This is an outline of the first chapter of Mark Murphy’s book Natural Law and Practical Rationality. It is a selectively interested outline, leaving out the details of many arguments of which I have little interest. This is a part of a larger project to get a better grasp on Natural Law metaethics and its use by Alexander Pruss in practical ethics, especially in regards to sexual practical ethics.
I. Ch. 1: The Real Identity Thesis
A. Definitions:
Practical judgement = a judgment about what ought to be done.
Theoretical Judgment = a judgement about the way things are in fact.
B. The Epistemic Problem; How are practical judgements known to be true?
i. Inclinationist: Practical judgements are known immediately and in a non-derived way. They may be occasioned by inclinations towards goods. No practical judgements can be drawn from non-practical judgments.
a. Hume’s law is the driving principle behind this principle.
b. They reject, however, the reduction of value to sentiment as exemplified by Hume.
c. John Finnis, Girgis, Robert George, represent this strand.
ii. Derivationist: More standard for the old style of Natural Law. Practical judgments can be drawn from non-practical, theoretical judgments. By examining the nature of humans, we can discover what the good of humans consists of.
a. David Oderberg and Ed Feser represent this strand.
C. Problems with both the Inclinationist and Derivationist positions
i. Problems for Derivationist: (a) The first problem with the derivationist is obvious. Hume’s law seems correct and the derivationist violates it and (b) The derivationist also seems to give an inadequate account of the basic nature of moral knowledge possessed by most people.
ii. Problems for the Inclinationist: The non-co-assertability problem, which is the difficulty of holding both (a) the idea that practical judgements are known in a non-derived sense and (b) the idea that goods are grounded in a strong sense in human nature. If (b) is weakened too much, Inclinationism would no longer count as a NL position. In other words, the Inclinationist is in tension with the central driving claim that natural law is based in human nature.
This difficulty, however, is less of a direct rejection of Inclinationism and more a challenge for it, which Murphy strives to answer in the next section.
D. The Real Identity Thesis Stated
i. Desirables:
(a) Preserve the basic accessibility of normative truth for the non-theoreticians
(b) Preserve Hume’s Law
(c) Preserve a tight and distinctive connection between the natural law and human nature.
ii. An analogous model for the relationship between practical and non-practical judgements: Indexicals. Consider the relationship between indexical statements and non-indexical statements: “I am in the office,” vs “Daryl Cotton is in the office.”
a. The one statement is not deducible from the other, paralleling Hume’s law.
b. Yet the connection between the two is extremely tight, satisfying one of our desiderata. The very same state of affairs is the truth-maker for both claims, which is my actually being in the office.
a. It’s possible to know one of the statements above without knowing the other. This can offer a parallel to the possibility of knowing only half of the non-practical vs practical judgements.
iii. If the relationship between practical and non-practical judgements are similar to the indexical case, then it seems we may have a bridge by which to understand how the two types of judgements can relate and shed light on one another. Natural law and judgements about human nature may refer to the same state of affairs and are made true by the obtaining of the same state of affairs; these judgements differ because the former are formulated by practical reason and the latter by theoretical reason--and perhaps, once we become aware of the precise nature of the connection between these types of judgements we may be able to use this information to argue in a justifiable way from judgements of one type to judgements of the other type.
iv. Why think this model is correct, though? We need to:
a. Identify which theoretical judgments we propose to connect with the principles of natural law and
b. Provide grounds for supposing that the practical and theoretical judgments are made true by the same state of affairs.
c. There is such a set of truths knowable by theoretical reason that affirms the existence of human flourishing and what the aspects of it are,
d. There are strong reasons to suppose that such a set will also be grasped by practical reason as a good worth having.
v. The Real Identity Thesis (RIT): States of affairs understood by theoretical reason as aspects of flourishing are identical with states of affairs understood by practical reason as goods worth having.
vi. What relevance would RIT have on justifying an account of the basic goods? If RIT is correct, then it can find a place for both practical and theoretical judgements in accounting for the natural law. Given independent, theoretical access to the nature of human flourishing and the affirmation of RIT, we can conclude that those states of affairs that are grasped as aspects of human flourishing are goods worth having. Vice versa.
E. The Function Argument
i. Murphy argues here that Humans have a function from the fact that systems in our bodies have functions.. He then further argues that our function as humans is to flourish.
F. Epistemic problem again: How do we know what human flourishing consists in?
i. Mentalism: Human flourishing consists in satisfying human desires. We have easy access to what we desire, so the epistemic problem isn’t hard. Absurd conclusions can result from this position, however. So reject.
ii. Statistical Normalcy: Whatever is most prevalent among a kind sets the criteria for flourishing among that kind. But it’s possible for a defect to be the most statistically common: It’s possible that every panda has its right ear removed, but that won’t constitute flourishing for pandas. This shows statistical normalcy is neither sufficient nor necessary to gauge flourishing for a kind, though it may be suggestive.
iii. By ascribing functions to things we implicity grasp what constitutes flourishing for those things. This back-and-forth can sharpen each to the point that we can advance in knowledge.
iv. One way to understand different types of flourishing is to attempt to isolate them by way of imagined malfunctions. Many of the activities that are included in accounts of human flourishing can plausibly be viewed as such through the application of this method: Imagine what we would say about the seriousness of the malfunctions in the brain that would prevent us from having friendships, or appreciating beauty, or making practical judgements. Some cases are not merely possible but actual. And it seems that we recognize that these inabilities count as malfunctions. So if they are malfunctions, then it is part of our function to have these things, and if they are part of our function to have, then they are part of our flourishing.
G. Reasons to affirm RIT
i. Why hold that those states of affairs grasped by theoretical reason are the same as those grasped by practical reason?
a. Unifying power. It’s pretty.
b. Both states of affairs that are grasped as aspects of flourishing and the states of affairs that are grasped as goods to be pursued both rely on evaluative concepts. It seems right that both judgements, if they are identifying the same state of affairs under different senses, should be marked by evaluative judgements. (NOTE: Evaluative and "practical" are not synonymous. "This plant is in good condition" is an evaluative judgement, but not a practical one. Evaluative concepts can justifiably operate within speculative reason.)
c. Structural Similarity: Some functions are for the sake of other functions, just as some goods are for the sake of other goods.
d. Epistemic: Inclinationist say that we grasp goods by examining that which we're inclined towards. This method bears a striking resemblance to the method for determining what a creature's flourishing is by looking at what makes the functions of its parts intelligible.
ii. The above list seems suggestive for affirming RIT, but not sufficient.
The point of defending RIT is to support the use of a dialectical method for justifying an account of the goods to be pursued that provide fundamental reasons for action. If a correspondence can be found in listing basic goods that provide practical reasons and seeing what the concept of flourishing gets us, it can offer some prima facie evidence for affirming RIT.
H. Similarities with Aquinas
i. Is this account compatible with historical Natural Law as espoused by Aquinas? Maybe. It seems like it could provide an account for why both Derivationists and Inclinationists interpret Aquinas as their own.
ii. Aquinas’s affirming of goodness being identical with being and differing only in sense seems awfully reminiscent of RIT.
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