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.
No comments:
Post a Comment