Aristotelian Categoricals and Natural Norms

 Here are some notes on Chapter Two, "Natural Norms,"  of Philippa Foot's Natural Goodness, Oxford UP, 2001.  

As I mentioned previously, Foot essays "a naturalistic theory of ethics: to break really radically both with G. E. Moore's anti-naturalism and with the subjectivist theories such as emotivism and prescriptivism that have been seen as clarifications and developments of Moore's original thought." (p. 5)  

"The main thesis of this book is that propositions about goodness and defect in a human being  -- even those that have to do with goodness of character and action -- are not to be understood in such psychological terms." (37)  Her point is that when we evaluate living things, whether plants, animals, or humans, our uses of 'good' do not need to be explained in terms of commendation or any other speech act, or in terms of any psychological attitude.  Goodness and defect in living things are intrinsic to them and not parasitic upon attitudes or stances we take up with respect to them.

On to the details.

Earlier we were discussing the peculiarities of generic statements.  A generic statement is one that is neither singular nor logically quantifiable.  'The cat is four-legged,' unlike 'The cat is sleeping,' is typically used to express a general not a singular proposition.   But 'The cat is four-legged,' typically used, is not equivalent to 'All cats are four-legged' or to any quantified statement.  One three-legged cat suffices to falsify the universal quantification, but it does not falsify the generic generalization.  The fact that many adult humans lack the full complement of 32 teeth does not falsify the generic 'Adult humans have 32 teeth.'  'Rabbits are herbivorous' is a further example.  It would seem to entail 'Some rabbits are herbivorous.'  Even so, one is saying much more with an utterance of the former than with the latter.

The following wrinkles now occur to me.  If 'some' imports present existence, then the generic 'Velociraptors are carnivorous' does not entail 'Some velociraptors are carnivorous.'  But let's not get hung up on this, or on the entailments of the presumably generic 'Unicorns are four-legged.'    But we should  note, en passant, the presumably different phenomenon of plural predication.  'Velociraptors are extinct' is not about individual velociraptors; it is not equivalent to 'Each velociraptor is extinct.'  Presumably, it is the species that is extinct, whatever exactly species are. A species goes extinct when its last specimen expires; but one cannot say that the specimen goes extinct.  Assuming that Obama is not a species unto himself, his death will not be his extinction.  Compare 'Horses fill the field' with 'Horses are four-legged.'  The first is a plural predication; the second is not.  It is false that each horse fills the field, but true that each normal horse is four-legged.   But both sentences have in common that they are not about each horse.  

But I digress.  Back to Foot.

Foot, following Michael Thompson, speaks of Aristotelian categoricals.  "The deer is an animal whose form of defence is flight" is an example. (34)  The sentence is "about a species at a given historical time . . . ." (29)  Foot is not assuming the immutability of species.  But species must have a "relative stability" if true Aristotelian categoricals are to be possible at all. (29)  "They tell us how a kind of plant or animal , considered at a particular time, and in its natural habitat, develops, sustains itself, defends itself, and reproduces." (29)

Foot, stepping beyond Thompson,  stresses the teleological aspect of Aristotelian categoricals.  "There is an Aristotelian categorical about the species peacock to the effect that the male peacock displays his brilliant tail in order to attract a female during the mating season." (31)  Not that the male strutting his stuff has any such telos in mind.  The thought here is that there is a teleology in nature that works itself out below the level of conscious mind.  The heliotropism in plants is a kind of teleology in nature below the level of conscious mind. Plants 'strive' to get into the light, but not consciously. Migrating birds are not trying to get somewhere warmer with better eats; they do not have this end in view.  And yet the migratory operation is teleologically directed.  Why do the birds head south?  In order to survive the winter, find food, and reproduce.

Can we say of an individual plant or animal that it is intrinsically good or bad independently of our interests or desires?  This is the crucial question that Foot answers in the affirmative.  Norms are ingredient in nature herself; they are not projected by us or expressive of our psychological attitudes.  Ingredient not in all of nature, but in all of living nature.  Living things bear within them norms that ground the correctness of our evaluations.  Evaluation occurs at "the intersection of two types of propositions: on the one hand, Aristotelian categoricals (life form descriptions relating to the species), and on the other, propositions about particular individuals that are the subject of evaluation." (33)

Foot is bravely resisting the fact-value dichotomy.  Values and norms are neither ideal objects in a Platonic realm apart, nor are they psychological projections.  They are intrinsically ingredient in natural facts.  How does the resistance go?  We start with an Aristotelian categorical such as 'The deer is an animal whose form of defence is flight.'  The sentence is "about a species at a given historical time . . . ." (29) The individual as a member of its species is intrinsically or naturally good if it is able to serve its species by maintaining itself in existence and reproducing. Note that an individual organism does not reproduce itself; it reproduces (usually in conjunction with an opposite sexed partner) an organism distinct  from itself, the offspring  Thus an individual's reproduction is quite unlike an individual's self-maintenance.  An individual needs ancestors but it doesn't need descendants.  The species needs descendants. Now suppose a deer is born with deformed limbs that prevent its engaging in swift flight from predators. This fact about it makes it an intrinsically or naturally bad deer.  For such a deer will not be able to serve its species by preserving itself in existence until it can reproduce.  That's my gloss, anyway.

The idea, then, is that the species to which the individual organism belongs encapsulates norms of goodness/badness for its members which the individual either meets or fails to meet.

Interim Critical Remarks

A. This naturalistic scheme strikes me as obscure because the status of species has not been sufficiently clarified.  Aristotelian categoricals are about species, but what exactly are species or the "life forms of species"?  The species peacock presumably exists only in individual peacocks, but is not identical to any such individual or to the whole lot of them. (The species is not an extensional entity such as a mereological sum, or a set.) It looks to be an immanent universal, a one-in-many.   But then it is not natural in the very same sense in which an individual peacock is natural, i.e., in space and time at a definite spatiotemporal location, and only there.  (Universals are multiply located.) So Foot's natural norms are not natural in the same sense in which the organisms of which they are the norms are natural.

So there still is a fact-norm distinction in the form of the distinction between a member of a species and the species.  This whole scheme will remain murky until it is explained what a species is and how it is present in its members.  We are in the vicinity of the ancient problem of universals.  Foot's norms are not outside of things in a realm apart, not in the mind; they are 'in' things.  But what does this 'in' mean exactly?

B. My second remark concerns an individual organism that cannot  serve its species such as an infertile human male, or a human female who cannot have children and is therefore biologically defective in this respect.  Does her biological defect make her a bad human being?  Foot would seem to have to say yes: the defective woman does not come up to the norm for her species.  She is abnormal in a normative sense and not merely in a statistical sense.  She is not a good woman!  How is this any different from the case of the lame deer?  A lame deer is a defective deer, hence not a good deer.  It is not a good deer because it cannot flee from predators thereby maintaining its life so that it can go on to procreate and serve its species by so doing.

Foot wants to bring normativity down to earth from Plato's heaven; at the same time she wants to extrude it from the mind and install it in natural things outside the mind.  This makes plenty of sense with respect to plants and non-human animals.  But of course she want to extend her scheme to humans as well.  This is where trouble starts.

Foot sees the individual organism in the light of the species: as a specimen of the species and not as an individual in its own right. This is not a problem for plants and non-human animals, with the possible exception of our pets.  But Foot wants to extend her natural normativity scheme to humans as well.  But how can what I ought to do, and what I ought not to do, and what I should be and how I should be be dictated by my species membership?  Am I just an animal, a bit of the world's fauna?  I am an animal, but I am also a person: not just a material object in a material world, but a conscious and self-conscious subject for whom there is a world.  

Comments

[Thomas]

Dear BV,

glad to see you're getting into Foot! I tend to agree with you that her characterization of species or life-forms is vague. I too thought that she most likely is refering to Aristotelian immanent universals, however I think I disgree with your comment. If by natural you mean "in space and time at a definite spatiotemporal location, and only there" then I think they are natural, wasn't that the whole point of Aristotle's moderate realism? That universals or forms do not exist independently yet are not subjective in the mind either, they only exist as instantiated in their objects or abstracted in the intellect? I don't see the problem.

As for your second comment, I think the response here would be that a women is certainly defective in some way if she cannot reproduce, but Foot will argue later in the book that human beings have vastly different natures than animals and plants, so while the normative framework that applies to plants and animals also applies to humans, normativity and morality will end up looking much different for human beings. I don't think Foot's account entails that a woman who can't reproduce is defective 'as a woman' , she would be defective as a woman (or more generally as a huma being) if she did not engage in that activity which is uniquely characteristic of the human species (rationality).

I look forawrd to more posts!

[BV]

Thanks for the comment, Thomas.

I suppose you would say that a species, as an immanent universal, is universal only in the mind but multiplied in things. I doubt the coherence of that. For me an immanent universal is universal in things. But then it can't be natural in exactly the same sense in which a spatiotemporal individual is natural.

I am aware of the passage in ch. 3 where Foot tries to deal with something like my objection. I hope to write a post about ch. 3 soon.

[Malcolm Pollack]

Hi Bill,

Does Ms. Foot make clear exactly why she places the locus of normativity at this intermediate level? (I haven't read her book, and I can't find the answer in your summary.)

The way I would make sense of this is to say that the configuration of the individual is shaped by nature in such a way as to instantiate those characteristics that enable it to survive (and by surviving, to have a chnace to reporduce). There is a huge, perhaps infinite, set of possible solutions to this problems, occupying different positions in what we might call a "design space". A species can be thought of as a tight cluster of points in this space (individuals vary, but if they stray too far from the successful design, they usually die, as with your deformed deer).

So, any large excursion from the viability-cluster of "designs" (which include both bodies and behaviors) that we call a species will be both "bad" for the individual (which will probably die) and for the continued instantiation of the species. If that's the whole picture, though, it's hard for me to see why one should give any preference to either the individual or the species level as the "correct" locus of moral value.

In social species, the picture gets even more complicated, as the individuals will die in the absence of coordinated behavior, and so individuals of these species (because, after all, a species is only instantiated in its individuals) must be wired-up so as to manifest those behaviors. This often includes altruistic behavior that can result in the death, or at least the non-reproduction, of individuals -- which certainly looks like sacrificing oneself for "the good of the species". Why do that if the well-being of the species isn't somehow the greater Good?

That said, I don't think that most critters (or any trees) concern themselves with what's "good". But when you get to humans, who are social animals par excellence, and gifted with reason and self-reflection, we not only have those wired-in behaviors, but we also get to wondering about them, and thinking about what's "good" and why. And of course it is in our interest to foster social cohesion, to act altruistically, to "take one for the team", and so on, because human groups that don't do these things are weak, and they fail, and they die. So it is very natural, I think, for us to understand this species-directed attitude -- as "the Good", in which the individual's worth is measured by his service to the group. And having internalized this, not only by thoughtful effort, but as an intrinsic part of our nature, I think it's also quite natural to extend the model to everything else we see in the living world.

But it's really only one model, built on a foundation of naturalism, both philosophically and intrinsically. The monk who devotes his life to God has a very different model.

Which is correct? That's above my pay-grade, I'm afraid.

[Malcolm Pollack]

Ah, typos. How easy they are to see as soon as one has clicked "Post"!

I meant to write:

"So it is very natural, I think, for us to understand this species-directed attitude -- in which the individual's worth is measured by his service to the group -- as "the Good"."