Does appeal to natural law commit the naturalistic fallacy?

[Peter_Plato]

1. We naturally desire to do X.
2. Therefore, we ought to do X?

How is that not an ought from an is?

The claim is not that we naturally desire to do X and therefore we ought to, the claim is that we ought to do X because we are moral agents, i.e., moral agents are the kind of creatures that do X whether they want to or not.

Just so we’re clear: I’m not unsympathetic towards natural law. I have no desire to see it torn down. I would like to understand it, though.

I know this is very complex, but I’m just not seeing it right now.

This one sounds something like:

1. “Justice” is a desirable/good goal
2. Therefore, most people seek “Justice”
3. Therefore, “Justice” is a desirable/good goal

Which is circular, at the very least.

I’m actually OK with just adopting moral axioms, but this sounds worse to me… it’s like they’re taking an axiom and trying to hide it behind a non-existent argument. Why bother?

More like:

1. Being just is a moral imperative.
2. Moral imperatives are not optional for moral agents.
   Therefore all moral agents ought to be just.

 

[VeritasLuxMea]

Well, thanks for being patient, because I’m definitely getting closer to understanding.

the claim is that we ought to do X

Ought.

because

From.

we are moral agents, i.e., moral agents are the kind of creatures that do X whether they want to or not.

Are (Is).

Equals:

Ought from (are) is?

More like:

1. Being just is a moral imperative.
2. Moral imperatives are not optional for moral agents.
   Therefore all moral agents ought to be just.

I’m guessing the breakdown comes from a lack of a shared understanding re: the definition of “moral imperative” and “moral agent.”

It sounds like you are saying:

1. Our nature is that of a moral agent.
2. The nature of a moral agent is to follow moral imperatives, and,
3. Therefore, we should follow moral imperatives.

In other words, it sounds as you are attempting to derive an ought (moral imperative) form an is (our nature as moral agents).

I know that this is not what you are doing, or at the very least it’s not what you think you’re doing. But I must apologize for my ignorance, because I’m having a tough time interpreting your arguments any other way.

 

[Peter_Plato]

Well, thanks for being patient, because I’m definitely getting closer to understanding.

Ought.
From.
Are (Is).
Equals:

Ought from (are) is?

This is great. I love your persistence. The answer, I think, is that this sentence:

We are moral agents, i.e., moral agents are the kind of creatures that do X whether they want to or not.
is not a claim about a “naturalistic” property of humans. “Moral agency” is not a natural, i.e., biological or found in nature, kind of property that can be established by natural or scientific means. It is not that kind of “is” that the ought can not be derived from. In G.E. Moore’s term, it is a “supersensible” property, not a “natural” one.

I’m guessing the breakdown comes from a lack of a shared understanding re: the definition of “moral imperative” and “moral agent.”

It sounds like you are saying:

1. Our nature is that of a moral agent.
2. The nature of a moral agent is to follow moral imperatives, and,
3. Therefore, we should follow moral imperatives.

In other words, it sounds as you are attempting to derive an ought (moral imperative) form an is (our nature as moral agents).

I know that this is not what you are doing, or at the very least it’s not what you think you’re doing. But I must apologize for my ignorance, because I’m having a tough time interpreting your arguments any other way.

Again, the argument could be made that “is” functions, in this case, to indicate something other than a “natural” property, so the naturalistic fallacy would not apply. To say, “Joe is a moral agent,” cannot be taken to indicate some property of Joe than can be determined naturalistically or evidentially as his hair colour or blood type.

It seems, though that Moore thought his ”cannot derive an ought from an is" did extend beyond naturalistic statements to even “supersensible” ones. A good article on the issue is here:

plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-non-naturalism/#NatFal

 

[VeritasLuxMea]

This is great. I love your persistence. The answer, I think, is that this sentence:

We are moral agents, i.e., moral agents are the kind of creatures that do X whether they want to or not.
is not a claim about a “naturalistic” property of humans. “Moral agency” is not a natural, i.e., biological or found in nature, kind of property that can be established by natural or scientific means. It is not that kind of “is” that the ought can not be derived from. In G.E. Moore’s term, it is a “supersensible” property, not a “natural” one.

Again, the argument could be made that “is” functions, in this case, to indicate something other than a “natural” property, so the naturalistic fallacy would not apply. To say, “Joe is a moral agent,” cannot be taken to indicate some property of Joe than can be determined naturalistically or evidentially as his hair colour or blood type.

It seems, though that Moore thought his ”cannot derive an ought from an is" did extend beyond naturalistic statements to even “supersensible” ones. A good article on the issue is here:

plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-non-naturalism/#NatFal

Whoa boy, I’m hoping this is not become some kind of transubstantiation thing (i.e., the bread isn’t the Body of Christ, but in “another” sense, it is).

I’m going to have to really read up on what a “supersensible” property is and isn’t, and how it differs from a natural property.

With that assignment in hand, I leave a few words in closing:

I’m going to disregard the entire idea of “oughts” and just look at some cold, hard logic here.

A and ~A cannot be simultaneously true. At the very least, A and ~A cannot be understood by our human minds.

We utilize the basic laws of logic by default, as they are quite necessary for our continued existence. I cannot have eaten today and not eaten, when I’m driving down the highway, there is either another car that I must slow down so as not to hit or there is not. This is the fundamental “is” of the universe.

So it seems to me that if we’re going to have any moral principles at all, they must be universal and consistent. We cannot say murder is both A and ~A (moral and immoral) depending on the person, place or time. Neither with theft, nor adultery, nor rape and so on.

With regards to the “ought”, for now I look at it this way. As you suggested, most men do want to do “right”, and all things considered, there’s a pretty broad consensus as to what is “right.” We disagree, albeit rarely, with regards to the definition or murder, theft, rape, etc. but everywhere, in every culture, these things are considered criminal.

So while finding the “ought” is a fun mental exercise, it hardly seems necessary on a practical level. Those convinced that there is such a thing as a moral truth do not need such convincing.

Meanwhile the few who are genuinely doubtful that there exist moral truths, well, those people are largely not worth the time. I’m not going to sit there and discuss the finer points of morality with a mugger.

So, in the end, almost all of us accept moral truths, but we have the question of how to define them.

Unfortunately, I don’t think the existence of God makes this any easier (nor any harder, but not any easier) because if we’re going to say that something is good because God deems it to be such, because good is in God’s nature, then we still have the is/ought problem.

 

[Ghosty]

I honestly don’t understand the problem with getting “ought” from “is”.

First we’ll take a non-moral issue, like a spider feeding off of grapefruit instead of fruit flies. The spider ought to feed from fruit flies because it is an animal that requires animal fluids to survive. It’s nature is such, therefore it ought to act in such a way. There are consequences for the spider if it feeds on grapefruit, and it will die.

Now this isn’t a moral issue for the spider, but it is an example of a action arising from the need of nature. We can raise it to the level of humans, again in a non-moral sphere, by saying that humans ought to consume living matter instead of rocks. Again this follows from the nature of humans as animals, and eating rocks would not satisfy the natural requirements of a human.

We can go further, however, and apply this to a moral sphere as well. Humans ought to maintain social bonds because we are social animals. We are not social animals because we maintain social bonds, but rather being a social animal is part of our very nature. Humans literally can’t survive without a social structure for some portion of their lives, and our psychological health requires a social framework through our entire individual lives. Without a social framework we break down individually, and when we break down individually we break down as a species and die out.

For a social framework to exist certain behaviors must be maintained: there must be empathy, there must be sharing, there must not be murder, lying, nor theft. A social framework can tolerate a certain amount of these negative activities so long as the overall social fabric remains intact and the unsocial behavior does not dominate the social behavior. This requires punishment of the unsocial behavior in various ways, whether to make it less desirable or to destroy the offenders so they don’t overwhelm the general social framework. Likewise the proper social behaviors may be rewarded, though the continued survival and health of the species passively rewards this behavior in the long run for the species as a whole and the individuals (as the individuals benefit from social cohesion).

So in advanced social animals like humans we have a “moral order” that is every bit as necessary for survival as the spider’s dietary restrictions. Our moral order tells us our “oughts” regarding behavior that affects social cohesion, and it arises from the “is” of our social animal nature and its requirements for survival. It can also be argued that humans are the only known animal with a “moral order” because we are the only known rational animal (another discussion/debate, of course), and for an “ought” to be a moral matter and not merely a mechanical one (like the spider eating a grapefruit), it must be involve a rational reflection on the matter in question, hence people that are incapable of rational reflection are not typically regarded as immoral, but rather amoral, at least in the sense of culpability.

So, long story short, I just don’t get the is-ought problem. What am I missing?

Peace and God bless!

 

[Ghosty]

Portofino:

The problem is that even appeals to objective morality are not guaranteed to work. So, you say, “it is morally wrong only to care about yourself, and not care about anyone else. Do you understand that? It is morally wrong.” And they say… “prove it.”

Or they say “so what” and you’ve got the same problem.

All moral argument is a matter of persuasion. Some people are persuaded by the fear of punishment, some are persuaded by positive self-interest, some are persuaded by “the common good”, and some are persuaded by the notion of God.

Simply saying “this is moral because God wills it” is a weak form of moral argument, and typically not very persuasive except to those already convinced. Whether or not it is a fact is really irrelevant. Every “ought” is simply a persuasive argument, with some arguments being more objective than others.

I personally believe that moral “oughts” can be known through our nature (not the same as the naturalist fallacy, which would say that things that we do naturally are morally right), and I believe that only God can adequately explain the existence of any nature, and I further believe that God has communicated specially to humans a rational moral law that fits the nature He’s given us. I believe these things to be objective facts, but I recognize that not everyone grasps the Grace of God to believe them, or follows the more arduous path of rationally discovering them.

Peace and God bless!

 

[Portofino]

I honestly don’t understand the problem with getting “ought” from “is”.

First we’ll take a non-moral issue, like a spider feeding off of grapefruit instead of fruit flies. The spider ought to feed from fruit flies because it is an animal that requires animal fluids to survive. It’s nature is such, therefore it ought to act in such a way. There are consequences for the spider if it feeds on grapefruit, and it will die.

Now this isn’t a moral issue for the spider, but it is an example of a action arising from the need of nature. We can raise it to the level of humans, again in a non-moral sphere, by saying that humans ought to consume living matter instead of rocks. Again this follows from the nature of humans as animals, and eating rocks would not satisfy the natural requirements of a human.

We can go further, however, and apply this to a moral sphere as well. Humans ought to maintain social bonds because we are social animals. We are not social animals because we maintain social bonds, but rather being a social animal is part of our very nature. Humans literally can’t survive without a social structure for some portion of their lives, and our psychological health requires a social framework through our entire individual lives. Without a social framework we break down individually, and when we break down individually we break down as a species and die out.

For a social framework to exist certain behaviors must be maintained: there must be empathy, there must be sharing, there must not be murder, lying, nor theft. A social framework can tolerate a certain amount of these negative activities so long as the overall social fabric remains intact and the unsocial behavior does not dominate the social behavior. This requires punishment of the unsocial behavior in various ways, whether to make it less desirable or to destroy the offenders so they don’t overwhelm the general social framework. Likewise the proper social behaviors may be rewarded, though the continued survival and health of the species passively rewards this behavior in the long run for the species as a whole and the individuals (as the individuals benefit from social cohesion).

Thank you, Ghosty – that was brilliant (though I may be biased, since I agree with all of it).

On other threads, I’ve tried to make an argument very much like yours – namely, that our societies need these basic tenets of morality in the same way that our bodies need nutritious food; and that a violent criminal is to the health of a society what rat poison is to the health of a body.

We are arguing for a morality based on more than subjective whim, in terms of "if we want to survive as a species, *then *we need to behave morally. " I’ve even tried to take this conditional further – with some reason, I believe – by saying, “if you want to be personally happy, then you ought to be behave morally.” It’s a more subtle argument – its most obvious point being avoidance of prison, its more subtle points including the gaining of peace of mind, and being surrounded by loving relationships – but I largely agree with the reasoning of a Buddha, an Epicurus, or a Socrates (“virtue is happiness”) on this point.

Here is the criticism of this argument, however – “you say that ‘if we want to survive as a species, then we ought to behave morally.’ But why ought we to survive? Why ought we to prefer life to death? Why ought we to prefer pleasure (physical or emotional) to pain?”

My own response is that this is ultimately a theoretical question, of limited pragmatic value. We might as well ask, “why don’t we speak in gibberish? Why *ought * our languages to make sense?” Or, even, “why ought we not to have three arms?”

So the vast majority of human beings would agree, for example, that hospitals ought to heal patients, not harm them; that fire departments ought to extinguish fires, not start them; that laws ought to protect us from harm, not protect us from non-harm. These may be subjective human preferences, but they are stable and predictable ones – reliable. In that sense, they are inter-subjective and have a de facto objectivity.

 

[Ghosty]

Here is the criticism of this argument, however – “you say that ‘if we want to survive as a species, then we ought to behave morally.’ But why ought we to survive? Why ought we to prefer life to death? Why ought we to prefer pleasure (physical or emotional) to pain?”

Why ought we obey God’s commands? At a certain point it always comes down to an “if/then” statement. If you want to survive, then you ought to eat living matter and not rocks. If you want to be with God, then you should obey His commands. No permutation of moral reckoning is immune from this ultimate point.

I think the real point of the “ought from is” fallacy is actually missed entirely by most moral debates. After all, even saying “We ought to follow God’s commands because they are good” is an “ought from is” statement. Personally I just don’t buy Hume’s argument that “ought” is a fundamentally different category from “is”; rather, I think “ought” is simply the recognition of real potentiality in existing relations.

Peace and God bless!