Furthering Philippa Foot

Ethics
101

Foot’s revised view of 2001 looks to be very standard Aristotelianism, explicitly following in the footsteps of Aristotle and Aquinas.

A basic argument she makes is that it seems that we are able to do this with animals. From my post above:

So then I suppose we should begin by asking this: Do you think your objection applies to animals, too? Can we say what is good for an animal? Or are all such claims about what is good for an animal merely subjective and untrustworthy?

Foot actually gives special attention to this area, given her belief that Michael Thompson “has not said enough to isolate the kind of proposition that will yield evaluations of individual organ­isms” (30).

But it’s worth pointing out here—and this is something Foot understood—that if you define a description or a fact as, in part, “That from which no evaluation can rationally follow,” (or vice-versa, by focusing on values instead of facts) then you have guaranteed the fact/value gulf. Indeed, you have tautologically begged the question such that, “No evaluation follows from a fact,” means little more than, “No evaluation follows from that from which no evaluation can follow.” This is @Banno’s error which I pointed out to you here. If we want to take any of this seriously we can’t sloppily import our desired conclusion into our definitions and pretend that we have made some kind of point.

102

I think my misreading of @Jay’s post, if it was one, was precisely on account of the fact that Aristotle, Avicenna, Thomas—none of these countenance a “moral calculus.” Famously, early in the Ethics that the specificity and determinateness of the answers we seek ought to vary according to the subject matter, so that one ought not expect definitive answers to ethical inquiry in many cases.

The idea of a moral calculus is distinctively modern as far as I can tell, and flows from the idea that reason is wholly discursive and calculative, so that to know is to deduce (presumably from something like first principles/hinges and/or the “given” of sense inputs, since one cannot deduce anything from nothing).

But in systems operating under a very different metaphysics and anthropology the movement between particulars and principles is quite different, so that discursive argument and reasoning is a means of understanding, related to understanding as motion to rest at a destination, or acquisition to possession.

Plus, the analogical nature of the Good would also make a calculus impossible.

But I am pretty sure I have written many long posts explaining this to both of you before. I would say ethical knowledge, like all knowledge, involves both discursive argument and deduction (and other forms of inference) and the receptive noetic faculty (and in particular, a sort of knowing by becoming).

Anyhow @Banno, if knowledge of how the world alone is can never get us to any ethical judgement, but then there are ethical truths, what is knowledge of ethical truths knowledge of? Presumably, it cannot be the world. How are they known? It seems they cannot be known in the way all other knowledge is gained, since this knowledge would seem to relate to how the world is (its being).

Does the set of truths about the world (how it is) not contain the set of ethical truths? In this case ethical truths would be extrinsic to the world, right? And so, even if we want to avoid the term “subjective” we seem to have something of the ontological subject/object dualism, since these ethical truths would be an extrinsic imputation set over and against all that can be understood about the world. But then the question is how man, who is of the world, can ever know such things.

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103

That’s just fine. I’m not suggesting we abandon logic when we begin to think about ethics. You’re right that my target was primarily a kind of deductive approach – what I’d call “armchair ethics,” something we could figure out all by ourselves, based on some philosophical starting point.

I also mean to sound a caution about the very idea of “knowledge of man” if that knowledge is drawn upon to mandate an alleged “ought.”

I meant yes to the 3rd as well, based on how it was stated: “Wouldn’t it need to be a sui generis sort of knowledge if it is disconnected from all other forms of understanding?” Yes, it would need to be; but I was also saying that such a thing is impossible. Were it possible, it would indeed be sui generis.

Yes, no problem. The binary I referred to would have been based on a kind of “all or nothing” interpretation in which either something is derivable or it must be apprehended by other means. I wanted to leave room for various other applications of logic (and derivability) while rejecting what I was calling a (strictly) deductive approach.

Very good question. It may or may not be different at the root, but we could start by noting one ordinary difference: We know what we’re pointing at when we see the events and items we need to see in order to build knowledge in other areas. But the “seeing” of morality is arguably much less clear, and many would dispute that there is anything at all to be seen. I’d start by exploring the reasons for that difference – but again, I don’t want to hijack @Banno 's thread.

Really? That would be a major disquisition, not for this thread. But I don’t want to skip the question entirely. So, without an attempt at argument, I would say that “moral” refers to what is ethically good (whether a propensity or an action), and “ought” in this context is an adjuration of uncertain strength. In my own life, when I say, “You ought to help that child,” I mean that it would be a good thing to do so, and that you, in particular, have a responsibility.

104

@Banno
I’ve thought of a better way to characterize what we’ve variously been calling a “calculus” or “deductive system” or “armchair ethics”: Does the system in question claim that all moral or ethical dilemmas have answers? Are the answers predictable in principle from premises? If so, then this is the sort of system I’m opposing.

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105

Yes, it may well do, in unsubtle hands. Another attraction is that it minimizes the amount of personal suffering – in terms of empathy, taking on burdens, opening oneself to injustice – required to actually develop as a moral person. If I can figure it all out beforehand, then there’s no need for me to “see” anything more by feeling the suffering of others, thus widening my circle of compassion and understanding more deeply what is the ethical realm.

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106

I think the ER problem is basically the same as the trolley problem. Say Brenda works in an ER. She’s trying to help everyone. She doesn’t face any situation alone. She’s part of a complex of events that have given rise to the equipped hospital, medical education, etc. There are murders and drug abuse in her world. There are charities and safe havens. All of these things contribute to the single death or survival of someone in an ER. Brenda realizes that she’s just part of it all. If she noticed the right thing to help person X survive, it’s because circumstances rolled in that direction and she applied the knowledge she was taught. The same is true of death. Might that person have lived if Brenda had reacted differently? Maybe. But that’s not where the wheel of fortune landed. Brenda’s sanity is preserved by keeping in mind that she’s just one person doing the best she can.

So with regard to organ distribution, though a philosopher may be puzzled at how we come to our conclusions, to Brenda it’s black and white. Help everyone. Do the best you can. Some will live, some will die. Period.

The trolley problem is just like that. If you saw a train headed toward anyone on a track, wouldn’t you do the best you could to get their attention? All you need is a few seconds. Try to save all of them. Do the best you can. The rest is fortune, in which the whole universe participates.

Why does the hospital exist? Fundamentally it’s for the same reason that we really don’t need moral rules. Because we love life. That adoration for life makes us reach out to help each other. ‘Love and do as you will.’ Moral realism is a stupid fiction. It’s for people who have no hope and resort to useless condemnation because it makes them feel better.

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107

Yes, and for Aristotelians the distinction between speculative and practical reason is also a distinction between necessary conclusions and non-necessary conclusions. For practical reason the conclusions vary not only according to subject matter, but also according to the individual in question (for each individual will have different virtues, vices, dispositions, histories, societal roles, and aims).

But the strawman of these positions is apparently too tempting to avoid, especially for those who have no account of moral or practical reason.

The other key here is essentialism and a logic that can convey it. In forms of essentialism there are regularities and irregularities; rules and exceptions; the fulfillment of ends and the non-fulfillment of ends. This is why non-necessary reasoning can flourish in essentialist paradigms, like Foot’s. Aquinas literally compares the study of practical reason to the study of physics and biology, where there are forms of orderedness that do not always obtain.

None of this is possible in modern paradigms, whether it be Descartes, Wittgenstein, Kripke, or Nagel. In the modern paradigm reason is by definition related to necessity (and the attempts to draw out ‘possibility’ are not robust, being merely the logical complement of necessity). This is also why modern paradigms are forced to take an all-or-nothing approach to culture war issues, such as transgenderism. The idea of exceptional cases or disordered cases or tiered cases is not available to the modern paradigm.

@Jay and @Banno are moderns through and through. Having recourse only to necessitarian (and univocal) reason, they have no way to account for morality in a non-Kantian manner. So Jay leans into Kant with abrupt revulsions along the way, and Banno talks about “seeing” while refusing to see the problems that attend that approach. Both approaches become “mystical,” for that has become the only alternative to rational (much like how for Hume “sentimental” was the only alternative to instrumental rationality). In a word, they are fideists, following in the footsteps of the modern Protestant fideists who made faith the only alternative to self-sufficient reason. The strawman is what covers over the poverty of this fideist view.

108

Attraction for whom? I’m an fairly familiar with different varieties of Thomism, and none of them fit what is being opined on here. Is there a real world example of this sort of Kantian-Thomistic chimera either of you have in mind?

A core point of Thomas’s teaching, and his whole tradition, is that knowing what is good is not sufficient, both because virtue is a pre-requisite for “right action,” but also because virtue is a pre-requisite for knowledge itself, so that you cannot divorce them. Indeed, virtue is itself participatory, as is knowledge.

The quoted part in particular seems the opposite of what would be “attractive” in the context of Catholic philosophy (where Saint Thomas is most popular) given Church teaching (and Thomas’s own position) on “suffering with Christ,” and Christ’s admonition to “bear one’s cross.” This seems to me, far from being a bonus, precisely what Catholic philosophers tend to dislike in Kant, because it makes ethics solipsistic and lacking in real communion on their account.

This is why it seems to me like a strange chimera. I don’t think it’s actually going to be attractive to anyone. The strong impetus for grounding ethics in clear deductions from unimpeachable, foundational first principles, as a sort of calculus or legislation, would seem to come (and does come historically) precisely from the rejection of teleology and participatory anthropology and metaphysics, so that fusing them seems like a strange mix to me. I cannot think of any examples of this to be honest.

109

This is more than theoretical. People on TPF who take a non-rational approach to morality really engage in this sort of thing, just on a smaller level.

It is much like what we were discussing in the other thread with respect to emotivism. For the emotivist proselytization and propaganda go hand in hand, and this is because their bedrock, emotion, is non-rational. Rational persuasion is out of the question, and therefore emotion-shaping and propaganda become the only option.

Similarly, for someone who rejects deductive moral reasoning, and who has no rational alternative to deductive reasoning, their only option to spread their moral view is some form of propaganda. They resort to insinuation, misrepresentation, strawmen, a failure to substantiate their sources and claims, an inability to face up to the one they disagree with, emotional appeals, poetic language, mystical claims, etc. There is literally no other option open to them, at least according to their paradigm. Their understanding of morality involves no rational persuasion, none of the “ethical deliberation” that I was focusing on in the previous thread. What else could they do?

So it’s not a minor problem and it’s not theoretical. If rational persuasion is not possible in the realm of morality, the goal is to propagate one’s own view, and majoritarian consensus-building is the key to such propagation, then propaganda-for-the-sake-of-consensus-power becomes the only option. This goes hand in hand with factionalism, cliques, and lots of behind-the-scenes PMs. It is basically coalition-building sans rational persuasion. It isn’t really in accord with the purpose of a philosophy forum.

110

Yes, that is the teaching, and one I admire. But as I understand it, such cross-bearing is meant to be a consequence of accepting Catholic teaching, not a reason to do so. You certainly know Thomas better than I – is there a place where he talks about how we acquire compassion, and how this might motivate us to accept Christianity?

But what all this leaves out is precisely the lived feeling – something I also fault Kant for. Christian love is, IMO, not an intellectual virtue. It is experienced and felt, often in anguish. Well, maybe this is what you have in mind by “participatory virtue,” but it doesn’t usually get described in these existential terms.

I think the conversation has gotten a little carried away. I can’t speak for @Banno , but I think we were talking originally about the difference between morality as a kind of seeing or recognizing, versus something that could be deduced from premises. And my point was only that, if you start from a stipulated definition of “man”, or what is “natural,” and try to squeeze an “ought” out of it, you’re barking up the wrong tree. I’ve certainly seen this argument made many times on TPF, so it must be attractive to someone. Whether it goes back to Aristotle (or Thomas) or not, I leave to others to say.

111

Yikes. That’s quite a take.

Hospitals exist because Christians founded them, like Augustine, who you are quoting. The Spartans loved life; the Romans loved life; Nietzsche loved life. None of them founded any hospitals.

112

I’m not sure if you’re contradicting me or agreeing, or what?

113

You should try to offer an alternative to the things you disagree with, else it is not constructive.

So let’s pretend that someone holds to “moral deductivism.” What is the problem with it, on your view? The key problem would seem to be the “stipulation” you point out. After all, mere stipulation can never get us anywhere.

So what is your alternative to this stipulation-based approach? You seem to think that if we have a certain manner of being then we will see certain evaluative judgments as compelling even without stipulating them. Hence if those ethical judgments ought to be seen as compelling, then the “manner of being” that generates them should be favored (i.e. it should be seen as normative in one way or another).

And then we get back to @Tom_Storm’s question, which asks something like, “What about those people who do not partake in that manner of being?” Your answer was something like, “We need to reshape them so that they do have that manner of being.”

Tom’s objections were very good. What needs to be reckoned with is the idea that the problem for your view is much broader than “moral deductivism.” If you object not only to moral deductivism and stipulation—which everyone seems to disagree with, by the way—but also with ethical normativity, then it is no coincidence that you are not offering any alternatives.

To put it more concisely: you seem to be averse to the idea that someone might try to persuade someone else to act differently on the basis of rationality, but you are not averse to the idea of re-shaping someone’s “manner of being” without their permission or knowledge. It seems to me that even the caricature of this ethical persuasion (i.e. “moral deductivism”) is a better option than what you are offering. This is because it is much easier for someone to reject the stipulative premises than for them to avoid the surreptitious re-conditioning that your view requires.

114

So are you saying that Christians are not moral realists?

115

This is not incorrect, and one could plausibly take this idea and run with it. Hume is someone who does this in a fairly principled and fair way. For Hume “sentiment” is something akin to what I’ve called “way of being,” and yet a normativity obtains insofar as sentiment can be good or bad. For example, people with good sentiments will be morally virtuous and people with bad sentiments will be morally vicious. Let’s use Hume’s term “sentiment” and make use of it, but without trying to actually track his thought.

Even if sentiment is divorced from “Reason,” nevertheless insofar as a normative measure applies to sentiment it will still involve comparison, measure, and therefore small-‘r’ “reason.” Put more simply, everything which is normative involves intelligibility and “reason.” In Foot’s register this cashes out as the idea that we are able to predicate ‘good’ and ‘bad’ of normative realities, and such predications must themselves be intelligible and reason-apt. (It follows that all normative ethics must involve some form of reason even if they eschew particular forms of reason such as “moral deductivism,” and this is what Foot and Anscombe were wrestling with in a more general way.)

One way to work this out in a political register would be to take cultural relativism and make it non-relativistic by construing each culture as a sentiment-option and then allowing each culture to “compete” with the others. Whichever cultures are most appealing and persuasive “Win out” in the normative construal. But again, no approach to ethics which involves normativity can escape ‘good’ and ‘bad’ and the rational comparisons that attend those concepts, including this cultural approach. Arguments and persuasion—and therefore reason!—are inevitable in every ethical system that is normative, and ethics is by definition normative.

These are the truths which modern ethics struggles with:

  1. You can’t have ethics without the concepts ‘good’ and ‘bad’
  2. You can’t have ‘good’ and ‘bad’ without ‘true’ and ‘false’
  • Early Anscombe accepted 1 but rejected 2
  • Early/mid Foot accepted 2 but rejected 1
  • Hume accepted 1 but rejected 2
  • Kant rejected 1 and accepted 2
  • Stevenson accepted 1 but rejected 2
  • A number of TPFers reject both

Kant is interesting because he tries to refound ethics apart from inclination. He manages to think that ethics involves ‘true’ and ‘false’ but not ‘good’ and ‘bad’. Hume and early Anscombe were his opposite while sharing many of the same presuppositions.

116

I think that the message of Jesus wasn’t so much about following rules. He liked breaking rules. For Jesus, rule following should be replaced with love and forgiveness. I see this as moral anti-realism.

The religion based on Jesus is pretty diverse though. Many need strict rules or they can’t operate.

117

Thanks for this. I am interested in Phillipa Foot’s conception of natural goodness. Not able to comment on the specific claim about recognition.

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118

Perhaps for another thread.

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119

I’m going to reply as I read this, so I can capture my actual reactions.
I understand this impulse, but as I say, in the trolley case it is a personal choice, absent any institutional permission, prohibition etc.. The ER case is empirically quite different, in that it is an institutional decision being made through the process of medical assessment and (we assume) an environment where that choice is actually open to the institution (it isn’t in the real world). These seem to be quite meaningful differences to me. Let’s see…

Having now read hte rest of hte post, I really cannot see what you’re trying to argue here. Is the point that we’ve assumed Brenda’s moral position, ergo, any decision she’s “bound” to make?

The difference is that the decision making-process is quite different in each scenario. I don’t wholly reject what I think the underlying thing is: We all have our moral position and take actions based upon it.

I think that is all we’re dealing with in the Trolley, but not so in the ER version, i guess. Can you tease out some specific objection to that?

120

I think this must be a misreading. Even if someone is borrowing from classical teleological accounts and heavily modifying them in this deductive direction, who would claim that the premises from which all ethical deductions are derived are simply “stipulated?” On that account, wouldn’t ethical truth vary with stipulations? And since all facts about what is good and bad, better or worse, would be flowing from these self-same stipulations, it would seem to render the deductive apparatus itself arbitrary (a sort of voluntarism lurking prior to the whole edifice).

The various problems of such a deductive apparatus not withstanding, it certainly makes much more sense if the “premises” are at least known somehow (i.e., are true) rather than simply being held true by fiat.

Well, if it can be “rational” to reject any inference rule, then any sort of deductive edifice isn’t going to get one to “rationality” either. I do agree though that it seems difficult to me to imagine how any sort of moral “conversion” could be achieved if it one is not prepared to suggest to people that they are ever being irrational, immoral, or are engaged in something ugly/base (or presumably all three). Or, at the very least, some other sort of measure aside from rationality, morality, or beauty would need to be appealed to it would seem, because if a person’s current orientation is not lacking in any respect, it’s hard to see why they would ever want to “convert.”

The very notion of educating taste or preference seems to require some measure (some definite form) to which formation is ordered. Even in the case of “all is power relations,” there is a measure, namely the (brute) preferences of the “educator” who is attempting formation/manipulation (I use both formation and manipulation here because, under the “all is power relations” view, there is no real difference between education/formation and manipulation, both involve conforming anothers’ will to one’s own, in the absence of any measure outside the will).

I suppose the exception here would be if the “moral” is ineffable, so that a standard can be “shown” but never appealed to as a measure because it cannot be spoken of, although, even here, this “moral goodness” that is there to experience functions as a measure that people either do or do not currently conform to.