Anscombe avoids talking about Kant. However, she refers at length to other less relevant philosophers. One explanation: Kant is a strong obstacle to her starting point: morality cannot be autonomous.

Here too Sartre is interesting: the important thing is not that God does not exist. Although God exists one must decide which command is divine. Therefore one is alone with his freedom.

Anscombe avoids talking about Kant. — David Mo

Page two paragraph four (sorry, can't cut and paste at the moment).

...no further analysis needed.
— Banno

But there is. In 'Brute Facts' Anscombe is quite clear that this meaning is not an absolute one. There is an uncountable (un-listable) set of circumstances under which that is not the meaning of the transaction - the spuds were provided as part of a film, the spuds were a gift, the spuds were given out under charity...etc. — Isaac

Yeah, nuh.

Following Wittgenstein, I don't think that this counts as further analysis; because the criteria are not listable - she mentions family resemblance, I recall. So yes, the meaning is not absolute - I agree; and no, further analysis, such as Searle might attempt in listing the necessary and sufficient conditions for such a transaction, is not doable.

sorry, can't cut and paste at the moment — Isaac

Does anyone have a better PDF? Uncopyable and unsearchable, it's like I was an undergrad again...

Yep. Kant gets owned.

Does anyone have a better PDF? Uncopyable and unsearchable, it's like I was an undergrad again... — Banno

Yeah, seconded. It's really annoying - I though it was just me.

I don't think that this counts as further analysis; because the criteria are not listable — Banno

She says (and I would quote if I wasn't too lazy to write it out), that the list is not completable. That's different and doesn't in any way preclude a attempt to describe some of it.

ちはそう

Does anyone have a better PDF? — Banno

I'll link to one when I get home tonight.

Cheers!

Yes, I agree...

"I think that's what Anscombe is saying here though. 'Ought' doesn't make any sense without laws. Something just is 'unjust' because of the definition of 'just' which is provided by society's use of the word".

So, what role does she leave to dissidents?
Do you know An Enemy of the People by Henrik Ibsen?

The argument against Kant is absurdly conformist. Nothing and no one can prevent the moral subject from evaluating the decisions of the majority. I repeat: Ibsen: The Enemy of the People.

So, what role does she leave to dissidents? — David Mo

I'm pretty sure it doesn't say. I agree with what @Banno has already hinted at, that Anscombe assumed a good deal of Wittgenstein in the paper without specifically referencing him (I think the publication dates of this paper and Philosophical Investigations are pretty close - both early fifties, but perhaps some experts here could confirm that). Either way the importance of culture and tradition in determining meaning, and the absence of any transcendent determinant is taken as read.

So no, no place for dissidents speaking the 'truth' about what is just. If it's not what the word is used for, they're not dissidents, they just haven't learnt to read properly.

Nothing and no one can prevent the moral subject from evaluating the decisions of the majority. — David Mo

True. But absolutely anyone can prevent the moral subject from calling that evaluation 'justice'. Their prevention goes like this - "eh!"

I don't see that the principle of autonomy implies that of moral truth. I mentioned Sartre, who is more radical than Kant. Neither does Hume, who is mentioned in the article. Kant's moral truth is of another order than empirical truth. They cannot be confused in the same bag.

The reference to Wittgenstein seems to me unjustified. At what specific point?

I still believe that the purpose of the article is to get God through. I don't like.

(I think the publication dates of this paper and Philosophical Investigations are pretty close - both early fifties, but perhaps some experts here could confirm that). — Isaac

“Modern Moral Philosophy,” Philosophy, 33 (1958)

Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Philosophical Investigations, translated by G. E. M. Anscombe, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1953.

Edit: Just added the bolding, to be sure folk realise of whom we speak.

:grin:

She was also, I believe, a student of his, as in, she was thought by him, face to face. As well as one of his literary executors after his death.

No need to hear voices. The moral dilemma involves different internal instances (motives). Plato spoke of sensations and intellect. Passions and reason, etc. The instance that resolves is internal. Putting it outside is an illusion. It is the problem of using a legal concept (justice) to solve a moral problem. Or political (community). Morality is the consensus of autonomous (wo)men.
Or do you believe in the unity of the moral subject?

I don't see that the principle of autonomy implies that of moral truth. — David Mo

It's not the autonomy that's in question. It's what is 'moral'. The references to Wittgenstein are - for me - suffused through the whole thing. The way she looks to the use, embedded in a culture, of the terms she's examining is exactly like the later Wittgenstein looking at language use.

Kant's moral truth is of another order than empirical truth. — David Mo

Maybe - for Kant. The point Anscombe is making here is that it doesn't matter a fig what Kant wants to call 'moral'. It's what the people who use it call it that matters. People who use 'ought' are (whether they admit it or not) referring to some external law - on pain of incoherence. People who refer to 'bilking' are referring to the customary rules of transaction. People referring to 'justice' are referring to the customary rules of justice, etc...

Cheers. I thought that was the case. I knew she was responsible for my copy of Philosophical Investigations and so must have had some close ties, but I didn't know she was actually taught by him.

It shows in the approach though, I think.

He called her "Old Man" - an honorific gender reassignment.

It should not be necessary to defend a Wittgensteinian reading of her essay.

I'd been introduced to the article as an undergrad, and hadn't been too impressed with it then. But I now have a much better grasp of Wittgenstein, so I suppose that's why my opinion has changed.

I agree with Anscombe's first thesis, because:

1) Much empirical investigation (Science) has been conducted in the various fields of Psychology (especially since 1958), but logical investigation (Philosophy) has not kept pace (probably due to the complexity of the task). There are dozens of fields of academic study and/or professional practice which are relevant to developing a Scientifically-informed Philosophy of Mind, Social Philosophy, and Moral Philosophy.

2) The human mind is foundational to human social dynamics, including the development of ethical models and ethical behaviour.

The linguistic turn in Moral Philosophy is a crutch.
Moral Philosophy needs to be informed by a coherent Moral Psychology.

http://s000.tinyupload.com/?file_id=34191831628526077764

Searchable and copyable PDF, as promised.

I'd love to read Anscombe's 'Under a Description' after this if we're not all to exhausted by her when we're done with this. Or 'The First Person'.

Sweeet. Cheers.

There are a few bits in the paper that allude to the role moral psychology should play in a new conception of moral philosophy.

But in the case of a plant, let us say, the inference from "is" to "needs" is certainly not in the least dubious. It is interesting and worth examining; but not at all fishy. Its interest is similar to the interest of the relation between brute and less brute facts: these relations have been very little considered. And while you can contrast "what it needs" with "what it's got"-like contrasting de facto and deiure-that does not make its needing this environment less of a "truth." "

(whatever the relative brute-ness construction does) seems to be proposed as a logical mechanism for grounding (whatever the new conception Anscombe has about moral philosophy) in (some conception of the psychology of morals and human nature).

Certainly in the case of what the plant needs, the thought of a need will only affect action if you want the plant to flourish. Here, then, there is no necessary connection between what you can judge the plant "needs" and what you want. But there is some sort of necessary connection between what you think you need, and what you want. The connection is a complicated one; it is possible not to want something that you judge you need. But, e.g., it is not possible never to want anything that you judge you need. This, however, is not a fact about the meaning of the word "to need," but about the phenomenon of wanting. Hume's reasoning, we might say, in effect, leads one to think it must be about the word "to need," or "to be good for."

Allegorically, plants need water and sunlight because of what plants are. If moral philosophy was done by plants, maybe a Hume plant would have written that: "Whenever I have occasioned to find a treatise regarding our affairs, I have observed a transition from the usual copulations of propositions like "is a water requiring organism" and "does not survive without water" to "ought to absorb water " and "ought not station themselves in an arid landscape" which express a new affirmation of a different sort. Wherefrom this new type of affirmations are deduced from their precedents despite this difference in character I cannot conceive".

Such a plant could be alleged to engender a discourse about plant morality that concerned the operation of the word "ought" severed from the context of how plants behave and develop; more concerned with an abstract rule of application of these words to statements of fact regarding plant behaviour and development. Anscombe would want the plants to talk about how they need water because of their metabolic requirements than about a moral logic operating on statements of facts concerning plants.

So part of the appeal to moral psychology is to explain why such a move appears to make sense; and Anscombe finds this in divine law and legalist accounts of moral obligation, in historical context. But, Anscombe suggests, such motivating contexts have long since lost their ability to furnish our understanding of morality, and that moral philosophers simply have not kept up with the times. More specifically, legalistic/contractual and divine law conceptions of morality stymie the formation of any conception of morality which is tethered to real life rather than dead metaphors; and moral philosophy in the criticised senses has replaced these dead metaphors with philosophical principles that function to fill void left by this death.

Thus we find two problems already wrapped up in the remark about a transition from "is" to "ought"; now supposing that we had clarified the "relative bruteness" of facts on the one hand, and the notions involved in "needing," and "flourishing" on the other-there would still remain a third point. For, following Hume, someone might say: Perhaps you have made out your point about a transition from "is" This comment, it seems to me, would be correct. This word"ought," having become a word of mere mesmeric force, could not, in the character of having that force, be inferred from anything whatever. It may be objected that it could be inferred from other "morally ought" sentences: but that cannot be true. The appearance that this is so is produced by the fact that we say "All men are q" and "Socrates is a man" implies "Socrates is O." But here "O" is a dummy predicate. We mean that if you substitute a real predicate for "O" the implication is valid. A real predicate is required; not just a word containing no intelligible thought: a word retaining the suggestion of force, and apt to have a strong psychological effect, but which no longer signifies a real concept at all.

This death is felt in the context of philosophical discourse by words like "ought" and concepts of "moral obligation" having a bizarre centralising character, a "mesmeric force", which stops these words from functioning as they do in every day moral decisions/actions/evaluations and thereby renders them irrelevant to practical concern and severed from any context that would render them intelligible.

Edit: This is quite Wittgensteinian, philosophical "analysis" of morality has actually shifted the context in which (such notions of) morality made sense. "Language on holiday" kind of thing.

The other part of the appeal to moral psychology in the essay appears to be to gesture towards analysing human needs and wants and human character with reference to our social practices. The cue for their analysis should be taken from how we talk and act and feel and want.

But meanwhile-is it not clear that there are several concepts that need investigating simply as part of the philosophy of psychology and,-as I should recommend-banishing ethics totally from our minds? Namely-to begin with: "action," "intention," "pleasure," "wanting." More will probably turn up if we start with these. Eventually it might be possible to advance to considering the concept "virtue"; with which, I suppose, we should be beginning some sort of a study of ethics.

Isn't it possible to have an ethical outlook that is not law-bound, and yet still hasa philosophical infrastructure?

Isn't that what virtue ethics is? — Banno

The problem with virtue ethics is the appearance of infinite regress. Plato introduced "the good", which Aristotle described as "that for the sake of which" an action is carried out, what he called the "end", and we call the "purpose" of an act. Aristotle set out to put an end to the infinite regress. Notice the use of the word "end". The problem is that whenever we assign a purpose or "end" to an act, that purpose is justified by a further purpose, and so on, creating the possibility of infinite regress. So Aristotle posited happiness as the end which justifies all ends. Ultimately, he suggested all things are done for the sake of one's happiness. But "happiness" is just an arbitrary designation based in a principle of self-sufficiency, it's not properly supported.

What emerges from Aristotle, and is followed in Christian ethics is a distinction between the real good, and the apparent good. All goods (anything for the sake of which an action is carried out), must be justified as real goods rather than merely apparent goods. So to take the example of what a person "owes", the purveyor of goods is only owed if the goods supplied are true, not spoiled, not something other than what was requested, etc., as there are many reasons why one might reject the burden of debt. The burden of debt is dependent on the reality of the goods. The reality of the goods is justified by reference to further principles and the infinite regress rears its ugly head. In Christianity there is an assumed end to the infinite regress, as God provides the real good, and the means for reconciling the apparent good with the real good. You might say that God objectifies the good, but in reality the Euthyphro conundrum kicks in, and the real good is enveloped in a vicious circle of thought. This is expressed in Aristotle's ethics and metaphysics. The highest virtue is described as a thinking, thinking on thinking. This type of thinking (contemplation of the true good) suspends decision making, incapacitating one from acting. This portrays virtue ethics as turning back on itself. By recognizing the irrational nature of the infinite regress, and upholding the effort to end the infinite regress, the most virtuous act becomes the act which suspends action.

But "happiness" is just an arbitrary designation based in a principle of self-sufficiency, it's not properly supported. — Metaphysician Undercover

But since the "ought" is downplayed, can't we think of happiness as goal we learn about through experience? The price of that wisdom is the experience of dis-ease that arises from ignorance.

We would identify the background machinery of this as nature.

Hesitate to interrupt, but on the why a need for a philosophy of psychology: Hume was the empirical psychologist. But these days, a modern empiricist might present a different fork against the hedonist rather than the divine:- " you can't get a want from an is. That is to say, that one acts out (of) a conflict of oughts and wants, and that conflict is what makes the divide between is and ought. If only we wanted to do what we ought to do, then what ought to be would be. But no one has ever troubled over deriving their wants...

Allegorically, plants need water and sunlight because of what plants are. If moral philosophy was done by plants, maybe a Hume plant would have written that: "Whenever I have occasioned to find a treatise regarding our affairs, I have observed a transition from the usual copulations of propositions like "is a water requiring organism" and "does not survive without water" to "ought to absorb water " and "ought not station themselves in an arid landscape" which express a new affirmation of a different sort. Wherefrom this new type of affirmations are deduced from their precedents despite this difference in character I cannot conceive". — fdrake

Nice.

So Moore had supposed that "ethical knowledge rests on a capacity for an intuitive grasp of fundamental ethical truths for which we can give no reason". We could not then introduce arguments into our discussion, but must take moral disagreements as moot - beetles in boxes. Anscombe is showing the fly that there is still room for discussion as to the virtue of various psychological theories.

But no one has ever troubled over deriving their wants... — unenlightened

Giving them some sort of priority, on the other hand, certainly takes up considerable energy. Hare and Socrates concluded that weakness of the will was impossible, re-describing folk's actions so as to rule it out; and introducing the notion of a subconscious in the process - we are supposedly not aware of what we really want. Davidson argued for a difference between what I want now and what I want, all things considered.

But the move form deontology to virtue brings a change of view that bypasses this discussion. In the place of an absolute judgement we find the virtue of continence, and in the place of guilt at our weakness we can set pride in our growing moral wisdom.

The problem with virtue ethics is the appearance of infinite regress. — Metaphysician Undercover

It's apparent from discussion elsewhere that infinity holds a terror for you that I, and I think most others, do not share.

Arguably Aristotle sort to promote, say, courage because it presented a path to eudaimonia; but I don't see why we could not simply accept courage as worthy in itself.

One can step over the pit of regress.