Conceptual gerrymandering? The alignment of Hursthouse's naturalistic virtue ethics with neo-Kantian non-naturalism

Southern Journal of Philosophy

Volumn 41, Issue 4, 2003, Pages 583-600

  Rehg, William ^a   Davis, Darin ^b  

^a Saint Louis University

^b ST NORBERT COLLEGE   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 37349088976     PISSN: 00384283     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.2041-6962.2003.tb00967.x     Document Type: Article

References (53)

1. For examples of science-based naturalism, see Michael Ruse, Taking Darwin Seriously: A Naturalistic Approach to Philosophy (Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 1998)
2. Frans de Waal, Good Natured: The Origins of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other Animals (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996)
3. Paul Churchland, The Engine of Reason, the Seat of the Soul (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1995)
4. Philippa Foot, Natural Goodness (Oxford: Clarendon, 2001)
5. Christine Korsgaard, The Sources of Normativity (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 160-1, describes her neo-Kantian ethics as somewhat naturalistic
6. Soran Reader, "New Directions in Ethics: Naturalisms, Reasons and Virtue," Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 3 (2000): 342
7. See Reader, "New Directions," 342
8. McDowell, Mind, Value, and Reality (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998)
9. Hursthouse, On Virtue Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999)
10. Foot, Natural Goodness
11. For the various obstacles, see John Cottingham, "Neo-Naturalism and Its Pitfalls," Philosophy 58 (1983): 455-70
12. Cottingham sees the fact-value gap as posing the crucial test for naturalists, but naturalism also confronts a number of other challenges (see Richmond Campbell, "Sociobiology and the Possibility of Ethical Naturalism," in Morality, Reason and Truth, ed. D. Copp and D. Zimmerman [Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1984], 271-5
13. Virginia Held, "Moral Subjects: The Natural and the Normative," Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 76/2 [November 2002]: 7-24)
14. See her "Moral Realism I: Naturalism," and "Moral Realism II: Non-Naturalism," Philosophical Books 35 (1994): 145-53 and 225-33
15. G. E. Moore, Principia Ethica (Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge University Press, 1959; 1903), 39-40
16. See Charles R. Pidgin, "Naturalism," in A Companion to Ethics, ed. P. Singer (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993) 422
17. see also Moore, Principia, chap. 2
18. See, for example, Kai Nielsen, "Contemporary Nonnaturalism," Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. P. Edwards (New York: Macmillan, 1967), 3: 100-04
19. W. D. Ross continues to be quite influential in recent attempts to rescue intuitionism, e.g., David McNaughton, "Intuitionism," Blackwell Guide to Ethical Theory, ed. H. LaFollette (Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2000), 92-110
20. also Robert Audi, "Intuitionism, Pluralism, and the Foundations of Ethics," in Audi, Moral Knowledge and Ethical Character (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), chap. 2
21. Blackburn, Ruling Passions, 48-9
22. Korsgaard, Sources, 160
23. See, e.g., Nicholas L. Sturgeon, "Naturalism in Ethics," Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, gen. ed. Edward Craig (New York: Routledge, 1998), 6: 713-17, here 714
24. Cf. Campbell, "Sociobiology," 270, 278
25. Stephen Darwall, Philosophical Ethics (Boulder: Westview, 1998), chap. 3
26. James Rachels, "Naturalism," Blackwell Guide to Ethical Theory, 74-91, esp. 75-6
27. cf. also Pidgin, "Naturalism," 423-8
28. The possibilities include nonreductive ontological naturalisms as well, see Little, "Moral Realism," 146-7
29. On explanationist naturalism, see Nicholas L. Sturgeon, "Moral Explanations," in Morality, Reason and Truth, chap. 2
30. also Audi, "Ethical Naturalism and the Explanatory Power of Moral Concepts," in Moral Knowledge and Ethical Character, chap. 5
31. On the interconnections between ontological naturalism and moral realism, see G. Sayre-McCord, ed., Essays in Moral Realism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988)
32. see also Southern Journal of Philosophy, supplement to vol. 24 (1986)
33. See VE 212-16, 242-7
34. interest in pluralist conflict is displayed, for example, in debates that developed in reaction to John Rawls's Theory of Justice (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971)
35. See Campbell, "Sociobiology," for an attempt to rescue E. O. Wilson from such naiveté; according to Held, "Moral Subjects," a number of naturalisms simply fail to address moral questions as normative questions
36. Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. and ed. M. Gregor (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 3, trans, modified
37. Jürgen Habermas, "From Kant's 'Ideas' of Pure Reason to the 'Idealizing' Presuppositions of Communicative Action: Reflections on the De-Transcendentalized 'Use of Reason'," trans. B. Fultner, in Pluralism and the Pragmatic Turn, ed. W. Rehg and J. Bohman (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2001), chap. 1
38. On the weak transcendental approach, see Habermas, "Reply to Symposium Participants," in Habermas on Law and Democracy, ed. M. Rosenfeld and A. Arato (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 417-19
39. for Habermas's explicit antipathy to naturalism, see his "Richard Rorty's Pragmatic Turn," in Habermas, On the Pragmatics of Communication, ed. M. Cooke (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1998), 373-7
40. Habermas has recently described his theory of empirical knowledge as a nonreductive "weak naturalism," which he understands as the causal-explanatory thesis that human cognitive capacities first emerged through evolution. As an explanatory thesis, weak naturalism - whose precise implications for moral theory remain unclear - does not lead to the kind of ethical naturalism that interests us here, for it is not meant to replace normative ethics or to prescribe a normative account of moral justification; see Habermas, Wahrheit und Rechtfertigung (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1999), introduction
41. trans, into English as Truth and Justification by B. Fultner (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2003)
42. To do normative work, weak naturalism must become a moderate transcendental metaphysics; see Maeve Cooke, "Socio-Cultural Learning as a 'Transcendental Fact': Habermas's Postmetaphysical Perspective," International Journal of Philosophical Studies 9 (2001): 63-83
43. Habermas, "Discourse Ethics: Notes on a Program of Philosophical Justification," Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, trans. C. Lenhardt and S. W. Nicholsen (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1990), 46-7
44. See Habermas, "Discourse Ethics," 86ff; according to Habermas, these idealizing conditions imply a principle of universalization (U)
45. Cf. also his "A Genealogical Analysis of the Cognitive Content of Morality," in Habermas, The Inclusion of the Other, ed. C. Cronin and P. DeGreiff (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1998), 42-4
46. Besides Rawls's original position, recall Scanlon's contractualist principle, which projects an ideal of what no one could reasonably reject; T. M. Scanlon, What We Owe to Each Other (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998), 153; for Scanlon's comparison of his view with Habermas's, see 393 note 5, 395 note 18
47. For a broader critical assessment of Hursthouse's virtue ethics, see Karen Stohr and Christopher Heath Wellman, "Recent Work on Virtue Ethics," American Philosophical Quarterly 39 (2002): 49-72
48. See, e.g., Cottingham's critique of Mary Midgley's Beast and Man (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1978; rev. ed., 1995) (note 3 above)
49. McDowell, "Two Sorts of Naturalism," in Virtues and Reasons, ed. R. Hursthouse, G. Lawrence, and W. Quinn (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 70
50. reprinted in McDowell, Mind, Value, and Reality, chap. 9
51. Habermas acknowledges the moral relevance of claims about flourishing when he holds that the justification of moral norms should take into consideration the particular "value-orientations" of the participants; see his "Genealogical Analysis," 42
52. Held, "Moral Subjects." Habermas's remarks on epistemology (note 19 above) suggest a middle way that combines a weak (normative- transcendental) non-naturalism with an explanatory weak naturalism
53. For feedback on earlier versions of this paper, we thank Garth Hallett, David Solomon, George Schedler, and the participants at the Philosophical Collaborations Conference on "The Natural and the Normal," Southern Illinois University, March 1-2, 2001