Charles R. Pigden

Is the history of philosophy primarily a contribution to PHILOSOPHY or primarily a contribution to HISTORY? This paper is primarily contribution to history (specifically the history of New Zealand) but although the history of philosophy has been big in New Zealand, most NZ philosophers with a historical bent are primarily interested in the history of philosophy as a contribution to philosophy. My essay focuses on two questions: 1) How did New Zealand philosophy get to be so good? And why, given that is so good (a point I am at pains to establish), has it apparently had so slight a cultural impact within New Zealand itself? Did we get the wrong Anderson – the uninspiring William, who was Professor at Auckland, rather than his talented younger brother John, who had such a huge cultural influence as Professor of Philosophy at Sydney? Perhaps but that can only be part of the story since we managed to attract even bigger stars, (notably Karl Popper) as well as breeding bigger talents of our own (Prior, Baier, Bennett, Mulgan, Hursthouse, Waldron and many more). Do we export our best talent? Sometimes – but the stars that stay and the stars who arrive don’t seem to have much impact in New Zealand itself however brightly they shine in the international philosophical firmament. Is it too esoteric? Perhaps, but esoteric philosophy can still have a cultural impact, witness, Moore, Popper and the younger Anderson. Is it, like many of New Zealand’s cultural products (from romance novels to movies), primarily intended for an international audience? That’s a large part of the answer but only a part. Another part of the answer is that philosophy HAS had a cultural impact but that impact is not readily apparent. For NZ philosophers have been less keen to push their ideological barrows and more keen to produce critical thinkers, and critical thinkers don’t all think alike. The logician George Hughes was apparently a life-changing teacher not because he had a nostrum but because he taught people to think. As one of his students said ‘the only ism you believe in is the syllogism’. On the whole the history of New Zealand Philosphy is a ‘From Log Cabin to White House’ tale, ‘From colonial obscurity through struggle and adversity to philosophical excellence’. But there are shadows in the picture. Some departments have nearly come to grief through bureaucratic and political misadventures, and it is hard to resist the suspicion that there is often an element of hostility to philosophers on the part of both university bureaucrats and fellow-academics. I speculate as to why this is the case (we are too argumentative and don’t confine our argumentative tendencies to the cloister) but conclude with some upbeat reflections. on the future of New Zealand Philosophy.

Taking my cue from Michael Smith, I try to extract a decent argument for non-cognitivism from the text of the Treatise. I argue that the premises are false and that the whole thing rests on a petitio principi. I then re-jig the argument so as to support that conclusion that Hume actually believed (namely that an action is virtuous if it would excite the approbation of a suitably qualified spectator). This argument too rests on false premises and a begged question. Thus the Motivation Argument fails BOTH as an argument for noncognitivism AND as an argument for what Hume actually believed, that moral distinctions are not derived from reason and that moral properties are akin to secondary qualities. So far as the Motivation Argument is concerned, both cognitivists and rationalists can rest easy. Themes: 1) Hume’s Slavery of Reason thesis is only defensible if passions are not only desires but sometimes dispositions to acquire desires (DTADs). 2) A desire for our good on the whole, which Humeans need to posit to fend off apparent counterexamples to the Slavery of Reason Thesis, does not sit well with the Humean theory of how novel desires arise (an objection due originally to Reid). 3) Hume is wrong to suppose that ‘abstract or demonstrative reasoning never influences any of our actions, but only as it directs our judgment concerning causes and effects’ as the examples of Russell and Hobbes convincingly demonstrate. This ironic as both Russell and Hobbes subscribed to the Slavery of Reason Thesis. 4) I critique Michael Smith’s critique of motivational externalism.

In his celebrated 'Good and Evil' (l956) Professor Geach argues as against the non-naturalists that ‘good’ is attributive and that the predicative 'good', as used by Moore, is senseless.. 'Good' when properly used is attributive. 'There is no such thing as being just good or bad, [that is, no predicative 'good'] there is only being a good or bad so and so'. On the other hand, Geach insists, as against non-cognitivists, that good-judgments are entirely 'descriptive'. By a consideration of what it is to be an A, we can determine what it is to be a good A, even where the ‘A’ in question is ‘human being’. These battles are fought on behalf of naturalism, indeed, of an up-to-date Aristotelianism. Geach plans to 'pass' from the 'purely descriptive' man to good/bad man, and from human act to good/bad human act. I argue: (l) That the predicative 'good' does have a genuine sense and that it is a mistake to suppose that ‘good’ is a purely attributive adjective. This does not entail that the predicative good (as used by Moore) denotes a non-natural property, but his mistake, if any is metaphysical or ontological not conceptual. (2) That the attributive 'good' cannot be used to generate a naturalistic ethic. It is difficult to extract a set of biologically based requirements out of human nature that are a) reasonably specific; b) rationally binding or at least highly persuasive; and c) morally credible. On the way I protest against Geach’s tendency to try to win arguments by affecting not to understand things. My views to some extent anticipate those of Kraut in *Against Absolute Goodness*.

n ‘Modern Moral Philosophy’ Anscombe argues that the moral ‘ought’ should be abandoned as the senseless survivor from a defunct conceptual scheme. I argue 1) That even if the moral ‘ought’ derives its meaning from a Divine Law conception of ethics it does not follow that it cannot sensibly survive the Death of God. 2) That anyway Anscombe is mistaken since ancestors of the emphatic moral ‘ought’ predate the system of Christian Divine Law from which the moral ‘ought’ supposedly derives its meaning (Cicero in particular subscribed to something like the modern conception of a duty which seems to be a generalization of the duties attendant on particular roles). 3) That if the moral ‘ought’ derived its meaning from embodying Gods’ commands then the two should have been equated in the minds of true believers. This was not the case. 4) That Anscombe is absurdly wrong in supposing that Protestant moralists had abandoned a Divine Law conception of ethics. 5) That the virtue-based ought-free Aristotelian alternative suggested by Anscombe is unworkable since the basic idea is that it pays in terms of human flourishing to be good (which means inter alia being just). Since it is pretty obvious that there are plenty of good people who don’t flourish and flourishing people who are not good, the neo-Aristotelian program has gradually undergone a degenerating problem-shift: either the pay-off is deferred to the hereafter or being good is incorporated into the pay-off. 6) That there is a certain amount of sophistry in selling the neo-Aristotelian virtues. Since the unjust person is simply somebody who is NOT systematically just, you cannot prove that it pays to be just by arguing that it is a mistake to be systematically UNjust. So too for many of the other virtues.

Can an explanation of a set of beliefs cast doubt on the things believed? In particular, can an evolutionary explanation of religious beliefs call the contents of those beliefs into question? Yes - under certain circumstances. I distinguish between natural histories of beliefs and genealogies. A natural history of a set of beliefs is an explanation that puts them down to naturalistic causes. (I try to give an account of natural explanations which favors a certain kind of ‘methodological atheism’ without begging any crucial questions against theists.) A genealogy is an explanation which somehow subverts the claims believed, usually by putting down the beliefs to unreliable causal mechanisms. Some genealogies are natural histories, such as Aquinas’s explanation of the prevalence of Islam and Gibbon’s explanation of the prevalence of Christianity. But not all genealogies are natural histories and not all natural histories are genealogies: witness the Primitive Christians’ explanation of the prevalence of Paganism which relies crucially on supernatural agencies and Hume’s explanation of our moral beliefs which defines moral truth in terms of the idealized outputs of our natural belief-forming mechanisms. However both believers and non-believers postulate a natural propensity of to devotion on the part of human beings a ‘sensus divinitatis’ which often results in false positives and is therefore unreliable. Thus the evolutionary explanation of this propensity does not add much to the skeptical case against religion. I conclude by arguing, as against Plantinga that since on his own showing our sensus divinitatis often malfunctions under optimum conditions, its unreliability constitutes a defeater for the claim that Christian beliefs are properly basic.

Frank Snare had a puzzle. Noncognitivism implies No-Ought-From-Is but No- Ought-From-Is does not imply non-cognitivism. How then can we derive non-cognitivism from No-Ought-From-Is? Via an abductive argument. If we combine non-cognitivism with the conservativeness of logic (the idea that in a valid argument the conclusion is contained in the premises), this implies No-Ought-From-Is. Hence if No-Ought-From-Is is true, we can arrive at non-cognitivism via an inference to the best explanation. With prescriptivism we can make this argument more precise. I develop an account of imperative consequence that underwrites Hare’s principle that you cannot derive imperatives from indicatives. Thus if moral judgments contain an imperative component, it will be impossible to derive moral conclusions from indicative or non-moral premises. Given this account of imperative consequence, we can explain No-Ought-From-Is without appealing to anything as nebulous as the conservativeness of logic. Hence if No-Ought-From-Is is true, we have an inference to the best explanation for prescriptivism. Both lines of argument face problems from Prior. Given Prior’s counterexamples, No-Ought-From-Is as originally conceived is false. The version that survives is No-Non-Vacuous-Ought-From-Is. But the best explanation of this does not include non-cognitivism. With prescriptivism it is worse. For the version of No-Ought-From-Is that prescriptivism ‘explains’ – that is, the version of No-Ought-From-Is that prescriptivism implies – would exclude Prior’s counter-examples to Autonomy as invalid. But they are not invalid. Thus Prior’s counter-examples to No-Ought-From- Is refute prescriptivism. Thus from 1960 onwards R. M.Hare was a dead philosopher walking. But if non-cognitivism cannot be derived from No-Ought-From-Is, this suggests that it is not what Hume was trying to prove. I argue that what Hume was trying to prove is that moral truths are not demonstrable. To be demonstrable, a proposition must be either self-evident or logically derivable from self-evident propositions. By Treatise 3.1.1.27, Hume had proved to his own satisfaction that no moral propositions are self-evident. That leaves open the possibility that they are logically derivable from self-evident but NON-moral propositions. The point of No-Ought-From-Is was to exclude this possibility. If you cannot logically derive moral conclusions from non-moral premises, you cannot demonstrate the truths of morality by deriving them from self-evident but NON-moral truths. I also discuss why Hume abandoned No-Ought-From-Is in the EPM. He had no need of it since he thought he had a proof that (with some exceptions) no nontrivial truths are demonstrable. Hence no non-trivial MORAL truths are demonstrable. No-Ought-From-Is drops out as unnecessary.

I argue that No-Ought-From-Is (in the sense that I believe it) is a relatively trivial affair. Of course, when people try to derive substantive or non-vacuous moral conclusions from non-moral premises, they are making a mistake. But No-Non-Vacuous-Ought-From-Is is meta-ethically inert. It tells us nothing about the nature of the moral concepts. It neither refutes naturalism nor supports non-cognitivism. And this is not very surprising since it is merely an instance of an updated version of the conservativeness of logic (in a logically valid inference you don’t get out what you haven’t put in): so long as the expressions F are non-logical, you cannot get non-vacuous F-conclusions from non-F premises. However, the triviality of No-Non-Vacuous-Ought-From-Is is important and its non-profundity profound. No-Ought-From-Is is widely supposed to tell us something significant about the nature of the moral concepts. If, in fact, it tells us nothing, this is a point well worth shouting from the housetops. This brings me to my dispute with Gerhard Schurz who has proved a related version of No-Ought-From-Is, No-Ought-Relevant-Ought-From-Is, a proof which relaxes my assumption that ‘ought’ should not be treated as a logical constant. But if ought is not a logical expression then it does not really matter much that No-Ought-From-Is would be salvageable even if it were. Furthermore, Schurz’s proof depends on special features of the moral concepts and this might afford the basis for an abductive argument to something like non-cognitivism. As an error theorist, and therefore a cognitivist, I object. Finally I take a dim view of deontic logic. Many of its leading principles are false, bordering on the nonsensical, and even the reasonably plausible ones are subject to devastating counter-examples.