not just anything can count as morally good and not just any character trait can count as human virtue unless it can be shown how the thing in question can lead to human good and avoid harm. So, if there happens to be two people who disagree on whether or not a certain behavior is morally good or on whether or not a certain character trait is a virtue, we can always prove that either one of them were wrong by appealing to the facts; which are, in this case, the facts about human good and flourishing. However, Phillips and Mounce contend that this is exactly what cannot be done. The reason why we cannot resolve moral disagreements, just the same way we resolve factual disagreements, is because there is no such common evidence called the human good from which we can test our moral conclusions in the first place. That is, different people may have different conceptions in what constitute the human good itself, and based on their different conception of the human good, it is perfectly possible for different people to regard different facts as evidence for their own moral conclusion. This is how deadlocks in moral arguments are usually reached. That is, deadlocks in moral arguments occur because people disagree about the very nature of human good itself. A typical example of this kind of deadlock can be shown from what Phillips and Mounce call the disagreement between the ‘scientific rationalist’ and his ‘Roman Catholic housewife’ over birth control.
In so far as philosophers construct a paradigm in their search for the ‘unity of the facts of human good and harm’, they are not far removed from the so-called scientific rationalists and their talk of proper functions, primary purpose, etc. One of these, in an argument with a Roman Catholic housewife over birth control, stressed the harm which could result from having too many children. He obviously thought that the reference to physical harm clinched the matter. The housewife, on the other hand, stressed the honour
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a mother has in bringing children into the world. It seems more likely that the scientific rationalist was blind to what the housewife meant by honour, than that she was blind to what he meant by harm. [Phillips and Mounce 1965: 317]
We are not able to settle the disagreement between the scientific rationalist and the Roman Catholic housewife by appealing to the facts about human good and harm, since what they disagree about is precisely on what constitute human good and harm itself. And there can still remain this kind of disagreement between two people even if they mutually agree to all of the non-evaluative facts of the matter, since each might take totally different facts to be relevant to human good and flourishing. For example, the Roman Catholic housewife might as well perfectly agree with her Scientific husband to the non-evaluative facts- e.g. that having more babies at her age will be dangerous to her health, that having more children at this stage will worsen the family’s economical situation, and so on- but, nonetheless disagree about whether birth-control is the morally right thing to do. Phillips and Mounce write:
How would the scientific rationalist and the housewife reach the agreement which some philosophers seem to think inevitable if all the facts were known? It is hard to see they could without renouncing what they believe in. Certainly, one cannot regard their respective moral opinions as hypotheses which the facts will either confirm or refute, for what would the evidence be? For the rationalist, the possibility of the mother’s death or injury, the economic situation of the family, the provision of good facilities for the children, and so on, would be extremely important. The housewife too agrees about providing good things of life for children, but believes that one ought to begin by allowing them to enter the world. For her, submission to the will of God, the honor of motherhood, the creation of new life, and so on, are of the greatest importance. [Phillips and Mounce 1965: 317-318]
And, moreover, we cannot settle this issue by resorting to the common facts about human good and flourishing since it is precisely what constitutes the human good that is at issue here. Sooner or later, the scientific husband and the Roman Catholic house wife will reach a deadlock in their discussion, and when this happens, this will be not due to their disagreement in factual matters, but due to their disagreement in their evaluative judgment. According to Phillips and Mounce, the same is true of all
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fundamental moral disagreements.23 Now, it must be worth considering whether it is the case that the scientific husband and his Roman Catholic house wife are really agreeing to all of the non-evaluative facts. For example, is there a God? Or did God order his creatures to bring out new life despite the hard circumstances?24 None of these issues seem to be settled in the disagreement between the scientific husband and the Roman Catholic housewife at hand; the husband will say ‘no’ to both of these questions, whereas the housewife will say ‘yes’ to both questions. However, both of these issues are certainly relevant facts which can make a huge difference in determining whether either one of them has judged falsely. So, it is not quite clear whether the disagreement between the scientific husband and the Roman Catholic housewife was a genuine moral disagreement or simply a disagreement in non-evaluative facts. And if it turns out that their disagreement was really due to their disagreement in non-evaluative facts, it would be, in principle, possible to prove that either one of them had judged falsely when all of the non-evaluative facts are finally known. To strengthen the point that I have just made, I would like to propose the distinction between what I call ‘the objective human good’ and ‘the subjective human good’. The objective human good is what is good for human beings construed as biological organisms that maintain a social life. For example, it is essential to drink a sufficient amount of water every day25 in order for human beings to preserve and maintain their biological life. Therefore, based on the objective human good, it is good to drink a sufficient amount of water every day. By contrast, the subjective human good is what the individual subjectively thinks is good for human beings in general; in other words, the subjective human good is the individual’s own subjective conception of what the human good is. Now, one’s subjective human good can be influenced by varieties of factors; it can be influenced by one’s religion, ideology, culture, superstition, etc. It is also possible for different people to share their subjective good. This is the case for people who believe in the same religion, ideology, etc. However, the subjective human good doesn’t always coincide with the objective human good. For example,
23 .Z. Phillips and H.O. Mounce, “On Morality’s Having a Point”, p. 318 24 I owe this insight to Nicholas Sturgeon from his personal comments on an earlier draft of this paper. 25 More specifically, it is said that the recommended amount of water that one needs to drink in a day can be calculated by dividing one’s weight (lbs) by 2, and the resulting number is one’s recommended amount of water for a day in oz.
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Philippa Foot’s Ethical Naturalism there might be some kind of religion that regards drinking too much water as some sort of a sinful act. Then, people who believe in this religion will think that drinking sufficient amount water everyday is a bad thing to do based on their own subjective human good. Therefore, these people will try hard to drink less than the recommend amount of water every day. To them, the lesser one drinks, the better one has behaved. Drinking half the recommended amount would be regarded as a very pious act and would be regarded as something that should be praised. If somebody refused to drink water for several days, he would be regarded as a saint. Nonetheless, drinking less than the recommended amount of water, (no matter how much one subjectively thinks as good), is objectively bad viewed from the objective human good. This means that there can be a wide discrepancy between what is regarded as good from the objective human good perspective, and what is regarded as good from the subjective human good perspective of the individual. Now, whenever there is a strict conflict between the objective human good and the subjective human good on whether a certain behavior is good or bad, we can always press the question by asking ‘Is the behavior really good?’ And the answer to this question will be the answer that is provided by the objective human good perspective. Of course, one need not be convinced by the answer that is given by the objective human good, and one might as well retain his own conviction and follow what is suggested by his own subjective human good. The answer provided by the objective human good need not motivate the individual, since the individual might be deeply immersed in his own world of the subjective human good. However, whenever somebody judges that a certain behavior is good when the objective human good tells us that the behavior is actually bad, we can always say that the person’s judgment was objectively false, no matter how much his subjective human good tells us otherwise. This is because whereas the objective human good is fact, the subjective human good is interpretation, and interpretations are always liable to mistakes. It is not hard to find examples of this kind of conflict between the objective human good and the subjective human good. I would like to first present one example that I heard from the news report when I was in South Korea. Korean people are generally very religious, and some numbers of Koreans try to vent their religious fervor by participating in some kind of pseudo-religious cult. In the mid-90s, there was this cult in South Korea that had about several hundred followers. The leader of the cult was some guy who claimed that he was the reincarnation of Jesus. The leader tried to
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convince his followers by showing off his magical powers of healing. He gathered a group of his followers who had mild injuries such as a sprained ankle, a back problem, etc., and what he did was, he started to rapidly and continuously scratch the injured part of his followers with his finger nails until the skin started to bleed heavily. He started to do the same thing to the next follower without washing his hands. While he was scratching the people’s skin, he murmured some kind of magical spell. A few days later the whole group who had gone through the healing ritual developed an inflammatory skin disease. The leader of the cult explained that the rashes were the sins that the followers committed through out their lives coming out from their body. The leader also explained that it was a good sign, since after the process their bodies and souls will be completely purified. The followers believed every word he said. It later turned out that the rashes were due to a sexually transmitted disease, syphilis. Now, in this example, it seems that the followers thought that getting their skin scratched by their religious leader until it started to bleed, and developing massive rashes on their skins, were a good thing, since, based on their own subjective human good, the scratching meant the honor of being touched by the holy one, and the rashes meant they were being purified by their own sins. However, viewed from the objective human good, the scratching was nothing more than an unhygienic and harmful activity, and the rashes were nothing more than a symptom of a sexually transmitted disease that is deemed to be very dangerous. So, viewed from the perspective of the objective human good, the scratching and the rashes were both extremely bad. Now, should we want to say that we cannot settle the issue, even in this case, on whether the scratching and the rashes were good or bad by appealing to the common evidence of human good and harm, since it is in precisely what constitute the human good and harm that the followers of the cult and we, ordinary scientific minded people, differ? Isn’t it the case that when we are pressed with the question on whether the scratching and the rashes were really good or bad, the answer should be that the scratching and the rashes were both objectively bad, and that the followers of the cult had judged falsely when they judged that they were good? There is another example where there is a strict conflict between the objective human good and the subjective human good in judging a particular behavior to be either good or bad. The example is the foot-binding custom that was popular among the upper class women in the medieval days of China. In a very early stage in her life,
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Philippa Foot’s Ethical Naturalism a female child in China, who was born from an upper class family, would get her feet wrapped by a sock-shaped cloth that was approximately 4 inches long. The cloth was permanently tied to the feet with tightly bound ropes and the main purpose of the binding was to inhibit the growing of her feet. As time passes, the rest of the female’s body grow bigger and bigger except for her feet. Her feet naturally want to grow bigger as well, but due to the restriction of the binding, her feet cannot grow to its natural size and gets limited to the size of the cloth, which is 4 inches. The feet usually get totally deformed during the process. Now, after the binding and through out her entire life, the foot-bound female can barely walk, and it becomes impossible for her to participate in any kind of physical labor. Chinese men, at that time, regarded the ridiculously small and deformed feet of a foot-bound female as a symbol of her beauty. Despite the immense pain that usually resulted, women, at that time, also thought getting their feet bound an honor, since it signified that they belonged to the upper class, and that they were free from any kinds of physical labor. It seems that, when the foot-binding custom was popular, Chinese people regarded foot-binding to be a good thing; women regarded it as an honor that signified prestige and men regarded it as something that represented beauty of the female. In other words, based on the subjective human good that the Chinese people affirmed at that time, the foot-binding custom was good. However, viewed from the perspective of the objective human good, the foot-binding custom was obviously bad. From the purely biological perspective the foot-binding inhibited the natural growth of the female’s feet. Women who got their feet bound couldn’t even walk properly and were incapable of conducting almost all physical activity. The women usually died by some type of geriatric disease, such as high blood pressure, diabetes, etc., which were mainly due to lack of sufficient exercise. Foot-binding was obviously harmful to the woman’s health. From the feminist perspective, the foot-binding custom was merely a means of oppression against women. It disallowed women to participate in public affairs and confined the role of women to sexual toys of men in the domestic household. However, even if we disregard this feminist interpretation, it is fairly obvious that the foot-binding custom was objectively bad viewed from the perspective of the objective human good. However, should we, now, want to say that by judging that the foot-binding custom was objectively bad, we have just unfairly elevated one particular conception of the human good as paradigmatic and disregarded all other conceptions of the human good
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as subordinate? Furthermore, do we really want to say that when somebody says “Foot-binding is good” and another says “Foot-binding is bad”, we have reached a deadlock in ethics, and that there is no way to resolve this disagreement by appealing to common evidence and facts, since viewed from their own subjective conception of the human good and harm neither of them could be wrong? I do not think so. Now, let’s go back to our example of the Roman Catholic housewife. Phillips and Mounce explains that the housewife regarded bringing new life to this world as an honor which signified a submission to God, and therefore a good thing to do, even if it meant risking one’s life to do so. I do not wish to be disrespectful but I wonder how much the honor which the Roman Catholic housewife felt in bringing new life to this world was different from the honor that the Chinese woman felt when her feet was being bound. Now, let’s consider the case of Brentano who regarded his blindness as something not necessarily bad and Saint Paul who regarded the thorn in his flesh as something not necessarily bad. I wonder how much Brentano’s regarding his blindness and Saint Paul’s regarding his thorn as something not necessarily bad differed from the religious cult followers’ regarding their inflammatory rashes to be something not necessarily bad. Of course, the blindness of Brentano and the thorn in Saint Paul’s flesh served some significant purpose: a dedication to philosophy and God. However, the inflammatory rashes also served some significant purpose for the cult followers as well: purification of their bodily sins. So, how much were they different? Pretty much, I’m sure. But, I suspect that it was not enough.
□ Date of Submission The Original: May 11, 2015 / The Revised: May 18, 2015 / The Confirmed: May 20, 2015
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REFERENCES
1. Books
Ayer, J. Language, Truth, and Logic 2nd edition, Dover Publications, 1952. Copp, David, ed. The Oxford Handbook of Ethical Theory. Oxford University Press, 2006. Foot, Philippa. Moral Belief in Virtues and Vices. Oxford University Press, 2002. Geoffrey Sayre-McCord, ed., Essays on Moral Realism, Cornell University Press, 1988. Hare, R. M. The Language of Morals,.Oxford University Press, 1991 Hume, David. A Treatise of Human Nature, Oxford University Press, 2000. Moore, G. E. Principia Ethica. Dover Publications, 2004.
2. Articles
Foot, Philippa. “Moral Arguments” in Virtues and Vices, Oxford University Press, 2002 Phillips, D.Z. and H.O. Mounce. “On Morality’s Having a Point.” Philosophy, Vol. 40, No. 154(Oct., 1965). Stevenson, Charles. “The Emotive Meaning of Ethical Terms.” Mind, Vol. 46, No. 181(1937). Sturgeon, Nicholas. "Moral Explanations." In Geoffrey Sayre-McCord, ed., Essays on Moral Realism, Cornell University Press, 1988: 229-55. Sturgeon, Nicholas. “Ethical Naturalism.” In David Copp, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Ethical Theory, Oxford University Press, 2006: 91-121.
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