ETHICS AFTER ANSCOMBE LIBRARY OF ETHICS AND APPLIED PHILOSOPHY VOLUMES Managing Editor: Govert A. den Hartogh, University ofA msterdam, The Netherlands The titles published in this series are listed at the end of this volume. ETHICS AFTER ANSCOMBE Post "Modern Moral Philosophy" by DUNCAN RICHTER Virginia Military Institute, Lexington, VA, U.S.A. ..... ' ' SPRINGER-SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, B.V. A C.I.P. Catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN 978-90-481-5371-8 ISBN 978-94-017-1478-5 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-94-017-1478-5 Printed on acid-free paper All Rights Reserved © 2000 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 2000 No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner. For Stephanie and Isabel vii CONTENTS Preface ix Acknowledgements Xl Chapter I - The Incoherence of the Moral 'Ought' Part I - Anscombe's Intelligibility Thesis 2 Part 2 -Baier's Objection 5 Part 3-Winch's Objection 6 Part 4-Johnston's Objection 9 Part 5-Diamond's Defense 10 Part 6 - Conclusion 13 Chapter 2 - Is Moral Philosophy Possible?: Wittgenstein and Anscombe 19 Part I - Problems 20 Part 2-Continuity in Wittgenstein's Remarks on Ethics 21 Part 3 - Wittgenstein' s Philosophy and the Disappearance of Ethics 23 Part 4 -Purpose and Method 26 Part 5-Anscombe's Advice 29 Part 6 - Conclusion 31 Chapter 3 -How to do Moral Philosophy. Part I: Lovibond and Bambrough 35 Part 1-Sabina Lovibond's Realism 35 Part 2 - Diamond on Lovibond 43 Part 3 - Renford Bambrough and Dialectic 46 Part 4 - Conclusion 52 Chapter 4-How to do Moral Philosophy. Part 2: Virtue and Anti-Theory 57 Part 1 - Anscombe, Hursthouse and Virtue Theory 57 Part 2 -Iris Murdoch and Attention 60 V111 Chapter 4 Part 3-Charles Taylor and Articulation 62 Part 4 - Cora Diamond and the Moral Imagination 64 Part 5 - Conclusion 71 Chapter 5 - The Ethics of Suicide 76 Part 1 -The Variety of Suicide 77 Part 2 -Brandt on Morality and Rationality 81 Part 3 - Chesterton and the Elementary Sin 87 Part 4 - Conclusion 91 Chapter 6 -Persons, Babies and Martians: The Philosophy of Abortion 97 Part 1 - The Liberal Rationalist View 98 Part 2 - The Catholic View 107 Part 3 - A Middle Way? 112 Chapter 7 - Does Meat Mean Murder? 125 Part 1 -For Liberation 125 Part 2 -Against Liberation 131 Part 3-Diamond's Wittgensteinian Argument for Vegetarianism 138 Chapter 8 - Conclusion 146 Part 1 - Sense and Nonsense in Moral Philosophy 146 Part 2 - Reason, Rights and Persons 152 Part 3 - Conservatism 155 Part 4 - The Middle Ground 157 Part 5 - Conclusion 158 Bibliography 163 Index 171 lX PREFACE How, if at all, can we do moral philosophy in the light of the radical critique made by Elizabeth Anscombe in "Modem Moral Philosophy"? Among the principal theses of this essay is that ethical thinking (that of philosophers and others) suffers from a widespread appeal to incoherent uses of terms such as 'obligation,' 'ought,' 'right' and 'wrong.' In this book I first explain and evaluate her thesis and the argument for it, and I then confront the challenge it poses: what ways are there of doing moral philosophy that avoid the kind of incoherence to which she has drawn our attention? The best way to show how it is possible for us to think about ethics is to demonstrate how to do so, using actual cases. This book therefore combines the critical study of central theoretical issues about ethics, in the first half, with concrete examination of serious practical issues, in the second. Following Dostoyevsky's Ivan Karamazov, it is often said that if God does not exist then everything is permitted. This is not literally the case, since God cannot permit anything if He does not exist, and those of us who do exist do not permit everything, or at least our parents, employers, and governments do not. It is true, though, that if God does not exist then nothing is forbidden in the traditional sense of 'forbidden'. Secular work on ethics, however, is riddled with questions about whether suicide is absolutely wrong, whether abortion is morally permissible, whether animals have moral rights, and so on. If we do not wish to presuppose God's existence in our speaking, writing and thinking about ethics, for whatever reason, we should think about the implications of concepts such as 'absolute wrong' and 'moral rights'. Not all such talk is meaningless without God, but Dostoevsk1' and Anscombe give us reason to question its meaning. Anscombe in particular has shown what might be meant by such language, and what cannot be meant by it. It is my aim to go further in this direction, and to do so in connection with specific, practical ethical questions. The idea that nothing is forbidden, or that the notions of moral obligation or the moral sense of 'ought' are incoherent, sounds to many ears like a complete rejection of ethics. I hope to show that this is not the case. The first chapter deals directly with Anscombe's paper. In the next three, I examine the approaches to ethics recommended by other philosophers in the Wittgensteinian tradition to which Anscombe belongs, including Wittgenstein himself, Sabina Lovibond, Renford Bambrough and Cora Diamond. Drawing on their views, I suggest that moral philosophy should at least begin with an attempt to understand the facts relevant to central moral debates and issues. Chapter 5 focuses on the disagreement between the religious view of suicide as perhaps the ultimate sin and the non-religious view that suicide is often justified. I look at R.F. Holland's work as a good example of an attempt to understand the strengths and weaknesses X of both sides of the divide. In a somewhat parallel way, chapter 6 is concerned with the abortion debate. Here I look sympathetically at attempts by Ronald Dworkin and Warren Quinn to fmd some ground away from the two familiar poles of the debate. I do not claim that such attempts are always successful, but the effort to understand that they involve is at least worthwhile. Finally in chapter 7 I consider the debate over the moral status of animals. After an examination of Peter Singer's well known argument for animal liberation and Michael Leahy's purportedly Wittgensteinian argument against it, I conclude that in fact there is less disagreement between these antagonists than might appear. A more realistic approach to animals and a better defense of vegetarianism are offered by Cora Diamond. With this discussion of Leahy and Diamond, the book returns to the philosophy of Wittgenstein and its application in practical ethics and thus to the themes of its first part. These themes, as well as those of chapters 5, 6 and 7, are fmally summarized and reviewed in chapter 8. My aim is not to reject all or most current moral philosophy, but to see what approach to ethics is best supported by the work of Wittgenstein and Anscom be, and to see how this kind of approach fares in connection with practical moral concerns. XI ACKNO~EDGE~NTS Various people are mentioned in various footnotes throughout the tex1 for having helped with this project in one way or another. But none of those people deserves to be relegated to a footnote, so I would like to thank them all in a more prominent place, namely here. First of all I want to thank Cora Diamond, who showed enormous patience and kindness to me while I worked under her supervision on the dissertation out of which this book has grown, as well as giving me very helpful advice and criticism. The influence of her work on mine will be obvious to the reader. I believe and hope that she has influenced me by example, both as a philosopher and as a human being, in less obvious ways, too. Secondly, I want to thank my wife Stephanie Wilkinson not only for some very helpful discussions, of G. K. Chesterton in particular, but also for her constant support and encouragement. I want also to thank John Marshall for a number of useful criticisms of an earlier draft of chapter I. It has been possible for me to make numerous improvements on the original dissertation thanks to the careful reading and constructive criticism of Daniel T. Devereux, James F. Childress, George Thomas and Jorge Secada. Margaret G. Holland, Nancy Schauber and Christopher Dustin also made helpful comments on a paper that I have partially incorporated into chapter 4. I have received helpful comments also from two anonymous reviewers. None of these people is responsible in any way for the remaining imperfections. \ Chapter I is based on "The Incoherence of the Moral 'Ought'," which originally appeared in Philosophy, Vol. 70, No. 27I (1995). It is reprinted with the permission of Cambridge University Press. Parts of chapter 2 were originally published as "Nothing to be Said: Wittgenstein and Wittgensteinian Ethics," in The Southern Journal ofP hilosophy, Vol. XXXIV, No. 2 (1996). I am very grateful to the editor, Nancy Simco, for her permission to reprint material from that paper here. I am grateful also for advice and encouragement from Thomas Magnell, editor of The Joumal of Value Jnqu i1y, in whose pages first appeared parts of chapters 4 and 6. These were published as "Virtue Without Theory," in Vol. 33, No. 4 (1999) and "Is Abortion Vicious?," in Vol. 32, No. 3 (1998). Philosophy takes money. The dissertation which I submitted to the Graduate Faculty ofthe University of Virginia in candidacy for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy would not have been possible were it not for the generosity of the University of Virginia, its Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and its Department of Philosophy. While writing the dissertation I was helped especially by the awards of teaching assistantships, graduate instructorships, a President's Fellowship, a DuPont Fellowship and, above all, a Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertation Year Fellowship. Finally, the completion of this book was greatly helped by a generous grant from the Virginia Military Institute's Grants in Aid of Research Committee. I am very grateful to all the people who made these awards available to me.