What he is skeptical of here is whether appeals to what is natural (or unnatural) can provide any critieria for evaluation in normative ethical systems. He's right that those simple inferences won't go through. But there are other interpretations of "ethical naturalism" that might be more interesting. Richard Chappell at Philosophy, et cetera points out thatToday's quiz has just one question.? All you have to do is fill in the blank and explain what "unnatural" means.? Notice that your account of "unnatural" has to justify the crucial closing clause, "and therefore wrong."? I'm happy to make it an open-book quiz, because you'll all fail anyway.? Ready?? Here goes.
? ?? ?? _____________ is unnatural and therefore wrong.
I hasten to note that I am not any kind of skeptic about moral or political argument.? My conviction that there is no sound way to fill in the blank here is a targeted skepticism.? We have to get along without any appeals to what's natural or unnatural, I think, because those appeals are strictly speaking nonsensical.
Ethical naturalism is not the claim that morals are found by looking to (biological) "nature". Rather, it is the view that ethical properties are (metaphysically) naturalistic properties - or, more simply, that the natural facts determine the moral facts.And there are also efforts to naturalize ethics by explaining the ground of ethical principles in terms of empirical (natural) processes.
Left2Right | a skeptical challenge
Posted by garns at 09:26:03. Filed under: Philosophy
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