Abstract

In "Nature and Conscience in Butler's Ethics," Nicholas Sturgeon argues that Butler's account of the role of conscience in morality is fundamentally Incoherent. Butler's emphasis upon conscience as the most superior principle rendering acts natural or unnatural is inconsistent with his tacit commitment to the "Naturalistic Thesis" that conscience always uses naturalness and unnaturalness as grounds upon which it bases its approvals and disapprovals. I argue that Butler is not committed to the Naturalistic Thesis, and hence his views are saved from incoherence. This Thesis is not entailed, as Sturgeon claims, by two of Butler's central doctrines, and there are reasonable interpretations of the passages Sturgeon cites that do not conurlt Butler to the Thesis. Butler's view is that the logically primary perception-approvals of acts as virtuous and perception-disapprovals of acts as vicious by themselves can render acts natural and unnatural, respectively, without the need for conscience to rely upon some other superior principle to first determine the naturalness or unnaturalness of acts.