Furthering Philippa Foot

Ethics
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Philippa Foot was one of the four women who brought ethics back to life in the middle of the last century. She was renowned for how her views on Ethics grew over time, as she worked through issues involved. To my eye this is one of the main reasons to appreciate her efforts.

She is known for the Tram problem, in which she shows that there is a difference between our intuition towards pulling a lever in order to save five people, killing one, and pushing one person off an overpass to do the same thing. We recognise these as different cases. This morphed into the Trolly Problem as it crossed the Atlantic, becoming merely a tool for contrasting deontology and consequentialism, losing much of its interest outside undergrad debates. For Foot it concerned the difference between doing and allowing, between initiating a situation by pushing the fat man off the bridge and altering the outcome by pulling the lever. This is missed in most recent discussions.

This is not a thread about the trolly problem. I want to instead consider the place of recognition in her ideas.

It seems to me that she held that we are able to recognise the ethical import of a given situation, in a way not unlike, but not the same as, we recognise a flower or a colour; we see the ethical significance in a situation. We see the injustice in slavery, the cruelty in bull fighting.

Our ability to see such things is embedded in our culture and can be cultivated by education, yet this does not make the seeing any less real.

The difference between pulling the lever and pushing the man off a bridge is not found in a calculus of the outcome, nor in a deontological universal imperative - both save five at the expense of one. The difference is more subtle.

Nor is the seeing an intuition in Moore’s sense. It does not involve seeing a non-natural property in the situation, but seeing the situation as involving ethical considerations. This is a continuation of Wittgenstein’s distinction between saying and showing. And like the duck-rabbit, if someone cannot see the duck, or if someone cannot see the cruelty in bull fighting, there is not much that can be done.

This approach continues the distinction between an is and an ought, between a descriptive and an evaluative truth. We are not able to say how an evaluation follows from sentences that set out how things are, but we are able to see the evaluation from such a set of sentences. The evaluation does not follow from how the world is, but is seen in how the world is.

Ethical truths then are not algorithmically reducible to descriptions of the world. Nor are they mere intuitions or attitudes. They are instead embedded in the “form of life”, cultivated by education, and integral to how we are in the world.

Her ethical realism is that the injustice is in the situation, whether seen or not. The form of life can obstruct the seeing as much as enable it. That obstruction is itself a kind of moral failure, not merely an epistemic one.

Such a realism differs greatly from those views that see us as asymptotically approaching some already given target. The form of life, which is inherently communal, grows from our human relations and interactions. It is immanent, operating within our being, not transcendent, coming from without. It is becoming more responsive to what is there, not imposing a framing from outside.

All four women - Foot, Anscombe, Murdoch and Midgley - understood that ethics is not legislated from outside, by god or reason or non-natural facts, but grows from how we interact and what we choose.

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Foot: Morality As A System Of Hypothetical Imperatives
I am a Moral Nihilist
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I agree. Basically we need not limit the “significance” of perceived objects and situations to “pure concept” colliding with “pure sensation.”

Situations immediately “matter” to us. I only reach for legalistic justifications in edge cases, and I do that in preparation for those who may read my response to the situation as inappropriate.

Not “pure logic” but “rhetoric” is fundamental. I am faced with other organisms in my little tribe who have to be handled, deflected, mollified, talked into cooperation, etc.

This very post is not offered as “derived from pure logic” by a being with the luxury of hovering above the world like a god.

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We are not faced with choosing one or the other, exclusively. Good rhetoric is consistent and coherent, good logic is rhetorically effective.

And often, the way to show a bit of rhetoric is wanting is to display its lack of consistency.

Also, as well as convincing others, we engage in growing the story. Not all discourse is confrontational.

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I agree. I’m not anti-logic. But I see logic ( to put it vaguely ) as a constrained or selected component of a larger rhetoric.

Yes indeed ! But this is what I meant my “poetry” ( poesis) elsewhere. We are inventors, creators, story-tellers.

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Now consider the opposite: a merely rhetorical critique of a logical argument will not invalidate the argument.

There is here a priority of logic over rhetoric.

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This sounds very mystical. Does it make sense to say that there is a strong distinction between ‘is’ and ‘ought’, between description and evaluation, and then to go on to imply that evaluation can “follow from sentences that set out how things are”?

Maybe some quotes from Foot would be helpful?

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Leon, in what you quote, I explicitly reject that the evaluation follows from the description:

Take care to read what is there, lest you be seen as misrepresenting what others have said.

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I was referring to a different sentence:

This seems…

Again, it’s not clear that the things that are being said are not contradictory. Hence the question. Pointing to one half of the putatively contradictory claims does not eclipse the other half.

Again, I would want some quotes from Foot to buttress the ideas.

(Presumably this thread is a follow-on from the recent thread on moral nihilism.)

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Then see if you can understand the things being said in a way that is not contradictory. Read the text charitably.

The ethical import of a situation cannot follow from a description of that situation, as Hume famously showed. But it can be seen in that situation.

(By way of background for those reading on, I have in the past had Leon on my “ignore” list, having found over the years that he often misrepresents those arguments with which he disagrees, presenting them as other than the author wrote. Yesterday, in response to @Tom_Storm, as an act of good will I removed the block. Here he appears to be interpreting what I have written in the opposite way to what is said.)

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Mcdowell argues that norms are a part of the world of nature, and so are ethical values. He interprets Wittgenstein’s phrase ‘my spade is turned’ is indicate that we dont need to codify the following of an ethical or epistemological rule on the basis of a mechanism or interpretation.

Through rational upbringing, we become adept as properly discerning the ethical ought in a situation without the need for codification, mechanism or interpretation. Wittgenstein would agree here, but while Mcdowell relies on the idea of responsiveness to reasons (grasping an inner rational fact), Wittgenstein instead shows how we are inducted into practices which bring with them preferences and ethical stances.

So he would agree with you that if someone cannot see the cruelty in bull fighting, there is not much that can be done, but he doesn’t treat this seeing as the use of a cognitive capacity for reason. Since you used the duck-rabbit as your exemplar, am I right to assume you don’t either? And if the space of reasons can’t help us in seeing the cruelty in bullfighting, then it is only trivially true to claim that bullfighting is wrong, as it is true that that drawing is of a duck rather than a rabbit.

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Perhaps it is time you entertained the idea that you are the one who is failing to provide a charitable interpretation. Do you think that Hume would follow your idea that, “We are able to see the evaluation from [sentences that set out how things are]”? The problem I’m asking about out will inevitably be seen by others as well. It can’t simply be swept under the rug with more attempts at ad hominem.

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Good OP, and I’m pretty sure Foot would agree with your emphasis on ethical recognition as a kind of primary experience. It’s also reminiscent, coming from another tradition, of Levinas’s idea of ethics as “First Philosophy” – the place where philosophical thinking begins, and from which our metaphysics must emerge, not the other way round.

Two thoughts: I understand that Foot is not talking about a non-natural property, but nevertheless I believe her (and your) position is closer to Moore than you might think. We can emphasize the idea of intuition in Moore’s ethical thinking while remaining skeptical about his theories of properties. Is there really an objection to describing the recognition involved here as a type of intuition as well? Granted, one whose ground must be prepared in the ways you describe.

Second, I wouldn’t despair so quickly about being able to show someone the cruelty of bullfighting, e.g. If that person has been so unfortunate as to have missed the cultural training that would have revealed the cruelty to him, he’s not a lost cause. Remedial training is always possible – not via intellection, but via what used to be called “sentimental education” – creating opportunities to experience compassion and pity, not merely think about it. For me, this is an important role that religion, art, and family life can play.

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Just to be sure, I’m not espousing, so much as exploring, Foot’s view.

But how do you get to “it is only trivially true to claim that bullfighting is wrong”? It’s not as if something must be demonstrated deductively in order to be important.

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I’m not sure Foot is being captured very accurately. Here is SEP:

Among Foot’s most anthologized, celebrated, controversial, and widely cited articles is undoubtedly “Morality as a System of Hypothetical Imperatives” (1972, MSHI). In this article, Foot takes an about-face on the issue of the rationality of morality. In MSHI she retains the view from “Moral Beliefs” that self-interest is rationally required: we must have desires for what is evidently in our self-interest or else we are irrational. Yet, she drops the view that morality coincides with self-interest, and ends up with the position that morality only provides reasons if we have desires that we might rationally lack.

(Philippa Foot, SEP)

Foot seems to think 1) that moral action is always dependent on our values and that such values cannot be derived from description or ‘is’ statements (whether by “saying” or by “seeing”), and 2) that it is incorrect to hold that everyone has a reason to be moral. For Foot, one’s reasons to be moral are contingent, and therefore they may be absent from some and they may fall away from others.

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When they articulate it, there might be something to contend with. Until then, it’s not at all clear to me what you want.

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I’ve always liked Moore, but do baulk a bit at “intuition”; Foot treats the ethical more as a perception than an instinct; kicking the pup is seen, not intuited, as cruel. Tht seems more accurate to me.

Yes, that might have been said too quickly.

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My reaction to these paragraphs is to wonder how helpful this frame is.

Is it what one does when one gives up on objectivity?

While I am not saying it is untrue or lacking in utility, part of me wonders how this actually helps us in practice.

Can we explore how it would apply to a concrete ethical claim to test its effectiveness?

On the subject of abortion, how does Foot’s approach assist us in determining the ethical status of the issue?

How do we deceived between competing views and social policies that stem from such views?

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The Tram is set up in the article The Problem of Abortion and the Doctrine of Double Effect, of course, and is central to her applied ethics. It is only one of a number of thought experiments in that article, and as mentioned is used to show the ethical difference between causing a situation and ameliorating one that is already inevitable - the famous double effect. Is the intervention directed at the foetus or at saving the mother? It makes a difference.

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Great opener, even if I’ve not found much in those specific workers to shout about.

I think it’s worth putting forward Foot’s ER case to test the boundaries of how that TE applies to real-life.

"A surgeon has five patients, each of whom will die without a different organ transplant. A healthy person comes in for a routine check-up. The surgeon could kill this one healthy person and distribute their organs to the five patients, thereby saving five lives at the cost of one.

Is it morally permissible for the surgeon to do so?"

The original two hypotheticals in the tram/trolley problems seem to rest on a relative passionate decision making process for the person.
In the ER example, it is the institutional decision that’s in question. Personally, this seems far more interesting. How we go about establishing some ‘right’ answer to the question will have massive bearing on what sort of environment one might encounter the original problem in.

If in the ER case, the world en masse were to say it was permissible, then the Fat Man becomes ‘right’ action in some very real way. Both cases require initiating against an otherwise uninvolved person for the consequential outcome (i’m guessing) all but the most staunch antinatalists would prefer, emotionally.

So i think my favourite point in your OP is around how education can provide us with reasons to lift facts from our deliberations. That these can change, not on a whim, but due to generally changing widely-held ideas around justice in interesting to me.

Maybe this has something to do with redistribution of wealth too. I guess my answer is the same for both, though, so maybe not interesting.

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There seems to be something ethically remiss with indulging in a vivisection of one to save five - despite the consequentialist equation. Foot is offering an account of why that seems wrong, and one not reliant on deontological imperatives; (@Tom_Storm ).

If the one person were terminally ill, and willing to engage in VAD, then the ethical situation changes.

It’s worth considering how these play out in the light of the double effect.

(VAD = voluntary assisted dying.)