The following gives a reconstruction of a new argument
in support of classical natural law theory (CNLT) based on some remarks from a
friend, followed by a discussion of that argument. CNLT, one might provisionally say, is an attempt to provide an ethics
based on a specific metaphysical account of human nature, namely, that offered
by St. Thomas Aquinas. Such an ethics would be especially appealing to theists
based on its attempt to provide a reasoned account of morality that is largely
consistent with ethical views that many theists tend to accept. (As for the friend in question, I have not asked for his permission to publish his name, so I will not do so without further notice.)
This
context in mind, the point of the new argument (I think) is to try to sidestep
a recent dialectical impasse (among some friends) with respect to what one
might call the perverted function argument (PFA). Roughly, the PFA holds that
an action that involves one of one's bodily organs or functions is wrong only
if one's action actively frustrates that organ or function. For example, the
proper function of one's sexual organs, one might say, is procreation. So
anything that deviates from this function is sufficient for perverting that
function, i.e., making it morally wrong. The argument, however, has not been
overly persuasive to many; hence, the rationale for trying to establish CNLT on
independent grounds from the PFA.
Following
my presentation of the new argument, I give a walkthrough of the argument that tries to be as charitable as possible. Following this, I
point out a difficulty in the argument that proponents of CNLT will want to
meet. The word difficulty, here, moreover, might be a bit of a misnomer. A
better word would be 'challenge': I don't think any of the reflections I offer
here are crippling or damning to CNLT. But they do point out an area in which
the theory possibly needs further development.
That
said, one can lay out the argument as this:
(1) Assume that someone S has a nature N (assumption).
(2) If S has a nature N, then (in the
absence of natural or intentional obstructions of that nature) S will have
features (x) in virtue of N (premise).
(3) If S has (in the absence of natural or
intentional obstructions of that nature) some features (x) in virtue of N, then
S ought to have N (premise).
(4) S ought to have (x) (1-2, 3 MP).
(5) If S ought to have (x) and S can freely choose
to have (x), then S ought to will to have (x) (premise).
(6) S can freely choose to have (x) (assumption).
(7) S ought to will to have (x) (4&6, 5 MP).
Premises (1) through (3) depend on a specific understanding of what it means for some individual 'thing' to have a nature; 'nature' in this context meaning a thing's essence. It's not a bad idea, then, I think, to cover this in a little more detail. A widely accepted view of essences that many contemporary philosophers accept is that an essence is simply the collection or set of properties that some individual 'thing' has such that this thing could not exist without its possessing every single property in this collection. So, for example, Barrack Obama could exist without the property 'being President of the United States,' since, for one, Barrack Obama did in fact, once exist without being the President of the United States. Thus, Barrack Obama has the property 'being the President of the United States' non-essentially or contingently.
He
does not, however, possess the property 'being a human being' in the same way
that he possesses the property 'being the President of the United States.' For,
it seems very plausible to hold, Barrack Obama could not exist without having
the property 'being a human being,' whereas he could, in fact, exist without
his being the President of the United States. In contrast, then, to his having
the property 'being the President of the United States,' Barrack Obama has the
property 'being a human being' essentially or non-contingently. And the
assortment of all the properties that Barrack Obama possesses in this way are
what make up Barrack Obama's essence in the sense of his individual essence.
A
more metaphysically perspicuous and elegant way of describing someone's
possessing an essence in this sense is to advance the claim that an individual
person S's essence consists in the properties that S possesses in all the
possible worlds in which S exists. Typically, in fact, contemporary defenders
of essences in this sense will make recourse to the conceptual machinery of
possible worlds for expressing and arguing for this view. But, for my purposes
here, one can safely leave talk about possible worlds in the
background.
Returning
to the view of essences in question, then, what it means for Barrack Obama to
have an essence, on the account I'm currently discussing, is for Barrack Obama
to have a collection of properties such that in the absence of even one of
these properties, Barrack Obama does not exist. That is, Barrack Obama's having
these properties are necessary for his existence. And, therefore, if Barrack Obama ceases
to have one of these properties, he thereby ceases to exist.
It
is still an open question, however, whether the possession of these properties
are sufficient for Barrack Obama's existence. For, even accounting for the
existence of all the properties that are a part of Barrack Obama's individual
essence, it is still an open question as to what it is that has these properties. Presumably, it is
Barrack Obama himself. And this, in turn, presupposes a subject that is the bearer of these properties, i.e., the subject
who is Barrack Obama. A further
question on this note is: what exactly is the relationship of a subject to its
properties?
There
are a number of options by which one can try to answer to this question, but
one important idea that seems plausible and such that one should try to include it in
one's answer to the question is that a subject is ontologically prior to its properties. And it is this putative desideratum that
motivates the concept of nature or essence that premises (1) through (3)
rely on. (Another reason for advancing an account of essence in this second sense is that
it seems wrong to identify an individual thing with its essence. Barrack Obama
has an essence; he is not identical to his essence.)
In
this second way of thinking about essences, a subject's essence is not a
collection or set of properties. Rather, a subject's essence is that in virtue
of which an individual subject is one kind
or sort of thing as opposed to another kind of thing. And, one would
want to say, the concept of a kind is itself not further subject to metaphysical
dissection or analysis.
On
this second interpretation of essence, then, there is a fundamental distinction
between a property and a kind. Using the language of universals to give a
clearer idea of what I have in mind, one might say that any individual instance
of a kind is a subject that has that specific kind as its essence. It is a kind
(in the sense of the universal of that kind) of which individual instances of
that kind are subjects. In contrast, instances of attributes (in the sense of
the universal of that attribute) exist only if they exist in a subject. A subject may necessarily (in the sense of
metaphysical necessity) have a number of properties or attributes such that the
subject does not and cannot exist without these attributes, but these attributes
are nonetheless not part of its essence in the second sense of an essence I
have described.
This,
of course, is not to say that an individual thing's kind has no important
connection to its properties. It is only to say that it is not the individual
thing's properties that determine its essence, but the other way around. Instead,
an individual thing's essence determines the its properties in two senses. In one sense (a), an individual thing's essence determines its properties in the sense of determining the possible range of properties it
possesses. A human being, for example, is not the sort of thing that is
possibly flat, but it is the kind of thing that is possibly tan. It is this
feature of a kind or an essence in
this second sense, moreover, that is represented by premise (2). In another sense (b), an essence or
a kind also necessitates, one might say, what features a thing possibly has. Thus, a thing's kind also determines what features it
actually has. An essence or a kind, one should say, necessitates what features
a subject has. (The sense of necessity here, of course, is not that of metaphysical necessity -- more on this in a moment.)
Or,
to be more precise, a subject has those features that follow from its kind or essence
only if there is not anything that intentionally or naturally obstructs those
properties from being a part of that subject. That is, as long as there is not
anything that prevents that subject from acquiring the properties that it would otherwise
necessarily have in virtue of its having a specific essence or kind. It is this sense, then, that
an advocate of the argument wants to insist that a subject ought to have those features that follow from its nature. For
example, a human being who is not (naturally or intentionally) obstructed from
attaining adulthood and the full powers of human reason that are a part of that
nature will necessarily reach adulthood and acquire those powers. And,
therefore, in this sense, such a human being ought to reach adulthood and acquire the full powers of human
reason.
One
final thing to note with respect to this second sense of 'essence' is the
importance in distinguishing between two senses of 'necessity' regarding an
individual subject's essence. In one sense, a thing has the essence it has
necessarily in the sense of metaphysical necessity; it is not possible for this very subject to exist without
having this essence (in the sense of its having its specific kind or nature). It is true, of course, that the individual in question
could also not exist if it lacked certain properties that the thing has in
virtue of its essence. For example, a cow could not exist without the property
'having four stomachs.'
But
this sense of 'essential' is distinct -- and, I think, clearly so -- from the other
sense of essence I have in mind: that in virtue of which an individual subject is the kind of individual subject that it is. And even
here there is a strong sense in which a thing's nature or essence has a deeper
claim than its properties to being essential to it in the first sense. For, at
least on the view of essences in question, a subject's attributes are
ontologically posterior to their subject in the sense that they depend
ontologically on that subject. Before
any attributes can exist, that is, there must first be a subject that is the
bearer of these attributes or that in which these attributes exist.
In
a second sense of necessity, on the other hand, a thing's essence makes it necessary
that, in virtue of that individual thing's essence, the individual thing will have certain
features and lack others. The sense of necessity in this second sense should, I
think, be understood as natural necessity. For, clearly, in the stronger sense
of broadly logical necessity (otherwise known as metaphysical necessity), there
is nothing about a subject's essence that logically implies that it will have (or lack)
such and such features. (However, if a thing's essence fails to naturally produce certain features in its subject, the thing will, at some near future time or at the present, cease to exist -- in this sense, then, one might say that certain metaphysically necessary features follow from the thing's essence.) Thus, taking necessity in this sense, a human being will
necessarily develop certain powers of reason and a cow will necessarily grow four stomachs in virtue of their respective natures, unless there is something
that obstructs their development of these features.
Now,
my purpose in drawing out the meaning of 'nature' in this second sense is
twofold. First, it provides a way in which to interpret the term 'essence' as it is used
in premises (1) through (3). Second, it helps to forestall a likely objection that
one might raise, namely, that the sub-argument in premises (1) through (4) is
circular. The apparent rationale behind this claim is that it seems that the
sense in which one ought to have features (x) (i.e., properties) associated
with one's essence is not any different from that in which one possesses any
features of one's essence -- that is, essentially.[1] Or
so this is a likely way in which one might read the argument if one has
something like the first interpretation of essence I discussed in mind.
'Those
essential features associated with one's essence are those features anyone with
that essence ought to have' is blatantly circular. For that which is to be
explained -- one's essential features -- is the very thing one uses to explain
those features that one ought to
have. What is worse, the account, on this reading at least, is also tautological.
'What one ought to have are essential features' becomes something like 'the
essential features one ought to have are essential features.' 'Essential
features,' however, in the sense of features that follow or "flow"
naturally from one's essence in the second sense I discussed, is both
non-circular and seemingly informative, in the sense of not being a tautology.
Now,
as for the argument itself, accepting 'nature' in this sense, one has perhaps
good reason for accepting premises (1) through (3). And having made this
acceptance, (4) follows without further ado. The remaining question, then, is
what one should think about the remaining three premises. There are some good
reasons one might have for not accepting (6). For one, it does not seem very
plausible to think that for any feature of the kind or sort human being, one can freely
choose to have that feature. At the very least, one will need to spell out in
greater detail what features follow naturally from the essence in question. But for now, I will waive these concerns.
Premise
(5) may seem, at first, more difficult to assess due to the obvious equivocation between
one sense of 'ought' found in the antecedent and another located in the
consequent. But it should be fairly apparent that, though indeed 'ought' is used equivocally in (5), (5) does not
seem to depend on this equivocation
for its being true. That is, even though (5) may contain an equivocation, the
equivocation is not needed to tie the first half of the conjunction in the antecedent
of (5) with (4), and the second half of the conjunction ties in with (6)
without any use of ought in either sense.
Moreover,
for the antecedent of (5) to be true, one needs the claim that
'someone with a nature N ought to have x in virtue of their having N' to be true. They also need the further claim that 'someone who ought to have x (in the
ontological sense) has it in their power to choose to have x' to be true. And if these two
claims are granted, the consequent, of course, necessarily follows, along with the associated claim that
someone who ought (ontological sense) to have x ought (moral sense) to will to
have x. So, again, it seems that the only really controversial claim, so far discussed, in the
sub-argument (5) through (7) is premise (6).
But
(6) is not likely to be the only potential difficulty facing the account on which
this argument is based -- i.e. CNLT. One such additional problem is the generality of (x) with respect
to further claims the adherent of CNLT might want to make. For example, if one
motivation for accepting the argument is to give a presentation of CNLT that
does not depend on the PFA for its criticism of certain moral behaviors, say,
same-sex sexual relations, this may be harder to accomplish than the proponent
of CNLT realizes.
For
if (x) is supposed to exclude such relations, there must be something in virtue
of one of these features of N that entails that such relations are incompatible
with N. In this sense, there must be some feature x* of N -- or something else
that is considered "a part of" N -- that entails that something y is not
possibly a (natural) feature of N. Nor is there anything presented in the argument so far that would suggest that y is not possibly a feature of N. And, moreover, it is not enough merely for one to say that y is just not something that is
necessarily (in the sense of natural necessity) brought about by N; for there
are many possible features (in the sense of either properties or behaviors)
some subject of a nature N can have that are not incompatible with N. For
example, collecting stamps or having a low-pitched voice.
In
order to fill this lacuna in CNLT, then, one must provide an account of the
feature x* that rules out the compatibility of y and N. Whether one relies on
the PFA to fill this lacuna is, of course, up to the proponent of CNLT. For
perhaps the proponent of CNLT will rely on some other argument or justification
of his view in place of PFA. One might even conjoin PFA with some further
principle or amendment and argue that, although the proper use of one's
reproductive organs is not sufficient for avoiding immoral behavior, it is
necessary for it. But if the point of relying on the present argument (the one
under discussion in this post) I have presented is to avoid having recourse to
the PFA, I conclude that it cannot be regarded as a success. This, once again,
is not to say that CNLT is either false or incoherent. It is merely to say that
its proponents need some further tie if they are going to argue persuasively
that y is incompatible with N.
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