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ABSTRACT
The usual way of discussing normativity and naturalism is by running through a standard range of issues: the relations of fact and value, objectivity, reason and emotion, is and ought, and the so-called ‘naturalistic fallacy’. This is a naturalism that is virtually silent on nature. I outline an alternative approach that relates normativity to our nature as living beings, for whom specific things are good or bad for us. Our nature as evaluative beings is shown to be rooted in and emergent from this biological normativity. There is also significant downward causation, such that our brain-bodies are continually modified by our experience and thoughts. Cultures, as emergent from the affordances of our brain-bodies, create further extensive, irreducible sources of normativity, albeit ones which do not wholly escape biological normativity and can impact back on it.
Acknowledgement
Thanks – with the usual disclaimers – to Celia Roberts and Adrian Mackenzie for discussions of some of these issues.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
Andrew Sayer is Professor of Social Theory and Political Economy at Lancaster University, UK. He works mainly on inequality and ethical life and is author of several books on or informed by critical realism, including Realism and Social Science (2000, Sage) and Why Things Matter to People: Social Science, Values and Ethical Life (2011, Cambridge University Press).
Notes
1 Note Bernard Williams’ comment on ‘the naturalistic fallacy’, ‘It is hard to think of any other widely used phrase in the history of philosophy that is such a spectacular misnomer’ (Williams Citation1985, 121).
2 The error of ‘logicism’, as Harré called it (Harré Citation1970).
3 While some other animals exhibit cultural variation – differences in behaviour that are learned in specific sub-groups rather than genetically inherited – it seems to be of a much more limited form than that evident in human cultures.
4 While critical realists usually explain causation in terms of examples of causal powers that may or may not be activated, to be alive is to be dependent on causal powers that are continually active and difficult to stop or override.
5 I suggest this non-intentional seeking is an evolutionary precursor of curiosity, a capacity which notwithstanding its dangers allows the discovery of opportunities for survival and flourishing.
6 In some cases, they may even be dysfunctional, as when an overly strong immune system attacks the body.
7 The brain is not a discrete or self-sufficient organ counterposed to the body, but part of several more extensive physiological systems. To acknowledge this, I will thus refer at times to the ‘brain-body’.
8 See also Spinoza’s concept of conatus.
9 On this ‘aboutness’ of morality and ethics I am in agreement with Andrew Collier (Citation1999, Citation2003).
10 See footnote 8.
11 This distinction is usually made with reference to statements (e.g. Williams Citation1985), but note here it applies to the body, to intransitive processes.
12 This distinction, which is entirely consistent with critical realism, is made by Damasio. He conceptualizes emotions not as subjective feelings but as the very workings of homeostatic systems, some of which contingently give rise to objective feelings or sensations, some of which we contingently notice, transitively.
13 This is a drastically abbreviated version of Damasio’s account of the origins of consciousness and sense of the self, omitting in particular the role of memory.
14 As Porges shows, this subconscious, physical response continues into later life, affecting our heart rate and hearing, activating or de-activating our fight or flight responses, and affecting our ability to engage with others, even at the basic level of being able to listen to what they say (Porges Citation2011; see also Van der Kolk Citation2014; Claxton Citation2015). These are some ways in which human biology is social.
15 Here I am dealing with normativity with regard to life – biological and socio-cultural, personal – and not with evaluations of objects and their qualities, as in ‘a good bed’, where the criteria are instrumental. While animals or other people may also be viewed instrumentally as good or bad for our purposes, nevertheless, unlike inanimate objects, they have consciousness, which is why animals but not coats can be oppressed.
16 Of course, as Charles Taylor points out, in some cases there may be overriding reasons for evaluating health negatively, for instance, we might negatively value the health of the ebola virus. That is, we might accept the positive valuation of health of that organism but argue that there is an overriding reason for trying to kill it. To undermine particular evaluations of health we would presumably have to show that the understanding of the functioning of the organism was mistaken in some way. While these understandings do not logically entail any particular ought, they set up a particular ‘value-slope’ that suggests that it would be unreasonable not to act in accordance with it (Taylor Citation1967). Logical deduction is not the only kind of inference that we can rely on in life (fortunately!), and refusing any other kind puts us in the position of the perverse doctor of our opening scenario.
17 There are parallels between our disastrous disregard of external nature in modern society, and our disregard of the body – ‘inner nature’ – in philosophy and social science.
18 See also Archer’s apt comments on the ‘emotional lobotomy’ of ‘Modernity’s man’ (Archer, Citation200Citation0, 85).
19 MacIntyre extends Foot’s way of thinking about natural normativity into the socio-cultural realm, with regard to roles, where ‘Good is ascribed … both to what benefits human beings as such and to what benefits human beings in particular roles within particular contexts of practice.’ (MacIntyre Citation1999, 65).
20 See UNICEF (Citation2007).
21 While I have long argued for a postdisciplinary approach that works to remove boundaries between the various social sciences, I had not seen any necessity for dialogue between biology and the social sciences (Sayer Citation2000). I have now changed my mind.
22 As Norman Doidge puts it, ‘The plastic paradox is that the same neuroplastic properties that allow us to change our brains and produce more flexible behaviours can also allow us to produce more rigid ones (Doidge Citation2007, 242).