My immediate aim in this lecture is to contribute something to the apt characterization of our representation and knowledge of the specifically human life form, as I will put it - and, to some extent, of things ‘human’ more generally. In particular I want to argue against an exaggerated empiricism about such cognition. Meditation on these themes might be pursued as having a kind of interest of its own, an epistemological and in the end metaphysical interest, but my own purpose (...) in the matter is practical-philosophical. I want to employ my theses to make room for a certain range of doctrines in ethical theory and the theory of practical rationality - doctrines, namely, of natural normativity or natural goodness, as we may call them. I am not proposing to attempt a positive argument for any such ‘neo-Aristotelian’ position, but merely to defend such views against certain familiar lines of objection; and even here my aims will be limited, as will be seen. (shrink)

It is the famous first thesis of Anscombe's ‘Modern Moral Philosophy’ that we should lay aside moral philosophy—indeed ‘ banish ethics totally from our minds’! —‘until we have an adequate philosophy of psychology’. By a ‘philosophy of psychology’ I understand Anscombe to mean grammatical investigations into various psychological concepts that hold the key to ethics. Anscombe herself instances ‘action’, ‘intention’, ‘pleasure’, ‘wanting’ . Without such an understanding, she thinks we will simply go astray.

The author presents and defends three theses: (1) "the first is that it is not profitable for us at present to do moral philosophy; that should be laid aside at any rate until we have an adequate philosophy of psychology." (2) "the second is that the concepts of obligation, And duty... And of what is morally right and wrong, And of the moral sense of 'ought', Ought to be jettisoned if this is psychologically possible...." (3) "the third thesis is that (...) the differences between the well-Known english writers on moral philosophy from sidgwick to the present day are of little importance." (staff). (shrink)

The problem I am going to discuss here concerns practical rationality, rationality not in thought but in action. More particularly, I am going to discuss the rationality, or absence of rationality of moral action. And ‘moral action’ shall mean here something done by someone who believes that to act otherwise would be contrary to, say, justice or charity; or again not done because it is thought that it would be unjust or uncharitable to do it. The question is whether in (...) so acting, or refusing to act, this person will be acting rationally, even in cases where he or she believes that not only desire but self-interest would argue in favour of the wrongdoing. (shrink)