Abstract
Since natural rights are essentially a kind of ethical concept, this chapter looks into the problem of defending ethical concepts from a metaphysical realist perspective. In this framework, human nature plays the central role in determining ethical norms. In this connection such notions as essentialism as presented by Martha Nussbaum are contrasted with our own understanding of essences. In addition, Hilary Putnam’s objections to metaphysical realism through practices rather than essences is examined as well. We conclude by suggesting that metaphysical realism remains a viable alternative grounding for ethics and that a naturalistic ethics is thereby feasible.
Nature may be known from what we see of the natural State of Creatures, and of Man himself, when unprejudic’d by vitious Education.
Shaftesbury
Most of this chapter is adapted from Douglas B. Rasmussen, “The Importance of Metaphysical Realism for Ethical Knowledge,” Social Philosophy & Policy 25, no. 1 (Winter 2008): 56–99.
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Notes
- 1.
We have the following works in mind: Julia Annas, The Morality of Happiness (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993); idem, Intelligent Virtue (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011); Paul Bloomfield, Moral Reality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001); idem, The Virtues of Happiness: A Theory of the Good Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014); Talbot Brewer, The Retrieval of Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009); Douglas J. Den Uyl, The Virtue of Prudence (New York: Peter Lang, 1991); Douglas J. Den Uyl and Douglas B. Rasmussen, The Perfectionist Turn: From Metanorms to Metaethics (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2016) [hereinafter TPT]; Philippa Foot, Natural Goodness (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001); Rosalind Hursthouse, On Virtue Ethics (Oxford; Oxford University Press, 1999); Anthony Lisska, Aquinas’s Theory of Natural Law: An Analytic Reconstruction (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996); Michael Thompson, “The Representation of Life,” in Rosalind Hursthouse, Gavin Lawrence, and Warren Quinn, eds., Virtues and Reasons: Philippa Foot and Moral Theory (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), pp. 247–96; and Warren Quinn, Morality and Action (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), especially chapter 11.
- 2.
See our discussion of life-based natural teleology in Chap. 4 where we respond to the claim that appealing to natural rights commits the so-called naturalistic fallacy , and for a fuller account and defense, see Den Uyl and Rasmussen, TPT, chapters 2, 6 and 7.
- 3.
In its most general sense, essentialism holds that to be is to be something, and thus that there is something about a thing without which that thing would neither exist nor be that thing. See Chap. 7 for an account and defense of what we call moderate essentialism.
- 4.
Ontological realism holds that there are beings that exist and are what they are independent of and apart from our cognition; epistemological realism holds that we can come to know, though sometimes not without great difficulty, both the existence and nature of these beings. We understand metaphysical realism to encompass both ontological and epistemological realism. See Roger Trigg, Reality at Risk: A Defense of Realism in Philosophy and the Sciences (Sussex, UK: Harvester Press; and Totowa, NJ: Barnes and Noble Books, 1980), for a discussion of these views.
- 5.
Martha C. Nussbaum, “Human Functioning and Social Justice: In Defense of Aristotelian Essentialism,” Political Theory 20, no. 2 (May 1992): 202–46. Nussbaum claims that her rejection of ontological and epistemological realism has its origins in Aristotle’s understanding of “appearances.” She claims that “we can have truth only inside the circle of the appearances, because only there can we communicate, even refer, at all.” Martha C. Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), p. 257. Christopher Long notes, however, that Nussbaum fails to do justice to Aristotle’s view: “Aristotle operates with a naturalistic conception of the relationship between being and language that allows him to recognize that our very speaking about beings reveals something of the nature of these beings themselves.” Long, “Saving Ta Legomena: Aristotle and the History of Philosophy,” The Review of Metaphysics 60, no. 2 (December 2006): 251–52.
- 6.
Nussbaum, “Human Functioning and Social Justice,” p. 206.
- 7.
Ibid.
- 8.
Ibid., pp. 207–08.
- 9.
Ibid., p. 206.
- 10.
Ibid., p. 207.
- 11.
Ibid., p. 212.
- 12.
Ibid., pp. 212–13.
- 13.
Nussbaum also mentions Donald Davidson, W. V. O. Quine, and Nelson Goodman as critics of metaphysical realism. We will not be considering these thinkers in this chapter because, for the most part, they have not used their criticisms of metaphysical realism as a basis upon which to build an account of ethical knowledge.
- 14.
Nussbaum, “Human Functioning and Social Justice,” pp. 213–14. For a criticism of Nussbaum’s internalist essentialism, see Douglas J. Den Uyl and Douglas B. Rasmussen, “Liberalism in Retreat,” The Review of Metaphysics 62, no. 4 (June 2009): 875–908.
- 15.
Hilary Putnam, Renewing Philosophy (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1992), p. 135.
- 16.
See Den Uyl and Rasmussen, TPT, for our arguments against other forms of moral constructivism , including Mark LeBar’s Aristotelian moral constructivism .
- 17.
In part 1 (“Sense, Nonsense, and the Senses: An Inquiry into the Powers of the Human Mind”) of Hilary Putnam, The Threefold Cord: Mind, Body, and World (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), Putnam discusses his earlier mistakes regarding realism; but he still maintains his rejection of metaphysical realism insofar as it rejects conceptual relativity, which he endorses. More recently, on this point, see Hilary Putnam, “On Not Writing Off Scientific Realism,” in Mario De Caro and David Macarthur, eds., Philosophy in an Age of Science (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2012), pp. 100–02.
- 18.
We shall also discuss in Chap. 7 a sense of conceptual relativity, which Putnam appears at times to endorse, that is true but trivial, and thus not antithetical to metaphysical realism.
- 19.
For us, both epistemic and moral realism are best expressed and defended in neo-Aristotelian-Thomistic terms.
- 20.
Hilary Putnam, “The Question of Realism,” in James Conant, ed., Words and Life (Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press, 1994), p. 300.
- 21.
Ibid., p. 302.
- 22.
Ibid., p. 297.
- 23.
Ibid., p. 303.
- 24.
Ibid.
- 25.
Hilary Putnam, “A Defense of Internal Realism,” in James Conant, ed., Realism with a Human Face (Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press, 1990), p. 41 (emphasis added).
- 26.
Putnam qualifies this picture later and no longer defines truth as warranted assertibility. Rather, he thinks that a definition of truth is unnecessary, though he claims that he can examine the concept of truth in relation to other semantic and epistemological concepts. See Putnam, The Threefold Cord, part 1, and Putnam, “Are Values Made or Discovered?” in Putnam, The Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy and Other Essays (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2002), p. 107.
- 27.
See Hilary Putnam, “Skepticism about Enlightenment,” in Putnam, Ethics without Ontology (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2004), p. 120.
- 28.
See Hilary Putnam, “A Defense of Conceptual Relativity,” in Putnam, Ethics without Ontology, pp. 38–40.
- 29.
Putnam notes: “The whole idea that the world dictates a unique ‘true’ way of dividing the world into objects, situations, properties, etc. is a piece of philosophical parochialism. But just that parochialism is and always has been behind the subject called Ontology.” Ibid., p. 51.
- 30.
Hilary Putnam, Reason, Truth, and History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 52.
- 31.
Hilary Putnam, The Many Faces of Realism: The Paul Carus Lectures (La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1987), p. 16. This saying comes from William James, Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking (1907), in Bruce Kuklick, ed., William James: Writings 1902–1910 (New York: Library of America, 1987), pp. 514–15.
- 32.
Hilary Putnam, “Aristotle after Wittgenstein,” in Conant, ed., Words and Life, p. 63.
- 33.
Putnam, Reason, Truth, and History, p. 51.
- 34.
For an examination of this claim, see Douglas B. Rasmussen, “Realism, Intentionality, and the Nature of Logical Relations,” Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 66 (1992): 267–77. See also Laird Addis, Natural Signs: A Theory of Intentionality (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1989), pp. 87–94.
- 35.
Putnam, The Many Faces of Realism, p. 34.
- 36.
Ibid., pp. 35–36.
- 37.
Putnam also notes that there is “the common philosophical error of supposing that the term reality must refer to a single superthing instead of looking at the ways in which we endlessly negotiate—and are forced to renegotiate—our notion of reality as our language and our life develop.” Putnam, “Sense, Nonsense, and the Senses,” p. 9.
- 38.
Putnam, “The Question of Realism,” p. 306. See Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979).
- 39.
Putnam initially described this form of realism as “internal realism,” but he has more recently described it as “pragmatic realism” or “realism with a small ‘r.’ ” See his “Reply to Gary Ebbs,” in The Philosophy of Hilary Putnam, Philosophical Topics 20, no. 1 (Spring 1992): 353.
- 40.
Putnam, “Realism without Absolutes,” in Conant, ed., Words and Life, p. 284.
- 41.
Putnam states that there is “common-sense realism: the realism that says that mountains and stars are not created by language and thought, and yet can be described by language and thought…. [The] metaphysical kind of realism is ‘incoherent’.” Putnam, “The Question of Realism,” p. 303.
- 42.
Putnam, “Are Values Made or Discovered?” p. 101.
- 43.
Putnam, “The Question of Realism,” p. 300. He also references John Wisdom, “Metaphysics and Verification,” Mind 47, no. 188 (October 1938): 452–98.
- 44.
Putnam, “A Defense of Conceptual Relativity,” p. 43.
- 45.
Ibid., p. 45.
- 46.
Putnam, “The Question of Realism,” p. 309.
- 47.
Hilary Putnam, “The Craving for Objectivity,” in Conant, ed., Realism with a Human Face, p. 122.
- 48.
Willard Van Orman Quine, “Two Dogmas of Empiricism,” From a Logical Point of View: Nine Logico-Philosophical Essays, 2nd ed., rev. (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1980), pp. 20–46.
- 49.
Hilary Putnam, “The Entanglement of Fact and Value,” in Putnam, The Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy, p. 31; and Putnam, “Pragmatism and Moral Objectivity,” in Conant, ed., Words and Life, p. 154.
- 50.
Hilary Putnam, “Beyond the Fact/Value Dichotomy,” in Conant, ed., Realism with a Human Face, p. 139.
- 51.
Putnam does not deny that one can distinguish between facts and values; rather, he denies that there is some metaphysical divide between them. See Putnam, “The Empiricist Background,” in Putnam, The Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy, p. 19. Further, he states: “… I … find it convenient to use the term valuings as a general term for value judgments of every sort…. [M]y position isn’t simply that ‘valuings are not descriptions’; my position is that some valuings, in fact, some ethical valuings, are descriptions (though not of anything ‘nonnatural’), and some valuings are not descriptions. Valuings do not contrast simply with descriptions; there is an overlap, in my view, between the class of descriptions and the class of valuings.” Putnam, “‘Ontology’: An Obituary,” in Putnam, Ethics without Ontology, p. 74.
- 52.
Putnam, “The Entanglement of Fact and Value,” p. 33.
- 53.
Putnam, “Pragmatism and Moral Objectivity,” p. 153.
- 54.
Ibid., p. 154. Putnam does qualify this claim, however. He notes that the emphasis on practice does not mean that we should “get rid of metaphysics once and for all.” In fact, he states that “revisionary metaphysics is not always bad.” Ibid., pp. 159–60. We will discuss the importance of this qualification in Sect. 3. Yet, it is important to realize that, for Putnam, “revisionary metaphysics” includes not only those metaphysical views that would overturn or replace our everyday practices and common-sense views, but also those metaphysical views that seek to explain such practices and views—that is, metaphysical views that attempt to offer something more primary than practice.
- 55.
Putnam, “The Entanglement of Fact and Value,” p. 33.
- 56.
Hilary Putnam, “The Three Enlightenments,” in Putnam, Ethics without Ontology, p. 96.
- 57.
Ibid., p. 107.
- 58.
Putnam, “The Entanglement of Fact and Value,” p. 38.
- 59.
Ibid., pp. 39–40.
- 60.
Putnam, “Are Values Made or Discovered?” 97.
- 61.
Ibid., p. 103.
- 62.
Ibid.
- 63.
Ibid.
- 64.
Ibid., pp. 103–06.
- 65.
Putnam would not want the “sea” in this analogy to be interpreted as a reality that exists apart from our conceptual practices—not even a Kantian “noumenal reality.” The sort of Kantianism that Putnam endorses considers metaphysical realism, even about a noumenal reality, unintelligible. See Putnam, “Model Theory and the ‘Factuality’ of Semantics,” in Conant, ed., Words and Life, pp. 361–62. The ship analogy originates with Otto Neurath. See Otto Neurath, “Protocol Sentences” (trans. George Schick), in A. J. Ayer, ed., Logical Positivism (New York: The Free Press, 1959), p. 201. This essay first appeared in German as “Protokollsätze,” Erkenntnis 3 (1932/1933).
- 66.
Problems, for Putnam, are part of the practices in which we are engaged.
- 67.
See Putnam, “The Three Enlightenments,” pp. 89–108.
- 68.
Putnam, “Pragmatism and Moral Objectivity,” pp. 170–77.
- 69.
See ibid. and Jürgen Habermas, “Discourse Ethics: Notes on a Program of Philosophical Justification,” in Jürgen Habermas, Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, trans. Christian Lenhardt and Shierry Weber Nicholson (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1990), pp. 43–115. For a criticism of Habermas from a point of view that is neo-Aristotelian but does not assume the primacy of practice, see Douglas B. Rasmussen, “Political Legitimacy and Discourse Ethics,” International Philosophical Quarterly 32 (March 1992): 17–34.
- 70.
Putnam, “Are Values Made or Discovered?” pp. 106–09.
- 71.
Hilary Putnam, “Values and Norms,” in Putnam, The Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy, p. 124.
- 72.
Putnam, “Are Values Made or Discovered?” p. 107 (emphasis added).
- 73.
Ibid., p. 108.
- 74.
Ibid., pp.108–09.
- 75.
Putnam, “Values and Norms,” p. 134.
- 76.
Ibid., p. 118.
- 77.
Ibid., p. 119.
- 78.
Hilary Putnam, “A Reconsideration of Deweyan Democracy,” The Southern California Law Review 63 (1990): 1671.
- 79.
Such direct participation does not require, however, that they refrain from calling upon experts to assist them in their decision-making.
- 80.
Putnam, “The Three Enlightenments,” p. 105.
- 81.
Putnam, “A Reconsideration of Deweyan Democracy,” p. 1696. Dewey also states: “Since actual, that is effective [as opposed to original or native or ‘natural’], rights and demands are products of interactions, and are not found in the original and isolated constitution of human nature, whether moral or psychological, mere elimination of obstructions is not enough. The latter merely liberate force and ability as that happens to be distributed by past accidents of history.” Ibid. The quotation is drawn from John Dewey, “Philosophies of Freedom,” in H. M. Kallen, ed., Freedom in the Modern World (New York: Coward-McCann, 1928), pp. 249–50.
- 82.
Putnam, “Are Values Made or Discovered?” p. 97.
- 83.
Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974), pp. 30–31.
- 84.
Ibid., p. 172.
- 85.
Putnam, “Values and Norms,” p. 115. Putnam lists respect for autonomy among the criteria of idealized inquiry; see Putnam, “Pragmatism and Moral Objectivity,” p. 173.
- 86.
Hilary Putnam, “How Not to Solve Ethical Problems,” in Conant, ed., Realism with a Human Face, p. 180.
- 87.
Ibid.
- 88.
Ibid., pp. 181–83.
- 89.
Ibid., p. 180.
- 90.
Ibid., p. 183. Interestingly enough, Putnam never really explains how the process of idealized inquiry concludes that slavery, racism, and male chauvinism are wrong. We know we believe they are wrong, but why should we think that our belief conforms to the result of idealized inquiry? For additional concerns regarding Putnam’s account of democratic inquiry, see Matthew Festenstein, “Putnam, Pragmatism, and Democratic Theory,” The Review of Politics 57, no. 4 (Fall 1995): 693–721.
- 91.
Putnam, “How Not to Solve Ethical Problems,” p. 184.
- 92.
Putnam, “Pragmatism and Moral Objectivity,” p. 160.
- 93.
F. A. Hayek, “The Use of Knowledge in Society,” American Economic Review 35, no. 4 (September 1945): 519–30.
- 94.
Practical reason is the intellectual faculty employed in guiding conduct, and practical wisdom is the excellent use of practical reason . Practical wisdom is more than mere cleverness or means-end reasoning . It is the ability of an individual at the time of action to discern, in particular and contingent circumstances, what is morally required. It involves the intelligent management of one’s life so that all the necessary goods and virtues are coherently achieved, maintained, and enjoyed in a manner that is appropriate for the individual human being. It is the intellectual virtue of a neo-Aristotelian conception of human flourishing. See Fred D. Miller, Jr., “Rationality and Freedom in Aristotle and Hayek,” Reason Papers no. 9 (Winter 1983): 29–36. See also Den Uyl and Rasmussen, TPT, chapters 2 and 8.
- 95.
Putnam, “Values and Norms,” p. 115.
- 96.
Ibid. Putnam regards Kant’s great achievement in moral philosophy to be the Categorical Imperative. He understands by this “the idea that ethics is universal, that insofar as ethics is concerned with the alleviation of suffering, it is concerned with everyone’s suffering, or if it is concerned with positive well-being, it is with everybody’s positive well-being.” Hilary Putnam, “Ethics without Metaphysics,” in Putnam, Ethics without Ontology, p. 25. For a critique of this type of reasoning, see Douglas J. Den Uyl and Douglas B. Rasmussen, TPT, chapter 3.
- 97.
Putnam, “Values and Norms,” p. 114.
- 98.
Ayn Rand, “The Objectivist Ethics,” in Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism (New York: New American Library, 1964), p. 27.
- 99.
We hasten to add that these theories need not be understood as necessarily egoistic, at least in the usual sense of that term, for it is quite possible for the welfare of other persons, though not every person, to be an essential feature of, and not a mere means to, one’s own flourishing. Moreover, an ethics of human flourishing or self-perfection neither denies the profoundly social character of human life nor assumes an atomistic perspective. See Douglas B. Rasmussen and Douglas J. Den Uyl, Norms of Liberty: A Perfectionist Basis for Non-Perfectionist Politics (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2005), pp. 127–43; and Douglas J. Den Uyl and Douglas B. Rasmussen, “The Myth of Atomism,” The Review of Metaphysics 59, no. 4 (June 2006): 841–68; and Den Uyl and Rasmussen, TPT, chapter 2.
- 100.
He also uses the term “symmetric reciprocity.”
- 101.
See Chap. 2 and Rasmussen and Den Uyl, Norms of Liberty A Perfectionist Basis for Non-Perfectionist Politics (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2005), pp. 134–36; and Den Uyl and Rasmussen, TPT, pp. 34–37, 83–84.
- 102.
However, agent-relativity alone does not require that P1 be an ethical egoist, for it is perfectly possible for P1’s morally salient values, reasons, or rankings to be agent-relative and entirely altruistic. Yet, this possibility does not show that these values, reasons, and rankings are agent-neutral, because benefiting others must still be a value, reason, or ranking for P1, and not necessarily for P2–Pn. Further, there is the question of whether it is desirable for P1 to be entirely altruistic. See TPT, pp. 1–64.
- 103.
Putnam makes this point in many places, but see Ethics without Ontology, pp. 3, 29, and 102.
- 104.
Indeed, the point can be put more strongly. Actual practice condemns failure to consider one’s own case especially when it comes to one’s family, one’s friends, and one’s finances, as Adam Smith clearly shows in The Theory of Moral Sentiments, ed. D. D. Raphael and A. L. Macfie (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, Inc., 1976), VI.i.1–11, pp. 212–15.
- 105.
Ethical non-cognitivism holds that moral claims are not knowledge claims.
- 106.
See the following works by Martha C. Nussbaum: Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality, Species Membership (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006); Women and Human Development: The Capability Approach (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); “Non-Relative Virtues: An Aristotelian Approach,” in Martha C. Nussbaum and Amartya Sen, eds., The Quality of Life (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), pp. 242–69; “Human Functioning and Social Justice”; and “Aristotelian Social Democracy,” in R. Bruce Douglass, Gerald Mara, and Henry Richardson, eds., Liberalism and the Good (New York: Routledge, 1990), pp. 203–52. See the following works by Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom (New York: Anchor Books, 2000); “Capability and Well-Being,” in Nussbaum and Sen, eds., The Quality of Life, pp. 30–53; Inequality Reexamined (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992); and Ethics and Economics (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987).
- 107.
Putnam, “The Three Enlightenments,” p. 107.
- 108.
The point here is not that a political conversation is separate from an ethical one, or from any other one for that matter. Rather, the point is that there is a distinction—a difference in the issue that is being addressed. See also Fred D. Miller, Jr., Nature, Justice and Rights in Aristotle’s Politics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), p. 358.
- 109.
Alasdair MacIntyre, Dependent Rational Animals: Why Human Beings Need the Virtues (Chicago and La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1999), pp. 99–118.
- 110.
See Den Uyl and Douglas B. Rasmussen, “Liberalism in Retreat.”
- 111.
Real people are engaged in a quest for answers and solutions. This means that what they say or conclude is often less important than the basis for their conclusions. This brings us back to the idea that there is something more than human practices when it comes to finding answers and solutions.
- 112.
Nussbaum, “Human Functioning and Social Justice,” p. 214.
- 113.
It might be replied that Putnam’s decision not to define truth as warranted assertibility under ideal conditions is based on understanding that the contingent relationship between truth and warranted assertibility is deeply imbedded in the worldviews and practices of both science and common sense. Thus, Putnam seeks to take advantage of metaphysical realism’s view of truth while at the same time maintaining the primacy of practice.
- 114.
Putnam, “How Not to Solve Ethical Problems,” p. 185. See also Putnam, “The Three Enlightenments,” pp. 101–04.
- 115.
Furthermore, how is “we” idealized? Why idealize along the lines of educated cosmopolitans rather than middle-class folks with mediocre educations, or the uneducated, or those who have to live with the results, and so on? It is never clear how this is done, except, of course, to assume simply that universality and consistency are the standards. Yet, why must these values be the standards? Why must science and the values of Modernity be our guide? Obviously, these questions are not just theoretical any longer, if they ever were.
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Rasmussen, D.B., Den Uyl, D.J. (2020). On the Rejection of Metaphysical Realism for Ethical Knowledge. In: The Realist Turn. Palgrave Studies in Classical Liberalism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48435-4_6
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