[lit-ideas] Re: Grice and Foot on the foundations of morality
- From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 6 Oct 2010 14:35:05 +0100 (BST)
For Popper there are no more "foundations of morality" than there are
"foundations of science" or "foundations of metaphysics". Of course, Popper's
epistemic critique of 'foundationalism' or 'justificationism' can be evaded by
not taking the notion of foundation or justification too seriously i.e.
interpreting these in a 'conjectural' way. Nevertheless, just as the existence
and success of science can only at best be partially explained, so too the
existence and validity of moral claims defies anything like complete
explanation.
Some further Popperian comments on extracts from the Telegraph obit:-
>One of the chief critics of “naturalistic ethics” was RM Hare, who attempted
>to show in The Language of Morals (1952) that even if moral arguments could
>not be settled in the way arguments about fact could be, >they need not on
>that account be irrational.
Popper was an unrelenting opponent of the 'naturalistic fallacy', which in his
_OSE_ is seen to be central to Platonic, Hegelian and Marxist ethics
(corresponding, roughly, to 'right' = 'past might' (Plato), 'present might'
(Hegel), 'future might' (Marx)). In an addendum he presents a very simple
argument to expose the naturalistic fallacy:- this might be summed up as
conceding that while any moral situation or problem may be expressed in purely
factual terms, and it might seem therefore that we can reduce ethics to some
kind of factual analysis, this is a fallacy because we can open the gap between
facts and standards at any point simply by asking of the so-called 'factual
terms' whether they reflect something ethically 'good' or 'bad', and no appeal
to mere 'facts' can resolve this question.
>Hare argued, however, that, in the final analysis, since there is no logical
>connection between statements of fact and statements of value, everyone has to
>choose his own moral principles and make his own decisions >on the facts
>relevant to his evaluation.
I suspect Popper would agree with this but would not draw any relativistic
conclusion from it. Compare the position of a 'test statement', like "Here is a
white swan", in science: these are not logically proven by experience and so
there is no "logical connection" in this sense between the experiences we have
and the statement - in science we have to decide, after critical discussion
which takes our experiences or observations into account, whether to accept the
'test statement' or not. Yet this does not mean such critically-controlled
decision-making is merely an arbitrary or conventional or subjective act - it
may be as rational as human reason permits. Similar remarks could, for Popper,
be made a propos moral decision-making - though admittedly the falsifiable
character of ethics is
quite distinct because the role of observation and 'test statements' as
falsifiers is not the same as in science.
>In a key article, Moral Arguments (1958), Philippa Foot challenged this
>relativistic stance, suggesting that anyone who uses moral terms at all (bad,
>good and the like), whether to assert or deny a moral proposition, must abide
>by certain agreed rules for their use . The only recourse of someone who fails
>to accept the rules, she wrote, would be “to abjure >altogether the use of
>moral terms”.
Ahhh. The sweet smell of Wittgenstein in the morning. The question here is, as
said above, whether Hare's point - or, better, rejection of the 'naturalistic
fallacy' - leads to a "relativistic stance". For Popper, as indicated, it ain't
necessarily so.
>In her view the distinction between statements of fact and value is based on
>two false assumptions: first, that any individual may, properly, base his
>beliefs about matters of value on premises which no one else would recognise
>as valid; secondly, he may refuse to accept another’s evaluation >because
>their standards are not ones he accepts.
Wittgensteinian approach, seems to me.
>The first assumption is refuted, she argued, by an appeal to the basic idea
>that words, while they may not have an intrinsic meaning, do have a proper
>use: “It is surely clear that moral virtues must be connected with human good
>or harm, and that it is quite impossible to call anything you >like good or
>harm.”
But is that "proper use" a criterion of 'good' or 'bad'? The fact this question
even makes logical sense [it does, despite possible Wittgensteinian denials,
otherwise you would not have understood it] opens up the gap between facts and
standards that lies at the heart of why the 'naturalistic fallacy' is indeed a
fallacy. Also, while I may agree _as a matter of ethics_ that moral virtues
_are_ connected with "human good or harm", this is a reflection of an ethical
position not of a _logical_ "must". The overextension of the term 'logical',
and relating this term to 'sense' in some extended sense, are weaknesses in the
Wittgensteinian approach, which is potentially quite misleading as to what is
at stake here.
>Against the second assumption, she put forward the tentative idea that a moral
>question can be argued down to a point which reveals an “ultimate end” beyond
>which it is ridiculous to inquire, as it does not make sense >to ask: “Why do
>you hate pain?” or “Why do you want to feel happy?”
More Wittgensteinian argumentation, and, sorry, but it _does make sense_ "to
ask: “Why do you hate pain?” or “Why do you want to feel happy?”" : this "does
not make sense" argument is no stronger a case for some kind of moral bedrock
where our "spade is turned" than the assertion that in science [or maths] there
comes a point where questions have to stop because that is the point "beyond
which it is ridiculous to inquire, as it does not make sense to ask." There is
a kind of foundationalism at work here that betrays a mistaken theory of
knowledge [among other things].
>In her book Natural Goodness (2001) Philippa Foot rebutted the philosophical
>distinction between descriptive meaning (which deals with facts) and
>evaluative meaning (dealing with moral qualities). In the case of living
>things — plants, animals and humans — she argued that >evaluations simply
>state a special class of fact.
This last claim is perhaps unproblematic but hardly that special:- unless we
restrict the term 'fact' to the empirical field [where the truth of factual
claims may be tested by observation], we may freely speak of 'ethical facts'
e.g. "It is a fact that Dr. Shipman ought not to have killed his patients". But
this would not show this "special class of fact" simply to be an outcrop on the
reef of empirical facts, nor show that assertions of "ethical fact" were
anything less than 'conjectural' in their epistemic status (particularly as
assertions of 'empirical fact' also have this 'conjectural' character and they
may at least be tested by observation).
>Natural goodness can apply as well to physical parts of living beings as to
>their actions: to say that a tree has good roots, in her analysis, is
>logically the same as to say that a person performs a good deed. The
>underlying logic has to do with the assumption that good roots or good actions
>are those that are necessary in the lives of individuals of that species.
>Moral goodness should therefore be understood as the natural >flourishing of
>humans as living beings.
Let the bollix commence. The first claim in the above paragraph is off the
rails:- "to say that a tree has good roots, in her analysis, is logically the
same as to say that a person performs a good deed." No. To say that ethically a
tree ought to have "good roots" is (perhaps) logically equivalent to saying 'It
is morally good that the tree has good roots' ['good' being used in two
logically different senses here, the first ethical, the second 'factual']; and
to say 'It is morally good that the tree has good roots' is to make an ethical
claim that may be said therefore to share a 'logical sameness' with other
ethical claims. But to say that a tree has 'good' roots in the non-ethical
factual sense that, say, it is primed to survive a 'bad' winter better than a
tree with 'bad' roots, is to make no ethical claim at all - and whatever might
be said about superficial similarities in logical form between such a claim and
the claim that someone has done
something _ethically_ 'good', because the 'naturalistic fallacy' is indeed a
kind of logical fallacy these two kinds of claim are not at all "logically the
same".
Dnl
Ldn
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