An old Hindu story runs like this: "A King of Ancient
India, oppressed by the roughness of the earth upon soft human feet,
proposed that his whole territory should be carpeted with skins.
However one of his wise men pointed out that the same result could
be achieved far more simply by taking a single skin and cutting off
small pieces to bind beneath the feet. These were the first
sandals."
The point of the parable is, of course, that it is easier for man
to adapt himself to nature than to adapt nature to himself. And this
is the point of naturalism. |
I. Naturalistic ethics: a theory of moral behavior
according to which ethics is an empirical science. Ethical
statements are reduced to the natural sciences (physical or social),
and ethical questions are answered wholly on the basis of the
findings of those sciences.
I.e., naturalistic ethics is said to be a non-valuational
enterprise; any "ethical value" is said to be
confirmable through the methods of science.
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A. Hence, ethical naturalism is the doctrine that moral facts are
facts of nature. |
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1. The thesis that all facts are facts of nature seems obvious. |
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2. Even so, some persons deny that there are moral facts at all—just
as some people deny that there are peculiarly religious facts.
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B. Ethical naturalism can
take several different forms. A major difficulty in the articulation
of the theory is multifarious definitions of "nature,"
"natural," and "natural law." Various
examples of ethical naturalism are as follows: |
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1. Ethical values are reducible to natural properties; .e.g, a
good action is an action in conformity with the proper function of a
thing as in the Stoic's notion of "activities which are
consequential upon a thing's nature."
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2. "Virtue ethics" includes the doctrine that ethical good
is the realization of the capacities of a human being "living
well and doing well."
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3. Ethical values are a distinctive kind property-—not reducible to
those studied by the physical sciences but possibly studied by the
social sciences.
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4. Generally speaking, to define ethical naturalism as a doctrine
implying that natural actions are right and unnatural actions are
wrong is to set up a
straw-man argument.
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B. In a sense, a nihilist can be thought of as one kind of ethical
naturalist. |
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1. Nihilism is the doctrine that there are no moral
facts, no moral truths, and no moral knowledge. Moreover, nihilism
is a doctrine that denies that traditional values, including moral
truths, exist. |
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2. The word "nihilist" was invented by Turgenev in his
novel, Fathers and Sons (1861). |
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3. Some nihilists hold that morality is merely a superstitious
remnant of religion.
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II. The key question of the possibility of the adequacy of
ethical naturalism is whether morality is amenable to observational
testing. Or is observational evidence irrelevant to moral judgments?
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A. The existence of these distinctions in ordinary language would
seem to indicate ethical problems are independent of scientific problems:
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1. fact vs. value: "Pin oaks are often used in
landscaping" whereas "Pin oaks are magnificent
trees." |
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2. descriptive vs. prescriptive: "Many citizens are
law-abiding" whereas "All citizens should obey the
law." |
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3. is vs. ought: "Science is concerned with 'what
is'" whereas "Ethics is concerned with 'what ought to
be.'"
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B. The basic issue of observational testing depends upon whether
moral principles can be tested and confirmed in the way scientific
principles are. For example, suppose we accept the following
statement as an ethical principle.
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1. Principle: When given the choice to murder or not to
murder someone, you should choose not to murder. (Note the
difference between "killing" and "murder.") Is
this principle true or false? |
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a. "Kill" means "put to death." |
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b. "Murder" is "the unlawful killing of a human
being with malice aforethought." |
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c. Consider the case where one twin was put to death so the other
could have the shared heart. This is a test case to examine the
empirical results of a decision rather than examining moral rules
concerning the decision.
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2. In law, homicide is (1) justifiable, (2) excusable, or (3)
felonious. Suppose the law reads as follows and a society's morality
is based upon that law. |
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a. Justifiable: the killing of a man in obedience
to law, or by unavoidable necessity, or for the prevention of an
atrocious crime. |
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b. Excusable: committed by misadventure, also in
cases of self-defense, where the assailant did not intend murder,
rape, or robbery. |
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c. Felonious: comprehends the willful killing of a
man through malice aforethought (murder); the unlawful killing of a
man without such malice, either in sudden heat or while
involuntarily committing an unlawful action not amounting to felony;
self-murder, suicide.
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3. So, the physician who saves a twin in the case mentioned above
would be, by law and by common morality, murdering one of the twins.
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4. The moral rule, then, would seem clear—this act of separating the twins
should not be done. Yet, the empirical results seem to demand that a
life be saved. Hence, ethical naturalism is an attempt to avoid the
linguistic conflicts of arbitrary rules.
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IV. A salient philosophical objection to ethical
naturalism is described by G. E. Moore as the
naturalistic fallacy.
Moore argues that the question of goodness can still be raised as to
whether a natural property is good. What is pleasurable, what is desirable,
and what are proper functions of a person might not be what is
good for that person, but even if they were, they are not the same
as, or the definition of, what is good. |
III. In our next class, we will begin to develop a naturalistic
ethics based on Jung's theory of personality types. |