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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 June 2020
In ‘Modern Moral Philosophy’ Anscombe writes: ‘It is not profitable at present for us to do moral philosophy. It should be laid aside at any rate until we have an adequate philosophy of psychology, in which we are conspicuously lacking’. In consideration of this Anscombe appeals to the relation of ‘brute-relative-to’ which holds between facts and descriptions of human affairs. This paper describes the reorientation in philosophy of action that this relation aims to effect and examines the claim that this reorientation makes possible the sort of philosophy of psychology that can provide a starting point for ethics.
1 Vogler, Candace, Reasonably Vicious (Harvard: Harvard University Press, 2002), 45ffGoogle Scholar.
2 Anscombe, G. E. M., Intention (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1957; 2nd edition, 1963), 1Google Scholar.
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9 This is a reference to the imagined society in Anscombe's ‘The First Person’ (in Guttenplan, Samuel D. (ed.), Mind and Language (Oxford University Press, 1975), 45–65Google Scholar) who lack self-consciousness and the capacity for intentional action. See Wiseman, Rachael, ‘What am I and What am I Doing’, Journal of Philosophy 114: 10 (2017), 536–550CrossRefGoogle Scholar for an expanded discussion of this point.
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14 We can always extend our concepts to include the activities of humans and children. Sometimes this extension is one we are compelled to make because we have discovered new facts. For example, learning about the complex social relations that exist among the higher primates may convince us that certain kinds of behaviour really is ‘supplying’. Sometimes the extension is an ‘as if’ extension, as when we apply to our pets descriptions that their form of life can clearly not sustain (‘The cat is negotiating with the dog about who gets to sleep in the basket’). Sometimes the case falls between the two, and here exists the space for conceptual innovation, aspect shifts, moral transformation and poetry.
15 Compare the discussion of the concept of length in G. E. M. Anscombe, ‘The Question of Linguistic Idealism (1976), reprinted in her From Parmenides to Wittgenstein (Oxford: Blackwell, 1981), 112–134. 117.
16 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, esp. §§138–242.
17 See op. cit. note 2, 50 and op. cit. note 8 for further discussion.
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27 Thanks to audiences at the University of Oxford, University of Liverpool and at the Royal Institute of Philosophy for helpful questions and comments. This paper would not have been possible without the benefit of Clare Mac Cumhaill's generous insights and stimulating conversation over several years.
