A New Basis for Moral Philosophy

Keekok Lee

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000066630
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Ethics & Moral Philosophy

Originally published in 1985, this book establishes that moral discourse is critical, rational and objective and challenges the ideology of value irrationalism behind contemporary liberalism. The book discusses the origins of the fact/value distinction, and calls into question the thesis that logical derivability or strict implication is the only legitimate relationship between propositions. A straightforward philosophical treatment of the subject, in the analytical tradition, it will be especially useful for undergraduate students.

I

THE SOURCES OF THE FACT/ VALUE DISTINCTION

The Naturalistic Fallacy is considered to be the biggest single obstacle to any attempt to argue for a rational basis to ethics or for the possibility of naturalism. Without going into the fine details of scholarship about its provenance, suffice it to say that meta-ethics today cites at least the following authorities, which roughly historically sequenced are: Hume, Moore, logical positivism, the first wave of language analysis, ethical relativism based on the ‘form of life’ argument (constituting the second wave of Wittgenstein’s insights in the Investigations). The first six sections of this chapter briefly assess each of these influences, while section 7 will concentrate on the Naturalistic Fallacy as it is shaped and structured by the demand of formal logic in terms of logical derivability or strict implication which is shown as part of the positivist influence at work in moral discourse. Sections 8 and 9 will look at some recent attempts to combat this influence.

1 HUME

Naturalism (in ethics) seems to maintain that moral properties, although logically distinct from natural properties, are, nevertheless, entailed by them. In a naturalistic argument, Hume says that the premises contain ‘is’ propositions, while the conclusion contains an ‘ought’ proposition, which is a new term not already contained in the premises. It is analogous to his argument against induction – in an inductive argument, the premises refer to specific events, events which have happened or are happening, yet the conclusion refers to all events of a certain kind, including future events. Such an argument is defective. There is a logical gap between the premises and the conclusion.

As a general argument, however, it seems to prove too much. If Hume’s complaint is taken to mean that the ‘ought’ is illegitimate because it introduces a new relation, then as Swinburne¹ has pointed out, by the same token nearly all philosophical reasoning is defective since it is of the essence of philosophy to try to derive new relations from old. Philosophers deduce that God exists from the observation that the world is orderly (design argument); that mind exists because people think, say and do things in certain ways, etc. Now these deductions may not be convincing upon closer scrutiny for other reasons (such as, that the world is orderly, may already embody seeing the world through the eyes of a benevolent creator), but to rule out all such deductions would rule out all philosophising along that mode. This would be in keeping with Hume’s out and out scepticism.

However, scepticism as a philosophical position may itself have to rely on that very mode of operation in order to formulate its own thesis and to make its point against those it is criticising. For instance, if part of Hume’s evidence for saying that no attempt at deriving ‘ought’ from ‘is’ could be successful is his demolition of such attempts already made, then he too might be accused of introducing a new relation in his conclusion.

It is important to note that Hume’s ethical scepticism is part of his general scepticism and of his empiricist epistemology and ontology. Other minds, material objects and values are problematic, since one is not confronted directly by them in sensory experience. One may know them via less problematic modes of existence like behaviour, sense data, feelings of pleasure or pain, etc. However, such a method of grappling with the problematic is basically flawed, since there is a logical gap between the conclusion (that ‘X exists’ or ‘X is real’) and the evidence profferred for its existence or reality. Hence the mind/body, the material object/ sense data, the inductive, the is/ought gaps.

To emphasise the unity of thought in Hume is significant for the following reasons: (1) this gap-problem arises within the empiricist/positivist tradition and is unlikely to be solved within it; (2) that a selective piecemeal attempt to meet Hume’s sceptical challenge may give rise to inconsistencies – some philosophers have tried to sidestep his problem of induction, or other minds, for example, but have not seen fit to object to his indictment of ethical values. On the contrary, they have welcomed it whilst fiercely resisting him in other areas of cognitive discourse. Those who invoke Hume nowadays in moral philosophy do not wish to have any truck with his general sceptical onslaught. They are happy to take it seriously only in the sphere of moral discourse. This is odd (the basis of this reaction will be examined in Chapter Six) as the different instantiations of the gap-problem all come from the same stable. As a result, one powerful strand of contemporary philosophical orthodoxy takes for granted that while scepticism with regard to facts is intellectually uncomfortable and suspect, scepticism with regard to values is de rigueur. This saves science but sacrifices values with no hint of unease. However, this book wishes to argue that the asymmetry created between facts and values is unjustified, that the correct way to meet Hume’s challenge is a wholesale rejection of the terms with which he presents his general gap-problem, namely, the basic assumption that the relationship of logical derivability is the only wholesome, legitimate logical (and hence rational) relationship that may obtain between any two or more propositions. If p is not deducible from q, then p is problematic, uncertain or irrationally held. This presupposition will be examined in detail later on in the chapter.

2 MOORE

While Hume’s sceptical spectre haunts contemporary Western philosophy, yet as far as meta-ethics is concerned within the broadly English-speaking tradition, it is G. E. Moore who has by far exercised a more profound influence upon its development in the last seventy-five years than may be said to be good for it. Moore’s single most devastating argument is said to be the Open-Question Argument. He used it to show how Mill (utilitarianism), Social Darwinism as well as those who wish to anchor ethics in theology failed to pass the test he proposed, and thereby failed to provide an objective basis to their respective ethical systems. The argument consists of saying that it always makes sense to ask of the definiens which seeks to define the notion ‘good’ whether it itself is good. Thus, if Mill is taken to be defining ‘good’ in terms of pleasure in the proposition ‘pleasure is good’, if the Social Darwinists are defining ‘good’ in terms of ‘evolutionary success’, and theologically inclined ethical theorists in terms of ‘what God commands’, then it is meaningful to ask the question ‘Is pleasure good?’, or ‘Is what is evolutionarily successful good?’ or Ts what God commands good?’. Since the meaningfulness of these questions cannot be denied, Moore then concluded that all the three attempts cited failed to give what he called a correct definition of the term ‘good’. For Moore a correct definition is such that there is an exact equivalence between the definiens and the definiendum, so that it would be nonsensical to ask of the definiens, for example, ‘a figure of three sides’, whether it is a ‘triangle’, which is the definiendum in the profferred definition – ‘a triangle is a figure of three sides’.

Moore seemed to have been obsessed with definitions and, moreover, definitions of a peculiarly limited and special kind. Firstly, his paradigm of a correct definition is confined solely to what may be called ‘closed’ terms which may obtain in mathematical formal systems. The only test for such systems is that of internal consistency. The terms themselves need never be physically interpreted, and hence never face the problems which interpreted terms with applications to the world outside the formal framework of symbols have to face. In ethics, it is obvious that one’s interest is not in formal systems with uninterpreted terms; hence an argument which gets its point by assuming closed terms as a paradigm of a correct definition seems to be less than relevant to an inquiry whose basic concepts are not closed in the way required. Secondly, his paradigm also indicates that he had in mind either lexicographical or stipulative definition. The former reports how in current usage a term is defined. The latter lays down how someone proposes to use a term even if it is not so used at present. ‘A triangle is a figure of three sides’ is both a stipulative and a lexical definition. Ethics, in so far as it is concerned with the provision of definitions, is not interested in either of these types, since in the end they deal purely with verbal linguistic matters. Instead it is concerned with ‘real’ definitions,² something which, to be very charitable to Moore, he could be said to be vaguely grasping at implicitly, but if so, he grasped it in such an unsatisfactory manner that in the end it led him to postulate the existence of simple non-natural properties in terms of which ‘good’ is to be analysed. Moore wavered between being a ‘modernist’ in the sense of turning all philosophical matters into verbal linguistic matters (he is often acknowledged as one of the founding fathers of the analytical approach even though no one could be sure whether it was common language or common sense he was analysing) and being a ‘traditionalist’, of invoking the metaphysics of logical atomism which was fashionable at the time as the basis of analysis. The postulation of simple non-natural properties seems more properly to belong to the latter sphere of preoccupation.

Frankena³ showed nearly forty years ago that the Naturalistic Fallacy is neither a fallacy nor is it naturalistic. From the examples Moore used, it is clear he believed not only that Mill and the Social Darwinists have committed it, since ‘pleasure’ and ‘evolutionary success’ refer to what may be ‘natural’ matters, but also those who give a transcendent underpinning to ethics. God (a theistic deity) can hardly be said to be a natural term, since by definition it is transcendent. So the attribute ‘naturalistic’ cannot be taken seriously. But if even transcendent terms are not admissible, then Moore must be referring to another fallacy, what Frankena called the definist fallacy – Butler’s dictum ‘Everything is as it is and not another thing’ which he cited approvingly on the front page of the Principia Ethica. According to this fallacy, it is inadmissible to define one term in terms of another, unless the first can be completely reduced to the second so that they can be used interchangeably, and the definiendum becomes a shorthand for the definiens. It is, however, unwise to go along with this fallacy, since it would rule out all attempts to define terms outside such narrow confines.

Moore’s limited conception of definition and his hankering for the metaphysics of logical simples, the distinction between simple and complex, that between natural and non-natural which focused on the unfortunate example of the differences between ‘yellow’ and ‘good’, set modern moral philosophy off on a course chasing numerous red herrings. From this point of view, one is not sure if the influence of Moore on moral philosophy in the long run can be said to be salutary, although the problem about the ‘is/ought’ distinction he raised is a genuine problem. However, the way he presented it, and the arguments he put forward, took their colour so much from his other presuppositions, that they could only be said to hold, if these presuppositions survived challenge, which they appear not to have done.

But once challenged, the Open-Question Argument is then no longer the lethal weapon it claims itself to be in demolishing all attempts to put ethics on a rational basis. His emphasis on his paradigm of a correct definition misconstrued what ethical theorists like Mill and others were attempting to do. They were trying to lay down what for them is the fundamental criterion or postulate for their system. They did not see themselves providing either a lexical or stipulative definition of the term ‘good’. To the Social Darwinists, it is self-evident that what is evolutionarily successful is good. Mill did not fall back on self-evidence, and also admitted that such a principle is not susceptible to proof in the strict sense. (For details of Mill’s position, see Chapter Six.) This might make the system unsatisfactory to one who might like to get at a more rational basis for an ethical system than self-evidence or something not susceptible to proof in the strict sense; and its unsatisfactory nature in this respect might be cited by others as yet another attempt to build a rational ethic coming to grief. But to criticise thus is to use a different argument from that of the Open-Question Argument.

Moreover, Moore himself in the end was doing no more than what Mill had done – namely, to lay down the fundamental postulate of his own ethical system. Moore too, like Mill, could not provide any strict proof that love, friendship and aesthetic experiences rather than pleasure constitute the good. Both theories are teleological and utilitarian. Moore may be said to be an ideal utilitarian; and so too, may Mill, as his conception of utility is clearly non-Benthamite and non-hedonistic and can easily encompass within his account of the good the Moorean states of mind. There is an overlap in their moral visions. Consequently the stricture against Mill that he has committed the Naturalistic Fallacy applies with equal force against Moore’s own account. If there is something fishy about the leap from ‘pleasure is desired’ to ‘pleasure is good’, there is something equally fishy about the leap from ‘certain states of mind are desired’ to ‘certain states of mind are good’. Pace Frankena, one may rescue both arguments from the attack by pointing out that they only appear deficient because they are enthymemes, and go on to supply the suppressed premise in each case, namely, ‘what is desired is good’. At this point, Moore would fall back on intuition should the critic query the basis of that missing premise. But if Moore were to choose to regard it as a definition, then it would fail to pass his own Open-Question Argument test, as it clearly makes sense to ask whether what is desired is good.

The Principia Ethica may be assessed in the following ways: (1) in the context of Moore’s own thought; and (2) in the context of the influence upon the development of moral philosophy.⁴ With regard to the former, it appears to be consonant with Moore’s general philosophical eagerness to defend commonsense beliefs and common language against sceptical attack. He tried to provide a proof that he had knowledge of the external world, by holding up both hands and uttering ‘Here are two hands’ – therefore there are at least two material objects, and therefore, an external world exists or is real. His ploy lies in maintaining that any proposition embodying the sceptic’s reasons for doubting the truth of the proposition that he, G. E. Moore, had two hands, is less certainly true than the proposition itself. In other words he was merely reaffirming the claim that he had knowledge of the external world in the face of the sceptic’s reasons for doubting such knowledge. In the same way, in the face of the sceptic’s reasons for doubting moral knowledge, Moore equally affirmed the claim that he knew that certain mental states are ethically good. Analogous to the holding up of hands in the proof of an external world is the ‘pointing to’ or intuiting of certain desired mental states.

This unified attempt to meet the sceptic’s challenge may provoke one of two unfavourable responses: (a) the sceptic may not be over-impressed by the nature of the ‘proof’ in both instances; or (b) neither might the non-sceptic who shares Moore’s desire to surmount the sceptical hurdles, but who, nevertheless, believes that the mere re-affirmation of commonsense beliefs or the deliverances of intuition would not do, and who may wish to argue for the possibility of holding commonsense beliefs in a more critical manner.

The parallel efforts on Moore’s part to defend both commonsense beliefs about the external world and moral beliefs is obscured by his attack on Mill, the Social Darwinists and others via the Naturalistic Fallacy. This might give the misleading impression that he was on the side of moral scepticism. But actually he thought that his analysis of ‘good’ as a simple non-natural term would enable him to avoid the Naturalistic Fallacy to which Mill and others fell prey, and to surmount scepticism at the same time. However, those who claim themselves to be influenced by the Principia Ethica simply regard it as setting the scene in the English-speaking world of moral philosophy this century, for the bifurcation of facts and values and for moral scepticism. Philosophers would tend to applaud Moore for his attempt to give a ‘proof’ of the external world, even though they might not think much of it as a proof (but they would agree that he was right to have tried), but at the same time equally applaud the Naturalistic Fallacy without perceiving any inconsistency whatsoever in so doing.⁵ As a result it is taken for granted today that the Principia Ethica is the starting point of the growth of modern meta-ethics, a meta-ethics which legislates out of court any attempt to provide a critical basis for moral beliefs, apart from the constraint of consistency which it may permit.⁶

3 LOGICAL POSITIVISM AND ITS POLEMICAL HEYDAY

This meta-ethics was later explicitly reinforced by the arrival of logical positivism on English soil when A. J. Ayer brought the good news belatedly from Vienna. Although the actual form of the thesis might be hailed as new, the spirit of positivism itself was not.⁷ As is commonly acknowledged, logical positivism may be regarded as a linguistic refinement of empiricism. Its explicit aim is to render science philosophically respectable, an...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• I The Sources of the Fact/Value Distinction
• II The Consequences of Strict Implication
• III The Notion of Epistemic Implication
• IV Application and Testing of Epistemic Implication
• V The Philosophical Domain of Ordinary Knowledge
• VI Fact and Value within Contemporary Liberalism
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index