Naturalistic Ethics

Existentialism is a concern about the foundation of meaning, morals, and purpose. Existentialisms arise when some foundation for these elements of being is under assault. In the past, first-wave existentialism concerned the increasingly apparent inability of religion, and religious tradition, to provide such a foundation, as typified in the writings of Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky, and Nietzsche. Second-wave existentialism, personified philosophically by Sartre, Camus, and de Beauvoir, developed in response to the inability of the polity to serve as such a foundation. There is a third-wave existentialism, a new existentialism, developing in response to advances in the neurosciences that threaten the last vestiges of an immaterial soul or self. With the increasing explanatory and therapeutic power of neuroscience, the mind no longer stands apart from the world to serve as a foundation of meaning. This produces foundational anxiety.

This collection explores the anxiety caused by this third-wave existentialism and the possibility of resolving it through utilizing only naturalistic resources, including those in the natural sciences. It brings together some of the world’s leading neuroscientists, philosophers, psychologists, cognitive scientists, and legal scholars to tackle our neuroexistentialist predicament and explore what the mind sciences can tell us about morality, love, emotion, autonomy, consciousness, selfhood, free will, moral responsibility, law, the nature of criminal punishment, meaning in life, and purpose.

The collection begins with an introduction to neuroexistentialism by Owen Flanagan and Gregg D. Caruso. This chapter sets the stage for the chapters to follow. It explains what neuroexistentialism is and how it is related to, but differs from, the first two waves of existentialism. Eighteen original chapters divided into four sections follow the introduction.
There are contributions by Sean M. Carroll, Gregg D. Caruso, Patricia Smith Churchland, Farah Focquaert, Shaun Gallagher, Michael S. Gazzaniga, Walter Glannon, Andrea L. Glenn, Daniel Goya-Tocchetto, Valerie Hardcastle, Paul Henne, Neil Levy, Ben Morgan, Stephen J. Morse, Thomas Nadelhoffer, Eddy Nahmias, Derk Pereboom, Jesse Prinz, Amanda Pustilnik, Adrian Raine, Naomi Rokotnitz, Edmund Rolls, Maureen Sie, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Peter U. Tse, and Jennifer Cole Wright.

John Stuart Mill is known as the first canonical Western philosopher to espouse a stationary state of economic growth, and as such he can be seen as an important totemic figure for reformist strategies in environmental ethics. However, his reputation among environmental thinkers has been rendered more ambiguous in recent years by increased attention to his essay "Nature". The "Nature" essay has been much used lately by critics to oppose claims (1) that independent nature may properly be seen as important in any way as an ethical guide or inspiration, and (2) that Mill's philosophy may feasibly be viewed as pro-environmentalist. This use of Mill's essay is mistaken, and has undermined appreciation of the potential significance of Mill's thought for environmental philosophy. When examining the most detailed of the critical treatments of the essay, reading "Nature" as an anti-environmentalist text badly distorts the essay's meaning by ripping it from the context of Mill's intentions as well as from the very specific and significant historical circumstances and biographical conditions of its production. Attending properly to these factors shows that the essay is unrepresentative of Mill's general position and rather philosophically weaker than its reputation. Reading the text as a definitive statement of Mill's supposed anti-naturalism is thus mistaken and fails to recognize different modes and significances in "following nature", some of which Mill supported. The "Nature" essay is an aberrant outlier in the Mill canon, and one which should no longer be allowed to undermine Mill's strong and important environmentalist credentials.

Here I bewail the slapdash and confusing way in which philosophers bandy about the word ‘incoherent’ (and ‘incoherence’ and ‘incoherently’).  To some it appears to mean: inconsistent; to others: pragmatically self-defeating; and to yet others: nonsensical, i.e. meaningless.  And often one is left guessing.

This essay pursues the development of Charles Taylor’s ontological thought by comparing his – insightful yet neglected – early paper “Ontology” (1959) with his little known essay “Ethics and Ontology” (2003) and his most matured ontological position in Retrieving Realism (2015). It also puts a spotlight on Taylor’s unusual "interwoven" mode of argumentation in between ethics, phenomenology, and ontology. In so doing, I aim, first, to show Taylor’s remarkable consistency; second, to unravel his hybrid position in between ethics, phenomenology, and ontology; third, to argue for a tension between Taylor’s phenomenological approach to ethics and his claims about ontology; and, fourth, to highlight his ongoing hesitation with regard to ontological inquiry in general and issues of moral realism in particular.

Eğitim, klasik tanımıyla, istendik yönde bir davranış değiştirme sürecidir. Fakat bir eylem ya da davranışın ahlaken değerlendirilebilmesinin ön şartı, başkalarının varlığına rağmen failinin, onu özgürce, bilerek ve isteyerek gerçekleştirmesidir. Zira ahlak, her zaman özgür istenci ve ötekini ya da ötekilerini dolayısıyla toplumu varsayar. Aklını kötü tutkulara ya da başkalarının iradesine esir kılan ve davranışlarında ötekini hesaba katmayan bir insan özgür, erdemli ve nihayetinde mutlu olamaz. Bu ise Kantçı bir söylemle ifade edilecek olursa insanın kendi suçudur. Ancak Rousseau’ya göre bu suç ve de günah sonradan ortaya çıkmış yapay bir durumdur. Zira insan, orijinalinde, doğası gereği iyi, özgür ve mutludur. O hâlde, insan, doğasına uygun olarak aklını bütün kötü etkilerden ve yapay bağımlılıklardan arındırarak öylece eyleyebilmelidir ki bu da yine bir eğitim meselesidir. Eğitim, modern dünyanın olanca çürümüşlüğüne rağmen insanın, kendi doğasını keşfetmesine imkân tanıyan, toplum içerisinde doğal özgürlüğünü ve mutluluğunu tesis edebilmesini mümkün kılan en etkili araçtır. Bu çerçevede Rousseau’nun natüralist eğitim teorisi, uygar toplum düzeninde, doğal ve bu anlamda özgür, erdemli ve mutlu insanlar yani yurttaşlar yetiştirerek çağının siyasi ve toplumsal davranışını kökten değiştirip ahlaki zemine oturtacak bir “yeni sivil toplum projesi”dir. Rousseau’da eğitimin toplumsal temelleri, insan doğasının akıl yoluyla ehlîleştirilmesine dayanırken ahlaki temelleri bizzat orijinal insan doğasına dayanır. Yurttaşlık, insan
aklının ve doğasının eğitim yoluyla ahenkli bir şekilde işletilmesinden vücuda gelen bir mutluluk durumudur ve eğitimin de nihai ereğidir.

Neo-Aristotelian Naturalists present their theoremes as deriving from Aristotle's philosophy. The paper  is meant above all to sound out the extent to which Aristotelian Naturalism can call upon the testimony of Aristotle himself, and the extent to which Aristotle’s moral philosophy also allows or even suggests other possible readings at decisive points.

The paper is based on my:
„Was ist aristotelisch am Aristotelischen Naturalismus“, in: Martin Hähnel (ed.): Aristotelischer Naturalismus, Stuttgart: Metzler 2017, 19-41.

Bu çalışmada Yale Üniversitesi’nde Psikoloji profesörü olan ve
kendisine ait psikoloji laboratuarında dinin ve ahlâkın kaynağına dair deneysel çalışmalar yapan Paul Bloom’un ahlâkın kaynağına dair görüşleri ele alınacaktır. Çalışmayı farklı kılan taraf; Natüralist bir dünya görüşüne sahip olan Paul Bloom’un, Türkçe yazında hiç ele alınmamış olmasına rağmen, uluslar arası bilim camiasında yaptığı deneyler ve ulaştığı sonuçlarla dikkatleri üzerine çekmiş olması ve diğer natüralist görüş sahibi bilim adamlarından farklı tezler öne sürmesidir. Bloom’un ahlâkın kaynağı ile ilgili görüşü; ahlâkın doğuştan geldiği yönündedir. O tezini bebekler ve çocuklar üzerinde
yaptığı deneylerle ispat ettiğine inanmakta ve doğuştan gelen bu özelliği biyolojik adaptasyonun bir yan ürünü olarak görmektedir. Ahlâkın evrimsel bir rastlantı olarak görülmesi, ülkemizde üzerinde çalışılan bir konu olmamasına rağmen, uluslar arası bilim camiasında çokça tartışılmakta ve bu fikrin fikir babalarından biri olarak da Paul Bloom görülmektedir.

Foot argues that there are certain things that all human beings - perhaps all rational agents - need.  This gives a sense in which certain values and disvalues can be called 'objective'.  I suggest that, with certain relatively minor adjustments, her argument can be made cogent but that it cannot be used to show that there are objective answers to questions about what one should do when values conflict.  If Foot's own virtue ethics, utilitarianism, Kantian ethics or any other first-order moral system were to be established as objectively valid, this would require some completely different form of argumentation. 


Almost sixty years ago Philippa Foot published an article that began: To many people it seems that the most notable advance in moral philosophy during the past fifty years or so has been the refutation of naturalism; and they are a little shocked that at this late date such an issue should be reopened. It is easy to understand their attitude: given certain apparently unquestionable assumptions, it would be about as sensible to try to reintroduce naturalism as to try to square the circle. Those who see it like this have satisfied themselves that they know in advance that any naturalistic theory must have a catch in it somewhere, and are put out at having to waste more time exposing an old fallacy. This paper is an attempt to persuade them to look critically at the premises on which their arguments are based. 1 The paper in question was one of a number written by Foot around the time that were highly successful in reopening the issue of naturalism in ethics. Nowadays no one can just take it for granted that naturalism has been refuted, that there is a sharp distinction (or indeed any clear distinction) between fact and value or that it is impossible to derive an 'ought' from an 'is'. This is not to say that the naturalists have been completely victorious, of course; only that naturalism is today a live option. I shall argue that Foot's paper contains an important insight and an equally important mistake; and that the insight and the mistake are linked. I believe that the thinking behind it has influenced the subsequent course of moral philosophy to a quite remarkable extent and that this has been in some ways beneficial and in some ways harmful – not surprisingly, if I am right in seeing it as containing both truth and error. I do not want to exaggerate the influence of this one paper 2 but I do not know of any other that so neatly encapsulates the coupled insight and mistake. The anti-naturalism that Foot is attacking she characterises as follows: It would not be an exaggeration to say that the whole of moral philosophy, as it is now widely taught, rests on a contrast between statements of fact and evaluations, which runs something like this: The truth or falsity of statements of fact is shewn by means of evidence; and what counts as evidence is laid down in the meaning of the expressions occurring in the statement of fact … It follows that no two people can make the same statement and count completely different things as evidence; in the end one at least of them could be convicted of linguistic ignorance. It also follows that if a man is given good evidence for a factual conclusion he cannot just refuse to accept the conclusion on the ground that in his scheme of things this evidence is not evidence at all. 3 But, on the view she is criticising, [w]ith evaluations, however, it is different. An evaluation is not connected logically with the factual statements on which it is based. One man may say that a thing is good because of some fact about it, and another may refuse to take that fact as any evidence, for nothing is laid down in the meaning of 'good' which connects it with one piece of 'evidence' rather than another. It follows that a moral eccentric could argue to moral conclusions from quite idiosyncratic premises; he could say, for instance, that a man was a good man because he clasped and unclasped his hands and never turned NNE after

The Buddha taught that there is no self. He also accepted a version of the doctrine of karmic rebirth, according to which good and bad actions accrue merit and demerit respectively and where this determines the nature of the agent’s next life and explains some of the beneficial or harmful occurrences in that life. But how is karmic rebirth possible if there are no selves? If there are no selves, it would seem there are no agents that could be held morally responsible for ‘their’ actions. If actions are those happenings in the world performed by agents, it would seem there are no actions. And if there are no agents and no actions, then morality and the notion of karmic retribution would seem to lose application. Historical opponents argued that the Buddha's teaching of no self was tantamount to moral nihilism. The Buddha, and later Buddhist philosophers, firmly reject this charge. The relevant philosophical issues span a vast intellectual terrain and inspired centuries of philosophical reflection and debate. This article will contextualise and survey some of the historical and contemporary debates relevant to moral psychology and Buddhist ethics. They include whether the Buddha's teaching of no-self is consistent with the possibility of moral responsibility; the role of retributivism in Buddhist thought; the possibility of a Buddhist account of free will; the scope and viability of recent attempts to naturalise karma to character virtues and vices, and whether and how right action is to be understood within a Buddhist framework.

There are two questions one might ask about moral naturalism. Of the two, the more discussed question is: why should one accept (or reject) it? But the less discussed, second question is prior: what is ethical naturalism? Appeals to naturalism are often taken to play an important role in assessing the plausibility the metaethical theories.  So, it is perhaps surprising that there is so little agreement about just what ethical naturalism is.  Here I consider an opinionated overview of the various proposals on offer and then briefly defend one of my own.

In this short and highly readable monograph, the author aims to answer the question of why humans construct moral orders grounded upon natural orders, deriving normative authority from divine or otherwise non-anthropomorphic sources in nature.

Publicado en libro: Los avatares de la modernidad, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras de la Universidad Nacional de Tucumán, Tucumán, 2001) David Hume no sólo fue uno de los filósofos más destacados de los tiempos modernos debido a la importancia de sus doctrinas, sino que además elaboró una serie de refinadísimos argumentos críticos que echaron por tierra a algunas de las pretensiones de la tradición filosófica y que aún hoy tienen plena vigencia.

This conference centers on Charles Taylor’s paper “Ethics and Ontology” (2003) and its central theme of the relationship between ethical beliefs and ontological views. Taylor’s moral phenomenology defends commonsense moral reactions against reductionist views that attempt to dismiss these reactions altogether as mere projection on a neutral physical world. His criticism is that this naturalist ontology annihilates our very sense of morality, that is, the sense that moral values are in some way different from, higher than, or incommensurable with natural desires.

Against this background, the central question of the conference is: What do our ethical views commit us to ontologically?  In this way, this conference aims to discuss Taylor’s moral phenomenology in order to open up the question of the implicit ontological commitments behind our ethical beliefs. 

Keynotes:

Ruth Abbey (University of Notre Dame)
Nicholas Smith (Macquarie University)
Arto Laitinen (University of Tampere)

I discuss the second of the three theses advanced by Anscombe in 'Modern Moral Philosophy'. The focus is the nature of entities to which – if Anscombe's diagnosis is correct – ought and cognate modals are assumed by modern moral philosophers to refer. I reconstruct the alternative account offered by Anscombe of viable and justified 'Aristotelian' modals – as contrasted with mysterious and unjustified 'Kantian' modals; I discuss the nature and status of 'Aristotelian necessity' to which such legitimate modals refer to. I conclude with the claims that Anscombe's account of modern moral philosophy is viciously parochial, reducing it to Oxford philosophy from the Thirties and Forties and its immediate antecedents; that her historical reconstruction is vitiated by lack of awareness of the existence of law-views of morality preceding Christian theology, artful anticipation of secularization in order to fit her picture of modern moral philosophy as the 'day after' of Christianity; that Aquinas's and her own view of natural morality as made of rational moral judgments laws is incompatible with both her predilection for 'divine law' instead of plain down-to-earth 'natural law'; that her strained reconstruction of a Christian-Jewish-Stoic view of morality as law promulgated by God has little to share with any reconstruction of the Biblical moral traditions meeting academic standard and in more detail there is no possible translation of Torah as Law; and that her criticism hits just targets from the old little British world she was familiar with, while leaving Kantian ethics unaffected.

Dans ce chapitre, mon objectif est double : tout d’abord fournir une introduction à partir de quelques exemples aux recherches menées en psychologie morale, ensuite éclairer l’intérêt de ce type de recherches pour la philosophie et plus précisément pour l’éthique normative.

Almost sixty years ago Philippa Foot published an article that began: To many people it seems that the most notable advance in moral philosophy during the past fifty years or so has been the refutation of naturalism; and they are a little shocked that at this late date such an issue should be reopened. It is easy to understand their attitude: given certain apparently unquestionable assumptions, it would be about as sensible to try to reintroduce naturalism as to try to square the circle. Those who see it like this have satisfied themselves that they know in advance that any naturalistic theory must have a catch in it somewhere, and are put out at having to waste more time exposing an old fallacy. This paper is an attempt to persuade them to look critically at the premises on which their arguments are based. 1 The paper in question was one of a number written by Foot around the time that were highly successful in reopening the issue of naturalism in ethics. Nowadays no one can just take it for granted that naturalism has been refuted, that there is a sharp distinction (or indeed any clear distinction) between fact and value or that it is impossible to derive an 'ought' from an 'is'. This is not to say that the naturalists have been completely victorious, of course; only that naturalism is today a live option. I shall argue that Foot's paper contains an important insight and an equally important mistake; and that the insight and the mistake are linked. I believe that the thinking behind it has influenced the subsequent course of moral philosophy to a quite remarkable extent and that this has been in some ways beneficial and in some ways harmful – not surprisingly, if I am right in seeing it as containing both truth and error. I do not want to exaggerate the influence of this one paper 2 but I do not know of any other that so neatly encapsulates the coupled insight and mistake. The anti-naturalism that Foot is attacking she characterises as follows: It would not be an exaggeration to say that the whole of moral philosophy, as it is now widely taught, rests on a contrast between statements of fact and evaluations, which runs something like this: The truth or falsity of statements of fact is shewn by means of evidence; and what counts as evidence is laid down in the meaning of the expressions occurring in the statement of fact … It follows that no two people can make the same statement and count completely different things as evidence; in the end one at least of them could be convicted of linguistic ignorance. It also follows that if a man is given good evidence for a factual conclusion he cannot just refuse to accept the conclusion on the ground that in his scheme of things this evidence is not evidence at all. 3 But, on the view she is criticising, [w]ith evaluations, however, it is different. An evaluation is not connected logically with the factual statements on which it is based. One man may say that a thing is good because of some fact about it, and another may refuse to take that fact as any evidence, for nothing is laid down in the meaning of 'good' which connects it with one piece of 'evidence' rather than another. It follows that a moral eccentric could argue to moral conclusions from quite idiosyncratic premises; he could say, for instance, that a man was a good man because he clasped and unclasped his hands and never turned NNE after

Introductory courses dealing with sex, gender and sexuality are usually quite biased, going as far as to deny the reality of biology. Drawing on the Catholic tradition (Aquinas), this article presents an accessible argument aimed at restoring deliberative balance in the classroom.

Philippa Foot's Natural Goodness 1 does a lot in just 116 pages. In a philosophical context that largely takes for granted the separation of moral value from natural fact, and the location of moral meaning in moral agents' subjective states, Foot puts a radically different type of moral theory back on the table (5-9). 2 Foot suggests morality is properly grounded in fact, specifically facts about the natural goodness of the human life form

This essay series, titled “Huxley, Dewey, and Pinker: Evolution, Science and Enlightenment - The Critical Virtue of Inquiry” examines the effort of Thomas Huxley, John Dewey, and Steven Pinker to account for and justify the transformative impact of Darwinian evolution upon the intellectual, emotional, and moral lives of humanity. The series explores the struggle of humanity first, to understand the cosmos that was revealed by the discoveries of Darwinian evolution, second, to manage the intellectual, emotional and moral implications of these discoveries, and third, to assess the dangers and the benefits of the processes of inquiry that created the revolution within which we all now must live.

NATURALIZM "Etyka jest pochodzenia naturalnego", "dobro i powinność są czymś naturalnym"tak mogłyby brzmieć najogólniejsze i zarazem najbardziej intuicyjne odpowiedzi osoby niewyszkolonej specjalnie filozoficznie na pytanie o to, czym może być naturalizm etyczny. W rzeczy samej, odpowiedzi te stanowią punkt wyjścia dociekań ściśle filozoficznych: teza bazowa naturalisty etycznego brzmi bowiem mniej więcej właśnie w ten sposób: "Naturalizm etyczny jest stanowiskiem mówiącym, że to, co etyczne, jest naturalne" 1 . Piszę «mniej więcej», bo jeśli naturalizmu nie traktujemy -jak to zwykle ma miejsce -jako terminu, który "nosi znaczenie wypisane na swoim czole" 2 , to zasadniczo każdy z elementów wchodzących w skład tej quasi-definicji wymaga odpowiedniego sprecyzowania czy krytyki, żeby w ogóle dało się tu mówić o definicji. Jak można się domyślać, obiektem szczególnej uwagi musi być to, co naturalne. W niniejszym rozdziale postaram się, po uprzednim wyróżnieniu najważniejszych płaszczyzn refleksji naturalistycznej, omówić metaetycznie istotne dystynkcje i płaszczyzny rozważań, które pomogą objaśnić akceptowalne pojęcie naturalizmu etycznego. Zanim przedsięwzięcie to zostanie zainaugurowane, warto jednak dokonać pewnego rozróżnienia. W literaturze poświęconej naturalizmowi w etyce spotkać można dwa różne określenia, które odsyłają do rozważanego zagadnienia: naturalizm etyczny i etyka naturalistyczna. Druga z tych nazw jest genetycznie pierwotna: w dyskursie metaetycznym zadomowiła się dzięki -tyleż wpływowej, co często krytykowanej -znanej pracy George'a E. Moore'a, Principia Ethica 3 . Drugi termin został wprowadzony do etyki głównie za sprawą recepcji dzieła Moore'a 4 . Moore pisał: 1 Moore, Principia Ethica, dz. cyt., rozdział II. 4 Określenie to pojawiło się w artykule C.L. Stevensona, poźniej -w najbardziej znanej książce Richarda Brandta, a także u E.M. Adamsa. Zob. C.L. Stevenson, Moore's Argument against Certain Forms of Ethical Naturalism, w: The Philosophy of G.E. Moore, ed. P. Schilpp, Evanston, Northwestern UP 1942, s. 71-90; R.B. Brandt, Etyka…, dz. cyt., (rozdz. VII); E.M. Adams, Ethical Naturalism and the Modern World-View, Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press 1960, passim.

Neo-Aristotelian Naturalism draws on Aristotle. In some respects the philosophical affinity to Aristotle seems clear, in other respects the similarities are less obvious.

There is also an English version available (Aristotle an Aristotelian Naturalism).

This book entitled Goodness and Nature is concerned with the question of naturalism in ethics. Naturalism is the view that good and bad, right and wrong, are real matters of fact or knowledge that can in principle be determined by some reference to ‘nature’. This question is among the most important that any student of modern moral philosophy has to face. This book’s search for a solution to its difficulties, however, has required going outside the limits within which that question was originally posed. In fact, it is one of the principal messages of the book that it is these limits themselves that constitute most of the problem. The effort to think beyond the limits of modern moral philosophy has, in my case at any rate, proved to be also the effort to think back into an ancient tradition of philosophy which flourished for so many centuries beforehand, and which modern philosophers have largely rejected. For this reason this book is an unashamedly ancient book. It might even be called an essay in discarded ideas. There are, of course, differing views about how to approach the problems raised by modern moral philosophy. It is my conviction that a return to ancient ideas is the most helpful and the most fruitful, as will, I hope, become evident from the way my argument develops from the first to the final chapters. The ancient tradition that I am following provides, I contend, just the concepts and distinctions necessary to resolve the puzzles that have gathered themselves about the question of naturalism. These puzzles are genuine and philosophically instructive; that is why they need to be faced and answered squarely. To argue round them, or to dismiss them before getting to grips with them, is to run the risk of hindering philosophical understanding. Accordingly, the early chapters of this book are concerned with writings that appeared and provoked most controversy several decades ago. For this seeming anachronism I make no apology; it is in these writings that the puzzles find their most instructive, not to say classic, expression. A Supplement to this edition of Goodness and Nature is appended in a separate file. The Supplement that did not appear in the book when it was first published but its addition is meant to provide more of the background and evidence for the argument presented in chapter 5 of the book, the chapter entitled ‘Historical Origins’. That chapter can, to be sure, stand by itself in its place in Goodness and Nature independently of the Supplement. But since it makes claims, and presents a progression of thought, that are relatively controversial within the context of the debate about naturalism in ethics, it may excite an interest and a skepticism that some readers may wish to have more fully satisfied or answered. The Supplement is meant to supply that wish. The chapters and their contents cover the same ground as was covered in chapter 5 of Goodness and Nature but in greater detail, ranging over a fuller review of the important thinkers, and spelling out more of the relevant elements and implications. The Supplement can, therefore, stand by itself too, and need not just be read as an addition to Goodness and Nature (even though it contains several references to that book). In any event, interested readers should find on the Contents page of the Supplement enough information about what the Supplement contains to guide as well as, one hopes, to spark interest.

The book with supplement is also available from my website aristotelophile.com and in print from Amazon.com

The impact of science on ethics forms since long the subject of intense debate. Although there is a growing consensus that science can describe morality and explain its evolutionary origins, there is less consensus about the ability of science to
provide input to the normative domain of ethics. Whereas defenders of a scientific normative ethics appeal to naturalism, its critics either see the naturalistic fallacy committed or argue that the relevance of science to normative ethics remains undemonstrated. In this paper, we argue that current scientific normative ethicists commit no fallacy, that criticisms of scientific ethics contradict each other, and that scientific
insights are relevant to normative inquiries by informing ethics about the options open to the ethical debate. Moreover, when conceiving normative ethics as being a nonfoundational
ethics, science can be used to evaluate every possible norm. This stands in contrast to foundational ethics in which some norms remain beyond scientific inquiry. Finally, we state that a difference in conception of normative ethics underlies
the disagreement between proponents and opponents of a scientific ethics. Our argument is based on and preceded by a reconsideration of the notions naturalistic fallacy and foundational ethics. This argument differs from previous work in scientific ethics: whereas before the philosophical project of naturalizing the normative has been stressed, here we focus on concrete consequences of biological findings for normative
decisions or on the day-to-day normative relevance of these scientific insights.

A brief conspectus of my views on Hume, Is and Ought, omitting most  of the complications required to answer Arthur Prior (and saying nothing about Gerhard Schurz whose ideas would be a little too complicated to explain to the  intended audience). Suitable for first or second year undergraduates or intelligent laypeople with some knowledge of  philosophy but not much of formal logic.

This paper discusses normative appeals to naturalness in ecocentric environmental ethics. First, it demonstrates the resemblance between these appeals, as they are framed in ecocentric moral thinking and classical naturalistic ethical theories such as stoicism and Aristotelian ethics. It goes on to consider two objections to which this resemblance seemingly renders ecocentrism vulnerable: the naturalistic fallacy objection and the natural evils objection. The paper argues that raising the naturalistic fallacy objection against ecocentrism conflates an issue of normative ethics with a metaethical one. The issue of whether something can be good because it is natural is distinct from the issue of whether value concepts can be reduced to concepts referring to natural properties. The paper then defends ecocentrism from the natural evils objection, which argues that what is natural cannot be good because too many harmful events occur in the natural world. That objection conflates two ways of saying that something is valuable. What it shows is that natural events are sometimes bad for humans, whereas ecocentrism holds that nature is valuable independently of its goodness for human beings. It has been argued that this nonanthropocentric stance gives rise to the further objection that ecocentrism is committed to sacrificing human life and well-being when doing so is required to maintain ecosystems in a healthy state. The paper responds to this concern by emphasizing both the prima facie nature of ecocentric duties as they are understood by prominent ecocentrists, and the convergence between the good of humans and that of ecosystems.

Budhisme mempunyai prinsip samsara yang berarti menjalani kehidupan dengan mengontrol harapan dan keinginan dengan tujuan dapat mencapai satori. Dalam tradisi pemikiran orang Jepang yang natural, pragmatik dan realistis, telah diaplikasikan dan direkonstruksi dari bonno o tatsu (untuk mengontrol harapan dan keinginan) menjadi bonno o ikasu (membangunkan/ menggerakkan harapan dan keinginan).

Existen distintas concepciones acerca de la naturaleza de la ética implícitas en el debate acerca de la prevalencia de casos de abuso sexual visibilizados a través del fenómeno viral del #MeToo. El manifiesto publicado por intelectuales francesas en respuesta a esta campaña y defendiendo la " libertad de importunar" evidenció que la noción de abuso implicaba la condena moral de una serie de prácticas sexuales que no era compartida por la totalidad de los sectores que se reivindican feministas. A l no estar en cuestión la veracidad de los hechos denunciados sino su evaluación moral, queda claro que se trata de un desacuerdo en los criterios éticos, que a la vez evidencia la necesidad de preguntar por la fundamentación de estos criterios para encauzar la discusión en un terreno común.

In this paper, I argue that a close examination of Charles Taylor's central concept of "strong evaluation" brings out more clearly the continuing tensions in his writings as a whole. I trace back the origin of strong evaluation in Taylor’s earliest writings and continue by laying out the different philosophical themes that revolve around it. Next, the focus is on the separate arguments in which strong evaluation is central, uncovering certain methodological conflicts in Taylor’s strategies. Arguing against most of his commentators, I suggest that a distinction should be drawn between the philosophical-anthropological, ethical, and ontological implications of strong evaluation. As a result, the contribution of this paper is threefold. First, it clarifies the issue of strong evaluation by distinguishing the different arguments in which Taylor employs the concept. Second, it makes the case for multiple tensions within Taylor’s methods. Third, as a consequence, this analysis opens up the question of the metaphysical status of his ontological view.

This book provides a comprehensive critical account of the philosophy of Charles Taylor. The author engages with the secondary literature on Taylor's work and suggests that some interpretations and criticisms have been based on misunderstandings of the ontological dimension of strong evaluation, while also developing a novel interpretation of Taylor's ontological thought. Meijer argues that a close examination of Taylor’s central concept of “strong evaluation” reveals both the potential of and the tensions in his entire thinking. The analysis pursues the development of Taylor’s thought from his very first philosophical papers (1958) until his most recent reflections in Retrieving Realism (2015) and The Language Animal (2016). It also examines in detail Taylor’s ambitious philosophical project: to connect arguments in philosophical anthropology, ethics, phenomenology, and ontology across the full range of his diverse writings. The book therefore specifically traces the links between Taylor’s arguments, with strong evaluation as their unifying leitmotif.

Reviews

"I am grateful to Michiel Meijer for his interesting and challenging description of the inner relations – and tensions – in my account of human agency. There is certainly a lot more to be worked out in this area. His discussion should help further define the issues involved, which are central to our understanding of what it is to be human."

Charles Taylor, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, McGill University

"Michiel Meijer does a great job of bringing out how distinctive, and yet how valuable, Charles Taylor’s contribution to contemporary debates in ethics is. Centering on Taylor’s important, multi-layered concept of strong evaluation, Meijer ranges across decades of Taylor’s writings to masterfully explicate the complications and nuances of Taylor’s thought while also engaging constructively with the large secondary literature about it."

Dr. Ruth Abbey, Professor of Political Theory at the University of Notre Dame

"Michiel Meijer’s book is an impressive addition to the scholarship on Taylor. By focusing on the key concept of strong evaluation, and then analysing how this concept features in Taylor’s writings in philosophical anthropology, ethics and ontology, Meijer brings a new and interesting perspective to bear on Taylor’s philosophical work as a whole."

Nicholas Smith, Professor of Philosophy, Macquarie University

The discussion is about a mode for recognizing some fundaments to the significance and the practice of ethics, which may be proved true by their own intrinsic significance so far Nature and the economic processes are concerned. As a goal we look for understanding what can be an approach for integrating ecology and economy within an ethical perspective with the aim of proposing an eco-sustainable development.

The aim of this paper is to submit the doctrine of methodological individualism to a reconsideration from the point of view of the arguments formulated by contemporary communitarian philosophy. I propose to approach the opposition between the individual and the community, constitutive for the liberal–communitarian debate, by means of two concepts, i.e. those of recognition and order. I argue that for the individualists a social order emerges through a process of mutual recognition of the pre-existing individuals and their interests, while the communitarians claim that the task of individuals is to recognize values and norms of a pre-existing social order which is to become their own. The difference between them thus resides primarily in the ontological distinction between the respective objects of these two divergent concepts of recognition. The argument is developed through an analysis of David Hume’s concept of the individual. In opposition to some communitarian claims, I maintain that his approach may be interpreted as an antecedent of the communitarian views on the subject. I also outline a view of moral rules as neither universal, absolutist, nor purely emotivist in character, but as social constructions endowed with the status of “contingent permanence.”

In questo contributo cerco di chiarire in quale senso un’etica di ispirazione kantiana possa fare appello a un certo significato di «natura» come fondamento della normatività morale. Intendo questo obiettivo non come una nuova esegesi della dottrina di Kant (vi sono interpretazioni esegetiche che vanno in questo senso, comunque), bensì come un tentativo di elaborare una posizione teorica che condivide con Kant anzitutto il primato della ragion pratica.
Per fare questo prendo le distanze da alcune delle interpretazioni recenti dell’etica kantiana e al tempo stesso provo a chiarire la differenza fra questo appello alla natura e, rispettivamente, il «naturalismo etico» contemporaneo e il naturalismo classico di ispirazione aristotelico-scolastica. Illustro poi la struttura essenziale del «realismo della ragion pratica come libertà», che ritengo sia il perno della prospettiva kantiana in etica. Indico le ragioni per cui un’interpretazione realista sia della ragion pratica sia della libertà siano preferibili alle alternative antirealiste. Sposto quindi il punto focale dell’argomentazione sul problema della realtà della libertà, richiamando l’argomento kantiano del Faktum der Vernunft e altri argomenti a favore dell’esistenza reale della libertà. Infine, indico in che senso il realismo della ragion pratica apre la possibilità di riconoscere la variabilità delle tradizioni morali contingenti senza perdere di vista un criterio trascendentale che consente di esprimere un giudizio critico dall’interno di ciascuna tradizione morale.

Che la Meditazione milanese fosse più di un semplice gioco filosofico era già stato intuito, sin dal momento della pubblicazione, da alcuni attenti lettori. Essi non si limitarono a comprenderla come semplice base teorica alla luce della quale rileggere le ben più famose opere letterarie, bensì come una riflessione a sé stante, dotata di coerenza e dignità proprie 1 . Tuttavia, di fronte a una vicenda così accattivante, quella del letterato-filosofo, occorre evitare la doppia tentazione: da un lato disconoscere il valore filosofico di una riflessione, facendone una premessa o un'appendice delle pubblicazioni successive, dall'altro esaltarlo oltre misura, equiparando di fatto la grandezza del pensatore a quella del letterato. Per questo oggi, al di là delle polemiche e delle precisazioni legittime che hanno caratterizzato anche il recente dibattito 2 , va sicuramente sostenuto il valore teoretico di un testo che, sebbene dato alle stampe più di trent'anni fa, ha ricevuto l'attenzione prevalente, se non esclusiva, di italianisti, linguisti e in generale studiosi delle lettere. Per quanto il linguaggio usato e l'approccio possano essere del tutto personali e per certi versi, a tratti, poco ortodossi -qui potrebbero trovare spiegazione gli addebiti e le imputazioni di dilettantismo rivolti nei suoi riguardi -resta la consistenza di un ragionamento che merita di essere approfondito per quello che dice, e non per chi l'ha detto.

In the face of widespread uncertainty about how best to characterize the project of neo- Aristotelian naturalism, this paper presents a novel way to understand the distinction John McDowell draws in 'Two Sorts of Naturalism' between a crass empirical naturalism and a more satisfactory alternative. Empirical naturalism is attacked using the representation problem as presented by Bernard Williams. The alternative, excellence naturalism, understands the reasons for action we draw from nature as the application of the characteristic functions of a being of our type towards its characteristic ends. They are excellences because they allow the overcoming of obstacles towards the good life for a being of that type. Finally, a problem for excellence naturalism is indicated, regarding how to handle new or changing forms of life.

The concept of distributed moral responsibility (DMR) has a long history. When it is understood as being entirely reducible to the sum of (some) human, individual, and already morally loaded actions, then the allocation of DMR, and hence of praise and reward or blame and punishment, may be pragmatically difficult, but not conceptually problematic. However, in distributed environments it is increasingly possible that a network of agents, some human, some artificial (e.g. a program) and some hybrid (e.g. a group of people working as a team thanks to a software platform) may cause distributed moral actions (DMAs). These are morally good or evil (i.e., morally loaded) actions caused by local interactions that are in themselves neither good nor evil (morally neutral). In this article, I analyse DMRs that are due to DMAs and argue in favour of the allocation, by default and overridably, of full moral responsibility (faultless responsibility) to all the nodes/agents in the network causally relevant for bringing about the DMA in question, independently of intentionality. The mechanism proposed is inspired by, and adapts, three concepts: back propagation from network theory, strict liability from jurisprudence, and common knowledge from epistemic logic.

In this paper, I engage in metaphysical reflection with Bernard Williams in order to assess the possibility of objective ethical knowledge. Objective knowledge according to Williams, consists of representations that are true regardless of perspective. The sum of true objective knowledge is what he calls ‘the absolute conception of the world’. By reflection on what it would be like to know the world from no point of view at all, that is, from the absolute conception, Williams suggests that we may come to see which representations that approximate the absolute and what representations are riddled with peculiarities that are particular to a specific point of view. In this essay, I will reflect with Williams on the idea of the absolute conception with the purpose in mind to determine whether ethics can be part of that conception.

A remote haploscopic video refractor was used to assess vergence and accommodation responses in a group of 32 emmetropic, orthophoric, symptom free, young adults naïve to vision experiments in a minimally instructed setting. Picture targets were presented at four positions between 2 m and 33 cm. Blur, disparity and looming cues were presented in combination or separately to asses their contributions to the total near response in a within-subjects design. Response gain for both vergence and accommodation reduced markedly whenever disparity was excluded, with much smaller effects when blur and proximity were excluded. Despite the clinical homogeneity of the participant group there were also some individual differences.