Of course Hursthouse’s account of ethical naturalism could be mistaken. (I am not totally satisfied with it either). But I just don’t see how morality can be seen as “objective” without appealing to human nature in some way. (I know Derek Parfit has a book On What Matters defending moral objectivity. But I have not had the guts to dive into it.)
As for “impersonally benevolence”, I agree that it doesn’t necessary has to conflict with the well-being of one’s family. For example in Alienation, Consequentialism, and the Demands of Morality, Peter Railton argues that maybe to be it is may be the case that a do-gooder can do more good if he/she be a bit partial—If you have a happy family, you may have a lot more energy to help strangers.
But I do think this is not necessarily always conflict free. For example, Peter Singer was once accused of being hypocrite because he and his sister put their mum with Alzheimer’s disease in a caring facility, which cost a lot of money.
Singer has spent his career trying to lay down rules for human behavior which are divorced from emotion and intuition. His is a world that makes no provision for private aides to look after addled, dying old women. Yet he can’t help himself. “I think this has made me see how the issues of someone with these kinds of problems are really very difficult,” he said quietly. “Perhaps it is more difficult than I thought before, because it is different when it’s your mother.”
Did helping his mum motivated Singer to do more good later in his life? Maybe. But it would be very hard to do the calculations.
The best answer here, the one that actually lets us try to live our lives by reasonable ethical principles, seems to me like “morality isn’t conflict-free and humans aren’t perfectly consistent”. The whole point of EA is that standard “ethical” systems often fail to provide useful advice on how to live a good life. No one can be perfectly virtuous or benevolent; all we can do is act well given our circumstances and the options in front of us.
How does this interface with the question of objective morality? You can either say “morality is objective and people are bound to fall short of it”, or “morality is subjective and I’m going to do what seems best to me”. Either way, as a subjectivist who judges other people through the lens of my own moral opinions, I’m going to judge you by how your actions affect others, rather than by whether they all hang together in a rigorous system.
Thanks for the discussion! I realize that I was mostly explaining my own instincts rather than engaging with Hursthouse, but that’s because I find her claims difficult to understand in the context of how to actually live one’s life.
She is a virtue ethicist, so she believes the best way to live a good life to develop virtues in ourselves. The reason she gives it that being a virtuous person, on average, is the best bet to flourish, e.g., having good health, satisfying career, happy family, etc. But she rejects that “impersonal benevolence” is a virtue. Thus, for Hurshouse, a person can still be virtuous and live a good life even if she does not care at all about strangers whom she has never met. To be honest, this is the most problematic part I found in her thesis.
Of course Hursthouse’s account of ethical naturalism could be mistaken. (I am not totally satisfied with it either). But I just don’t see how morality can be seen as “objective” without appealing to human nature in some way. (I know Derek Parfit has a book On What Matters defending moral objectivity. But I have not had the guts to dive into it.)
As for “impersonally benevolence”, I agree that it doesn’t necessary has to conflict with the well-being of one’s family. For example in Alienation, Consequentialism, and the Demands of Morality, Peter Railton argues that maybe to be it is may be the case that a do-gooder can do more good if he/she be a bit partial—If you have a happy family, you may have a lot more energy to help strangers.
But I do think this is not necessarily always conflict free. For example, Peter Singer was once accused of being hypocrite because he and his sister put their mum with Alzheimer’s disease in a caring facility, which cost a lot of money.
Did helping his mum motivated Singer to do more good later in his life? Maybe. But it would be very hard to do the calculations.
The best answer here, the one that actually lets us try to live our lives by reasonable ethical principles, seems to me like “morality isn’t conflict-free and humans aren’t perfectly consistent”. The whole point of EA is that standard “ethical” systems often fail to provide useful advice on how to live a good life. No one can be perfectly virtuous or benevolent; all we can do is act well given our circumstances and the options in front of us.
How does this interface with the question of objective morality? You can either say “morality is objective and people are bound to fall short of it”, or “morality is subjective and I’m going to do what seems best to me”. Either way, as a subjectivist who judges other people through the lens of my own moral opinions, I’m going to judge you by how your actions affect others, rather than by whether they all hang together in a rigorous system.
I like your answer. Thanks for all the replies!
Thanks for the discussion! I realize that I was mostly explaining my own instincts rather than engaging with Hursthouse, but that’s because I find her claims difficult to understand in the context of how to actually live one’s life.
She is a virtue ethicist, so she believes the best way to live a good life to develop virtues in ourselves. The reason she gives it that being a virtuous person, on average, is the best bet to flourish, e.g., having good health, satisfying career, happy family, etc. But she rejects that “impersonal benevolence” is a virtue. Thus, for Hurshouse, a person can still be virtuous and live a good life even if she does not care at all about strangers whom she has never met. To be honest, this is the most problematic part I found in her thesis.