Metaethics - Aristotelian Naturalism

This video outlines Aristotelian naturalism in metaethics, as defended by Philippa Foot in her book "Natural Goodness". Foot argues that all living things have objective goodnesses and defects relative to their kind, and that moral goodness is a type of this natural goodness.

Christopher Gowans, "Virtue and nature"
Jay Odenbaugh, "Nothing in ethics makes sense except in light of evolution?"
John Hacker-Wright, "What is natural about Foot's ethical naturalism?"
Michael Thompson, "The representation of life"
Philippa Foot, "Natural Goodness"
Scott Woodcock, "Philippa Foot's virtue ethics has an Achilles' heel"

0:00 - Introduction
1:57 - Natural goodness
15:51 - Objections to natural normativity
29:30 - Moral goodness
44:26 - Could moral goodness be natural goodness?

[KaneB]

The other videos I mentioned:

Idealizations

Species concepts

The evolutionary theory of rape:

[JinchengPriceShi]

Super good introduction to natural goodness approach！ Thanks a lot, Kane！

[Tschoo]

Nice video! Have you ever considered doing a video for philosophy students about what job fields they can go into? I got a BA in philosophy and still don't really know, at the moment I'm thinking about journalism. Carneades is actually doing a series on it right now

I really wish loving philosophy wouldn't be so painful on the economic level haha

[LEMAN-AND]

Great lecture Kane, thank you very much! Are you planning lectures on normative ethics or political philosophy (for example, on versions of utilitarianism, or on communitarianism)?

[sehrgut]

I follow the analogy, but in reality, good cactus roots are wide and shallow, not deep. They don't try finding deep water, they try catching as much surface rain and dew as possible.

[lorenzodavidsartormaurino]

Kaneeee, would you consider making more videos on logic and philosophy of language, those are the ones I find the most appealing. Some videos similar to for example the ones you did on Russell’s theory of descriptions would be great

[Jorge-xfgs]

Am I being a naive armchair philosopher for thinking this is extremely dumb? "I'm human, therefore, the universe forces me somehow to be an average human"

[rath]

Just:
Proposition(p) 1: It is is morally good to act in ways that preserve naturally good humans.
p2: A good human is not defective (blind, dumb, death, etc.)
p3: Many traits that make humans defective are inheritable.
Conclusion 1: It is good to prevent defective humans from reproducing with good humans.(Negative eugenics)
p4: Some amount of good humans will die before giving birth.
p5: A large population is more likely to preserve its traits.
Conclusion 2: It is good for there to be a large population of good humans.(Positive Eugenics)
p7: Humans require resources to increase there population.
Conclusion 3: Good humans should have more resources.
p8: Defective human require resources.
p9: At any given time the total amount of resources is finite.
Conclusion 4: It is good for defective humans to have less resources.
Definition: Genocide Article II c. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part. (UN Convention on [...] Genocide)
Conclusion 5: It is good to commit genocide on defective humans.

[dionysianapollomarx]

I believe Foot was supposed to be writing against virtue ethics before she died. Would've been interesting, especially in response to her critics.

[InventiveHarvest]

Not only is it problematic to try and cone up with necessary and sufficient conditions for a species, species do not suffer. Individuals suffer. There is often not a singular behavior for a species, and they will rotate behaviors for an optimal evolutionary strategy. Categorical morality will thus fail.

Objective ethics must first concede that we all have individual desires and dislikes. Harm is whatever that individual's subjective preferences dictate.

[athlios]

HEY KANE! Do you have any book recommendations? No specific topic, just philosophy In general. thank you!

[chrispowell]

When it comes to the coherence of Aristotelian concepts when it comes to Biology and Evolution, have you seen Christopher Austin's book Essence in the Age of Evolution published in 2018 by Routledge? That to my mind is the best case offered for Aristotelianism more generally in light of current Biological Science.

[DeadEndFrog]

sounds like a view that wants its darwinian cake, but doesn't want to eat it
excuse the bad comment, great video as always!
also as always with morality, there seems to be no force behind this view either

[yourfutureself]

Very interesting video and view. Are you going to do a video on metaethical humean constructivism, seeing that you already did one on kantian constructivism?

[justus]

8:10
This is the biggest bs i have heard in a while
Tf

[suzettedarrow]

I think you’re rig guy that ideal-gas-talk isn’t normative, but I don’t think the normative interpretation is bizarre. It is not bizarre to think of ideality as normative. It is not bizarre to think of usefulness as normative.

[StudyRelaxingMusicHR]

It is a false dilemma to try to force a person to pick one of the two in the question, “Which concept [ecology or biology] do we use for determining the Aristotelian categoricals?”

We use none (in the understanding of Aristotle). My understanding is that (1) Aristotle would say species is the whole essence of the subject (e.g. “rational animal” is the species of man). Moreover, (2) his understanding of species are—properly speaking—one of the many predicables, not categories.

The concern of biology species or ecology species misses the point, even granted the definitions of species from biology or ecology—go with Aristotle’s definition instead!
If one is not satisfied with Aristotle definition of species, make up another name for the meaning but just use the same meaning of, “whole essence of the subject.”

[mohitoness]

Sometimes bridges between artificial ideas and the natural world are somewhat clear; for example, money is a "completely human invention", but it represents fungible value, which is probably not a human concept, and other organisms trade and examine goods when trading. Some ideas are harder yet to bridge, for example it's arguable whether our idea of religion has any faint analogy to something in the natural world (perhaps the closest thing I can think of is family ceremonies, like in elephant graveyards).

Without saying morality is a natural property, could we only that it could be seen to originate *from* a natural property? We don't really know how animals feel about the "behavioural contrainsts/rules" of fighting and mating, except that they respect them, execute them to a ritualistic degree, and punish transgression. Human's sense of justice when others do not interact properly (according to the rules of engagement) could be something that any animal "feels" as simply the hardwired behavioural constraints imposed by hundreds of millions of years of evolved interactions. We have a tendency to think (at least it seems many people do) that we can simply do whatever we want. As a result, hardwired behaviour seems of a somewhat 'flimsier' nature than hardwired physiology, but this is a sort of bias.

[jessekyle]

Foot is not the end all of neo-Aristotelianism. This video might as well have not been about Aristotelian metaethics.

[susanprinzi]

Have you studied Aristotle’s categories?