Natural Law Theory: Some Features And A Bug

In a recent debate, Dr. Dustin Crummett raises several objections to natural law theory (NLT) as an account of human ethics. I’d like to briefly address these and explain why, in my view, popular versions of NLT avoid some and fall prey to others.

Objection: NLT doesn’t allow for other regarding reasons/NLT is egoistic.

Reply: According to NLT, good human action and good reasons for acting are determined by the practical dispositions proper to a happy human life. This amounts to a form of egoism if it entails that a person should perform a certain action if and only if, and because, that action serves the aim of their own happiness. 

However NLT does not require any commitment to the claim that we should perform an action because it contributes to our own happiness. Even if it is true that good actions are actions that contribute to one’s own happiness, this does not entail that actions are good *because* they contribute to this end. Additionally, NLT can allow for the possibility of good actions that lead to a great deal of suffering and harm. For instance, when presented with the opportunity to steal someone else’s food during a famine, refusing to do so might lead an individual to starve. Nevertheless, NLT can maintain that their refusal is right since it manifests an essential virtue of flourishing human life. This remains true despite the fact that, in the particular case, their action leads to immense suffering. 

Lastly, it may be true that flourishing human beings help people simply because they are in need. In this case, NLT implies that human beings should help people because they are in need. In other words, it implies that we have other-regarding reasons that are not derived from or dependent upon egoistic ends. Therefore, NLT doesn’t entail egoism and can allow for other-regarding reasons.

Objection: The NLT view of happiness/flourishing is false. Intrinsic teleology doesn’t exist and even if it did, this wouldn’t explain human ethics and morality.

Reply: Teleological judgements are an inextricable aspect of our conception of living things as such. In order to recognize something as alive, we must recognize it as engaging in (or capable of engaging in) certain vital processes such reproduction, digestion, etc. However, these processes are realized in vastly different ways depending on the life form in question. Our capacity to recognize any individual as a creature engaged in these processes depends upon recognizing it as an instance of some life form that, in good cases, brings about such processes in a particular way. 

This is why, despite their massive difference, we can recognize chimpanzee reproduction and eagle reproduction as instances of the same vital process. Furthermore, this is what enables us to recognize healthy creatures from sick or defective ones. Without a conception of what it is to be a healthy creature that is informed by the nature of the creature in question, we cannot grasp what would count as illness or injury for that creature. This implicit grasp of flourishing and defect for any living creature is the intrinsic teleological framework required by NLT. Its reality is secured by our recognition of any thing as being alive. 

Furthermore, counterfactual scenarios pose no problem for the view on their own. If it somehow turned out that we were radically defective in some way, this would simply constitute an a posteriori refutation of NLT. But if intrinsic teleology is an essential feature of human life, counterfactual scenarios where it is absent or different than it actually is are metaphysically impossible and can’t be used as evidence for the independence of ethics and teleology. 

Objection: It is unclear how NLT derives the categorical wrongness of using some faculty contrary to its end. 

Reply: One key problem facing versions of NLT that make such a claim is the fact that biological faculties as such do not clearly have any “proper end”. This follows trivially from the fact that biological faculties are not agents and cannot, on their own, be directed towards any end whatsoever. To be a good biological faculty is simply a matter of being the kind of faculty possessed by good instances of the relevant life form. If biological faculties have proper ends, these must derive from the ends that flourishing agents, according to their nature, use such faculties to achieve. Consequently, moral truths cannot be derived from any alleged “purpose” assigned to various faculties. Although the presence of a certain faculty might be explained by its role in achieving some end, being a good biological faculty is not. 

Nothing about human nature entails that there are categorical facts concerning the permissible ends for our specific biological faculties. Furthermore, even if a good human being is one which uses certain faculties in specific ways, this does not entail that using those faculties for other, “contrary” purposes constitutes a natural defect. Just like human beings can differ in many ways without being defective, a faculty can be used for many purposes without being damaged. Proponents of the so-called perverted-faculty argument have given no good reason to think that homosexual activity is a defect or that flourishing human beings use their reproductive faculties solely to reproduce. Consequently, there is no good reason to accept versions of NLT that make these assumptions.

The Case For Neo-Aristotelian Ethics

I wanted to lay out what I take to be the three main reasons to be a Neo-Aristotelian. For those who are interested in reading further, I highly recommend Reasons Without Rationalism and Knowing Right From Wrong by Kieran Setiya. 

Broadly construed, the Neo-Aristotelian approach to ethics (NA) can be characterized by the claim that ethical and moral truths are truths about the nature of a given form of life. For instance, how a human being should act is simply a matter of how a flourishing instance of human life would act. 

Neo-Aristotelianism offers the best account of the following subjects:

1. Moral-Knowledge 

A viable account of our moral-knowledge must explain how our moral attitudes are reliably and non-accidentally true. The requirement for non-accidental reliability is needed in order to avoid the possibility of a mere coincidental sort of reliability that is insufficient for knowledge. For instance, suppose I were to take a pill that randomly determined my dispositions to form certain moral attitudes. In this case, even if my moral attitudes still happened to be reliably true, they would not count as knowledge because their reliable was  merely accidental. 

To qualify as knowledge, moral truths must, in some appropriate sense, help explain why we form reliably true moral attitudes or be explained on the same basis. Many popular forms of moral naturalism and non-naturalism characterize moral truths in a way that prevents them from directly explaining our moral attitudes and, consequently, cannot adequately account for our moral knowledge.

By contrast, Neo-Aristotelianism can meet the demand for non-accidental reliability in the following way: Generic truths about the nature of a given type can provide a non-necessitating explanation for truths about tokens of that type. One truth about human nature is that human beings normally form moral attitudes that reflect the practical dispositions of a flourishing human being. Since human nature determines ethical/moral truths and explains the moral attitudes of individual humans, it is no accident that those moral attitudes are reliably true. Consequently, Neo-Aristotelianism provides a satisfactory account of moral knowledge while many popular alternatives do not. 

2. Moral Motivation

The second reason to endorse Neo-Aristotelianism is similar to the first. A core aim of any plausible ethical theory is to account for how and why moral truths as such explain our actions. An adequate theory must explain how it is possible for us to act morally because an action is the morally right thing to do. Even if an ethical theory can account for why we should act morally, it may nevertheless fail to provide a satisfactory account of why we do act morally. 

For example, suppose I have an irreducible, non-natural moral reason to help someone in need. If the only reason why I am motivated to help people in need is because humans were naturally selected to have such a motivation, then irreducible, non-natural moral reasons themselves have no impact on why we act, even when we do act for moral reasons. In other words, even if we act for the right reasons, those reasons may play no role in an explanation of our practical motivations. We should prefer a theory which explains how it is no mere coincidence that we can be motivated by our moral reasons to act. 

Neo-Aristotelian ethics provides this explanation by identifying the explanation of our practical motivations with the goodness of those motivations. The reason why an individual is moved to help someone because they are in need is, or can be, because human beings, by their nature, form such practical dispositions. Since, according to NA, acting for good reasons is just a matter of acting for reasons that a good instance of the human life form would act for, NA allows moral truths to explain why we act for good reasons.

3. The Standards Of Practical Reason

A plausible constraint on standards that determine what counts as a good F of some kind is what Kieran Setiya has called The Difference Principle:

“If Fs are a kind of G, and being a good F is not simply a matter of being an F that is a good G, there must be something in the distinctive nature of Fs to explain or illuminate the difference.”

With respect to human actions, the relevance of difference principle arises due to the fact that our motivations for acting are, at a minimum, human character traits. In the absence of further considerations, the standards for evaluating human character traits are determined by what traits are natural for human beings as such. In light of the difference principle, unless something about the nature of practical reasoning provides a unique standard for distinguishing good motivations for acting from bad motivations, they should be distinguished by appealing to human nature. In short, if NA is false, practical reason must supply a unique evaluative standard for practical motivations. The nature of practical reason provides no such unique standard, so NA is true. 

Ethical rationalists have objected to this claim on the grounds that practical reasoning as such is constitutively directed towards what agents take to be good to do. If this were the case, good practical motivations would be determined by the nature of practical reasoning as such. However, ethical rationalism is false. It is perfectly possible for an agent to act for no reason at all or for a reason they do not take to be good. For instance, I might head to the cafe because it is my lunch break. In acting because it is my lunch break, I do not need to take my reason for acting to be good. Nevertheless, I am clearly still acting intentionally. Therefore, it is not the case that practical reason is constitutively directed towards what agents take to be good to do. 

In conclusion, the difference principle, along with reflection upon the nature of practical reason, establishes that practical motivations should be evaluated, like other character traits, on the basis of human nature. Having good practical motivations and acting well are a matter of how a good human would act. 

The three points presented above provide what are, to my mind, powerful evidence in favor of Neo-Aristotelianism. By providing a unified account of moral knowledge, moral motivation, and the standards of practical reasoning, NA succeeds where many popular alternatives fail. 

The Futility Of Analytic Metaphysics

• Introduction

The aim of what follows is to clarify the ways in which metaphysics, as it is commonly practiced in contemporary analytic philosophy, is irreparably flawed. In claiming that analytic metaphysics is a flawed discipline, I do not wish to suggest that it's claims are meaningless. I do not even claim that we are not in a position to answer the questions that it raises. On the contrary, I believe that analytic metaphysicians are often in a position to know that their metaphysical views are true. The true reason why analytic metaphysics is flawed has nothing to do with the legitimacy of its answers, but rather, with the legitimacy of the questions themselves. 

Analytic metaphysics is irreparably flawed because it seeks reasons for belief where no such reasons can be provided. To the extent that we know certain metaphysical claims to be true, these truths are not known on the basis of any argument and cannot be supported by abductive theorizing. A metaphysical project which seeks to provide such things is illegitimate and its goals are unachievable. 

In order to clarify the flaws which are endemic to the contemporary metaphysical enterprise, I will discuss competing solutions to two metaphysical questions. While these discussions are inevitably simplified, their simplicity highlights the core principles which drive the debates surrounding their subject matter. By focusing on what is ultimately at issue, they clarify an irresolvable tension at the heart of analytic philosophy. 

• Causation 

Neo-Humeanism: Our beliefs about causation and laws reflect the axioms of our best scientific theory of the world. The theory that we form depends upon how our theoretical preferences are informed by the actual distribution qualities and other categorical features across space and time. (Koons & Pickavance, 2015)

Powerism: Our beliefs about causation and laws are beliefs about fundamental causal powers/dispositions and the regularities that they explain. 

Neo-Humeanism is criticized on the grounds that it renders our knowledge of causation and laws anthropocentric. It makes the facts about them depend upon our contingent theoretical preferences. By contrast, the Powerist can preserve causes and laws as objective features of the natural world, independent of our subjective characteristics. 

Both views, in their own way, attempt to provide a partial account of how the way we think about the world is related to the way the world actually is. The Neo-Humean makes objective truths about causes/laws depend on the way we think about the world. In doing so, they eliminate the gap between the way we think about causes/laws and the way causes/laws actually are. However, this solution depends upon undercutting the objectivity of our knowledge. It only succeeds to the extent that our knowledge is no longer a matter of how things are independently of our subjective characteristics. 

The Powerist avoids such an implication by insisting upon the fundamentality and mind-independence of causes/laws. In this way, they make it possible for our knowledge of causes/laws to be objective in a way that the Neo-Humean does not. But this solution also comes at a price. By making causal powers an irreducible feature of the world, powerism fails to account for the connection between the way we think about causal powers and the way causal powers actually are. Although they can ensure that, if our beliefs are true, they are beliefs about objective, mind-independent truths, they lose the Neo-Humeans ability to explain why these beliefs are, in fact, true. 

No matter which view one takes, the connection between the way we think about the world and the way the world is, independently of our thought, remains mysterious. Neither position allows us to make any progress towards establishing that our thoughts actually reflect an objective world. 

• Properties 

Nominalism: Everything is particular or concrete. 

Realism/Platonism: Some things are universal/abstract. 

Nominalism provides a secure connection between the way we think about the world and the way that the world is. According to nominalists, we do not think of things as being similar because they exemplify a common property. Rather, things are similar because we think of them in the same way. For example, the reason a Ford and Toyota are both red is because we think of each of them as being red. However, nominalism only ensures the truth of the way we think about the world by making such truth depend upon our own subjective characteristics. The way we think about the world is no longer a response to the way that the world is independently of our beliefs about it.

The realist/Platonist, by contrast, does maintain the potential for objective knowledge by 

insisting that similarities between objects are a matter of sharing common properties. But they preserve this potential by making it mysterious how our beliefs about similarities are connected to the way things actually are. Although they can ensure that, if our beliefs are true, they are beliefs about a mind-independent reality, they lose the nominalists ability to explain why these beliefs amount to knowledge. 

No matter which view one takes, the connection between the way we think about the world and the way the world is, independently of our thought, remains mysterious. Neither position allows us to make any progress towards establishing that our thoughts actually reflect an objective world. 

• Conclusion 

Each of these examples presents the way in which contemporary metaphysics is determined by our need to account for the possibility of objective knowledge. It has been shown that competing solutions for each subject can only provide partial solutions to this puzzle. In order to produce a complete account, it must be possible for these partial solutions to come together as one. However, this possibility is incompatible with the contemporary metaphysical project itself. 

To unify the partial solutions provided by opposing metaphysical views, we would require 

a conception of the world according to which our knowledge of the world is knowledge that does not depend upon our own subjective characteristics. This knowledge would also have to be informed by the way the world actually is, independently of our thought.

Analytic metaphysics depends upon drawing this distinction between the way we think about the world and the way the world is, independently of such thinking. But this distinction makes our required conception of the world impossible. If the way the world is, independently of our thinking, is what informs our beliefs about the world, it will always be mysterious why our beliefs about the world amount to knowledge. In turn, the only way to guarantee such knowledge will then be to make knowledge of the world depend upon our own subjective characteristics. Objectivity and knowledge remain apart and cannot be reconciled with one another. This metaphysical project can never aspire to anything beyond futility. 

How can this futility be overcome? If the metaphysical project is to have any hope of success, it must eliminate the distinction that led to its impossibility. In short, our knowledge of the world must be nothing other than knowledge of the way we think the world to be. It must be knowledge of thought itself. In this way, we preserve the connection between the world and the truth of our beliefs. Furthermore, we preserve the objectivity of these beliefs insofar as they do not depend on anything subjective. The very notion of subjectivity depends upon a conception of the world as something separated from thought. When this conception is abandoned, we recognize that our knowledge is informed by nothing other than reality itself. 

To adopt this necessary conception of reality is to re-introduce Absolute Idealism into our contemporary philosophical context. It's long absence has not resulted from a failure to withstand the critical examination of analytic metaphysicians. Such an examination would require abandoning the very commitments that define their subject matter. If Absolute Idealism is to return, it cannot be as a case of progress within analytic metaphysics. It must be as the overcoming of the entire discipline. 

Why I Am Not An Agnostic

The existence of God ranks among the most important mysteries that anyone can explore. Countless arguments have been made for and against God's existence over the course of human history and, despite centuries of debate, rational disagreement still remains. In light of this disagreement, it is tempting to suppose that we should refrain from drawing any strong conclusions on the matter. The lack of a belief in the existence or non-existence of God, otherwise known as agnosticism, is a position I am inclined to reject. While I do not claim that my view is the only one a reasonable person can hold, I am convinced that there are persuasive reasons to think that atheism, the belief that God does not exist, is true. 

Traditionally, atheists have appealed to the existence of evil or the apparent hiddenness of God in order to make their case. While I certainly think that there are forms of these arguments, such as the evidential argument from evil, that have substantial merit, my primary reason for rejecting theism rests upon the extraordinary power and coherence of an atheistic worldview. Specifically, progress in the empirical sciences has given us tremendous evidence that the concrete, particular things that make up our world are entirely physical. Furthermore, the arguments raised against this claim strike me as unsuccessful. 

Physicalism, the view that every concrete thing is physical, is supported by our discovery that the things we encounter in our world have all turned out to be physical things. Tables and chairs have turned out to be ultimately realized by microphysical particles, along with rocks, plants, oceans, and even ourselves. That last claim is a bit more controversial, but upon reflection, I believe it can be sustained.

One apparent difficulty for the view that we are material beings stems from the peculiar nature of our conscious lives. It seems absurd to suppose that our pains, itches, emotions, and sensory experiences can all be understood as features of the brain. However, when we focus on the way these mental phenomena influence our behavior, its hard to see how it could be otherwise. For example, we know that our pains are what cause us to move in certain ways. When we burn our fingers, we pull our hands away from the heat. But neuroscience has provided a complete explanation of this reaction in terms of activity in our brains. If our mental lives are distinct from brain activity, science gives us a reason to believe that they do not account for our behavior at all. 

But we are not forced to draw any such conclusion. Given that our mental lives influence our behavior and, as science shows, our behavior is fully explained by physical activity in the brain, the natural conclusion to draw is that our mental lives and the activity of our brains are the very same thing. This conclusion is no different from the discovery that heat is identical to certain sorts of molecular motion or the discovery that water is H20. And just like these discoveries, we can reasonably presume that they apply universally. Science gives us reasons to believe that all heat is molecular motion, all water is H20 , and all mentality is physical. 

These discoveries reflect the general picture motivated by the natural sciences concerning the world as a whole. Empirical investigation has consistently revealed a physical foundation underlying everything found in nature. This achievement, in turn, supports a worldview according to which physical reality accounts for concrete reality as a whole. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, we have evidence for materialism that is, to my mind, very powerful. 

The implications for theism are relatively straightforward. Given the plausible assumption  that God is a concrete, immaterial being, science provides us with evidence that God does not exist. Of course, this is far from the end of the conversation. As I mentioned earlier, many  intelligent individuals have provided arguments in favor of God's existence and against the truth of physicalism. A complete discussion of these issues would be necessary to arrive at any confident judgment on the matter. My purpose has not been to explain my reasons for rejecting theism. I only hope to have clarified one positive reason for being an atheist. It is the most compelling one I have found. 

[Addendum - My specific definition of physicalism would be something like the following:

Physicalism is true iff 1. Any world that is a minimal microphysical duplicate of the actual world is a duplicate simpliciter, 2. All higher level concrete phenomena are constituted/realized by lower level, physical phenomena, and 3. There is no fundamental mentality. I define "physical phenomena" as any concrete phenomena identical to or ultimately realized by the posits of an ideal microphysical theory ("ultimately realized" is understood straightforwardly in terms of transitive realization). There are substantive questions about how to properly formulate the physicalist thesis but this seems sufficient for my purposes. Ultimately, however, I suspect the best formulation will include reference to metaphysical ground.]