Abstract
The ethical naturalist asks us to take seriously the idea that practical norms are a species of natural norms, such that moral goodness is a kind of natural goodness. The ethical naturalist has not demonstrated, however, how it is possible for a power of reason to be governed by natural norms, because her own attempts to do this have led her into a dilemma. If she takes the first horn and stresses that ethical naturalism provides objective, natural norms of the species, then she fails to show how such norms are practical, or operative from a deliberative point of view. If she takes the second horn and stresses that ethical naturalism yields a picture of knowledge of human life that is practical because it comes through virtuous dispositions of intellect and will, then she fails to have an account of how it is knowledge of facts about a life form, potentially accessible to a non-human knower. In this paper, I argue that one potential resolution to this dilemma can be found in the writings of Thomas Aquinas. On a broadly Thomist account of practical reason, the first principles of practical reason are our common human ends or goods, which are constitutive of a good human life. The work of practical reason on this naturalistic account is twofold: (1) to conceive and order these ends into some general conception of how to live, and (2) to apply this general conception to the particular situations of one’s life in order to realize one’s vision of the good life, here and now.
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Notes
- 1.
VV 2.
- 2.
Foot puts it this way: “Moral judgment of human actions and dispositions is one example of a genre of evaluation itself actually characterized by the fact that its objects are living things” (NG 4).
- 3.
This is Korsgaard’s reading of the function argument in the Nicomachean Ethics . See Korsgaard (2008, 151–173).
- 4.
This is the position articulated by McDowell (1995) in “Two Sorts of Naturalism .”
- 5.
I argue directly for the falsity of premise (1) in another paper. See Frey (unpublished manuscript).
- 6.
Hursthouse believes that this investigation will proceed from within our well-formed ethical outlook. By this she seems to mean nothing more than that we can only call particular virtues into question one at a time, rather than throw out the whole lot in order to build them up from scratch from a morally neutral perspective.
- 7.
The original suggestion comes from Anscombe, “Modern Moral Philosophy” (1958), and was later developed by Geach, The Virtues (1977). The semantics of “good” utilized by the theory was first developed by Geach, “Good and Evil” (1956), and seems to suggest that the relevant goodness fixing kind would not be “social animal ” but “human being.”
- 8.
Children, having a great deal of leisure time, are often engaged in play of this sort. In fact, this sort of play is as natural to children as seeking nourishment and protection from their parents. A child who does not know how or naturally seek to engage in imaginative play for no purpose (such as a child with an autism spectrum disorder), is a child who will need therapeutic intervention. This is not a mere difference, for play is essential to the child’s ability to interact socially, to develop language, to read and write, and so on. Such a child will have to be taught what other children naturally do, and such instruction cannot merely be given by the parent, but comes in the form of theory-driven techniques aimed at incremental results.
- 9.
For evidence that play is essential to relating to others, see (Jenkins and Astington 2000; Leslie 1987; Singer and Singer 1990, 2005). For evidence that play allows the expression of feelings, the modulation of affect, and the ability to integrate emotion with cognition, see (Jent et al. 2011; Russ and Astrida 2001; Slade and Wolf 1999). Finally, the research reviewed by Berk et al. (2006) and Hirsh-Pasek et al. (2009) suggest that pretend games are forerunners of the capacity for self-regulation, including reduced aggression, delay of gratification, civility, and empathy. For a succinct review of the relevant research, see Kaufmann, “The Need for Pretend Play in Child Development,” in Psychology Today, available online at www.psychologytoday.com/blog/beautiful-minds/201203/the-need-pretend-play-in-child-development .
- 10.
Hursthouse is not unaware of the tension between the reasons of virtue and the reasons of moral theory, and she repeatedly insists that the reasons to do these things from a practical point of view are the reasons that the person with the relevant character trait does them, rather than naturalistic reasons. But she also qualifies this by saying that when we raise children, or want to reform bad characters, or when we do moral philosophy, we can provide this sort of justification for our moral beliefs. The trouble is that it is completely unclear how the two accounts are supposed to hang together, because it is unclear why when we are concerned with the truth of these activities (i.e., that they are really good human activities) we should give an account that looks radically incompatible with what we would say from a practical point of view, where we attend to something that is not supposed to stand in need of any such account.
- 11.
A similar complaint about this sort of view can be traced back to David Wiggins (1988), “Truth, Invention, and the Meaning of Life .”
- 12.
Quinn also argues that we need an account of the will which would make it clear that it is “the part of human reason whose function it is to choose for the best,” though he leaves this “part” of reason basically un-theorized. He seems to think it will naturally fall out of an account of practical reason. See Quinn (1994, 240).
- 13.
For other variants of recognitionalism, see Shafer-Landau, Moral Realism : A Defense; Nagel , The Possibility of Altruism; and Dworkin , “Objectivity and Truth: You’d Better Believe It.”
- 14.
The locus classicus of this critique of theories of self-knowledge is Shoemaker (1996), The First Person Perspective and Other Essays.
- 15.
- 16.
See also Anscombe (2005), “Practical Inference.” Anscombe calls this the “great Aristotelian parallel.”
- 17.
For a nice discussion of the intrinsic teleology of practical reason, see Mueller , “How Theoretical Is Practical Reason?” See also Vogler (2002), Reasonably Vicious, Chapter 2.
- 18.
See Lott (2012), “Moral Virtue as Knowledge of Human Form,” for a recent attempt to characterize ethical naturalism in this way. I understand Lott to be developing an idea he finds in McDowell (1995), “Two Sorts of Naturalism ,” in a way that is not incompatible with ethical naturalism (i.e., on which the distinction between “first” and “second” nature becomes less significant, because “second” nature norms are natural norms).
- 19.
For the full development of the idea of “second nature ,” see McDowell, Mind and World.
- 20.
It is the potential to know human life from a third personal point of view that distinguishes ethical naturalism from constructivism. The constructivist argues that true normative judgments represent a normative reality, but denies that the reality represented is in anyway independent of the normative judgment itself. I take it that if ethical naturalism is supposed to be a meaningful alternative to constructivism, it must deny that the normative reality it is concerned with is a reality that is entirely constructed from acts of practical judgment and nothing more. For more on this structural feature of the constructivist project, see LeBar (2008), “Aristotelian Constructivism,” and Street (2009), “What Is Constructivism in Ethics and Metaethics?”
- 21.
It’s also pretty unclear how this person is responsible for his bad behavior. I find this view strange in that it makes it seem as though being good is, to a large extent, being lucky that one was raised in “the right way.” For instance, if you were raised poorly, perhaps within a political community that was not governed by just laws, then you seem forever doomed to remain ignorant of your own nature. And it’s hard to argue that that sort of ignorance would not be exculpatory.
- 22.
This fits with Anscombe’s (1979) famous account of theoretical knowledge in Intention, 57.
- 23.
Here we are talking about rational desire , but desire nonetheless.
- 24.
This fact is shown very convincingly by Mueller (1979), “How Theoretical Is Practical Reason?” See also Aquinas , ST I–II, q. 8, a. 1, c.
- 25.
I am indebted to Matthias Haase for helping me to formulate the problem in this way.
- 26.
For a discussion of natural appetite , see DV q. 22, a. 4, and ST q. 80, a. 1.
- 27.
For a contemporary case that we need to appeal to such an internal principle of explanation in order to understand the movements of living substances, see Michael Thompson ’s (2008) Life and Action , Chapter 1.
- 28.
Aquinas entertains the idea that we need not attribute an appetitive power to animals, since each individual power can be said to be a tendency to its own end that comes to be for the sake of the whole. Aquinas responds that while it is true that each power, being of a certain form or nature, has an inclination to its own object, there is still the need for an appetite following upon apprehension by which the animal tends towards objects not just as suitable to a particular power, but as suitable to the animal simply or as a whole. See ST I, q. 80, a. 1, ad 3.
- 29.
It may be that Aquinas has too simplistic an account of animal life . I do not want to dwell on this question here, as it is outside the purpose or scope of this essay. For our purposes, it will be enough to say that even if animals do have alternatives available to them, and so do make decision of some kind, it is not in the same way that we do. That is, they do not have “perfect knowledge ” of their ends and the means in relation to them as Aquinas defines this.
- 30.
This is the parallel to the intellect regarding its object under the formality of the universal truth, rather than particular, sensible truth.
- 31.
See also ST I–II, q. 1, a. 2.
- 32.
For an argument to this effect, see Anscombe (2005), “Practical Inference,” 145.
- 33.
Some contemporary action theorists, such as Kieran Setiya , are willing to give up on the notion of practical intelligibility altogether. See Setiya (2007), Reasons Without Rationalism, 63–65. I think this is a mistake, because without an account of a uniquely practical form of intelligibility and explanation , the argument for speaking of a specifically practical form of reason loses its force and meaning.
- 34.
This, of course, is Kant’s complaint at the beginning of the Groundwork (A: 395). The complaint is echoed in McDowell’s (1995) “Two Sorts of Naturalism .”
- 35.
I follow Kevin Flannery , S.J. in thinking of principles as the wider concept, referring to the starting points of an Aristotelian science, and precepts as picking out the principles of practical reason and natural law . I will refer to both as first principles in this discussion, without always being careful to mark this distinction. For a careful discussion of the relation between principle and precepts, see Flannery (2001), Acts Amid Precepts: The Aristotelian Logical Structure of Thomas Aquinas ’s Moral Theory, Chapter 2.
- 36.
For an interesting discussion of the reasons why, as well as an articulation of one path towards a possible recovery, see MacIntyre (1990), First Principles, Final Ends and Contemporary Philosophical Issues.
- 37.
I should note that I am not saying that we are naturally apt to know them because we are inclined to them. If we must insist on a logical priority, then cognition is always prior (logically) to desire . Temporally, however, there is no priority. In saying this, I reject Maritain’s highly influential reading of Aquinas . For further discussion, see Brock (2011), “Natural Law , the Understanding of Principles, and Universal Good.”
- 38.
The formulation comes from Aristotle . See Met. IV. 6 1001b13–14.
- 39.
My discussion of these principles is heavily indebted to the work of Kevin L. Flannery, S.J., and to several discussions with him. See Flannery (2001), Acts Amid Precepts, Chapter 6.
- 40.
Bonum est faciendum et prosequendum, et malum vitandum.
- 41.
Of course, in one moment I might see it as good in some way, at another moment as bad in some other way, but only insofar as I attend to different aspects of the prospective action at different times.
- 42.
This is compatible with the fact that I can have contradictory desires. I just cannot hold in my consciousness contradictory rational desires (i.e., acts of will).
- 43.
It is sometimes complained that philosophers with deeply Aristotelian sympathies often argue by appeal to a notion of intelligibility that is itself not exactly transparent. For a nice articulation of the worry, see Setiya (2007), Reasons Without Rationalism. I take this sort of complaint to be legitimate. However, the notion of intelligibility is well worked out in Aristotle and those (like Aquinas ) who follow him, and it is far from indefensible.
- 44.
This is an idea that Anscombe suggests but does not herself defend. See Anscombe (2005), “Practical Inference.”
- 45.
Aquinas , ST I–II, q. 94, a. 2, ad 1, is also clear that the various precepts of the natural law , “insofar as they are referred to a single first precept, have the intelligibility of a single natural law .” This single precept is of course the FPPR. For further discussion, especially the distinction between referral and reduction, see Flannery (2001), Acts Amid Precepts.
- 46.
Aquinas ’s view is fully in keeping with the sort of first personal practical knowledge that Michael Thompson (2004) advocates in his paper “Apprehending Human Form.”
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Acknowledgements
Thanks to Rosalind Hursthouse for her insightful commentary on this paper at a workshop hosted by the Center for the Study of Mind and Nature at the University of Oslo, as well as audiences at Boston College, CSMN-Oslo, Johns Hopkins University, Mt. Saint Mary’s University, and The University of Auckland for their feedback on earlier versions. This chapter also benefited from feedback at a working group meeting of the “Virtue, Happiness, and Meaning of Life” project, which is generously underwritten by The John Templeton Foundation (grant #56194).
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Frey, J.A. (2018). How to Be an Ethical Naturalist. In: Hacker-Wright, J. (eds) Philippa Foot on Goodness and Virtue. Philosophers in Depth. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91256-1_3
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