Natural Goodness 1st Edition

Stylistically, Foot's Natural Goodness is eminently readable. It's tone is so familiar and real it seems almost conversational, and it would serve other academics well to imitate the admirable economy Foot practices with her words. There is little that I can add to the very comprehensive reviews already on this thread. Foot forwards that virtue is a natural constitutive part of being a member of the human species, such as our physical abilities to form word-like sounds and the mental capability to learn language, and that vice (or a lack of virtue, as the case may be) is thence a natural defect. This defect marks an individual as a non-well functioning human, in a manner that structurally is not different from how a physical or mental defect marks a non-well functioning human, or a lame leg marks a non-well functioning deer.

One possible oddity of this perspective is how it suggests that moral defects is on par with other natural defects, such as defects physical. In our language and in practice and in appeals to the concept, we seem to give Goodness a higher ground than the merely natural. The most obvious (and possibly flawed) example is how we actively seek to punish individuals with defective virtue, while we do not do so for individuals with physical or mental defects.

There are interesting parallels also between the notion that we practice virtue even if it isn't to our individual benefit because virtue as a general principle may be beneficent to the human species as a whole, and the claims forwarded in Dawkins' The Selfish Gene. Although, to be fair, in Dawkins' work terms such as "natural" and "beneficent" (and its synonyms) mean something very different from what they mean in Natural Goodness.

Highly recommend to anyone doing metaethics or ethics from a virtue ethics or neo-Aristotelian view. Well-crafted theory of the good based on a neo-Aristotelian theory of categories and a cognitive reading of flourishing.

The tight, hard reasoning that Foot was once known for
is gone, and its place has been taken by ethical wishful
thinking. There's good work in this tradition -- Michael
Thompson's "Representation of Life," for instance -- and I'd
go there instead.

Traditionally, economic theory has taken rational individuals to be self-regarding and consequentialist. That is, economic actors have been treated as caring only about the private gain afforded by a transaction. We now know from experiment that this characterization is incorrect. Individuals have other-regarding concerns (e.g., empathy, altruistic cooperation, altruistic punishment), and care about ethical aspects of strategic interaction (e.g., honesty, trustworthiness, considerateness). There remain many researchers (especially economists, biologists, and mathematicians) who cannot conceive of this behavior as either the product of error or enlightened long-term self-regard, but this view is, in my opinion, clearly incorrect.

With what do we with the traditional economic model of the rational individual? Ultimately, we would like to replace the current set of equations that characterize rational choice with another set of equations that do a better job at predicting behavior. This alternative is, however, only a distant dream. For the present, we need a general, qualitative notion of the human subject that guides research activity. Because philosophers have thought about this issue for a long time, it is worthwhile inspecting their general conclusions.

Of course, there are problems with taking the view of philosophers concerning human behavior seriously, for rather than collecting and analyzing a body of data using the scientific method, they invariable depend upon carefully chosen anecdotes. But, the plural of anecdote, as the saying goes, is not data. Moreover, philosophers carry on interminable conversations with one another, rarely taking into account scientific research, some of which could be of great interest in advancing philosophical ideas.

Most of 20th century moral philosophy was deeply influenced by G. E. Moore's analysis of the "naturalistic fallacy" (Principia Ethica, 1903), according to which claims about ethics cannot be cannot draw upon "natural" evidence, including the social or individual effects of alternative forms of behavior. This anti-naturalism led to subjectivist, non-cognitive, moral theories, including emotivism, prescriptivism, and expressivism, that have little value for the scientific study of human behavior.

Philippa Foot's naturalistic ethics is a welcome relief from moral subjectivism. Homo sapiens is a species, she says, and every species has a characteristic set of qualities that are required for its flourishing as a species, and exhibiting these qualities define the good for members of this species. For instance, a good oak tree has firm roots, a good deer is fleet of foot, a good mother sacrifices for her offspring, a good wolf participates in the hunt, and a good honey bee waggle-dances to indicate the location of a food source, and stings to defend the hive against intruders.

For humans, this naturalistic view translates into the notion that moral behavior is part of "practical reason," on par with self-regarding motives and other non-moral objectives. According to this view, unless they are morally defective, individuals pursue the good, the right, and the just for the same reason that they pursue pleasure, security, and other self-regarding objectives---it is part of the practical rationality of the species to do so, and not doing so is the mark of a defective member of the species. Moreover, such a defect is a natural defect, on par with physical or mental defect.

Foot supplies no reasons why we are so constituted, or even why animals and plants are so constituted that only a minority of "defective" members fail to display the characteristics that are "good" for that species. Most deer are in fact fleet of foot, most rabbits are prolific breeders, most wolves participate in the hunt, most honey bees do the waggle dance, and most humans display at least a modicum of honesty, trustworthiness, consideration for others, courage, and parental care. The reason, in the case of each species, is that this behavior is the product of biological evolution, and individuals who behaved otherwise were less fit and disappeared from the species. In the case of humans, gene-culture coevolution has ensured that most of us display the appropriate degree of practical reason, and we include ethical and other-regarding considerations in our calculations of what we most prefer to do in a given situation.

A key problem of moral theory is, having identified virtue, to explain why a rational individual should be virtuous. For most of the 20th century, economists considered virtue for virtue's sake to be "irrational." One might be prudent in refraining from robbing, pillaging, raping, and murdering for personal pleasure, but in the absence of penalties, it would be irrational not to satisfy one's whims, whatever the implications for others. This view in philosophical circles is known as "immoralism." In Books I and II of Plato's Republic, the immoralist Glaucon argues that most people consider injustice to be intrinsically superior to justice, and that the just are so only through expedience; were they sufficiently powerful, the just would abandon justice in favor of satisfying their personal whims and exercising their idiosyncratic prejudices. According to Glaucon, the life of the strong unjust man is the best life of all.

Socrates' answer to Glaucon is direct and simple: happiness resides in the "harmony of the soul," not in the possession of wealth and power. In other words, it is part of our constitution as members of the species Homo sapiens that our self-worth and self-dignity is tied up with our moral character. Foot completely agrees with this view, and I think this should be the working hypothesis for the behavioral scientist working on the nature of human strategic interaction. The preference function of the rational actor includes other-regarding preferences and character virtues as well as the traditional self-regarding preferences of economic theory. Moreover, individuals are generally willing to trade off among these valued ends: when it becomes too costly to be honest, or courageous, individuals will be underhanded and cowardly. But, casual observation and empirical evidence indicates that most people are honest most of the time, and there enough courage to go around in most societies.

Foot laments the fact that there are defective individuals who in fact lead perfectly happy lives by exercising their beastly and anti-social proclivities, and applauds the fact that most evil-doers are justly punished. She does not mention, but it must be mentioned, that there are also beastly and defective societies, such as Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Russia, Mao's China, South Africa in the era of apartheid, and beastly individuals who prey on their society, such as Mugabe in Zimbabwe, and so on. But, this fact does not contradict the notion that individuals, unless defective, do good because this is the right thing to do.
It is uncanny how close Foot's account of morality is to a famous poem by Alice Cary, with my notes in brackets ([HG: ... ]).

True worth is in being, not seeming, --
In doing, each day that goes by,
Some little good -- not in dreaming
Of great things to do by and by.
For whatever men say in their blindness,
And spite of the fancies of youth,
There's nothing so kingly as kindness,
And nothing so royal as truth.
[HG: The last two lines give the Socrates/Foot answer as to why immoralism is incorrect. We are kind and truthful because it is "kingly" and "royal" (i.e., intrinsically valued by humans) to do so.]

We get back our mete as we measure --
We cannot do wrong and feel right,
Nor can we give pain and gain pleasure,
For justice avenges each slight.
The air for the wing of the sparrow,
The bush for the robin and wren,
But always the path that is narrow
And straight, for the children of men.
[HG: The first four lines affirm that morality is part of practical reason, and the second four that character virtues for humans are akin to what is "naturally good" for other species.]

'Tis not in the pages of story
The heart of its ills to beguile,
Though he who makes courtship to glory
Gives all that he hath for her smile.
For when from her heights he has won her,
Alas! it is only to prove
That nothing's so sacred as honor,
And nothing so loyal as love!
[HG: The last two lines again give the Socrates/Foot answer as to why immoralism is incorrect]

We cannot make bargains for blisses,
Nor catch them like fishes in nets;
And sometimes the thing our life misses
Helps more than the thing which it gets.
For good lieth not in pursuing,
Nor gaining of great nor of small,
But just in the doing, and doing
As we would be done by, is all.
[HG: A life is successful if it is virtuous, however the vicissitudes of life confer material and social benefits on the individual.]

Through envy, through malice, through hating,
Against the world, early and late,
No jot of our courage abating --
Our part is to work and to wait.
And slight is the sting of his trouble
Whose winnings are less than his worth;
For he who is honest is noble,
Whatever his fortunes or birth.