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Reassuring Ourselves of the Reality of Ethical Reasons: What McDowell Should Take from Foot’s Ethical Naturalism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 September 2009

Steven Hendley
Steven Hendley*
Affiliation:
Birmingham-Southern College
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Abstract

ABSTRACT: In this paper I argue that John McDowell’s objections to Philipa Foot’s ethical naturalism do not justify a rejection of her views, but only clarifies what we can defensibly take from her position. Moreover, his comments suggest a way in which Foot’s naturalism may help to secure the realism McDowell defends in his own work. In seeing how Foot’s naturalism can reassure us of the reality of ethical reasons, we can understand how McDowell needs something like Foot’s naturalism in order to redeem his own realist aspirations for ethics.

RÉSUMÉ : Dans cet article, je démontre que les objections de John McDowell au naturalisme éthique de Phillipa Foot ne justifient pas le rejet de ses opinions, mais ne font qu’éclaircir ce que nous pouvons défendre dans sa position. En outre, les commentaires de McDowell présentent une manière suivant laquelle le naturalisme de Foot peut aider à affermir le réalisme que McDowell défend dans sa propre œuvre. En notant comment le naturalisme de Foot est en mesure de défendre la réalité des raisons éthiques, nous pouvons comprendre comment McDowell soit invoquer quelque chose comme le naturalisme de Foot pour satisfaire à ses propres aspirations réalistes en éthique.

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Articles
Information
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 48 , Issue 3 , September 2009 , pp. 513 - 537
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 2009

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References

Notes

1 Philippa Foot, “Rationality and Goodness,” in Modern Moral Philosophy, ed. Anthony O’Hear, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 1.

2 See Philippa Foot, Natural Goodness (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 27–30. For Thompson’s work, see his “Apprehending Human Form” in Modern Moral Philosophy, 47–74.

3 See Foot’s reference to Elizabeth Anscombe’s account of making and keeping promises in Foot’s Natural Goodness, 45–46.

4 Though Foot recognizes that what it means for a human being to live well cannot be reduced to survival and reproduction, she is somewhat vague about precisely what other factors should be considered, stressing primarily the diversity of human goods. (see Natural Goodness, 42–4) Rosalind Hursthouse gives this idea greater specification in identifying four ends by which we can evaluate whether or not “more sophisticated animals” live well: (1) individual survival, (2) the continuance of the species, (3) characteristic pleasure or enjoyment/characteristic freedom from pain and, for social animals, (4) the good functioning of the social group (in On Virtue Ethics [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999], 200–1). Though this list could surely stand to be fleshed out, it seems precise enough to enable us to intuitively consider how certain forms of behaviour might facilitate our capacity to live well in a way which is natural for us.

5 See Foot, “Rationality and Goodness,” 8–11.

6 John McDowell, “Two Sorts of Naturalism,” in Virtues and Reasons (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 154; also see 151–5. It should be noted here that McDowell’s essay was written before the publication of Foot’s Natural Goodness. Since the position he targets in “Two Sorts of Naturalism” just is the basic position Foot elaborates in her later book, the essay can still be said to provide a critical perspective onto the view advanced by Foot there. But there are obviously aspects of her more fully elaborated position that he would not have had access to at the time.

7 McDowell, “Two Sorts of Naturalism,” 170–1.

8 See McDowell, “Two Sorts of Naturalism,” 168.

9 John McDowell, “Projection and Truth in Ethics,” in Mind, Value and Reality (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998), 156.

10 McDowell, “Two Sorts of Naturalism,” 164.

11 See John McDowell, “Reply to Gibson, Byrne and Brandom,” in Perception, ed. Enrique Villanueva (Atascadero, CA: Ridgeview, 1996), 285.

12 McDowell, “Two Sorts of Naturalism,” 171. Also see John McDowell, Mind and World (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996), 84.

13 Ibid., 172.

14 Ibid., 173.

15 Ibid.

16 McDowell stresses this aspect of Aristotle’s conception of virtue in “Two Sorts of Naturalism,” 150.

17 See John McDowell, “Values and Secondary Qualities,” in Morality and Objectivity: A Tribute to J. L. Mackie, ed. T. Honderich (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985), 111–2, 118.

18 Ibid., 119.

19 See Simon Blackburn, “Errors and the Phenomenology of Values,” in Morality and Objectivity: A Tribute to J. L. Mackie, ed. T. Honderich (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985), 17.

20 See Simon Blackburn, Ruling Passions (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), 97–9.

21 Ibid., 78.

22 “Conventionalism” may not be the best word to use here since it can have a range of different connotations. I use it more as a term of convenience to merely reference an understanding of our ethical practices which does not clearly distinguish them from obviously conventional practices, such as a game which might be played differently or even not at all.

23 Michael Thompson, Life and Action (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008), 189.

24 See McDowell, “Two Sorts of Naturalism,” 173. This point was raised by one of the anonymous referees on the paper.

25 This curious rule or, better, lack of a rule became evident in the last play of Super Bowl XLIII when Larry Fitzgerald, a wide receiver for the Arizona Cardinals, tackled James Harrison, a linebacker for the Pittsburgh Steelers, after he intercepted the ball (making Fitzgerald a defensive player at that point in the play), having run most of the length of the field out of bounds to catch Harrison. Needless to say, the rule which permits this came in for much Neurathian style criticism from Steelers fans after the game.

26 I owe the basic idea behind these last two paragraphs to one of the anonymous referees on the paper.

27 McDowell, “Two Sorts of Naturalism,” 155.

28 Foot, Natural Goodness, 30.

29 Ibid., 34.

30 Hursthouse, On Virtue Ethics, 173–4.

31 It might, of course, not merely be a stroke of good luck but, for instance, a specific genetic constitution that enables such smokers to live long and healthy lives. In this case, we would want to make an exception to our judgment that people generally should not smoke in order to live long and healthy lives in order to take account of the genetic variance in the population. But assuming the genetic trait is relatively rare, our advice would still be generally well taken. More on natural goodness and variance within a population shortly.

32 McDowell, “Two Sorts of Naturalism,” 153–5.

33 Ibid., 155.

34 Foot, Natural Goodness, 108.

35 Ibid., 29.

36 I owe the basic outline of this example to one of the anonymous referees on the paper who posed it in an objection.

37 See McDowell, “Two Sorts of Naturalism,” 173.

38 Hursthouse, On Virtue Ethics, 189.

39 Ibid., 182.

40 Ibid., 188.

41 Ibid., 189.

42 See, for instance, Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976); Robert Frank, Passions Within Reason (W. W. Norton and Company, 1988); Elliot Sober and David Sloan Wilson, Unto Others: The Evolution and Psychology of Unselfish Behaviour (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999); Herbert Gintis, “Strong Reciprocity and Human Sociality,” Journal of Theoretical Biology 206 (2000): 169–79); and Frans de Waal, Primates and Philosophers (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006). Foot distinguishes the sense in which a trait can have a function in enabling a species to live well from the sense in which a trait can be adaptive in the sense of enabling a species to evolve: “To say that some feature of a living thing is an adaptation is to place it in the history of a species. To say that it has a function is to say that it has a place in the life of individuals that belong to that species at a certain time” (Natural Goodness, 32). But this should not preclude us from appealing to studies of how altruism can be adaptive for a species in considering whether or not it can be said to have a function in the life of a species at a particular point in time. The adaptive role altruistic sentiments can play in the evolution of a species with those sentiments may be appealed to both as evidence in favour of those sentiments having a function in the life of a species and as an explanation of how they came to have that function.

43 McDowell, “Two Sorts of Naturalism,” 150.

44 Foot, Natural Goodness, 12.

45 Thompson also discusses, in a parallel way, the justification of the rationality or goodness of dispositions as well, but the point I want to bring out here is most apparent in his discussion of the justification of a practice.

46 Thompson, Life and Action, 177.

47 See John Rawls, “Two Concepts of Rules,” The Philosophical Review 64, no. 1 (January 1955): 3–32.

48 See Thompson, Life and Action, 167, 175.

49 Foot, Natural Goodness, 47.

50 Hursthouse, On Virtue Ethics, 227–8.

51 Chrisoula Andreou, “Getting On in a Varied World,” Social Theory and Practice 32, no. 1: 68.

52 See Andreou, “Getting On in a Varied World,” 71, where she writes: “[T]he reasonable default view is that being a mixed moral type is naturally sound.”

53 See David Copp and David Sobel, “Morality and Virtue: An Assessment of Some Recent Work in Virtue Ethics,” Ethics 114 (April 2004): 527–9. In some version or other, this is a very prominent criticism in the literature. For more examples see Joseph Millum, “Natural Goodness and Natural Evil,” Ratio 19 (June 2006): 210–2 and Nicholas Everitt, “Some Problems with Virtue Theory,” Philosophy 82 (2007): 287–8.

54 See Robert Frank, Passions within Reason, especially ch. 3.

55 One must say “in part” here as our biology surely has a great deal to do with our ethical sentiments as well.

56 McDowell, “Two Sorts of Naturalism,” 173.

57 See Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1105b, 13–8.