David P. Barash's article Two Cheers for Nature is a very thought-provoking piece. Here are a few of my thoughts on it:
1) Good for him for overturning the Rousseuean fetishization of nature as good.
2) The is-ought distinction is much more complex than being a mere fallacy. Not all ises result in oughts, to be sure, but all oughts must come from some is.
3) He is wrong that life is a zero-sum game. Or, more precisely, he is wrong that it is merely a zero-sum game. There are many positive-sum games (and some negative-sum games). In fact, that might be a good way of defining the good -- anything that results in a positive-sum game. Another way of putting this is Alexander Argyros' formulation of ethics as the good being anything that results in greater complexity and the bad being anything that reduces complexity (negative-sum).
4) His reflections on tragic ethics reminds me of Frederick Turner's reflections on them. Perhaps zero-sum ethics are tragic ethics?
2 comments:
Troy,
Unfortunately, I don't have the time to read all things I'd like to. But I would like to respond to the first point.
I'm surprised that philosophers have ever thought of nature as anything other than neutral, or amoral anyway. Certainly there are many who fetishize nature, and belief anything 'natural' is morally good. But how can philosophers fall prey to this soft-headedness? Pray tell.
Well, if you believe that civilization of the source of all of mankind's evils, then you are left with nothing but nature as being good. Rousseau argued that children and natives (the noble savage, as he termed it) were good, and that thte became bad as they became more civilzed. Others, like Hobbes, took literally the opposite position. The Hobbesean tradition gives us the argument that people have to be made to be civilized -- which may sound familiar from conservative rhetoric. The Rousseauean tradition gives us the blank slate Leftist arguments. As usual, between the two extremes -- both of which lead to tyranny -- is the classical liberal position.
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