242 - Ethical Naturalism and the Modern World-View

Ethical Naturalism and the Modern World-View
By E. M. Adams
230 pp. Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1960. $6.00.

Ethics has been intensively cultivated in recent years by philosophers employing the techniques of linguistic analysis. The result has been a rich development of what may be broadly described as naturalistic ethical theories. In this book, however, in which the methods of language analysis are employed and which deals at length with the views of such contemporary ethical analysts as Hare, Toulmin, Stevenson, Hampshire, Prior, Nowell-Smith, and Baier, as well as more traditional writers, ethical naturalism is re-examined and found on balance to be wanting.

By naturalism Dr. Adams (professor of philosophy in the University of North Carolina) means the view that "the empirical, descriptive-explanatory conceptual scheme of common sense and science is fully adequate to categorize all dimensions of human experience" (p. 12). The program of naturalism in ethics must therefore be to show that the language of morals does not point to aspects of reality which disrupt this principle. Ostensibly, ethical language refers to values which elude the categories of the natural sciences; and accordingly the naturalist, in order to main-

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tain his position, must find ways of reducing these values to factors within the realm of nature.

Adams distinguishes and criticizes three kinds of ethical naturalism. The first, which he calls classical, is the theory that ethical statements make significant assertions and have truth-values, but that the facts to which they refer are purely natural facts. In Utilitarianism, for example, the natural fact with which ethics is concerned is human desire; and everything that is said about moral values can be translated into statements about men's desires and their fulfilment. To say, for example, that honesty is a morally valuable policy is to say that it tends to promote a state of maximum human happiness, thereby fulfilling the most basic human wish. It was this kind of theory that G. E. Moore charged with committing "the naturalistic fallacy"-in this case by failing to distinguish between an invariable consequence of moral goodness and its defining essence. Adams devotes a long section to the elucidation of this notion, which seemed so clear to Moore but which has been so variously interpreted by subsequent writers. He concludes that Moore did not succeed in convicting the naturalist of any definite logical error. Nevertheless he holds that in conjunction with other considerations the naturalistic fallacy argument does in effect undermine classical ethical naturalism.

Adams next examines emotive naturalism. The emotivists hold that to say of a certain action that it is right, or wrong, is not to make any factual statement about the action but is to display one's own emotional attitude towards it. As against the emotive theories of Ayer, Stevenson, and Robinson, Adams contends that "moral feelings, attitudes, and preferences are subject to being appraised as rational or irrational" and that therefore "they do make some kind of a claim that is either correct or incorrect" (p. 95). He has an important argument to the effect that moral utterances do not primarily embody approvals and disapprovals, but presuppose them, in a way parallel to that in which the making of an indicative statement presupposes, and thus indirectly attests, a state of belief in the speaker. "Having a favorable attitude towards x is, I suggest, the way in which one accepts the judgment 'x is good,' just as believing is the way in which one accepts a factual statement" (p. 76).

Adams then moves to a discussion of what he calls logical naturalism. Here he is referring to the position of the "good reasons" ethicists, such as Toulmin, Hampshire, Baier, and Ladd, who confine their task to showing what counts, within the web of ordinary language, as good and as bad reasons for an ethical judgment. For example, it may turn out that in a given society it is accepted as a good reason for a social policy that it is likely to reduce conflicts of interest. One has then discovered

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part at least of what counts as a good reason for a moral decision; and discoveries of this kind constitute the proper content of ethics. Any attempt to transcend the boundaries of ordinary, everyday speech in search of ultimate grounds or justifications is ruled out. Adams rejects this position, arguing for objective "value-requirednesses" which enables us to move validly from factual premises to ethical conclusions.

The discussion concludes with a chapter on the metaphysical implications of rejecting ethical naturalism.

This book is for the professional philosopher, who will study it with both interest and profit. Adams' arguments demand a reply from the schools of thought which he so carefully considers and criticizes. The importance of the work lies in its detailed documentation of the author's remark: "When I began this study I was confident that some version of ethical naturalism was correct, but I must confess that in the process of the study I found myself being forced by the unfolding argument into a nonnaturalistic position" (p. 200).

John Hick
Princeton Theological Seminary
Princeton, New Jersey