Virtue and Reason
Concerning a discussion of evidence for moral codes among non-human animals, Lee writes:
I think our resistance to seeing animals as in any way “moral” might be rooted in the Kantian legacy of modern moral philosophy. Roughly, for Kant, you’re only acting morally when you’re acting for the sake of the moral law, and in opposition to some natural inclination. By contrast, the Aristotelian tradition says that a moral agent is someone with the dispositions toward and habits of performing virtuous action. By that standard, many non-human animals would count as virtuous.
But that’s too quick, isn’t it? On the Aristotelian picture, the virtuous person is the one who acts in accord with both his immediate dispositions and the dictates of (practical) reason; it’s just a mistake to think that when the right sorts of inclinations are in place there’s no longer a role to be played by “higher” cognitive functions. Hence Aristotle writes that virtuous choice “involves a rational principle and thought”, and marks off the kind of desiring that is central to action as “either desiderative reason or ratiocinative desire”. Even when explicit deliberation isn’t involved, the exercise of practical wisdom remains, as I wrote the other day, an exercise of wisdom, of a mental capacity that is essentially bound up with further capacities for reflection and ratiocination even as those further capacities aren’t consciously drawn upon.
This isn’t to say that the research Lee cites isn’t interesting – it clearly is, and it’s certainly possible to argue that Aristotle ultimately belongs alongside Kant in the long tradition of moral dualists who’ve gone too far in their attempts to separate us from the brutes. I actually think that charge is quite misguided, and that the capacities that Aristotle marked off as distinctively human can still be recognized as such even while we get a better sense of the more rudimentary capabilities from which they arose. But that’s a topic for a dissertation, or at least a much longer post than this one. Rejecting the Kantian* opposition between morality and desire doesn’t, in any case, entail giving up on the idea that responsiveness to the demands of the former is a distinctively human affair.
* In fact this opposition may not really be all that Kantian, either; here as ever, great thinkers can be a bit less one-dimensional than the standard interpretations might have us believe. (Another dissertation!)
Addendum: On the matter of how best to interpret Kant, see my quick comment on Lee’s post.
Filed under: morality, philosophy
Well, that’ll teach me to engage in off-the-cuff philosophizing when there are real philosophers afoot! I was, admittedly, working with the textbook caricature of Kant. Though, I think it’s seeped enough into our popular consciousness the point is still worth making.
And I’ll concede the point on Aristotle too, but this just makes me think even he draws the category of virtuous action too narrowly. Surely spontaneously or unreflective actions done, say, to help someone else count as virtuous under some meaning of the term. Is recognizing a moral rule or principle of some sort really necessary for an action to be virtuous?
No – don’t let it teach you anything, Lee. I really enjoy your philosophy-related writing, and in the vast majority of cases it runs circles around anything I might have to say.
Yes, they do; and yes, it is. Read the John McDowell paper whose title this post shares. It’s collected in his Mind, Value, and Reality, but sadly isn’t, from what I can tell, available anywhere online. Here, though, is a handout that seems to do a decent job of running through the central line of argument.
Well, I wasn’t going to stop anyway. ;)
Thanks for the link; I’ll check it out.
Sure thing. That paper – like so much of what McDowell’s written; have you read Mind and World? – really is a classic; it’s worth trying to get your hands on a copy.
Peter Railton has a pair of excellent articles on this as well. “Hypothetical and Non-Hypothetical in Theoretical and Practical Reasoning” and “How to Engage Reason: the Problem of Regress.”
Both of these might make the animals seem a lot closer to us though. Railton’s basic line, which he argues for quite well, is that reasoning must just be having thoughts, motives, and emotional responses that reliably conform to rational principles. Reflecting on a rational principle, he argues, must be an occasional double-check we perform, and which already presupposes a lot of reliable and unreflective conformity.
Thanks, DBake. I think that McDowell’s view isn’t really that dissimilar from Railton’s, at least as you describe it (though I haven’t read those papers). He doesn’t think that reflection is always necessary, just that it has to be possible, and that even in the cases where it’s not going on the very same cognitive capacities that make reflection possible are still being drawn on.