The Naturalistic Fallacy. A Note on a Note

2023

Natural Law Theory holds that Law draws its force from objective morality – that laws are good laws when they correspond to objective ought statements that are beyond the people who follow them, and not just social facts. The Classical Natural Law tradition further says that we can derive these objective moral claims by asking whether they conform to particular conceptions of “naturalness.” But David Hume, in what is now called the naturalistic fallacy, contends that the philosophers of the Classical Natural Law tradition fail to explain the leap from nature’s state of affairs – all of which are Is statements – towards the Ought statements that are required by Natural Law. In this paper, I argue that Finnis’s “New” Natural Law Theory, while far from being a perfect account of how we can derive objective moral oughts, is successful in avoiding the naturalistic fallacy. First, I sketch a general outline of how Classical Natural Law theorists tried to derive ought statements from what they saw as “natural,” and show why they fail to justify the leap from descriptive to normative statements. Then, I show how Finnis deals with the problem, and that by accepting the direct apprehension of goodness and the First Principle of Practical Reason, he manages to evade the naturalistic fallacy, shifting the question entirely towards their acceptance or non-acceptance.

Naturalised epistemology is more a movement than a philosophical position; it is inspired by the idea of making epistemology more continuous with natural science than it traditionally has been, but in detail the expression means different things to different people. In the sense with which I am concerned here, 'naturalised epistemology' denotes various different theories about what epistemic norms we should follow in order to form our beliefs rationally, and, in particular, about how these norms should be justified. Each kind of naturalised (or naturalistic) epistemology provides its own -naturalistic -account of justification. In my view, when we look at how these different accounts of justification work, we come to see that none of them is such that the norms justified can be seen both as probative and necessary for fully rational belief-formation. In a word, all naturalised epistemology is either defunct or superfluous -or (as I more frequently tend to argue) to the extent it is not defunct, it is superfluous. In my book Norms, Naturalism and Epistemology:

The main concern of this paper is whether Hume's account of belief has a normative dimension , especially concerning his account of general rules of reasoning in his Treatise of Human Nature, and consequently, whether it is possible to offer an account of the norma-tive force of those rules in spite of his naturalist framework. I conclude that there are many normative elements in his conception of belief and reasoning, and that, as many authors in recent studies of normativity have suggested, naturalism can sufficiently account for the normative structures of our cognition and their normative authority. Such a view of the normative dimension of belief in Hume's epistemology also shows an interesting and close connection with the moral dimension of his thought, which I believe is of fundamental importance for understanding his thought in general.

The Naturalistic Fallacy, ed. Neil Sinclair. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018, 179-205

A COMPRÉHENSION OF DAVID HUME'S MORAL PHILOSOPHY , 2025

Moral in philosophy is a very significant domain. One of the most prominent philosophers who have reflected on morals is David Hume. This write up thus aims at presenting some philosophical moral ideas of David especially in a world where norms are be put aside and what was put aside is rather normalized...

2007

Hume Studies , 2024

In this paper I argue that Hume's account of moral judgment is best understood if it is read in light of Hume's explanatory project. I first lay out the textual support to show that Hume's account of justice in the Treatise includes both approval of a motive that gives rise to the virtue of justice and approval a system of conduct, irrespective of a motive. I then argue that we can allow for such plurality in Hume's theory of moral judgment if we view it in light of his explanatory project: finding unifying causes for disparate phenomena. Hume offers a unified theory of moral judgment because he can show that the different approvals are explained by the same causes. Finally, I argue that viewing Hume's account of moral judgment in light of his explanatory project allows us to appreciate a further distinction between the moral judgment of the natural and the artificial virtues: while judgments of the former are fully explained by the causes of a certain motive, the latter are only fully explained by the causes of the motive in the context of a convention, which in turn is partially constituted by non-approved motives.

Journal of Value Inquiry, 2018

Teaching Philosophy, 2004