# Furthering Philippa Foot **URL:** \ **Category:** Ethics\ **Created:** [June 15, 2026, 10:56pm UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/furthering-philippa-foot/1367 "2026-06-15T22:56:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 139
**Author:** ![Count\_Timothy\_von\_Icarus](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex007/user_avatar/www.thephilosophyforum.com/count_timothy_von_icarus/32/675_2.png) [@Count\_Timothy\_von\_Icarus](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/Count_Timothy_von_Icarus)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2026, 1:48am UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/furthering-philippa-foot/1367/139 "2026-06-18T01:48:23Z")
> [@Banno](#): > > Your standard response now seems to be “It wasn’t like that in Medieval times”. > > Well, no. Things have moved on. That doesn’t amount to an argument. Well the post was responding to your comment about the consequences of “Thomism.” Thomas was a medieval philosopher. And my response isn’t “it wasn’t like that in medieval times,” as I’ve used many examples from other cultures to make this same point. It’s “it isn’t that way outside of Enlightenment premises, namely the premise that the world is purposeless and valueless.” As Anscombe writes: > Hume defines “truth” in such a way as to exclude ethical judgments > from it, and professes that he has proved that they are so excluded. > He also implicitly defines “passion” in such a way that aiming at > anything is having a passion. His objection to passing from “is” to > “ought” would apply equally to passing from “is” to “owes” or from > “is” to “needs.” Wouldn’t these sorts of core metaphysical assumptions be, on your account “hinge propositions?” So calling them old, or unfashionable as a key objection, aside from being parochial, would just seem amount to nothing more than criticizing one “game” according to the standards of another “game?” In virtue of what is the superior “game” superior such that it stands as the meta standard for all such “games?” > [@Banno](#): > > Suppose that we have perfect knowledge of how the world is, of what is the case. > > Do we _thereby_ know what to do? > > This is a variation of the is/ought problem, intended to bring out an aspect of our understanding that might not have been clear in medieval times. If we have at hand every chain of causation, each consequence, every state of affairs, would we have the answer to what we ought do? Even given a complete description of how things are, there are alternate outcomes of our actions. The question of which we should choose remains open. > > A further step: “Humans tend toward rational activity” and “We ought pursue rational activity” are not the same claim. The description does not entail the obligation. So what are “ethical truths” true in virtue of if “perfect knowledge of how the world is,” of “every cause and every state of affairs,” doesn’t grant us knowledge of them? At the very least, “ethical truths” seem to be a sui generis sort of truth, and they must have a different ontological ground since they can have nothing like a truthmaker in the world. But if complete knowledge of the world doesn’t include knowledge of ethical truths, how are such truths ever known? What faculty allows for such knowledge? > [@Banno](#): > > A further step: “Humans tend toward rational activity” and “We ought pursue rational activity” are not the same claim. The description does not entail the obligation. I would simply deny that ethics is about “obligation?” Who is this an obligation to? In virtue of what does it obtain? How or why is anyone “obligated” to do anything is in a specifically ethical sense? > [@Banno](#): > > This is a problem for teleological accounts of normatively, generally. For both your account and that provided by Foot. Teleological accounts do not explain what we ought do, they just classify certain descriptions as already normative - as int he example, “we tend to wards rational activity, therefore we ought be rational”. But this is a non sequitur. > > So, two points here: saying something wasn’t noticed in medieval times is not a reason not to notice it now; and teleological accounts, even if true, do not tell us what to do. I’d agree with Anscombe here that the idea of basing ethics on a “moral ought,” something like a legal “obligation” with no law-maker, is incoherent. These two threads have been a great example of this. We’re up to five posters now who make various objections about ethical theories because they fail to correspond to the specifically “moral ought,” and yet no one can define what they mean by “moral ought.” I would say the deontic is posterior to the good. If someone asks why we “ought” to prefer the better to the worse, this seems to be putting the cart before the horse. That we should prefer what is truly better to what is worse is constitutive of practical reason in the same way that the desirability of truth and knowledge over falsity and error is constitutive of theoretical reason. > [@Jay](#): > > Well, yes, that’s just it. I said “stipulated” because I don’t think it’s possible to know the relevant “definition of man,” as there isn’t one, other than the label H. sapiens, which says nothing about what humans are supposed, or designed, to be. Nor do I think “natural” can be pinned down to a term of approbation. I realize that some who favor this approach believe they can start from self-evidently true premises along these lines, but for me that’s part of what’s wrong with the approach. Probably, in line with charitable reading, I should have said “if you start from a definition of ‘man’ that is asserted as true.” “Stipulated” is what _I_ think it comes down to, but that’s my bias. I cannot think of why anyone would say they can ground ethics in “definitions” either. Wouldn’t it be instead knowledge of things, namely man and the world, or at least the most relevant aspects of the world that are known in such appeals, not “definitions?” Earlier you said the “moral” can be known and communicated. What exactly is known in this case then, and how does it relate to knowledge of man and the world? --- _[View the full topic](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/furthering-philippa-foot/1367)._