Gennady McCracken

Scott Woodcock has levied a number of objections against Aristotelian naturalism which claims that ethical norms are grounded by reason and biology. His most recent “membership objection” is a synthesis of earlier objections and consists in a trilemma. If Aristotelian naturalists answer the first horn of the trilemma by stipulating that determinations of species-membership are grounded non-empirically, and the second horn of the trilemma by stipulating rationality is species-specific, then they are confronted by a moral outsider—someone who claims that they have non-empirically determined their species membership and are thus guided by different norms of rationality than the rest of us. This permits the moral outsider to act heinously without moral sanction from Aristotelian naturalism. Critics have neglected Alasdair MacIntyre’s Aristotelian naturalism. And he has faced moral-outsider-type counterexamples before. I develop a new response to counterexamples MacIntyre’s account has faced and argue that MacIntyre’s Aristotelian naturalism is able to answer Woodcock’s membership objection. I do this by developing an empirical taxonomy-based approach that enables us to justify the moral outsider’s responsibilities while preserving the best of Aristotelian naturalism.

No-connection theories and special connection global justice theories attempt to explain our global responsibilities. No-connection theories, while universal are less than motivating. Special-connection theories, while motivating, have been unable to fully ground global responsibilities. “Bootstrapping” theories like those of Thomas Donahue-Ochoa or Shannon Vallor are both universal and motivating. Donahue-Ochoa argues that systemic injustice reduces everyone’s freedom. Vallor argues that virtues have global scope given how they are grounded. Both have flaws. I propose “absolute resistance theory.” I claim if we cannot resist systemic injustice locally without global resistance, we have global responsibilities to resist injustice stemming from proximate relationships.

I argue that Alasdair MacIntyre has important resources to provide in the debate over the moral status of severely disabled people. In contrast, Gregory Poore suggests that MacIntyre’s virtue theory cannot account for our responsibilities to severely disabled people. Given that MacIntyre bases his theory around community membership, this charge is made especially severe in the case of severely disabled strangers. I present an interpretation of MacIntyre that accounts for responsibilities to severely disabled strangers. I then argue that Poore is wrong to conclude that MacIntyre does not include severely disabled people in communities.