I am trying to come to grips with Philippa Foot's Natural Goodness (Oxford UP, 2001).
For Foot, norms are ingredient in nature herself; they are not projected by us or expressive of our psychological attitudes. They are ingredient not in all of nature, but in all of living nature. Living things bear within themselves 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 bravely resists the fact-value dichotomy. (You could say she will not stand for it.) Values and norms are neither ideal or abstract objects in a Platonic realm apart, as Continental axiologists such as Max Scheler and Nicolai Hartmann maintained, 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 defense 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.
I now note something not mentioned by Foot but which I think is true. An individual organism does not reproduce itself; it produces (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. It is the species that reproduces itself, strictly speaking, not the individual. A biological individual needs ancestors but it doesn't need descendants. The species needs descendants. Otherwise it becomes extinct.
I mention this to underscore the fact that Foot evaluates individuals and their parts, traits and actions in the light of the species to which the individual belongs. The goodness of a living thing "depends directly on the relation of an individual to the 'life form' of its species." (27) This is said to hold for all living things including human animals. It would seem to follow that human individuals have no ultimate intrinsic value or goodness as individuals: their value and goodness is relative to the contribution they make to the health and preservation of the species. Perhaps we could say that for Foot man is a species-being in that his existence and flourishing are necessarily tied to his being a specimen of a species. (It would make an interesting post to explore how this relates, if it does, to the Marxian notion of Gattungswesen.)
For example, 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. The evaluation of an individual deer is conducted solely in the light of its relation to its species. It is not evaluated as an individual in its own right. Of course, I am not suggesting that deer be evaluated as individuals in their own right with an intrinsic moral worth that would make it wrong to treat them as means to our ends as opposed to treating them as ends in themselves. What I am doing is preparing to resist Foot's claim that human being can be evaluated in the same way that plants and non-human animals are evaluated.
Or consider the roots of an oak tree. (46) What makes them good roots? In virtue of what do they have this evaluative/normative property? They are good because they are robust, not stunted; they go deep and wide in search of water and nutrients; they do not remain near the surface or near the tree. They are good because they are healthy. They are healthy because they preserve the oak in existence so that it can contribute to the propagation of the species. Bad roots, then, are defective roots.
So evaluative properties are 'rooted in' -- pun intended! -- factual, empirically discernible, characteristics of living things. (The empirical detectability of normative properties makes Foot a cognitivist in meta-ethics.) The vitality of the roots and their goodness are one in reality. We can prise apart the factual from the evaluative mentally, but in reality there is no distinction. Foot does not say this in so many words, but surely this is what her position implies. Somehow, the factual and the normative are one. No dichotomy, split, dualism -- leastways, not in reality outside the mind. The health of the roots and their goodness are somehow the same. This sameness, like the notion of a species, is not entirely pellucid.
Note, however, that this monism is purchased in the coin of an extramental dualism, namely, that between species and specimen. The normative properties are 'inscribed' in the species if you will. A three-legged cat is a defective cat, but still a cat: it is is a defective specimen of its species. The generic generalization 'Cats are four-legged' cannot be refuted by adducing a three-legged cat. This is because 'cat' in the Aristotelian categorical, or generic generalization, is about the species, or, as Foot also writes, the life form of the species, which is distinct from any and all of its specimens. The species is normative for its specimens.
In sum, the sameness or 'monism' of normative and factual properties presupposes the dualism of species and specimen.
A Tenable View?
One problem I mentioned earlier: the notion of a species is exceedingly murky. But at the moment something else makes me nervous.
For Foot life is the ultimate principle of evaluation, physical life, natural life, the life of material beings in space and time, mortal life, life that inevitably loses in the battle against death. So the goodness of a human action or disposition is "simply a fact about a given feature of a certain kind of living thing." (5) Badness, then, is natural defect and this goes for humans too: "moral defect is a form of natural defect." (27) It follows that a moral defect in a person is never a spiritual defect, but in every case a natural defect. The good man is the healthy man, the well-functioning man, where moral health is just a kind of natural health. But the health of a healthy specimen derives from its exercise of its proper function which is dictated by its species. A healthy specimen is one that serves its species. A good tiger is a good predator, and woe to you if you a member of a species that is prey to such a predator. The tiger's job is to eat you and to be a good tiger he must do his job well. And so it seems that a good Aryan man would then be a man who serves the Aryan race by developing all his faculties so that he can most effectively secure the Lebensraum and such that he needs, not just to survive, but to flourish, and above all to procreate and propagate, and woe to you if you are a member of weaker race, a Slavic race, say, fit to be slaves of a master race. As a member of a race incapable of exercising to the full the virtues (powers) of a characteristic member of a master race, one is then, naturally, sub-human, an Untermensch. A Mensch, to be sure, but a defective Mensch, and because naturally defective, or at least naturally inferior, then naturally bad.
This appears to be a consequence of taking life to the the ultimate principle of evaluation.
At this point the fans of Foot are beginning to scream in protest. But my point here is not to smear Foot, but to explore her kind of meta-ethical naturalism. Actually, I am just trying to understand it. But to understand a position you have to understand what it entails. There is philosophy-as-worldview and philosophy-as-inquiry. This is the latter. My intent is not polemical.
Foot's naturalism seems to imply a sort of anti-individualism and anti-personalism. Foot views the individual human being as an organism in nature, objectivistically, biologically, from an external, third-person point of view. She sees a man, not as a person, a subject, but as a specimen of a species, an instance of a type, whose value it tied necessarily to fulfilling the demands of the type. She also seems to be suggesting that one's fulfillment as a human being necessarily involves living in and through and for the species, like a good Gattungswesen.
So even if a position like Foot's has the resources to prevent a slide into eugenics, or into the sort of racism that would justify slavery and the exploitation of the naturally inferior, there is still the troubling anti-personalism of it.
How then could a monk's choice of celibacy for himself be a morally good choice? Presumably only if it contributes to the flourishing of the human species. But suppose our monk is not a scientist, or any other benefactor of humanity, but a hermit wholly devoted to seeking union with God. Could Foot's framework accommodate the goodness of such a life choice? It is not clear to me how. It would seem that the choice to become a celibate monk or nun who lives solely for union with God would have to be evaluated on a Footian meta-ethics as morally bad, as a defective life choice. The implication would seem to be that such a person has thrown his life away.
Now of course that would be the case if there is no God. But suppose that God and the soul are real. Could a Footian stance accommodate the moral choiceworthiness of the eremitic monk's choice on that assumption? It is not clear to me how.
Suppose that God and the soul exist, and that the ultimate goal of human life is happiness with God. Now suppose that the goal of the life of monks and nuns is not only their own happiness in union with God, but in bringing as many people as they can to Him. They offer their lives in prayer, fasting, and celibacy for the entire world so that God will offer grace to the world on account of the supplications and penance of these same monks and nuns. It seems to me that in such a case the lives of these monks and nuns would be morally good lives on Foot's terms. Now, if God and the soul did not exist then these lives would be pointless and on Foot's view most likely bad lives. But, if God and the soul didn't exist we wouldn't need Foot's analysis to tell us that these aforementioned lives are pointless and most likely morally bad.
Posted by: Christian | Tuesday, December 06, 2016 at 01:34 PM
Dear BV,
I think your point about racism and master races/ slaves is really off point. All human beings share in the same nature. There may be different people groups but they are of one nature. There's no way you can glean racism from such an account. If someone wants to come along and say 'we are a superior race' etc. then that's a problem, but it does not follow as a consequence from Foot's naturalism.
I still find your characterization of this dualism or dichotomy, between an individual and the species to which it belongs a bit puzzling. I take a very Aristotelian interpretation of Foot here. A thing's nature, or species, is not something separate from the individual. On the contrary, a thing's nature or essence simply is what that thing is, for Aristotle. There's no dichotomy or dualism here. All individuals under the same species share that same nature, but that nature is not something apart from the individuals themselves. Whether you find Aristotle's moderate realist position coherent or not is beside the point.
It seems like your beef with Foot is really a beef with Aristotle. Or maybe the problem is Foot is not Aristotelian enough!
Posted by: Thomas | Tuesday, December 06, 2016 at 02:51 PM
As far as I can see this just takes the case for fitness as an objective observable and levies as some sort of objective basis of moral value. But it really looks a lot more like fitness, anyway. An oak tree that can force its roots down further is simply more fit for survival. There can be little doubt that fitness has *value*, but can it sustain any other implications beyond what we understand from mere fitness?
It's ironic that this takes us no further than the Greek "arete" which stood for a pragmatic sort of good for the Greeks as well, and can be equally be translated "the Good" as "expedient". Whether or not it can support "high moral value" seems always to have been a matter of opinion.
It's interesting, but the harder epiphenomenalist in me sees it as pretty much the same effect as hand-waving.
Posted by: John J Cassidy | Tuesday, December 06, 2016 at 08:36 PM
Thank you for introducing me to Gattungswesen. ‘Gattung’ seems to be more ‘genus’ than ‘species’, although that distinction is murky. ‘Wesen’ is (a?) being, thus ‘species’ being’ or ‘genus’ being’. Does this originate with Marx? According to Wikipedia, with Feuerbach. There is also this interesting quote from Capital:
Posted by: Opponent | Wednesday, December 07, 2016 at 05:24 AM
Opponent,
Gattungswesen is usually translated as 'species-being.'
Here is how Marx defined species being in the 1844 Manuscripts: "To say that man is a species being, is, therefore, to say that man raises himself above his own subjective individuality, that he recognizes in himself the objective universal, and thereby transcends himself as a finite being. Put another way, he is individually the representative of mankind." "Man is a species-being, not only because he practically and theoretically makes the species – both his own and those of other things – his object, but also – and this is simply another way of saying the same thing – because he looks upon himself as the present, living species, because he looks upon himself as a universal and therefore free being." (2) "The animal is immediately one with its life activity; it is that activity. Man makes his life activity itself an object of his will and consciousness. He has conscious life activity. It is not a determination with which he directly merges. Conscious life activity directly distinguishes man from animal life activity. Only because of that is he a species-being."(3) "It is therefore in his fashioning of the objective that man really proves himself to be a species-being. Such production is his active species-life. Through it nature appears as his work and his reality. The object of labour is therefore the objectification of the species-life of man: for man reproduces himself not only intellectually, in his consciousness, but actively and actually, and he can therefore contemplate himself in a world he himself has created. In tearing away the object of his production from man, estranged labour therefore tears away from him his species-life, his true species-objectivity, and transforms his advantage over animals into the disadvantage that his inorganic body, nature, is taken from him."(4)
Source: http://internationalist-perspective.org/IP/ip-archive/ip_43_species-being.html
Posted by: BV | Wednesday, December 07, 2016 at 06:52 AM
Hi Bill,
Another consequence of Foot's view would seem to be that anyone disabled or in the alphabet brigade (lgbqt...) would be defective and therefore bad in some moral sense. This seems to be more extreme than Swinburne's view since I think he does not take the step from disability to bad in a moral sense.
Whether this consequence of her view is an advantage to her theory is another question.
Posted by: Tony Hanson | Wednesday, December 07, 2016 at 07:06 AM
John Cassidy,
Well said. Your concerns are my concerns. 'Virtue' blends the factual and the normative, when the Moorean in me resists the blending. If one identifies the good with pleasure or power or any empirically detectable property, one can always, and apparently sensibly, ask: But is pleasure good? Is power good?
Posted by: BV | Wednesday, December 07, 2016 at 03:06 PM
Thanks for the response, Thomas. Your challenge is a reasonable one; I don't know if I can meet it. But my thought was that if life is taken as the ultimate standard, then in our case that will be human life. But human beings come in different races. One cannot be a human being but not be a Caucasian or an Asian or a black or. . . If I try to buy fruit I find that I cannot buy fruit: I can buy only apples, or oranges or kumquats or . . . While racial classifications and theories are social constructs, what they attempt to classify, correctly or incorrectly, are not social constructs but biological realities.
So that makes me a race realist. So if you assimilate human goodness to fitness for survival, dominance, and propagation, then this will specify down to white fitness for survival, dominance, and propagation, etc. or Asian fitness, etc. Again, this is because one cannot be a human being in general. In my case I am Caucasian of Italian extraction and of course I am a particular biological individual, not a Caucasion of Italian extraction in general.
So I think an Aristotelian approach like that of Foot may give aid and comfort to a a from of racism that could justify slavery.
So yes, my beef is ultimately with Aristotle. His phil. anthropology is objectivistic, mine is personalist.
I also think my personalism aligns better with Judeo-Christianity according to which man alone is made in the image of God: man alone is a spiritual being. It also aligns with certain strains in existentialism. For Aristotle man is a rational animal, an animal with a difference. For Heidegger, man is Da-Sein.
But this is a very long story.
Kant too is on my side against Aristotle. Each individual human has a dignity and worth apart from all empirical differences. But then Kant was influenced by Xianity.
Posted by: BV | Wednesday, December 07, 2016 at 03:34 PM
I'll give it a try.
It's in our species nature to cognize and the like. But actual acquired knowledge, truths, etc., are something that one has as an individual, or a community has as an individual community, on the basis of actual experience. If biological evolution itself is analogous to a trial-and-error learning process, it depends on individuals' heritable changes analogous to possible learnings, hopeful monsters, etc., tested by selective pressures, under sometimes changing conditions; the organism's functions or culminal goods (exploitation, reproduction, homeostasis) are shaped by evolution to promote a lineage, a species, an ecosystem, or the like - some bigger or longer-term good confirmed over time at least till conditions change. This goes one's beyond being merely a specimen of a kind (or, for that matter, a portion of a total population, or an instance of a physical or mechanical law). A person or community of people, as if they were evolution enhanced by intelligence, can go even farther beyond culminative ends or effects (associated with pleasure in higher animals), to imagine, anticipate, notice, or remember final states or entelechies, in terms of unintended outcomes, outcomes better or worse than intended, conflicts of values, questions of what really is good in the bigger or longer-term view, and the like, in cognized structures of checks and balances in which to adjust both means and ends. Here the question is not just of what is good but of what is true, sound, wise, etc., which in philosophy are generically questions not of axiology but of logic, epistemology, philosophy of science, and probably more. If the true, sound, wise, etc., are accounted as kinds of good, they are still not the generic good and they complicate any purely species- or kind-based axiology of intelligent, self-controlled, self-modifiable individuals and communities. I think that what I'm saying is that personalism as opposed to species-ism or kind-ism, in order to see an individual as no mere specimen of a species, needs to look also to one's relation to truth and entelechy rather than only to one's relation to good and (culminal) ends. What individuals and individual communities learn and discover can modify their whole kind and kind's ends (well, not completely, but somewhat). Scholastics such as Aquinas saw the intellect as related to truth, the appetite as related to good, so what I'm saying doesn't seem too radical, although my paralleling that to a distinction between entelechy and culminative end seems unusual.
Posted by: Ben Udell | Thursday, December 08, 2016 at 08:40 AM
First, as light entertainment, I am updating Marx’s sexist and politically incorrect language to some thing more less inappropriate.
More seriously, and hopefully on topic, I wonder if we should agree with Marx’s main point, which is that the division of labour estranges man from his own being.Modern consumerism is built on division of labour and the incredible benefits it in brings in terms of efficiency. The cost is (1) that each person makes only a small part of the goods they are producing. Think of the person on the production line making radiators for cars, and (2) they might not even want or like the goods they are making. Perhaps the person on the production line doesn’t drive, and hates cars. Marx sees this as a sort of alienation from one’s own being. I am particularly tempted by his view at Christmas. If I do watch television I am distracted by a series of adverts for things that I cannot believe people want, but clearly do. Is this stuff our species-being?
So if the goodness of a human action, i.e. mass production, ‘simply a fact about a given feature of a certain kind of living thing’, and if this mass production itself is the fact in question, then I must look on the stuff on TV, which is basically sh*t, as intrinsically good. Indeed, if it is a form of alienation from our own being, how can it be good. Alternatively, we could view mass production and consumerism as intrinsically evil, so if Foot is correct, something has gone badly wrong: there is some natural defect in consumerism. But how do we make sense of that?
Perhaps I have misunderstood Foot – I am writing this in haste.
Posted by: Opponent | Friday, December 09, 2016 at 07:00 AM
On the individual/species distinction, here is some more unPC stuff from Arthur.
The point that an individual may be completely unconscious of their species-being is interesting.Posted by: Opponent | Friday, December 09, 2016 at 07:07 AM
The elusive chapter 44 is to be found here, and is rewarding.
This explains my puzzlement with Christmas television and the advertisements which consist almost entirely in selling perfume, the purpose of which is to make a woman desire the man who has bought it for her, and at the same time use the perfume to make other men desire her. The perfume is very expensive, 99% of the cost of which is marketing. So the perfume is our species-being. Which is as it should be, if Schopenhauer is correct.Posted by: Opponent | Friday, December 09, 2016 at 07:27 AM