Comments Elsewhere

DSH: I concede I over-condensed G.E.Moore, and you rightly identify him and his notion of the naturalistic fallacy as more concerned with “the good” than the “is” vs. “ought” distinction. It’s good to bring this point out, although I’m not sure what it adds.

My primary point is that you are running together three different issues that are in fact separate (the alleged naturalistic fallacy, the alleged is-ought gap, and the alleged fact-value distinction). Speaking as if they are all the same thing drastically oversimplifies intellectual history — which is a problem for you, specifically, because a lot of the argumentative force throughout your remarks rests on appeals to an alleged consensus among philosophers about what has been proven, demonstrated, is plausible, etc. You need to be much more careful if you are going to try to rest on these kinds of appeals to the consensus of philosophers rather than a critical explanation of some particular argument or another.

My secondary point is that you’re mischaracterizing Moore’s view. Moore does not accept the “fact-value” distinction. He considers “X is good (as an end)” to be a statement of fact which is either true or false, depending on whether or not X has or has not got the objective property of intrinsic goodness, and he took ethics to be a theoretical science that aims at asserting all those propositions about goodness that agree with the facts and denying all those that do not. He considered this property to be “non-natural” (which he characterizes in PE 26 as meaning that it does not exist in time and is not an object of study for the natural sciences or psychology). He was rather famous for believing this in the early 20th century because many other philosophers (emotivists, prescriptivists, other objectivists who were mystified by what “non-natural” properties were, etc.) disagreed with him. In PE he spends a bit of time on the objectivity of the good; in Ethics he spends two long (and very good) chapters on it. This isn’t a matter of “over-condensation” on your part; you just stated something about his view and his arguments that is flatly false.

It’s also specifically important to recognize that Moore’s discussion in PE Chapter I is focused on an issue of definition and not of inference because both the characterization of the fallacy that Moore offers and the argument that he gives for its fallaciousness depend on a particular view of language and definition (specifically, the idea that all terms are either simple or complex, with simple terms admitting of no definition and complex terms being definable entirely in terms of simple terms) that has been widely criticizedin Analytic philosophy since 1903 (Wittgenstein was one of the first to criticize it; see the remarks on the Theatetus in PI 46 et seq). Unless you intend for your comments to turn on an extremely controversial view of language now regarded by many philosophers as outmoded and wildly oversimplified, you’re better off sticking to Hume’s authority and not Moore’s.

DSH: (2) Moore was vitriolic in his contempt for the natural law, for simplicity’s sake = Suarez’s account, but I agree it wasn’t his locus. (See, Chap. IV of PE).

I don’t know where you’re finding this in Chapter IV, which deals with what Moore calls “Metaphysical Ethics” and explicitly distinguishes from “Naturalistic Ethics” (with which he deals in Chapter II and Chapter III). In PE 74-76 he accuses Kant of confusedly treating moral laws as if they were (1) analogous to “natural laws” (which Moore consistently uses to mean a universal truth about what in fact happens in nature) and (2) analogous to laws in the legal sense of command. The closest he comes to any discussion of natural law theory (vitriolic, contemptuous, or otherwise) is his discussion of Stoic ethics (along with a mention of Rousseau) in PE 27). But his objection here has nothing to do with a fact-value distinction; it has to do with a spat over the meaning of the term “natural” (and one in which I think Moore is actually rather obviously being unfair to the target of his criticism).

DSH: I concede I have no use for Moore’s or Murdock’s locus on the “good” for the same reason I can’t get my arms around “justifiable.” What in the world can “good” possibly identify that’s ethically meaningful?

Well, Moore’s answer would be that it identifies goodness, and there’s an end on’t. His suggestion is that you either grasp the concept or you don’t, and if you don’t, there isn’t anything he can to do explain it to you, other than to keep pointing to cases and hoping that you begin to cotton on to it.

Whether Moore is right about this or not, the important question for you is, why would you invoke Moore’s authority if you think that he is fundamentally wrong? Why mention the naturalistic fallacy if its explicit concern (the meaning of the term “good”) is something that you have no use for and doubt the meaningfulness of?

DSH: Important: Don’t confuse Strauss’s “natural rights” for “natural law.”

The notion of “natural rights” is not limited to Strauss or Straussians. (Strauss actually is primarily concerned with tracing the idea of “natural right,” singular, which he identifies with the tradition of “natural law.”) The phrase “natural rights” was used extensively before Strauss hit the English-speaking intellectual scene; for a few aleatory examples of pre-Straussian and non-Straussian usages, see Sam Adams (1772), New Hampshire state constitution (1783), T. H. Huxley (1890), H.L.A. Hart’s “Are There Any Natural Rights?” Philosophical Review 64 (1955), etc. Jefferson’s claim of “inalienable” or “inherent and inalienable” rights with which we are endowed by virtue of our equal creation is generally taken to have been considered straightforwardly synonymous with a doctrine of “natural rights” (as mentioned by Adams et al.) in the milieu in which Jefferson was writing.

DSH: Which raises the issue of “natural law.” The Stoics, Aquinas, Suarez, Locke, et alia, all had slightly different versions of it.

Very different, actually; Locke’s view, in particular, represents a radical departure.

DSH: But it’s news to me that Aristotle subscribed to the “natural law.”

I don’t think I claimed that he did. What I said is that he claims to ground ethics in (a particular sort of) natural facts, which is a different claim (a very different one, actually). The most famous text in regard to this claim is probably NE I.7, where Aristotle suggests that eudaimonia, and thus a characterization of the good, is to be found by considering the characteristic function of a human being. For a good overview of how this connects with the notions of ends and nature, in Aristotle’s ethical, political, and physical writing, see e.g. SEP on “Presuppositions of Aristotle’s Politics”, and follow the citations from there.

DSH: Other than Finnis, Grisez, Boyle, and George, what other philosopher, American or Continental, accepts natural law? Roger Scruton, a likely candidate, certainly doesn’t. A few Thomists, perhaps (e.g., Maritain). Otherwise the slate is clean. I admit that teleology is useful, when applied to production of human artefacts. But other than Aristotleans and Thomists, who seriously applies “natural” teleology to ethics?

Putting it this way is rather like saying, “Other than Kantians, who seriously suggests that the universalizability of a moral principle is an important criterion of rightness?” “Aristotelians and Thomists” include many important and well-respected writers on moral philosophy. Some prominent recent examples include Philippa Foot (cf. Natural Goodness), G.E.M. Anscombe (cf. “On Promising and its Justice”), Michael Thompson (cf. “The Representation of Life”), etc. (Note also that although each of these writers is explicitly interested in reviving ideas that they identify with Aristotle, they are not primarily identified as “Aristotelians” or “Thomists.” (They are more influenced by Frege and Wittgenstein than by the Thomist tradition, for one.)

A prominent example popular amongst libertarians, if not widely read elsewhere, would be Lysander Spooner (cf. “Natural Law, or the Science of Justice,” “Letter to Bayard,” etc.), who is not particularly indebted to either the Philosopher or to St. Thomas.

Of course, even if nobody at all in contemporary philosophy advocated the idea, it might still very well be true. But I don’t think that you have the right to appeal to philosophical consensus here, anyway.

DSH: Re: Wittgenstein, see David Stern (reviewed on Amazon.com). Personally, I find most LW incoherent. Even the “themes” he’s credited with are not powerhouse issues for me. The Humanities, conversely, adore him (after the Frankfurt School and Derrida).

So do a number of prominent Analytic philosophers (Putnam, Armstrong, Hacker, Cavell, Conant, Diamond, Foot, Kripke, etc.). Anyway, you’re entitled to your opinion of L.W., but if you find him incoherent and do not care about the things that he’s publicly identified with, why bring him up at all? You’re the one who invoked his authority, not I. The problem is that he clearly does not say what you suggest he says.

DSH: Re: the “self-evident” postulates of Jefferson, see my review of Thomas Reid’s philosophy on Amazon.com. Jefferson’s “self evidence” is an appeal to authority; if there’s an “argument” in the classical sense, I couldn’t find it.

You’re missing the point. Jefferson does not intend to give an argument, from authority or otherwise. If you hold a truth to be self-evident then you are holding that it needs no argument of any kind, because it recommends itself just as it is. (For useful discussion, see also Moore, in PE 86.) Maybe you think they’re not self-evident; maybe you think Jefferson needs to give some further argument that they are self-evident, or at least some explanation. But then that’s a different sort of complaint. (How are we supposed to identify the claims that are self-evident and distinguish them from the ones that aren’t? Well, I don’t know, but Jefferson wasn’t intending to write a declaration on epistemology anyway, so I’m not sure he can be faulted for not discussing the topic.)