Furthering Philippa Foot

Ethics
181

I disagree that it’s second-order in the first place. Consider:

“Drinking mercury is unhealthy for children.” and;
“Drinking mercury is bad for children.”

These not only have the same exact surface form, but I would say the same logical form. Both sentences predicate a property of an action vis-a-vis a kind of subject. Both are grounded in facts about what damages or fails to support the proper functioning/flourishing of an organism. If “unhealthy for” is uncontroversially first-order (a real predicate ranging over how an action affects an organism’s biological functioning), then I would say that “bad for” tracks the same kind of fact. But in that case, I can see there’s no principled logical reason to declare that we have moved from first-order to second-order when we move from “unhealthy” to “bad.” Rather, the shift looks motivated by something other than logic; namely, a prior metaphysical commitments (be they Humean, expressivist, or Kantian) i.e., that “moral badness” must be sui generis, action-guiding, and detached from descriptive/functional facts in a way that “health-badness” is not. That’s a substantive metaethical thesis smuggled in under the banner of “what logic requires,” as far as I can tell.

This seems right in line with Foot or Anscombe. If “good” functions attributively (e.g., good qua knife, good qua liver function, etc.) in “non-moral good” cases (without anyone reaching for second-order machinery AFAIK), then it seems to me that the burden of proof for such a variance is on the philosopher who wants moral “good” alone to require an operator-treatment. They need an independent argument for why “moral goodness” is metaphysically discontinuous from this general pattern, and what “moral goodness” is (and so a defense of that notion). An appeal to “that’s how deontic logic regiments it,” is question begging, since deontic logic was built to formalize “oughts,” with those very metaphysical assumptions in mind in the first place. Yet its adequacy as a model for “good” is what’s in question.

182

I wasn’t trying to offend or criticize you, just to press the point. I know why Kant gets rid of teleology. It comes down to his epistemic assumptions. That’s why this conversation is confusing for me. You seem to reject those epistemic restrictions, but then to keep the formulation based on them.

Also, I don’t think the comment is too strong for Kant. The structure of the argument in the Groundwork excludes precisely the goods I have been talking about. They are unrelated in that case. “It is bad to drink rat poison” describes a hypothetical imperative per Kant, something “bad” relative to the end of health. But Kant is explicit that hypothetical imperatives of this kind have no moral worth.

The key metric then for laws is their universalizability, not their content (e.g., their fit with human biology or psychology). This is explicit, because Kant thinks that any ethics grounded in human nature would be, by definition, heteronomous, since it makes the will dependent on contingent facts re human nature. So, even an ethics that grounded itself in human flourishing fails because it would be borrowing its normativity from outside the will, and so it would no be longer autonomous. The whole point is that the law would be binding on any rational creature. Hence, having the sorts of facts I am mentioning be “unrelated” is literally the entire point. The empirical phenomenal world is mechanistic, as the science of his day had it, so meaningful morality can only exist outside the phenomenal realm. The lack of relation is the point.

So, while I know you have appealed to Kant before, I am totally unclear on what exactly you are borrowing from him when you say this, hence my confusion. Because Kant also thinks ethics has to be formulated in laws, and this is exactly the sort of thing you seem to be very skeptical against (e.g., “deduction”), and his whole ethics rests on the idea that people who don’t act rightly are irrational (precisely the thing you seem to be concerned to avoid).

But then either I have badly misread all these concerns, or the part that comes from Kant is unclear to me at this point.

183

So you are simply not accepting the way we now use talk of first and second order logics. You are not only rejecting the discussion of Foot, but the whole of first-order/second order discrimination in modern logic.

it’s not the particular arguments here that you are rejecting, but a large part of modern logic.

So answering your questions here would be misplaced. The discussion is not about ethics, but how logic moved on since medieval times.

Maybe you should start another thread, and take your objections there.

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184

So then why do you reject the position that they are unrelated? How do you say they are related?

You and @Banno have a tendency to give lists of “not” statements without giving any positive statements. This is an example, for your a) and b) are both negations that provide no basis for your claim that moral good and human good are positively related.

185

“Drinking mercury is unhealthy for children.”
“Drinking mercury is bad for children.”
These can of course be parsed as first or second order statements.

These not only have the same exact surface form, but I would say the same logical form.

As if there were only one correct parsing.

I’m starting to think you will not be able to follow this until you start to use modern logic. It makes distinctions and has applications unavailable to your account.

186

True. In fact I think Kant would agree with you wholeheartedly.

I’m not sure Kant rejected biological teleology, even as applied to humans. It seems to me that Kant reads Hume’s quip and basically steelmans it, thinking of the strongest moral prohibitions he can imagine. He apparently thinks that moral prohibitions which can have no exceptions are very strong, and therefore cannot be generated by appeals to human goods or human inclinations. The same point could be expressed in the way he draws incommensurability between “a good will” and any desire-based actions.

So I don’t see it as an epistemic question, as if Kant thinks that humans cannot be guided by teleological ends. I think it is more an inference question, where Kant thinks that categorical imperatives cannot be validly inferred from “contingent” premises.

:+1:

187

Could be. But earlier, you said:

Why is “Drinking mercury is bad for children,” either second or first-order, but “it is bad for a fox to lose its leg” necessarily second-order? That’s the point I was objecting to.

I am not objecting modern logic per se. I am objecting a narrow formulation for being metaphysically loaded, as loads of modern logicians do.

188

That’s fair. “Gets rid” is probably too strong. I meant, gets rid of it as an organizing principle for ethics.

I do take it to be at least partially epistemic though. For Kant, it seems that we judge life “as if” it is purposive because our discursive understanding couldn’t otherwise grasp the nature of organic life. However, per his epistemology, this tells us nothing about how things are in themselves; rather it’s merely a heuristic our cognitive faculties impose. Hence, teleology cannot be a metaphysical discovery about natures in any thick sense. Yet it’s precisely the noumenal where the real value of life (at least human life and freedom) rests. This is why the freedom and rationality of others has to be a mere postulate of practical reason, rather than something known.

So, even granting full biological teleology at the level of appearances, teleology cannot ground a categorical “ought” because the moral law has to bind unconditionally. However, nothing whose status is grounded on “the way we must judge, given the peculiarities of our understanding” can supply the unconditional necessity he demands. Any such judgements are contingent on our cognitive constructions, not on the nature of rational agency as such.

189

Really? So stop doing philosophy and “look it up”? And what is your reasoning I should look it up?
Apparently “No.” Just, “no”.

That’s how you roll, I get it.

Even if you want to use “recognize” as a term of art, your website didn’t make your point clear to me, and the point of engaging you was to hear what you say. Which would truly be great.

Like I don’t know if you are feeling your argument is vulnerable right now so you just want to duck out, or, am I so stupid I don’t know when I’m beat and I just need to hit the books? Was anything said by you? By me? Like, what’s our total score Banno vs. FireO, at this point? :smiley:

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190

That was a very good rejoinder. I accept your reasoning.

Still, the question would remain for someone like @Jay: can the moral law bind unconditionally on teleological principles? Or put differently: if Kant had a different epistemology would he have then accepted teleological grounds for unconditional moral laws? Because the undefined “moral” that floats around on TPF can be defined as moral prohibitions which are unconditional (or else as categorical imperatives), and at that point things really do become more difficult.

191

The returns on my efforts are quickly diminishing.

“The fox’s leg is trapped” is about the fox and the leg, and so is first-order.

“It is bad that (the fox’s leg is trapped)” is about the statement "the fox’s leg is trapped” and so is second order.

This is a very standard account.

“Drinking mercury is bad for children” may be parsed as “bad (children, drinking mercury)”, a first-order parsing; or as as “It is desirable that not (Children drink mercury)”, a second order parsing.

That I have to spell this out is symptomatic of the drive into tedium happening here.

192

But “bad (foxes, losing legs)” is categorically different? How so?

As you say, it could be interpreted or intended either way. But you are making an argument against teleology on the grounds that it must be interpreted one way, and this to me seems illicit, the argument from one formalism to a metaphysical truth.

It seems particularly illicit given your position re logic. Certainly, this was never considered a difficulty for teleology for much of philosophical history, which certainly had many logicians. But if there are no more or less correct logics, only ones considered more or less useful, then it hardly seems decisive to appeal to a particular logic here as an authority. Indeed, you haven’t even made an argument for any particular logic even being more useful, you’ve just repeatedly appealed to the age of different views (the implication being that newer = better). But by this measure, I could just appeal to the fact that post-modal metaphysics is all the rage now, and that teleology is in again.

Now, in the other thread, you also said: “it is bad for men to be lit on fire” was necessarily an “ought premise.” How exactly does that work here? For surely this is no different from the mercury example.

193

Did I appeal to a particular logic as authoritative? I don’t think so. Rather I’m pointing out that deontological logic deals more cleanly with deontological statements. Of course one could reduce deontology to a first-order logic; at the cost of restricting the domain.

That we can chose a logic to suit our purposes does not meant that all logics are equally suitable to a given task.

I’m usually pretty careful with my use of necessity. Can you show me were?

https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/search?expanded=true&q=%22it%20is%20bad%20for%20men%20to%20be%20lit%20on%20fire%22%20%40Banno

194

Suppose we grant the modern claim that moral properties are second-order properties and we ignore the theory of the transcendentals. What is supposed to follow from this? Moral non-naturalism, I presume?

‘Bad’ can be a first-order predicate, on your view? And what is the semantic difference between these two candidates:

Or in other words, what does the first-order predicate ‘bad’ mean other than, “It is desirable that not”?

These look pretty identical:

  • “bad (children, drinking mercury)”
  • -and-
  • “bad (fox, catching leg)”

And yet @Count_Timothy_von_Icarus points out that you exclude the second for some unknown reason.

195

I don’t think it needs to be reduced. What I am objecting to is that any claim about goodness must be second-order.

Well, here:

This syllogism derives an ought from an is and an ought. That’s fine.

No sequence of Is-statements alone implies any ought-statement.
[/quote]

Your objection was that “good” must be an ought statement. If you allow that it can be a first-order description, then this isn’t a good objection. Whereas, if it can only be second-order, so that any apparent description of a condition has to be transposed into a prescription regarding an action or a preference, (“people ought not (be burned)”) that seems to necessarily rule out the descriptive option, no?

To be sure, the premise has “normative” content (a loaded term, just like “evaluative”), but if the is-ought gap only means that one cannot derive practical conclusions from wholly irrelevant premises, it is trivial. No one ever said that all premises and all arguments can inform action.

As noted in that original post, someone could demand the additional premise: “we should choose the better over the worse.” That isn’t an objectionable premise. But it is on par with demanding that every argument contain the premise “we should make valid inferences instead of invalid ones” and “we should affirm truth and not falsity.” That is, those aren’t revokable premises, they are formally constitutive of practical and theoretical reason respectively.

In virtue of what are they more or less “suitable?” My objection is that the suitability of the logic being advanced here seems to be precisely that it enshrines the fact/value distinction. Indeed, that is explicitly what it is designed to do. But formalizing a metaphysical position doesn’t thereby make it a “truth of logic.”

Also, as this interpretation is defective as a general rule (and aside from the obvious fact that you changed a universal statement into a particular). Consider: “He is a good baseball player” does not mean “it is good that (he is a baseball player).” And it would be pretty odd to say “it is good that (foxes have their legs in traps)” (universal). Your switch to the particular from the universal in your rendering makes it more plausible re cases where it might be intended either way. In the universal, it would be quite an odd thing to say.

196

I think the first thing to sort out is the coherence of @Banno’s “descriptive option”:

He is smuggling the copula into the predicate in a very odd way. Modern logicians in particular would balk at this (because ‘children’ and ‘drinking mercury’ are of an entirely different genus).

In a more rigorous sense, to say that moral claims are second-order is to say that moral claims involve two copulas, or that they are predications about predications. So, “Children are drinking mercury,” is one predication, and, “It is bad that children are drinking mercury,” is the second predication. This irons out Banno’s confusion where “drinking mercury” is a verb and is nevertheless reified into an object. More simply, “bad(children, drinking mercury)” involves two predications/copulas and not one, and therefore would not seem to be first-order at all.

With that sorted out we come to see that all moral claims are, on this view, about actions (or subject/verb relations). Your baseball player does not conform to this schema:

The example I was thinking of is, “Fido is a good dog.”

These are uncontroversially first-order, for there is one predicate, one copula, and no action at all.

Foot’s, “Water is good for plants,” is similar, but not quite as straightforward.

197

So I didn’t claim “it is bad for men to be lit on fire” was necessarily an “ought premise.” Good.

I will maintain that “it is bad for men to be lit on fire” in the way you are using it is normative.

This all seems pretty lame. Brandolini’s Law applies. And it’s all pretty far from the OP, so I’ll leave you to it.

198

Maybe this can pull the thread back on track.

Do these two acts look the same to you?

Or consider vivisecting a healthy human to save the lives of five people needing a transplant. Is that OK? Killing one to save five?

Or are they different?

A description in terms of outcomes or rules has trouble differentiating between the alternative acts. Same outcome, same numbers, same stakes. What changes is the action of the agent.

This brings us to the double effect, and consideration of whether the act is directed towards saving five or towards killing one.

Here’s where abortion fits, too, were the argument whether the abortion is directed at killing the foetus or helping the mother.

The double effect locates the difference between the alternative acts in terms other than the mere calculation of survival, by focusing on the causal structure of the activities.

199

It’s an odd objection to call it an ought premise if one allows that it need not be read as one.

“Normative” in what way? It relates to goodness, and a measure, sure. It is not “evaluative” as opposed to “descriptive” however.

“Normative” doesn’t enter the philosophical lexicon until the end of the 19th century and “evaluative” until significantly later. Both are often defined in terms that assume a hard fact/values dichotomy. I think we’ve covered that “x is good” need not imply ought though, as in the above argument. If you can have teleologically ordered goods, you can have descriptive premises and a practical conclusion.

Whereas, if “normative” merely means “relating to any measure at all” (including the good, the truly desirable, the truly choice-worthy, etc.), including descriptions, then the is-ought gap is a bit of a misnomer. It would merely be the finding that you cannot get practical conclusions from irrelevant premises, which no one has ever denied.

So, you mentioned Russell, and Russell’s work is very interesting, and sheds light on how Hume’s various contributions fit together. However, your appeal to this being “logic” and not “anthropology” (or metaphysics) misses the points we have been discussing. Russell is up front about formalizing a particular view of normativity, one which assumes that statements that have any practical valance are necessarily of a different type. The assumption is that the semantic conditions that make a descriptive sentence true are fundamentally separate from the semantic conditions that make a “normative” sentence true.

A classical naturalist can simply reject this dichotomy. It isn’t a law of logic, it’s a metaphysical position that is being codified into logic. But a statement like: “This fox’s leg is severed” and: “It is bad for this fox to have its leg severed” are not two different logical types requiring distinct model-theoretic treatments. The badness is a first-order description. By forcing those descriptions into separate categories before the logical analysis even begins, a system assumes the distinction. Which is fine depending on what one is doing, but it doesn’t thereby make conclusions drawn from the model “logical” as opposed to metaphysical.

The way assumptions drive the model is more obvious in her argument that you cannot derive the future from the past (given her particular construction; again, these claims are caveated). Many physicists are pancomputationalists, or ontic structural realists, who assume causality works in precisely this way, and that the universe is a four dimensional “block.” It would be strange indeed if work in logic could disprove these theories in theoreticL physics. But in her work, the substantive content rests in what counts as future-switchable. But that’s a stipulated technical notion built into a particular model. It takes for granted that “the future” is a free parameter that can vary independently while holding the past fixed. But that’s precisely what a block-universe theory, an ontic structural realist like Tegmark, or a pancomputationalist denies. On their view, there is no well-defined “future-switch” that holds between two physically possible models of one and the same past. The past doesn’t underdetermine the future.

Now, I don’t think anyone is going to claim that this debate is “logical” and not primarily (meta)physical, but I’d say it’s much the same with goodness.

But it’s also much the same with the treatment of “Hume’s law,” and Russell is indeed up front about this, worrying if her finding might be “trivial” and doesn’t claim that her stipulated definition of “normative” resolves broad disagreements about the term.

Hence, I think it’s a misrepresentation of her work, and her own humility and caveats, to claim that Hume’s intuitions have been born out by logic and no longer require a metaphysical and anthropological ground.

BTW, this is all directly related to Foot (or Geach) and Anscombe, who reject precisely such a framing of the normative.

200

Yes, the goods you have been talking about. But Kant doesn’t think those are the only human goods. [EDIT: See below. I think this is how he looks at it, but it’s open to interpretation.] He’s not interested in what you’re calling human nature. He’s interested in what might be called “rational nature.” As you say, his ethics apply to any rational creature. His sharp separation of heteronomy and autonomy only reinforces this. What can make this confusing is that Kant prefers to talk in terms of right actions rather than a “good.” So it can look like “doing right actions” (that is, actions that fall under the categorical imperative) are not also good.

Now I agree that we could ask Kant, “When all is said and done, what’s the point? Let’s say that I have applied the cat imp wherever I can, and followed its promptings. What have I achieved? What’s in it for me? Is there nothing I can point to as a beneficial result for me – a ‘human good’, perhaps one that is not the least self-interested?” It’s a fair question, and someone who knows Kant better than I could perhaps answer it – I don’t know offhand of any place he addresses it. If the answer is, strictly, no, then I think you’d be right that whole idea of “human goods” is excluded from Kantian ethics.

But I suspect that’s not it. When Kant talks about “the good will,” and having the right reasons for actions, I think he has a picture of human good in mind. But it turns on a very subtle point: If we think about human good as human good, we’ve missed the mark. You might put it this way: The human good is to stop thinking about the human good, at least insofar as it influences your actions.

The reason why I fault Kant is that he never seems to consider how we, as autonomous rational creatures, would develop the good will necessary to eschew heteronomous considerations in favor of rational autonomy. He seems to have the idea that “being consistent” alone will do the job; I think it will not. I could call myself a Kantian in my acceptance of the structure of ethical thought; but I am anti-Kantian when it comes to whether that structure alone is sufficient to develop moral sensibility. So yes, insofar as a complete morality could be “deduced” from Kant’s considerations, I think it’s the same old is-ought mistake, compounded by an over-reliance on formal deduction to get the entire job done.

Hope this helps. Now perhaps you could help me: Are you saying that the sketch of an argument I laid out here is Aristotelian/Thomistic?:

I’m not being disingenuous when I say that I don’t really know, and that’s why I didn’t attribute it to either of them. If it is not characteristically Aristotelian or Thomistic, I would be glad to know where it differs. All I know is that a similar structure of thought shows up repeatedly on TPF.