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Comments on Meynell's Paper
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 October 2008
Extract
The key points in Meynell's argument seem to me to be as follows: (1) It is logically absurd to say of an action or of a state of affairs that it is good unless at least some or other of the qualities w, x, y, z, etc. (e.g. being socially approved or being productive of happiness) are present. Similarly it is logically absurd to talk of human flourishing unless some or other specifiable features are present in a person's life. (2) The Heimler questionnaire shows us the sorts of ways in which the notion of human flourishing might be ‘unpacked’, viz, in terms of satisfaction through friendship, etc. I am in full agreement with him over (1) and I shall simply add some further comments on the notion of ‘evaluating’; but as far as (2) is concerned I shall voice some doubts and reservations.
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- Section I: Christian Philosophy and Ethics
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- Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1969
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page 156 note 1 Like many others of my generation, I was brought up to believe that there is a special moral sense attached to the words ‘good’, ‘ought’, ‘right’, and ‘duty’ and that no factual statement could entail a moral one. If, however, following the late J. L. Austin, we look at the words in their ‘natural habitat’, we find something very different. Thus the word ‘duty’ suggests to me expressions such as ‘duties of the night watchman’, and I see no good reason for saying that a list of such duties contains ‘moral’ statements as opposed to ‘factual’ ones. Again, if we look at the word ‘moral’ itself, we find occasional non-philosophical uses, though if the factual-moral dichotomy is as fundamental as some philosophers have supposed, it is perhaps surprising that these uses are not more frequent. One might, for example, have a moral obligation to allow a student to return to college if one had originally offered him a place, and someone who pointed this out might, I suppose, be said to be making a ‘moral statement’, in contrast with a ‘factual’ one such as ‘He has now returned to college’. Not many statements which tell us what to do, however, are ‘moral’ in this sense, and even devotees of the ‘factual-moral’ dichotomy concede that there are ‘non-moral’ uses of ‘ought’. The common philosophical assumption that the ‘factual-moral’ dichotomy marks the same distinction as the ‘is-ought’ dichotomy seems to me plainly wrong. In what follows I shall not be talking about ‘moral’ statements, if indeed there are such things, but about evaluation, which in my opinion is quite a different notion.
page 156 note 2 Urmson's excellent article ‘On grading’ (Mind, N.S., LIX, 1950, 145–69) seems to me particularly relevant in this connexion. I should like also to mention Quinton's articleGoogle Scholar, ‘Ethics and the theory of evolution’, in Biology and Personality, ed.Ramsey, I. T., Blackwell, 1965, 107–30. This article discusses evaluation in terms of ‘biological advantage’.Google Scholar
page 156 note 3 Miles, T. R., Eliminating the Unconscious. Pergamon Press, 1966, 123–5.Google Scholar
page 156 note 4 See Bruner, J. S., Goodnow, J. J. and Austin, G. A., A Study of Thinking (New York, 1969). Their work includes, inter alia, a fascinating study of the ways in which people respond to disjunctive concepts.Google Scholar
page 156 note 5 Op. cit., p. 43.Google Scholar
page 156 note 6 Op. cit., p. 156.Google Scholar
page 157 note 1 Compare, B. Mitchell, ‘The justification of religious belief’, Philosophical Quarterly 2, 1961, 213–26Google Scholar, and Ramsey, I. T., Christian Discourse, Oxford University Press, 1965.Google Scholar
page 158 note 1 The Divided Self, Pelican, 1965, p. 27Google Scholar
page 158 note 2 Heimler, E., Mental Illness and Social Casework, Pelican, 1967, pp. 124seq.Google Scholar
page 159 note 1 Social Science and Social Pathology, Allen & Unwin, 1959, p. 210seq.Google Scholar