Moral Change by Cecilie Eriksen

Author:Cecilie Eriksen
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030610371
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

This imaginary tribe has the same biological nature as other humans, but it has developed different pain-language games and different pain-concepts compared to ours. This kind of conceptual difference in connection with a common human nature is a possibility—and, anthropologists report, often a reality. All humans eat, but the meanings of and rituals surrounding food intake vary greatly. The majority of humans sees colours, but how colours are grouped is not fully identical across the globe. Most cultures have ‘coming of age’-rituals, but the content and age of the child varies. This illustrates that language games or moral values and ideals are not derived from facts of nature, and that facts cannot, in themselves, account for the concepts and practices we have (Kuusela 2008: 186; Williams 2009: 11). If human natured changed, so we lost the ability to feel pain, it would most likely lead to a row of changes in our forms of life, but it is an open question how our practices would change in response to that. There is thus no justification and exhaustive explanation running from the natural foundations in the bottom of a culture to the higher levels of this culture.

These considerations explain how a universal, for example, biological human nature can be united with the existence of irreducibly different concepts, language-games and cultures. ‘Irreducible’ does here not mean ‘incommensurable’ (that we cannot meaningfully compare them). It means that they have a meaning, which is not reducible to the meaning of each other. For instance, a religious practice is different from and cannot be reduced to a scientific one (Wittgenstein 1993a, b). Being human across time and across different cultures does thus not only entail common characteristics, it also always takes on a particular cultural and individual form.

To complicate matters further, even though human nature, like common biological and psychological needs, does not globally cause or explain our moral values, it is often part of what determines what is morally good or bad, and in some situations, we can legitimately refer to, for instance, ‘our natural needs’, when offering moral justifications. This happens when doctors and psychologists justify recommending breastfeeding or criticise the use of isolation in prisons. What moral values we can honour and create; what cultures we can develop and thrive in depends on nature, both human nature and the nature we are part of. Whatever we succeed with in life, it is always also by ‘favour of Nature’ (Wittgenstein 2016: § 505). This understanding of the role of nature in morality can be labelled ‘non-reductive moral naturalism’ or ‘normative naturalism’ (Crary 2007b: 196–197; Williams 2009).

Yet, what is natural is not necessarily morally good. ‘Eye-for-an-eye’ seems to express a natural sense of justice among humans. But that is no guarantee that following it will lead to human flourishing. The concept ‘natural’ is thus not synonym with ‘morally good’. If we continue with the example of two tribes with different pain-concepts and -practices, ours and the one Wittgenstein describes earlier, we can ask if the one pain-culture is better than the other is in an ethical sense.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.