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Does moral subjectivism rest on a mistake?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 April 2010

Philippa Foot
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Extract

I have asked that this article should be reprinted in the volume dedicated to Elizabeth Anscombe because it in particular reflects throughout my great indebtedness to her. I remember, as long ago as the late 1940s confidently referring to ‘the difference between descriptive and evaluative reasoning’ in one of the many discussions that we began to have from that time on. She, genuinely puzzled, simply asked, ‘What do you mean?’

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Papers
Information
Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements , Volume 46 , March 2000 , pp. 107 - 123
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 2000

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References

1 Ayer, A. J., Language, Truth and Logic (London: Gollancz, 1936)Google Scholar;Stevenson, C. L., Ethics and Language (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1945)Google Scholar;Hare, R. M., The Language of Morals (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965)Google Scholar;Mackie, J. L., Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1977)Google Scholar;Gibbard, A., Wise Choices, Apt Feelings (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990).Google Scholar I should mention here that although he has not abandoned his attack on what he calls ‘Descriptivism’ Hare does not want to be called either a subjectivist or a noncognitivist. See Hare, R. M., ‘Objective Prescriptions’, in Griffiths, A. P. (ed.) Ethics, Royal Institute of Philosophy Lectures 1993 (Cambridge University Press, 1994)Google Scholar. Also, Hare, R. M., ‘Off on the Wrong Foot’, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Supp. Vol. 21Google Scholar.

2 Moore, G. E., Principia Ethica (Cambridge University Press, 1903)Google Scholar.

3 Hare, R. M., Moral Thinking (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), p. 21CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 See Hare, R. M., Freedom and Reason (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963)Google Scholar.

5 See David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, Book III, part 2.

6 See Gauthier, D., Morals by Agreement (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986)Google Scholar.

7 Foot, P. R., ‘Moral Beliefs’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, vol. 59 (1958-1959)Google Scholar and ‘Morality as a System of Hypothetical Imperatives’, The Philosophical Review, vol. 89, no. 3, 07 1972Google Scholar.

8 Quinn, W. S., Morality and Action, (Cambridge University Press, 1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Anscombe, G. E. M., Collected Philosophical Papers (Oxford: Blackwell, 1981), vol. III, 18Google Scholar.

10 Ibid., 15, 18-19, 100-1, 139.

11 I have written here of species, but it might be better to use the words ‘life form’ as Michael Thompson does. See his article ‘The Representation of Life’ in Hursthouse, R., Lawrence, G. and Quinn, W. S. (eds) Virtues and Reasons (Oxford University Press, 1995)Google Scholar. Here I am particularly indebted to his work.

12 In theory, this could, of course, be different for some other kinds of rational beings. Perhaps they would find it impossible to think calmly about their own future, and would have invented a kind of ‘buddy system’ by which each person had someone else to look out for him. We should find this extremely inconvenient except in bringing up children when they are small.

13 And so, in Gavin Lawrence's graphic term we have them in our net.

14 See McDowell, J., ‘Are Moral Requirements Hypothetical Imperatives?’, The Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume, 1978, 13–29Google Scholar.

15 Smith, M., ‘The Humean Theory of Motivation’, Mind, NS XCVI, (1987) 38CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 Cp David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, Appendix I.