tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16355954.post1334037999144228876..comments2024-03-15T19:54:18.063+00:00Comments on Darwinian Conservatism by Larry Arnhart: Moving from "Is" to "Ought"Larry Arnharthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14619785331100785170noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16355954.post-70841605710921906882008-02-01T17:06:00.000+00:002008-02-01T17:06:00.000+00:00Rob Schebel,I have responded to your comments in a...Rob Schebel,<BR/><BR/>I have responded to your comments in a new post.Larry Arnharthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14619785331100785170noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16355954.post-89890094881841354662008-02-01T07:25:00.000+00:002008-02-01T07:25:00.000+00:00Dr Arnhart -You say "But I would say that there is...Dr Arnhart -<BR/><BR/>You say "But I would say that there is no merely factual desire separated from prescriptive desire, which would create the fact/value or is/ought dichotomy."<BR/><BR/>I daresay this fails to grasp the criticism that it seeks to address. Desires, <I>any</I> desire that you may have, whether it is one that you call factual or one that you call prescriptive, exists in the category of facts, rather than values.<BR/><BR/>The desires that you just find yourself having are facts about you, and the is/ought criticism is that you appear to be moving immediately from the factual existence of those desires to moral judgements or natural laws about the way people *ought* to live. Surely, so the objection goes, the most you can defensibly infer here is the way that people whould live if they are to be happy, rather than simply the way that people, morally, should live.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16355954.post-30864742251812850142008-02-01T02:07:00.000+00:002008-02-01T02:07:00.000+00:00The only justification you give for the good being...The only justification you give for the good being the desirable is that Aquinas said so. It would seem that you are trying to skirt the “is/ought” distinction by simply appealing to the most overarching “ought” possible: that we ought to follow what is desirable. But this does not overcome the “is/ought” problem because you simply pick one notion of the overarching good, that the good is desirable, without further justification. If you were to examine this notion further, you would continue to run into the “is/ought” problem.<BR/><BR/>Also, it is difficult to agree with your definition of the good as the desirable, especially considering that 1) people disagree as to what is desirable, 2) the universal desires Brown lists are only universal on a general cultural scale, not for individuals, 3) you pick and choose certain universal desires, and ignore "negative" desires such as the desire to do violence to others, cheat on our partners, kill our own children, make war, and wield power unjustly, 4) you give insufficient weight to environmental and cultural conditions that contribute to each individual's personality and sense of happiness, and 5) the constellation of human desires can itself be altered through biotechnology.<BR/><BR/>So my questions would be: <BR/><BR/>1) How can you use the desirable as a standard when there is no universal agreement on what is truly desirable? Also, at what level are we considering the concept of “desirable ?” The individual? The group? The species? All living things? The answer to this question could lead you to highly divergent ethical domains, from ethical egoism to preference utilitarianism.<BR/><BR/>2) How do you account for the lack of universality of Brown's universals on an individual scale, especially if your theory is supposed to help individuals make moral choices? <BR/><BR/>3) By what standard have you picked the twenty desires over any of the others? It seems you would have to use a standard outside of the "desirable," considering you are making a kind of meta-level choice about the desirability of desires themselves. <BR/><BR/>4) Even if we agree that the general constellation of desires is partly a product of evolutionary inheritance, environmental factors still play a great role in the moral make-up of any individual. You give weight to tradition and culture in <I>Darwinian Conservatism</I>, but how do we weigh competing political claims within a culture, especially when opposing factions use differing definitions of human happiness? If two factions disagree about happiness because they give weight to differing universal desires, how do we resolve their conflicts? <BR/><BR/>5) Lastly, in light of the revolution in bioethics, by what standard do you choose desires when human nature itself is up for grabs? How does Darwinian natural right assist us in deciding whether or not to alter what is naturally desirable? By an appeal to what is currently desirable? Why is the currently desirable superior to the potentially desirable?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16355954.post-26896080092878698532008-01-30T03:39:00.000+00:002008-01-30T03:39:00.000+00:00I think many philosophers mistakenly assume that h...I think many philosophers mistakenly assume that human beings are basically sociopaths who will not do the good unless they are so persuaded by bullet-proof ethical arguments. And many religionists have a similar assumption about human nature, but see the moral conversion instead coming from scripture.<BR/><BR/>Fortunately, as you have been explaining so persuasively, science has recently been discovering that human beings (at least most of them) are not by nature sociopaths but instead have an inborn moral sense, though that moral sense is imperfect and often in competion with other drives. <BR/><BR/>-- Les BrunswickAnonymousnoreply@blogger.com