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Neo-Naturalism and its Pitfalls

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

John Cottingham
John Cottingham
Affiliation:
University of Reading
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Extract

Naturalism, the purported derivation of values from facts, is a fallacy which stubbornly persists despite all attempts to root it out. And nowadays the naturalists seem to be getting the upper hand. It has become a commonplace of contemporary thinking, both in ethics and the philosophy of science (social and even natural), that the fact-value distinction has ‘broken down’. As early as 1955, J. L. Austin spoke disparagingly of the ‘fact/value fetish’; three years later, Philippa Foot referred to the ‘disappearance’ of the logical gap between factual premises and moral conclusions. In the following decade, Jonathan Cohen baldly asserted that ‘the statement/evaluation dichotomy is erroneous’; and John Searle produced a famous paper which set out to demolish the ‘alleged’ and ‘not very useful’ distinction between descriptive and evaluative utterances. More recently we find Benjamin Gibbs telling us that the ‘positivist doctrine of a fact-value dichtomy’ is ‘only a sort of myth’; while Richard Rorty asserts that the ‘positivist distinction between facts and values’ is based on a ‘philosophical fiction’. Finally, Roy Bhaskar goes so far as to pronounce that ‘the transition from “is” to “ought”, factual to value statements, indicatives to imperatives’ is ‘not only acceptable but mandatory’ !

Type
Articles
Information
Philosophy , Volume 58 , Issue 226 , October 1983 , pp. 455 - 470
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1983

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References

1 J. L., Austin, How to Do Things with Words (Oxford University Press, 1962), 150; P., Foot, ‘Moral Beliefs’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society (1958); repr. in W., Hudson (ed.), The Is/Ought Question (London: Macmillan, 1979), 206; J., Cohen ‘Do Illocutionary Forces Exist?’, Philosophical Quarterly (1964); cited by A., Flew, ‘How Not to Derive “Ought” from “Is” ‘, Analysis (1964), in Hudson, op. cit., 135; J. Searle, ‘How to Derive “Ought” from “Is” ‘, Philosophical Review (1964), in Hudson op. cit., 133-134; B. Gibbs, Freedom and Liberation (Sussex University Press, 1976), 115; R., Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Oxford: Blackwell, 1980), 364; R., Bhaskar, The Possibility of Naturalism (Sussex: Harvester Press, 1979), 69.Google Scholar

2 M., Midgley, Beast and Man (Sussex: Harvester Press, 1978), 194.Google Scholar

3 Op. cit, 178. The argument has its origins in Max Weber, ‘Objectivity in Social Science’ (1949); repr. in M., Brodbeck (ed.), Readings in the Philosophy of Social Science (New York: Macmillan, 1968), 85ff.Google Scholar

4 We must be careful not to go overboard here: the desert dweller surely could make the appropriate distinctions, given a bit of training.

5 Op. cit., 364; cf. Ch. 8.

6 Ibid.

7 Cf. R. M., Hare‘Descriptivism’, Proceedings of the British Academy (1963), repr. in Hudson op. cit., 240ff.Google Scholar

8 Op. cit., 187.

9 Op. cit., 194.

10 A Treatise of Human Nature (1739), Book II, Part 3, Sect. 3.Google Scholar

11 Nicomachean Ethics, III, 3–4.Google Scholar

12 I, 7; 1097b22ff.

13 Op. cit., X, 7.

14 Op. cit., 182.

15 Op. cit., 189.

16 Natural Law and Natural Rights (Oxford University Press, 1980), 70.Google Scholar

17 Op. cit., 182.

18 J., Rawls, A Theory of Justice (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972), 31 (italics mine).Google Scholar

19 Op. cit, 183.

20 La Philosophie dans le Boudoir (1795) tr. R., Seaver and A., Wainhouse (New York: Grove Press, 1965), 227.Google Scholar

21 Op. cit, 186.

22 Op. cit., 79.

23 Op. cit., 186.

24 Op. cit., 182-183.

25 Op. cit., 71.

26 Op. cit., xiii.

27 A., Clarke, 2001: A Space Odyssey (London: Hutchinson, 1968), Ch. 37.Google Scholar

28 Op. cit., 199-200.

29 Op. cit., 193.

30 Ibid.

31 Op. cit., 192.

32 Tractatus, 6.41.