*******Indeed.
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If we read Foot herself we realize that she rejects the etiquette analogy, she rejects the title of her paper, she rejects the restriction of disinterested justice, she rejects the motivational theory on which the paper was premised, she rejects the Humean paradigm on which the paper was premised, and she realizes that she had remained unwittingly stuck within a form of moral subjectivism. An anti-Kantian thrust does remain into Natural Goodness, but it is highly modified and it involves much more respect for Kant’s project.
That’s far to strong, Leon.
Let’s stick to one point, for the sake of manageability. Here’s the only place she mentions etiquette, so far as I can see, in Natural goodness:
And this is the nub of the proper answer to the challenge that I made in ‘Morality as a System of Hypothetical Imperatives’, where I asked why it should be thought rational to follow morality, but not to obey duelling rules or silly rules of etiquette. In that article I myself made a rotten job of answering my own question because, still under the influence of Humean ideas of practical rationality, I thought irrelevant what is now turning out to be most relevant. (pp16-17)
What she rejects is not the whole analogy between etiquette and morality; it remains true that etiquette rules are stated categorically and that we don’t seem to think them inescapably binding. The analogy stands; but she rejects her own answer, and does so because she built on Humean instrumentalism. She’s saying “I posed the right challenge, and gave a bad answer to it because of the theory of practical rationality I was working with” (p.17).
What turned out to be most relevant? From the beginning of the paragraph quoted above: “Anyone who thinks about it can see that for human beings the teaching and following of morality is something necessary.” She came to think that the necessity of morality was what differentiated it from mere trivial etiquette. By Natural Goodness she had here grounding, in natural normatively:
It is because I see practical rationality as determined in this way that I claim to be able to interpret the ‘action-guidingness’ of moral judgement in
terms of the practical rationality of moral action.
Hence the thread on Furthering Philippa Foot, and this thread; both of which deal with just that.
This has the advantage over your account of fitting in with the tertiary material on offer.
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All actions have moral implications attached to them. Shitting is one that matters more than most. One ought not to shit where one eats as they say.
Thank you. Your need to show this is obvious and understandable. But not necessary to repeat in every single thread about Foot, is it?
I admire the fact that Foot’s work progressed through different stages — early, middle and late. As I said: I am intrigued to observe her thinking process in the context and mores of her time.
@Banno in his OP, supplied a link to the relevant Section 3 in the SEP:
Foot: Morality As A System Of Hypothetical Imperatives - Ethics - The Philosophy Forum
The SEP article ends ( Section 6) with a poignant story: the case of a farm boy from the Sudetenland who chose to die rather than to serve the Nazis.[8] In a letter to his family he writes,
We did not sign up for the SS, and so they condemned us to death. Both of us would rather die than stain our consciences with such deeds of horror. (RG 2; see Gollwitzer et al. 1956) Philippa Foot (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Links include:
“Philippa Ruth Foot 1920–2010”, Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the British Academy, XI: 176–196. [Hursthouse 2012 available online]
and from Thompson, Michael, 2003, “Three Degrees of Natural Goodness”, https://sites.pitt.edu/~mthompso/three.pdf
…
I am grateful to Banno, you, and others for showing a sustained and knowledgeable background capturing the worth of Philippa Foot. Even if, or because, it leads to more questions on central questions.
Indeed. It is part of the philosophical process, no?
It is good to know at which point of someone’s life, career and thought we are reading. It is as much the reader’s responsibility, to follow through, as it is the author’s…to situate the views and arguments at a moment in time.
I’ll leave this now.
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We typically distinguish freedom to choose from coercion in terms of overwhelmingly compelling consequences “forcing” us in a particular direction, not actual physical barriers blocking an action.
If I steal because a gun is to my head, that is different than if I steal because someone physically grabbed my hand and used it as an instrument to steal. The former speaks of a coerced will. The latter, no will at all. In either, I’m relieved of moral responsibility due to lack of freedom.
So, yes, shitting and truth telling are different sorts of compulsions. Your shit will happen, just like your heart will beat.
But directly to your question, whether the need for morality is akin to the need to shit in that both are embedded in the human entity, I think that’s so.
We arrive at all sorts of moral truths and go to great lengths to offer theories for their justification, but we must admit that in all instances we trust our conscience (whatever organ that might be) as the gold standard for validation of the theory.
As in, suppose you fully supported Kantian ethics, but you created a hypothetical that offered an unsatisfactory result through the application of that theory, and so you would question the theory or at least recognize its limitations, meaning you take your feeling of lack of satisfaction as controlling, not the result of the theory.
The entire enterprise of forming a moral theory begins with first noticing the moral truths and second trying to figure out what is consistent with them that allows us to form an explaning principle. It’s as if we first notice the planets moving in a certain way and then we arrive at our calculations to explain them, giving primacy to the observation, with the theory correct only insofar as it can be empirically verified.
It would absurd to locate a planet at point X but to deny it was there because the math said it would be at point Y. We might go back and measure and re-measure to be sure, but ultimately, it is where it is, not where the math says it should be.
The point being if we “observe” (not sure what word to use here) X is immoral but deontology tells us it is not, it would be similarly absurd to say it must be moral when we can “see” it’s not.
This road leads us to the suggestion of genetic knowledge, similar to the Great Pyrenees who just knows to protect the goats, with some such dogs being better at it than others. That comports with some being more morally attuned than others (i.e. “good seeds” and “bad seeds”). This isn’t to say it can’t be learned and must be all nature, but it does seems to be coming from somewhere a priori as well.
And so that leads me to my theory du jour, which is that the best way for a Great Pyrenees to learn is to hang out with out with good Great Pyreneeses and watch them. For humans, that would mean studying and learning from those we trust as moral figures, whose moral reasoning we find valid and trust, which lends itself to referring to tradition and past considerations. But obvioulsy, we must be able to distinguish the Mother Teresas from the David Koreshes.
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I heard an interview with a gang member who said the gang he was in slowly teaches newbies how to become deaf to the inner voice saying “no” to criminal activity, and the deafness progresses to numbness.
Maybe some people don’t have that voice in the first place due to mental illness, but the rest have to learn how to become a monster from other monsters.
You’d think that something makes Nazis.
There is the general thought that education keeps us moral, but, again, the Nazi example doesn’t lend support to that, considering they were very educated and civilized.
A moral education therefore shouldn’t be in exposing you to just artistic and intellectual history or in teaching you the various humanities, but it should teach you non-conformity and independence in thought. A non-conformist is unreliable and of no value to a politician.
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Absolutely. They used to make everyone read Emerson. I wonder if they still do.
But also, people should consider that anyone (mostly) could become a gang member. If you don’t believe you have the potential to become numb and monstrous, how will you see the signs that it’s happening and run the other way?
In Schindler’s List, Liam Neeson’s character explains that, that the commandant of the concentration camp would be a normal person outside this situation.
From a thread in The Other Place:
“Suddenly I had to think of him.” Say a picture of him suddenly floated before me. Did I know it was a picture of him, N.? I did not tell myself it was. What did its being of him consist in, then? Perhaps what I later said or did.
(Zettel, 14)
If to know is to hold a justified true belief, then what is the justification here? I know it is a picture of him because I recognise it as such? But that is to say just that I know it is a picture of him because I know it is a picture of him…
And if there is no justification, then do we not know that it is a picture of him?
Now apply this to taking a shit. Can one properly be said to know one needs to shit? What is the justification here?
In my ubiquitous puppy-kicking for fun example, what is the justification for seeing the act as cruel?
Rather, we recognise that it is a picture of him; One recognises that one needs the loo; and one recognises that the puppy-kicking for fun is cruel.
This by way of a partial return to the lost theme in Furthering Philippa Foot.
Knowing it feels like you need to shit is different than knowing you need to shit.
I can’t feel like I need to shit but not feel like I need to shit. I can feel like I need to shit, but not actually need to shit.
Puppy kicking isn’t per se cruel. Puppy kicking for fun is cruel. “For fun” means “without justification.” Puppy kicking to keep the puppy from falling in the pool, from biting the baby, to get it from the fire isn’t cruel.
So, puppy kicking for good reason isnt cruel. “For good reason” means “with justification.”
So we have a tautology. That’s why it’s true.
But you mean something else, like it’s indisputable, but it can’t be like pain or the feel of needing to shit. That has no truth value.
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Yeah but, when I have to take a shit I don’t recognize that’s a guy that I know. How did I recognize that “I need to find the loo” as compared to recognizing some guy’s face floating before me, when I have to take a growingly ubiquitous shit?
I think that through, and I eventually get to this:
Recognition still invokes something prior, or external. We don’t just cognize “time for the loo”, we re-cognize “time for the loo”. That’s what you said.
The “re” part of the whole form of life isn’t being accounted for, despite repeating that recognition is different than finding essence; there appears to me no significant departure actually set out clearly.
Seems to me you need to make a distinction between cognize and recognize that hasn’t been made, to land the plane (maybe I should say “drop the payload”) of this form of life that is my stool neatly and safely there in the loo.
Further seems to me the term “to know” will have to come up to make a distinction between cognize and recognize. (The space inside these propositions between cognize and recognize is the same space in the argument where we seek “justification”, and the external source that marries recognition to what I of the “re” that marries a cognition to something else. (Namely, what we are cognizant of.)
Unless, to feel like I have to take a shit, and recognizing “I need the loo”, is the same form of life as to feel like I have to take a shit, and cognizing “I need the loo.”
Basically, I don’t want to take any of the pieces off the board that you set; I’m just still seeing some other yet unaccounted for pieces, or that the board you set is in need of different arrangement. It’s still too close to metaphysics, it’s just that propositional objects now stand in for the objects the propositions are a language of. Instead of the content, we talk about what people say about the content. But that’s still content, and that’s still meta, and that’s enough for the incompleteness of “form of life” to dissolve quiddity, and go “ok, what’s next, besides we don’t need any quiddity to ask ‘what is next?’”
Shame, I thought we were actually starting to say something on that thread. “We”, as in the exchange of communication was collecting into something worthwhile. Don’t know why you don’t want to keep digging from the spot carved out over there, but this shit works for me.
Perhaps a laxative? What has no truth value?
I don’t know if this central claim within your argument is correct, but I think your post gets at an important point in general.
“I feel like I need to shit.”
Can I doubt this?
I can doubt whether I actually need to shit.
Well, tell me what you think I’m circling.
So are you saying that “I feel like I need to shit” has no truth value?
But if I feel like I need to shit, then “I feel like I need to shit” is true.
This:
For, since the speculative reason is busied chiefly with the necessary things, which cannot be otherwise than they are, its proper conclusions, like the universal principles, contain the truth without fail. The practical reason, on the other hand, is busied with contingent matters, about which human actions are concerned: and consequently, although there is necessity in the general principles, the more we descend to matters of detail, the more frequently we encounter defects.
But Aquinas would agree with you that if there are cases where puppy-kicking is not cruel, then we cannot really say that puppy-kicking is cruel.
Yet if we have a rule that admits of exceptions then we can try to nail it down with a word like “fun” (or as I did here with the word “randomly”).
You can just say that the meaning of “it is wrong” is its truth conditions. That allows you to leave aside the judgement of hypothetical actions.
What we really need to focus on is actions that have already happened.
The problem has to do with what Aquinas (cited above) calls “descent into matters of detail.” Puppy-kicking is a species of act which contains all sorts of possible acts. @Hanover was setting out some of the different possible acts in that species. A species of act is a generalization, and ethics must generalize in this way if it is to be future-oriented.
So when you say we need to focus on actions that have already happened, this is somewhat true. That’s because in such a case we are focusing on particular acts and not a species of act. We are focusing on something that has “descended all the way,” so to speak. In fact for the Aristotelian we always begin from particulars. But the trouble will come back as soon as we derive from these past particulars generalized and future-oriented norms. So familiarity with particulars is important and necessary, but ethics by definition goes beyond the examination of particular acts.