What seems to have happened, according to Anscombe, is that we've carried forth a whole ethical machinery involving obligation, while jettisoning the idea of divine legislation which contextualizes and grounds it — csalisbury

Yes. That is a pillar, of sorts, for this paper... or so it seems to me.

Again, I think this fits the space-clearing view. — csalisbury

Yeah that's fair. I won't puruse this too far but I agree that providing more of the bits she says that should be provided doesn't necessarily block a fly-out-of-the bottle approach.

Anscombe thinks that it would be better if we moved from 'wrong' or 'what-you-ought-not-to-do' to a cluster of things like 'injust' 'untruthful' and 'unchaste'. If you're going to expel God, you have to expel 'wrong' as some absolute.

This brings us to the major villain, Sedgwick (a perfect member of an unsung class of philosophical figures: the forgotten, remembered only through being ripped by a Big Name. There's always hope, though, through some unanticipated Revival )

I'll leave it there. This is where the argument gets especially thickety and its too late for me to follow.

If I may also say a few words providing the Good Self-Appointed All-Knowing Lord, Banno, does not smite me for doing so.

What I got out of the article is not that Andscombe seeks and points at a direction of where and how moral philosophy should inquire and advance. That is the essence that the foregoing contributors have opined, and they pointed at how Andscombe uses historical and dynamically developing theories of ethics as, so-to-speak, fighting-dogs that bite and destroy each other. Each time a dog survives the malee, they opine that perhaps Anscombe appoints that particular (but only temporarily) victorious dog to be the leader in the direction of further enquiry of what morality is. These contributors to this thread have a consensus of sorts, that Anscombe has a hope, and a rational hope at that, to sometime find the real moral basis of ethics.

I read that she just throws her hands in the air, so to speak, and declares a state of being completely at a loss seeing or intuiting any direction out of our dilemma about the self-contradicting nature of morality, and expresses despair how our present systems are frought with contradictions that can be practically damaging, not only theoretically..

There is a difference. Hope that has no straw; this is how I read her essay. Others here who have also contributed read it with the impression that she has some sort of an idea how we ought to proceed. I deny she hints at having some idea how to discover the basic fundamental ways to create a road map to find a true theory of morality and ethics/ She bemoans, indeed, the complete chaos ruling moral considerations, as at the present state our best efforts at moral judgment still can send an innocent person into a punishing conviction.

Please don't misconstrue that I read her essay as that of a nihilist. She is not a nihilist; she desparately wants a moral system, she yearns for one, one that is true, and unassailable; she wants one, and she is grieving the fact that humanity still hasn't found one.

argued that both deontology and consequentialism assume a foundation for ethics in the concept of obligation, which makes no sense in the absence of a lawgiver which or who imposes it.

In my humble opinion, people, some I guess, consider reason/rationality as having an equal, if not more, obligatory force as any deity imaginable.

Anscombe's argument has nothing to do with private languages. It is only a presuasive use of the word "legislate". See p. 11. She uses a single sentence: It is absurd.
Sorry for the brevity. I'm traveling

I would reject the modus tollens reading... — Banno

Reject as being right, or reject as being reflective of Anscombe's intent? I'd agree on the former, but not the latter.

It's always intrigued me that there was ever any debate about the matter. I mean, didn't anyone just ask her? "Did you mean to revive Catholic moral authority or did you mean to initiate a revival of virtue ethics?" - seems like the sort of thing that should have cropped up in conversation since, but apparently not.

Another surprising thing in this article is the brevity with which each previous moral theory is dismissed. Barely a paragraph each. This would be less surprising if each were dismissed for the same reason, but, apart from the overall theme - lacking an external law - each is given its own tailored P45. Not something that's generally acceptable at any level, and yet this paper started modern virtue ethics. It's as if she pointed out that fairies don't exist and half the world's folklorists simply hang up their gloves and say "we never thought of that".

So. My problem with the detail starts at 'brute facts'. It seems to me from the opening that Anscombe is looking to a more psychological understanding of morality. So we could see what is 'unjust as a fact about the psychological state of justice (rather than the legal one). But if that's the case, then we just have morality brought into Naturalism, which I'm fine with - but then this weird argument about brute facts, as if there were something further to say, other than the standard argument for Naturalism, and I just don't get what she's trying to do with it. Is it her personal defense of naturalism, or some other point which I've missed completely?

Anscombe's argument has nothing to do with private languages. It is only a presuasive use of the word "legislate". See p. 11. She uses a single sentence: It is absurd. — David Mo

My impression was that maybe the original user of the word "legislate" meant to say that there is in each person at least two, and maybe more inner voices that argue with each other when it comes to moral choices, and the upshot of their argument is reflected by the behaviour of the person that obeys the votes these inner voices cast.

This is not to be confused with a schizophrenic psychotic state, in which people hear voices. Instead, it is a process of thought, where a person debates what he should do: similarly to when he finds a wallet, he contemplates whether he should return it to the owner intact, or take out some or all of the cash first and then return it, or not return it at all. In cartoons the debate is sometimes depicted by a white angelic self of the person sitting on his right shoudler, and a dark, satanic self sitting on his left, and the two suggesting inspiring thoughts to him why he should do one or the other of several equally available possible actions. This is what the original quote "legislation" could have referred to. Possibly.

So. My problem with the detail starts at 'brute facts'. It seems to me from the opening that Anscombe is looking to a more psychological understanding of morality. So we could see what is 'unjust as a fact about the psychological state of justice (rather than the legal one). But if that's the case, then we just have morality brought into Naturalism, which I'm fine with - but then this weird argument about brute facts, as if there were something further to say, other than the standard argument for Naturalism, and I just don't get what she's trying to do with it. Is it her personal defense of naturalism, or some other point which I've missed completely? — Isaac

I think Anscombe's criticism of Hume's stand is that if you take the non-causation principle to its completion on all aspects, then it destroys the power of rational reason, and that leads to not Naturalism, but to nihilism, inasmuch as you can't rationally say "this causes that" (X causes Y) because you can't prove this, in the absence of deterministic causation. By deterministic causation I mean that you KNOW that there is a causation process, not just a simple coincidence of events. Therefore, according to Hume, who believes in no possibility of certainly seeing causation in processes,when this causation is inherently absent, then one can argue as well that "This causes not that, but something else", (X causes not Y, but it causes Z) just as comfortably. The article expressed it as "for Hume, "is becomes ought" is just as likely as "is becomes must" or "is becomes needs" etc." This is not a direct, verbatim quote.

Yeah, one might suppose that you just made up this intuition to fill the space left by the removal of a commanding divinity. — Banno

Is conscience an inherent human faculty?

We ought not tackle ethics by looking for other universal rules - deontic or utilitarian - to replace divine rules, but by looking more directly at what we do, at what is virtuous. — Banno

If there are no universal or divine rules pertaining to human actions, then: Moral Relativism (which is untenable, because it provides no common basis for discussing ethics).

Notions of virtue and vice are subsumed in Deontology. The operation of conscience (self-judgment) develops:
1) Virtues through self-commendation, or
2) Vices through self-condemnation.

Possibly. I've just noticed that @Banno gave a link to Anscombe's paper on brute facts which I must have missed when scanning through the thread so far. I'll give that a read first and see if it explains things any better.

Someone removed the joke in the title by adding "Anscombe's..."

I'll await something more than mere assertion.

If there are no universal or divine rules pertaining to human actions, then: Moral Relativism (which is untenable, because it provides no common basis for discussing ethics). — Galuchat

Yes, that is the argument she is rejecting,

I'm not sure why you have said this. After all, it's not that Anscombe is rejecting the conclusion of this argument; she's not just saying that the argument is invalid. Rather she is saying that the argument is nonsense; that it doesn't gain any purchase in the first place.

And given that, a critique of Anscombe must do more than just repeat the argument she rejects.

Anscombe describes this ought as having a 'mesmeric' force, even though divorced from its religious origins.

It's not unlike the kabbalistic idea of 'reshimu':

'The reshimu is compared to the fragrance of the wine which remains in the glass after having been poured out of it.'

It contains a hint of what used to sustain it, though what sustained it has since evaporated. — csalisbury

Did you know that Quentin Tarantino made up the scripture Samuel Jackson quotes in Pulp Fiction? Fumes of the Bible:

Ezekiel 25:17.“The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother’s keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who would attempt to poison and destroy My brothers. And you will know My name is the Lord when I lay My vengeance upon thee.”

I don't understand why morals must die with God.

The person who wrote the bible, also created the idea of good and evil? I don't think so.

Some things cannot be translated to word, such as my vision of the now, which I can sum up partially as, in my room, with a phone and a TV - the walls are white - if I look closely, space looks pixellated.

Seemingly this is a good descriptor, but the reality of the matter is far more complex.

So when adjurning what is moral; what is good and what is evil, it's not so simply worded.

You would have to understand a wordless frame of reference.

I'm staring at(here's where I hail that frame of reference), what's too complex to word, and there is many right and wrong options, and where a world of options is concerned there are good and evil options.

I can turn the TV on via the on button - a right option. I can turn the TV on via the volume button - a wrong option. In relation to the world, if I turn the TV on it would waste a lot of energy and thus, be evil, and if I keep it off, it will be good. There're special alternatives. However, if you think, listing all good and all evil would take as much effort as my former example. It's far too complex for words.

So I refer to 'the green line' method. I draw on a blackboard, a green line to represent all good, and though, it's highly innacurate, it proves morality(but only to those with a wordless frame of reference).

Another surprising thing in this article is the brevity with which each previous moral theory is dismissed. — Isaac

Yep. Is your criticism that she wrote an article instead of a book?

Hume defines 'truth' in such a way as to exclude ethical judgements from it, and professes that he has proved that they are so excluded. He also implicitly defines 'passion' in such a way that aiming at anything is having a passion. His objection to passing from 'is' to 'ought' would apply equally to passing from 'is' to 'owes' or from 'is' to 'needs'. (However, because of the historical situation, he has a point here, which I shall return to.)

And she is exactly right.

Notice that she here makes reference to the argument she gives elsewhere regarding "is" and "owes". There's more than one paragraph contra the is-ought divide, but here she succinctly shows the error in Hume.

Kant introduces the idea of 'legislating for oneself', which is as absurd as if in these days, when majority votes command great respect, one were to call each reflective decision a man made a vote resulting in a majority, which as a matter of proportion is overwhelming, for it is always 1-0. The concept of legislation requires superior power in the legislator. His own rigoristic convictions on the subject of lying were so intense that it never occurred to him that a lie could be relevantly described as anything but just a lie (e.g. as 'a lie in such-and-such circumstances'). His rule about universalisable maxims is useless without stipulations as to what shall count as a relevant description of an action with a view to constructing a maxim about it.

Again, she is exactly right. The most inane climate denialist will legislate to herself an open mind.

Pleasure cannot be an internal impression, for no internal impression could have the consequence of pleasure

What?

It's obviously a joke, but it went over my head.

did you say you're in the hospital? Hope you feel better soon.

Fresh out. Just sittin'. Thanks.

It seems to me from the opening that Anscombe is looking to a more psychological understanding of morality. — Isaac

Hm, which passages do you have in mind that give warrant to this reading?

Yep. Is your criticism that she wrote an article instead of a book? — Banno

It's not a criticism.

I'm pointing out the sense in which this piece is more than just a technical criticism of the current state of moral philosophy. It's a dismissal of the very practice of moral philosophy thus far. These people are not merely wrong on technical ground. If that were the case then Anscombe is either an unrivalled genius or she's missed responding technically to the thousands and thousands of pages which have been written about each of these theories, each of which clearly disagrees with her in more complex ways that she addresses. No, she's dismissing the entire endeavour. No need to get into the technicality. Like dismissing the need for a Window 7 handbook, it doesn't matter about it's technicalities, Windows 7 has gone so the handbook's no longer needed.

Hm, which passages do you have in mind that give warrant to this reading? — StreetlightX

She says at the beginning that we need a more adequate philosophy of psychology, but it's not really that, it's her treatment of how we get 'owes' to be a fact. Her explanation here is confusing to me so I could easily have this wrong, but all I get out of it (both here and in 'Brute Facts') is that 'owes' refers just to a circumstance which most people would use 'owes' to identify. What criteria they are using is not yet fixed, but simply held by tradition. I owe the grocer for the potatoes (after he has delivered them) simply because that it the state of affairs most people would consider had arisen as a result of that prior fact. Even though some instances where we would use some label 'owes' can have their history/tradition elucidated by reference to other more brute facts/institutions (justifying that A is done by reference to xyz) but such a relationship between A and xyz is held in normal circumstances by tradition.

Also, we only have a speculative, pragmatic description of 'owes', fringe cases are up for debate and (local) consensus wins.

Investigating what this tradition/consensus is is a matter of induction, either from experience or scientific investigation (samples, statistical analysis etc). Investigating what traditions hold and in what circumstances is a matter of psychology.

I agree.

It's a dismissal of the very practice of moral philosophy thus far. These people are not merely wrong on technical ground. If that were the case then Anscombe is either an unrivalled genius or she's missed responding technically to the thousands and thousands of pages which have been written about each of these theories, each of which clearly disagrees with her in more complex ways that she addresses. No, she's dismissing the entire endeavour. No need to get into the technicality. Like dismissing the need for a Window 7 handbook, it doesn't matter about it's technicalities, Windows 7 has gone so the handbook's no longer needed. — Isaac

This is what I got out of her article, too. And I completely agree with the notion.

My addition to your comment would be that as Anscombe points at the chaos on ethics, I point at the undefined nature of ethics, and the fact that no consensus of what "ethical" or "moral" behaviour actually is exists. To continue your metaphor, everyone is busy writing Windows 7 handbooks, but Windows 7 is not only possibly considered obsolete, it never even existed.

We can distinguish between intrinsically unjust and circumstantially unjust (page 13)?

Really? The example she gives is of a person being convicted for an uncommitted crime. If the only way to get justice for a murder is to arrange a conviction of tax evasion (which didn't happen), that might strike some as a violation of the justice system, but not justice itself.

If we're supposed to be getting technical about "unjust" such that it specifically means adhering to proper judicial procedures, then that eliminates "unjust" as a substitute for "immoral."

And based in that, the end of the essay doesnt make sense.

I'm getting that the author thinks ethics is a challenge for the godless, especially where the godless embraces law-bound morality.

She thinks maybe philosophers should accept that. I agree.

@Banno

Is your ethical outlook law-bound? Do you accept that this is problematic for an atheist?

Or do you suspend worrying about it since it works for you without any philosophical infrastructure?

So it looks like there are two thrusts of argument in the paper, and a broad theme.

Broad theme; why does "modern moral philosophy" concern itself so widely with the troubled notion of "morally ought"?

(1) There's a historical account about Christianity and divine law theory in ethics. Ethical principles framed in terms of "I ought to do X" make sense because they draw upon a narrative background of "Thou shalt X". A broadly Aristotelian view of ethics (virtue ethics) is gestured towards as an alternative.

(2) (a) Using Hume's is ought gap to pan for gold. A few times in the paper, a (caricature) of other moral philosophers' views have Hume's is-ought gap applied to them. The purpose of this is twofold; it buttresses the interpretation of "moral language" in (1) being consistent with divine law, as "I ought to do X" takes on a special (philosophical-juridical/divine) sense - this component is repudiative; if you buy this special sense, you've got the is ought gap to deal with, and Anscombe tries to describe precisely how the gap manifests once this special sense is bought. (b) The manifestations of the gap are then addressed, by rejecting the special sense and descending from the special sense of "morally ought" to psychological proclivity and worldly action; which Anscombe analyses through a mixture of appeal to ordinary language use and a gesture (of possibility) towards the virtue ethics referenced in (1). The second component simultaneously tries to dissolve the problem posed by the is-ought gap by rejecting how it frames moral judgements and "fills it in" with appeals to context; how stuff works and everyday word functions of "just" and so on.

The second argument thrust is more technical, and appeals to a relation of facts to descriptions; collections of facts can be brute relative to a description. This is is the idea which is proposed to dissolve the is-ought problem and give a connection between psychological proclivity and worldly activity in Anscombe's new conception of moral philosophy.

Hume's is ought problem can be stated as: truths are either relations of ideas (logic) or matters of fact (observation) [Hume's fork], an argument that goes from a statement of fact to an "I ought to do X" statement requires a justification for going from the statement of fact to the ought claim; but "ought" claims are neither observations nor deductive relations, and so always require an unjustified, separate premise on this basis.

"brute relative to description" looks to be "brute relative to a context". As much as @Banno will protest to using the word "meaning", a rough characterisation of when a fact X is brute relative to a description Y is when the meaning of Y requires the truth of X in normal circumstances. EG, when the cashier tells you "That will be 3 shillings guv'" at the grocery when purchasing your shopping, "I must pay 3 shillings" is brute relative to "That will be 3 shillings guv" in the context of buying shopping in normal circumstances because "I must pay 3 shillings" is true in this circumstance. The separation of "ought" from "is" is replaced by the proximity of "owing" and "I must pay the cashier". Adequate understanding of what's going on allegedly dissolves the need for the "hidden premise" highlighted in the is-ought gap.

The overall pressure this places on the is-ought gap is that certain facts must be assumed in order to do something in a context successfully. These facts can include moral language, like "owe" and "needs". The every day character of these moral items places a pressure on the prequisite crystalline perfection of divine law that Anscombe characterises "modern moral philosophy" as tasting of., We already have a basis from which to do moral philosophy; everyday life. Moral analysis begins in our socially saturated world not in the miracle of stone tablets or abstract principles.

We already have a basis from which to do moral philosophy; everyday life. Moral analysis begins in our socially saturated world not in the miracle of stone tablets or abstract principles. — fdrake

As A points out, social norms obviously aren't the basis of morality (considering what those norms are apt to be.)

Law-bound morality is attractive because it seems to hold out the hope that morality can come down to language use. I'm totally cool with that, but I'm pretty sure that's nihilism.

As A points out, social norms obviously aren't the basis of morality (considering what those norms are apt to be.) — frank

The paper doesn't appeal to social norms to vouchsafe what is moral or immoral (it goes against this use of moral and immoral explicitly). The paper uses social circumstances to ground ethical consideration in life (again), not in rules - be they abstract or social codes. It's trying to shift the territory of moral philosophy, not redraw the map.