Lost without Landmarks. — “Up to the present in everyday discourse the habit of speaking of moral judgments as true or false persists; but the question of what it is in virtue of which a particular moral judgment is true or false has come to lack any clear answer. That this should be so is perfectly intelligible if the historical hypothesis which I have sketched is true: that moral judgments are linguisitic survivals from the practices of classical theism which have lost the context provided by those practices. In that context moral judgments were at once hypothetical and categorical in form. They were hypothetical insofar as they expressed a judgment as to what conduct would be teleologically appropriate for a human being: ‘You ought to do so-and-so, if and since your telos is such-and-such’ or perhaps ‘You ought to do so-and-so, if you do not want your essential desires to be frustrated’. They were categorical insofar as they reported the contents of the universal law commanded by God: ‘You ought to do so-and-so: that is what God’s law enjoins.’ But take away from them that in virtue of which they were hypothetical and that in virtue of which they were categorical and what are they? Moral judgments lose any clear status and the sentences which express them in a parallel way lose any undebateable meaning. Such sentences become available as forms of expression for an emotivist self which lacking the guidance of the context in which they were orginally at home has lost its linguistic as well as its practical way in the world.”
Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue (London: Duckworth, 2007), p.60.
16 comments:
It's hard and probably impossible to find any part of the human race so primitive that they do not have a well developed moral system. This is clean, this is unclean, etc.
One would almost claim that it was part of human nature, and that MacIntyre is wrong to analyze something fundamentally irrational so severely.
But then again, there is the example of us moderns. We seem to be trying to do without. Perhaps it's not human nature, or maybe we're no longer natural humans.
All normative assertions, when examined (which, in ordinary life, they usually are not) assume some teleological reference frame.
We can still have all the normativity we want, but since we've dared to peek behind the curtain (or to open Pandora's box, eat from the Tree, etc.), and have realized that the teleological scaffolding we thought was there all along turns out never to have been, we are now responsible (fortunately or otherwise, depending upon your view) for erecting and maintaining our own.
A pity, perhaps -- but as Tony Soprano reminded us (do forgive my French), "you can't put the shit back in the donkey."
Thras,
MacIntyre accepts that moral statements can be true and false and thereby rational. He rejects the modern emotivist travesty of moral philosophy.
Malcolm,
Empirical science has certainly given us no peek behind the empirical curtain, so I am not sure what you mean in claiming that we have dared to peek behind the curtain. What daring? Which curtain? Rational enquiry can give us that peek behind the empirical world, but therewith we enter into metaphysics. Positivism and mechanico-physicalism are incompatible; for the latter speaks where the former says we should not speak. Unfortunately many people seem not to care that the two views are incompatible.
"the teleological scaffolding we thought was there all along turns out never to have been"
Has it? How so? When I accept that A causes B, and is not merely a Humean "loose and separate" accidence of events, I accept that reality is teleological. I bet you do too. I do not know why you believe that "we" overcame teleology. Who is this "we"? And when did this overcoming happen? Certainly the mechanical philosophy rejected teleology, hence the Humean view and a host of other views which would render the world unintelligible --- if they were actually taken seriously by their proponents.
I am also confused why you believe that we can have all the normativity that we want when you also believe that nothing --- including us --- is ultimately normative but rather that everything is mechanical. It reminds me of Bertrand Russell's incoherent view as expressed in his "A Free Man's Worship" --- poor ideology, I would say. Science or good philosophy it is not.
D.,
The "curtain" reference is of course to the Great and Powerful Oz, whose curtain concealed the fact that his imposing effects were not due to sorcery, but rather to a mundane, albeit impressively articulated, mechanical apparatus. And so it is with us; most of the effects we observe around us -- from lightning and the movement of the Sun, to the profuse variety and exquisite adaptation of of living beings here on Earth -- were once ascribed to the direct causal action of the gods, but now are understood to be the product of natural laws and processes. It required some measure of daring to demonstrate this; people are protective of their gods. It took Darwin, for example -- who knew the uproar his book would cause -- decades to screw up the nerve to publish it.
I must charge you with some eeliness regarding the notion of teleology: your assertion that the production of any effect by any cause is an example thereof is a bit disingenuous, I think, as the concept as customarily used refers to final, not efficient, causes.
That said, I'll agree that I overstated the case when I said that the teleological scaffolding we had assumed "turns out not to have been there at all." Perhaps I ought to have said that what we have failed to find is any sort of persuasive case whatsoever that such a framework exists, while establishing easily comprehensible naturalistic accounts for a very great deal that was once assumed to have God as its efficient cause.
I believe that we can have all the normativity we want, because we plainly do. When a person says something like "we ought to pick up some milk on the way home", or "you really should put a tourniquet on that", we are expressing normative propositions that make sense in the context of our framework of interests, and that require no deeper substrate. You can deny that living creatures can have interests in the first place if they have arisen by purely natural processes, but I will disagree. That's another discussion.
Finally, I don't recall saying anywhere that we "overcame" teleology; that sounds irritatingly triumphal, and is not the sort of thing I would have said. I should say instead that we have ceased to believe in it, for lack of persuasive arguments in its favor. The rub, of course, is that we may differ about what constitutes a persuasive argument.
“[Y]our assertion that the production of any effect by any cause is an example [of teleology] is a bit disingenuous, I think, as the concept as customarily used refers to final, not efficient, causes.”
My assertion is certainly not disingenuous, but is, on the contrary, quite orthodox concerning causation as causation rather than as mere observed sequence, and is quite to the point of your oversight or misunderstanding on this matter; for to call disingenuous the claim that the production of any effect by any cause is an example of teleology or final causality just shows that you don’t know the millennia-old understanding of causation which you nevertheless reject in line with the centuries-old mechanistic assumptions that you have inherited.
As Aristotle showed, implicit in the very idea of causation, derived in part from a man’s empirical observation of a regularity-relation between phenomena, but also from his awareness of his own rationality and causal agency, is the formal-final aspect as well as the efficient-material aspect. There is nothing outlandish in this: when a man thinks of cause-and-effect as involving more than just an observed and coincidental sequence of phenomena, he imputes something to that sequence in virtue of which the so-called effect is not on every particular occasion just coincidently in relation to the so-called cause. He thinks that there is something in the nature of a phenomenon which points to or is directed towards another, in other words, he assumes formal-final causation, whether he gives it a name or not, or is even whether he is aware of that imputation. Causation is unintelligible without the final-causal or teleological aspect. Indeed, without such an aspect, it just wouldn’t be causation, but rather it would be just a coincidental sequence of phenomena. At the heart of the concept of final causation is the understanding that things do not bring about their effects merely fortuitously or by sheer chance. In other words, it is to understand that, for A to be the cause of B, it is not because A just happens by sheer chance to have B rather than X, Y, and Z as its so-called effect every time it occurs, but rather that there is something in the nature of A which leads to B, that A has its effect in B. Where A has its effect in B, rather than X, Y, or Z, there A is end-directed by its nature to B and not X, Y, or Z. That is all that is meant by final causality which is necessary to an understanding of causation itself. When I strike a match, I understand that the cause (chemical composition, friction, dryness, and all relevant conditions) is directed by its nature to have the effect of combustion and not the production of doves. It is merely the nature of reality, quite unspectacular from a quotidian point of view, and I beg your pardon in advance for finding it unnecessary to speak of directing imps and demons.
[Continued . . ]
“Perhaps I ought to have said that what we have failed to find is any sort of persuasive case whatsoever that such a [teleological] framework exists”
Who is this “we” again? Empiricists? Well, that is hardly surprising! They can find no persuasive case whatsoever for causation. (So far as I know, no-one has succeeded in finding any sort of persuasive case whatsoever for finding the failure of empiricists to find a persuasive case for the existence of a teleological framework or causation at all to be significant for its non-existence.) Causation is properly metaphysical in that it is not to be empirically confirmed; it is to be rationally understood if the world is to be intelligible at all. All that can be empirically observed are material phenomena, one following another with regularity. The causal nature of that regularity does not present itself to empirical observation. Thus it strictly finds no place in modern physical science as the empirical endeavour of natural philosophy, but it must find a place in the rational and metaphysical foundations that underlie and support that endeavour, and without which it could not stand: assumptions principally, but not solely, concerning a world which is intelligible to rational enquiry. You are entitled, of course, to be as radically sceptical and outlandish as David Hume or Bertrand Russell, if the fancy takes you.
“I believe that we can have all the normativity we want, because we plainly do.”
Indeed we do. Perhaps then you should find a metaphysics that is rationally coherent with that understanding.
“You can deny that living creatures can have interests in the first place if they have arisen by purely natural processes, but I will disagree.”
Shouldn’t it be you who denies it? You are the one who denies that there is any natural teleological framework! I am the one that claims that purely natural processes are teleological. It is funny: the metaphysical naturalist is more in need of the concept of final causation than is the supernaturalist. After all, the supernaturalist could take a wholly mechanistic view of nature --- as did Newton --- and still be able to claim the existence of teleology in man on account of man’s supernatural essence as derived from God. But the naturalist cannot hold this view; for he holds that man is wholly a natural being, and thus, if he is not to go to the absurdity of denying beliefs, purposes, end-directed activities in man, then he will have to find that purposefulness arises from nature and derives from the teleology inherent thereto, which is at odds with the mechanistic view.
"I should say instead that we have ceased to believe in [teleology], for lack of persuasive arguments in its favor."
Firstly, everyone --- even you and Daniel Dennett --- still believes in it implicitly in their everyday understanding of cause-and-effect, and everyone imputes it, knowingly or not, as an aspect of reality necessary to the rational intelligibility thereof. Secondly, there are very persuasive arguments in its favour, and some of them have been around for a long time. I, on the other hand, should like to hear even one persuasive argument against it.
D.,
Do forgive me for going silent here for so long. Distractedness, I'm afraid, led to forgetfulness.
Is this then your position, your worldview? The full Aristotelian/Thomist monty? Do you hold that saying "fire, by its form, is inclined to rise" tells us anything about causality? Are we to believe also that motion, rather than being inertial, is an end-directed seeking of perfection, that once achieved comes to rest? (This last, at least, seems amply disconfirmed by observation: moving objects unimpeded by external forces do not tend toward rest.)
There are, apparently, causative regularities in the world, and of course we should all like a fully satisfying account of causality. To be sure, one can consistently imagine that all things are end-seeking agents, and that the noncognitive ones -- a falling stone, a storm-tossed branch, the arrow of an archer -- must derive their causal agency in turn either from God or other cognitive agents, but this is just a sop for our ignorance: we certainly do not see God, much less His hand, driving the tree-branch through the living-room window and shattering the glass. The fact, rather, is simply that causation puzzles and worries us, and so to diminish our agitation we calm ourselves with an unfalsifiable story, a soothing emollient. But such explanations are no better than telling us opium puts us to sleep because "it has a dormative power".
The real issue here, and one that we are not likely to agree upon, is the source of the teleology that clearly is evident in the world, as opposed to that which we merely imagine: to wit, the end-directedness exhibited by living things. It is my opinion that such purposefulness -- which is, I think, the only teleology there really is -- emerges from, and is supervenient upon, the substance and processes of the natural world. But here, I think, you and I have axiomatic differences that I doubt we are apt to resolve.
As for there being something in A that tends toward a given effect in B, this requires, as far as I can see, no end-directedness in A. If a B gets in an A's way, some effect may regularly occur, but this hardly counts as teleology in any conventional sense. If, on the other hand, it is in some sense A's purpose to have a certain effect, then we want an account of the origin of that purposefulness. Imps or demons, perhaps, or God -- or some natural process, if there is one. Which I suppose there is.
Malcolm, since it is evident that there is little point in continuing any serious discussion of the matter with you, I shall not bother myself.
Yet if only I’d remembered Molière! I could have saved myself all these vain imaginings and fairy-tale emollients with which I have deluded myself. For a while I thought I was trying to understand something to that little extent that my head can take me; but it seems after all that my true motive was just the need to tell myself comforting bedside-stories in order to fend off nightmares of an inexplicable universe of unintelligible happenings. And to think that there were men once who actually believed the world to be intelligible --- fearful children! Thank goodness the incoherence and irrationalism of materialistic ideology will save us! Now that I remember Molière, I hope that next time I read Leibniz, I shall remember Voltaire. It’d save me a lot of trouble of a similar kind. If we cannot learn the complicated ins-and-outs and all the implicit and explicit values of the works of geniuses through the plays and novels of flippant buffoons, or from the long-repeated erroneous assumptions which have bubbled up from who-knows-where and which have taken on the image of facts, where would we be? Why, we wouldn’t believe that non-tautologous statements claiming simply that things have inherent propensities are actually tautologous statements purporting to explain the mechanics of things; we wouldn’t believe that a notion of seventeenth-century physics about the nature of bodies moving in space is anathema to a metaphysics which holds that things do indeed by their very nature have propensities to behave in certain ways; we wouldn’t believe that anyone interested in an intellectual tradition which has its roots in old metaphysics need accept old and mistaken ideas of physics, just as we wouldn’t believe that any modern need remain committed to the idea of phlogiston or ether; we wouldn’t believe that formal-final causality is to be taken instead of mechanical-efficient causality but rather all to be taken as aspects of a whole necessary to intelligibility; we would understand the difference between explanatory principles and empirical data, and not reject on account of thoughtless metaphysical assumptions the former because they are not the latter, a rejection which is based on its own instance of the former and not the latter; we might even begin to take things thoughtfully, and consider that other people might have some valuable insights, instead of sneering at the incredible images projected by our own ignorance and polemical misconceptions.
But perhaps I should have talked of imps and demons, as it seems you cannot be satisfied with anything less. Still, if you wish to keep psychologising and interpreting things in the silliest manner; if you cannot accept that insights into reality might have occurred in “the long dark ages of man” before we enlightened moderns turned up; if you cannot understand the nature of an intellectual tradition such that you believe that every idea or conception coming out of it must be retained; and if you wish to keep telling those who do not accept your irrationalistic and incoherent ideology that they are telling themselves comforting stories against it --- rather than not being so silly to accept it --- then so be it. I do request, however, that you sell it elsewhere. It would save your time and mine.
D.,
Surely we needn't toss in the towel so soon, my friend. Indeed, I too am only "trying to understand something to that little extent that my head can take me"; we have both thought about these conundrums a great deal, and I cannot imagine that for us to compare and contrast our views must needs be unprofitable. If I have misread you, and should have understood your remarks about teleology and final cause to mean only tendencies, propensities, and not purpose, do forgive me; it was not my intention to vex you so. It is difficult in such conversations always to be clear about terms, and so I defaulted to a conventional understanding, based on the ancient metaphysics to which you alluded as your animating viewpoint, of the idea of "teleology" as requiring some intentional agent to set the ends. Perhaps you refer to a different metaphysics altogether than that which I had assumed you had in mind, namey that of Aquinas and Aristotle, but formal and final, material and efficient cause are central ideas in that philosophy, and so it seemed to me that this was the system -- the millennia-old one rejected, as you say, by a centuries-old "modern" philosophical tradition -- was what you wished to defend.
I quite understand that you may have in mind some more evolved conception of this system of ideas, and from your latest it does indeed seem this is so. If so, forgive me again, this time for suggesting that you might actually be plumping, in 2010, for Aristotelian mechanics.
So it does seem to me that I have not understood you properly, and I would like very much to gain a clearer picture of what you do have in mind. If, by "propensities to behave in certain ways", you mean to say only that things have properties that allow us reliably to predict their behavior with relation to their surroundings -- the density of a stone, for example, which we can be sure will imbue it with a tendency to fall toward other massive objects; or the brittleness of glass, which gives it a propensity to shatter when sharply struck -- then there is but little distance between us, and of course I will agree. This appears to be what you are saying when you discuss A and B (and their effects X, Y, and Z) above. But I still see no end-directedness in any of this. It does give us a way to enumerate likely effects of various interactions of bodies, but there is no sense that I can see in which there is any goal, or purpose -- which is, as far as I know, the usual sense of telos -- in it.
(continued below)
(continued)
But what, then, of formal and final causes? What, on this view, do they add as "aspects of the whole, necessary to intelligibility"? How, in your view, do these additions to our explanatory principles help us understand the empirical data? To ascribe such causes to the existence and behavior of a stone is, traditionally, to say that the stone is made massive in order that it move toward its proper place, and that the stone's natural downward movement toward its resting place is an end-directed seeking of a greater perfection, an actualization of a perfection in potentia. But because a stone is not the kind of conscious and intentional agent that can fix such ends for itself, we must have a source from which its purpose emanates, traditionally God. It is simply because I can see no comprehensible defintion of "teleology" and "purpose" that does not include this sort of agency that I was puzzled by your claim to have teleology with no "imps or demons". I am still baffled by it, frankly: I cannot see how we can have either formal or final causes without some account of intentional agency.
As far as I can see there are only two possible sources for the existence of purpose in the world: either God, or some process by which intentional, end-directed agents can arise from mindless muck. (I am persuaded, provisionally, that such a process actually is at work in the world, which of course makes me far less confident about the necessity of God.) But if God, and imps and demons, are not a part of your system -- as you seem to be saying -- then whence purpose? I assure you that I consider this question to be of primary importance, and your remarks so far have left me quite in the dark as to how you would answer it.
I am sorry to have got off on the wrong foot in this conversation; I can be a bit of a smart-aleck at times, and I know you're a prickly chap (that is why, after all, you are listed on my sidebar in the category "Grumpy Sites"). Like you, I want very much to make sense of the world, and like you also, I have worked hard at it. I do hope we can carry on more amiably, and perhaps more productively, from here.
“If I have misread you, and should have understood your remarks about teleology and final cause to mean only tendencies, propensities, and not purpose, do forgive me”
“Perhaps you refer to a different metaphysics altogether than that which I had assumed you had in mind, namey that of Aquinas and Aristotle, but formal and final, material and efficient cause are central ideas in that philosophy, and so it seemed to me that this was the system -- the millennia-old one rejected, as you say, by a centuries-old "modern" philosophical tradition -- was what you wished to defend.”
All this demonstrates is that you haven’t got the first idea what Aristotelian metaphysics is, so your cock-sureness is misplaced. Aristotelian final causality or end-directedness is not conscious purpose. The latter is but a subset of the former. And it does indeed involve tendencies and propensities for things to act towards certain ends.
“I defaulted to a conventional understanding, based on the ancient metaphysics to which you alluded as your animating viewpoint, of the idea of ‘teleology’ as requiring some intentional agent to set the ends.”
That is nowhere near a conventional understanding, but is rather a popular misconception not based on the ancient metaphysics to which I alluded: a metaphysics that in the case of Aristotle himself explicitly does not require a conscious-intentional agent to set the ends. For the differences between Aristotle and Aquinas, see Edward Feser’s post thereon. Whilst you are at it, and if you really wish to dispell some of the misconceptions that you have about this metaphysics, have a look through Feser’s archives, including here and here. As Prof. Feser says:
“If you think that what Aristotelians or Thomists mean when they say that teleology pervades the natural world is that certain natural objects exhibit “irreducible specified complexity,” or that some inorganic objects are analogous to machines and/or to biological organs, or that they are best explained as the means by which an “Intelligent Designer” is seeking to achieve certain goals, etc., then you are way off base.”
You might also care to read Feser’s books, or Jonathan Lear’s Aristotle: The Desire to Understand, or G.E.R Lloyd’s Aristotle: The Growth and Structure of His Thought, or Aristotle’s works themselves.
[Cont . . .]
“If, by ‘propensities to behave in certain ways’, you mean to say only that things have properties that allow us reliably to predict their behavior with relation to their surroundings -- the density of a stone, for example, which we can be sure will imbue it with a tendency to fall toward other massive objects; or the brittleness of glass, which gives it a propensity to shatter when sharply struck -- then there is but little distance between us, and of course I will agree. This appears to be what you are saying when you discuss A and B (and their effects X, Y, and Z) above.”
Then you agree with Aristotle against the mechanists, and you assume powers and propensities and ends in nature, which puts you outside the mechanical philosophy which has informed science since the seventeenth century. (Of course scientists, in understanding their findings, cannot do so except as rational animals, rather than as mere sensible beasts, and are thus naturally predisposed to the teleological thinking by which the order of the world is intelligible, and they do so even if they explicitly reject what they falsely believe Aristotelianism to be.) A propensity to act towards a certain end just is what is meant by final causality or end-directedness.
“But I still see no end-directedness in any of this. It does give us a way to enumerate likely effects of various interactions of bodies, but there is no sense that I can see in which there is any goal, or purpose -- which is, as far as I know, the usual sense of telos -- in it.”
How to miss the point! Giving us an understanding of effects is the point of why final causality or end-directedness is necessary for intelligibility! Yet you fail to see this because you keep ascribing purpose to end-directedness, when purpose is but a subset of end-directedness. Furthermore, the usual sense of telos is “end”, not “purpose”, and since Aristotle formulated teleology, and is the paramount philosopher of it, you might allow that his concept of teleology is the usual one outside of the crude misunderstanding of it that has arisen in modern times.
You are relying on myths and popular misconceptions. Aristotle’s philosophy is very subtle and profound, and is not the crudity that your impute to it. If you wish to gain some idea of my frustration in arguing with you, imagine if you were arguing with a creationist who kept on insisting that modern evolution theory is ridiculous because it claims that monkeys have given birth to humans. In such a case, it is a fruitless waste of time to continue the argument.
Deogolwulf,
Very well. If my understanding of Aquinas and Aristotle is actually as crude as you say, I shall retire from the field for a time for further reading and brooding. I certainly do not mean to argue against a "straw man", and I can see that my remarks here have brought you to the very brink of irritation. That the entire modern edifice is incoherent rubbish I do not believe, but certainly I cannot but benefit from additional study and reflection. I do hope we may chat more productively thereafter.
I have long been aware that Dr. Feser is a capable authority, and I shall read his book, as you have so kindly suggested. I must note in parting, however, that even he insists, with Aquinas, that final causes must depend ultimately upon God:
[B]etween Aristotle’s position and the (William Paley-like) view represented by Anaxagoras, there is a middle position represented by Aquinas’s Fifth Way, according to which purposes are indeed immanent in the way Aristotle says they are (rather than extrinsic a la Paley), but still ultimately need to be explained by reference to God’s ordering of things to their ends. Aristotle was, in Aquinas’s view and mine, just wrong to think otherwise.
I note also his willingness to use the word "purposes", for which I was lately castigated.
Malcolm,
Naturally for Aquinas, and for anyone else who believes in an ultimate ground of all being, final causes must indeed depend ultimately upon that ground. (Aristotle’s conception of God, and the latter’s relation to the world including its causality, is an odd one.) The point is, however, that Aquinas as an Aristotelian also accepts that final causality is simply of the nature of things — a mundane datum of an intelligible order to be explained, albeit with the ultimate explanation lying in God. It is possible to take that datum without drawing a conclusion about the existence of God, although naturally certain arguments urge that conclusion. One might, like Schopenhauer, seek the ultimate ground of reality in an unconscious striving will, or one might, on the other hand, remain steadfastly a positivist, and refuse to ask any questions at all thereof. Neither seems to me satisfying, for various reasons, pace the dear old grumpy one. (There is notoriously a contradiction in Schopenhauer’s philosophy, although Mark Anderson makes a good case for saving its sublime aspects from its modernistic assumptions.) From the naturalist’s point of view, the world construed broadly in Aristotelian terms has the distinct conceptual advantage of not radically sundering the inorganic from the organic, and does not therefore demand a move from non-intentionality to intentionality. Ex nihil, nihil fit. I am not here claiming that Aristotelianism promises to clear up all problems, or can account for all aspects of the world, but it does seem to offer at least a coherent basis from which to proceed.
As a neophyte in these matters, I still have many questions, and I cannot say that I have absolutely made up my mind — for example, whether I am more a Platonist than an Aristotelian. But these views are profoundly interesting and insightful, as well as sublime, and worth taking very seriously. There are aspects of the world that need explaining, and not ignoring or explaining away, and all too often the empiricist-materialist chooses one of the latter simply because he cannot fit the non-empirical aspects of the world into his picture of it. That bears the mark of an ideology. I would also say, contrary to what is generally assumed, that the empiricist-materialist worldview is inimical to the continuation of empirical science, and to every other rational pursuit of the truth, but we’ll leave that argument for another time.
Finally, although you don’t half rile me up sometimes, I do beg your pardon for being rude. Our exchanges do tend to be served al dente.
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