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The Ghost of the Naturalistic Fallacy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

Aurel Kolnai
Aurel Kolnai
Affiliation:
Bedford College, London
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Extract

In 1952, having for the first time to give a lecture in Madrid, I said somewhat dejectedly to the able and witty young man entrusted with the tedious task of revising the Spanish of my text that I found my lecture didn't amount to much: it was but a long paraphrase of one single idea. Perhaps I hoped for an enthusiastic protest on his part. But he only offered as solace the terse remark: ‘Well, I have heard many a lecture that didn't contain even one single idea’.

Type
Articles
Information
Philosophy , Volume 55 , Issue 211 , January 1980 , pp. 5 - 16
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1980

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References

1 [Author's annotation] Some exaggeration.

2 I think there is an important insight implied in this; many philosophers of very different doctrinal shades have independently, mostly no more than occasionally, hit upon what I have called the thematic primacy of moral evil, and to my knowledge none has treated the matter so elaborately as Mr Mayo. [See also Kolnai, , Ethics, Value and Reality (edited by Klug, and Dunlop, , London, 1976), 105–6Google Scholar; ‘The thematic primacy of Moral Evil’, Philosophical Quarterly, VI, 1956.]Google Scholar

3 Cf. White, Alan R., G. E. Moore, 127Google Scholar; ‘Hint of dissatisfaction with his usual attacks may perhaps be seen in their very repetitiveness’. As for the possible different meanings of the Naturalistic Fallacy, see White, , op. cit., 124f.Google Scholar, and of the distinction between natural and non-natural properties, p. 135, the passages here referred to in Principia Ethica being on pp. 40–41, 110–111, 124.

4 Even the barest and poorest minimum, the mere extrinsic reference to the decrees of some specified authority, connotes a distinctive designation of that authority and some presumption of intrinsic goodness in that authority or in the fact of a disciplinary relationship itself.

5 The religious position that ascribes to God ‘sanctity’ or ‘all-goodness’, and on that presupposition defines moral obligation in terms of Divine commandments, may of course be held to escape this criticism, for it operates with an independent notion of moral good, derived from intuitive and consensual moral experience. If I believe in the validity of not intrinsically evident Divine commandments on the strength of the various Divine commandments whose contents are intrinsically evident, it may well be argued that my beliefs, whether true or false, do not commit me to ethical naturalism, i.e. a non-moral concept of morality.

6 By the way, what Moore may have meant here by ‘felt’ is entirely obscure. I understand my will's or desire's being the principle of good (and reject the thesis as Moore does), but what do we make of ‘feeling’? Has it ever occurred to anybody to suggest that nausea or anguish or an oncoming fever or frustration are good, just because one feels them? Or is ‘felt’ intended to mean our feeling that something is good? That would refer, not to a naturalistic, but (on the contrary) to an intuitional concept of morality or value; and such feelings provide the only possible commonsensical approach to the matter, though they may be fallible and in need of reflective analysis, various confrontations, reconsideration and correction. [See Ethics, Value and Reality, 144.]

7 Unless Naturalism be taken in the wide sense that to call anything good, including morally good, implies some kind of pro-attitude to it. In which case Naturalism reduces to tautology.

8 See ‘Vision and Choice in Morality’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume XXX (1956). I think Miss Murdoch's points of view are very remarkable and reveal most essential insights, only I happen to cherish everything she seems to despise and loathe everything she seems to admire.

9 [This paper, which is assigned to 1966 by the compilers of the Bibliography of Kolnai's Ethics, Value and Reality (edited by Klug, Brian and Dunlop, Francis, London: Athlone Press, 1977)Google Scholar, was written to be read aloud on an occasion that I have not been able to identify, and was left by the author when he died in 1973 in an incomplete and very provisional state, unprepared for publication. The unedited manuscript will be made available in due course in Bedford College Library (D. Wiggins, June 1979).]