2016년 11월 7일 월요일

Principia Ethica 27

Principia Ethica 27



71.= By exposing this ambiguity, then, we are enabled to see more
clearly what must be meant by the question: Can Ethics be based on
Metaphysics? and we are, therefore, more likely to find the correct
answer. It is now plain that a metaphysical principle of Ethics
which says ‘This eternal reality is the Supreme Good’ can only mean
‘Something like this eternal reality would be the Supreme Good.’ We
are now to understand such principles as having the only meaning which
they can consistently have, namely, as describing the kind of thing
which ought to exist in the future, and which we ought to try to bring
about. And, when this is clearly recognised, it seems more evident
that the knowledge that such a kind of thing is also eternally real,
cannot help us at all towards deciding the properly ethical question:
Is the existence of that kind of good thing? If we can see that an
eternal reality is good, we can see, equally easily, once the idea
of such a thing has been suggested to us, that it _would_ be good.
The metaphysical construction of Reality would therefore be quite as
useful, for the purposes of Ethics, if it were a mere construction
of an imaginary Utopia: provided the kind of thing suggested is the
same, fiction is as useful as truth, for giving us matter, upon
which to exercise the judgment of value. Though, therefore, we admit
that Metaphysics may serve an ethical purpose, in suggesting things,
which would not otherwise have occurred to us, but which, when they
are suggested, we see to be good; yet, it is not as Metaphysics--as
professing to tell us what is real--that it has this use. And, in
fact, the pursuit of truth must limit the usefulness of Metaphysics
in this respect. Wild and extravagant as are the assertions which
metaphysicians have made about reality, it is not to be supposed but
that they have been partially deterred from making them wilder still,
by the idea that it was their business to tell nothing but the truth.
But the wilder they are, and the less useful for Metaphysics, the
more useful will they be for Ethics; since, in order to be sure that
we have neglected nothing in the description of our ideal, we should
have had before us as wide a field as possible of suggested goods. It
is probable that this utility of Metaphysics, in suggesting possible
ideals, may sometimes be what is meant by the assertion that Ethics
should be based on Metaphysics. It is not uncommon to find that which
suggests a truth confused with that on which it logically depends; and
I have already pointed out that Metaphysical have, in general, this
superiority over Naturalistic systems, that they conceive the Supreme
Good as something differing more widely from what exists here and now.
But, if it be recognised that, in this sense, Ethics should, far more
emphatically, be _based on_ fiction, metaphysicians will, I think,
admit that a connection of this kind between Metaphysics and Ethics
would by no means justify the importance which they attribute to the
bearing of the one study on the other.
 
 
=72.= We may, then, attribute the obstinate prejudice that a knowledge
of supersensible reality is a necessary step to a knowledge of what
is good in itself, partly to a failure to perceive that the subject
of the latter judgment is not anything _real_ as such, and partly to
a failure to distinguish the cause of our perception of a truth from
the reason why it is true. But these two causes will carry us only a
very little way in our explanation of why Metaphysics should have been
supposed to have a bearing upon Ethics. The first explanation which
I have given would only account for the supposition that a thing’s
reality is a _necessary condition_ for its goodness. This supposition
is, indeed, commonly made; we find it commonly presupposed that unless
a thing can be shewn to be involved in the constitution of reality, it
cannot be good. And it is, therefore, worth while to insist that this
is not the case; that Metaphysics is not even necessary to furnish
_part_ of the basis of Ethics. But when metaphysicians talk of basing
Ethics on Metaphysics they commonly mean much more than this. They
commonly mean that Metaphysics is the _sole_ basis of Ethics--that it
furnishes not only one necessary condition but _all_ the conditions
necessary to prove that certain things are good. And this view may,
at first sight, appear to be held in two different forms. It may be
asserted that merely to prove a thing supersensibly real is sufficient
to prove it good: that the truly real must, for that reason alone,
be truly good. But more commonly it appears to be held that the real
must be good because it possesses certain characters. And we may, I
think, reduce the first kind of assertion to no more than this. When
it is asserted that the real must be good, because it is real, it is
commonly also held that this is only because, in order to be real, it
must be of a certain kind. The reasoning by which it is thought that a
metaphysical enquiry can give an ethical conclusion is of the following
form. From a consideration of what it is to be real, we can infer that
what is real must have certain supersensible properties: but to have
these properties is identical with being good--it is the very meaning
of the word: it follows therefore that what has these properties is
good: and from a consideration of what it is to be real, we can again
infer what it is that has these properties. It is plain that, if such
reasoning were correct, any answer which could be given to the question
‘What is good in itself?’ could be arrived at by a purely metaphysical
discussion and by that alone. Just as, when Mill supposed that ‘to
be good’ _meant_ ‘to be desired,’ the question ‘What is good?’ could
be and must be answered solely by an empirical investigation of the
question what was desired; so here, if to be good means to have some
supersensible property, the ethical question can and must be answered
by a metaphysical enquiry into the question, What has this property?
What, then, remains to be done in order to destroy the plausibility of
Metaphysical Ethics, is to expose the chief errors which seem to have
led metaphysicians to suppose that to be good _means_ to possess some
supersensible property.
 
 
=73.= What, then, are the chief reasons which have made it seem
plausible to maintain that to be good must _mean_ to possess some
supersensible property or to be related to some supersensible reality?
 
We may, first of all, notice one, which seems to have had some
influence in causing the view that good must be defined by _some_
such property, although it does not suggest any _particular_ property
as the one required. This reason lies in the supposition that the
proposition ‘This is good’ or ‘This would be good, if it existed’ must,
in a certain respect, be of the same type as other propositions.
The fact is that there is one type of proposition so familiar to
everyone, and therefore having such a strong hold upon the imagination,
that philosophers have always supposed that all other types must be
reducible to it. This type is that of the objects of experience--of all
those truths which occupy our minds for the immensely greater part of
our waking lives: truths such as that somebody is in the room, that I
am writing or eating or talking. All these truths, however much they
may differ, have this in common that in them both the grammatical
subject and the grammatical predicate stand for something which exists.
Immensely the commonest type of truth, then, is one which asserts a
relation between two existing things. Ethical truths are immediately
felt not to conform to this type, and the naturalistic fallacy arises
from the attempt to make out that, in some roundabout way, they do
conform to it. It is immediately obvious that when we see a thing
to be good, its goodness is not a property which we can take up in
our hands, or separate from it even by the most delicate scientific
instruments, and transfer to something else. It is not, in fact, like
most of the predicates which we ascribe to things, a _part_ of the
thing to which we ascribe it. But philosophers suppose that the reason
why we cannot take goodness up and move it about, is not that it is
a different _kind_ of object from any which can be moved about, but
only that it _necessarily_ exists together with anything with which
it does exist. They explain the type of ethical truths by supposing
it identical with the type of scientific laws. And it is only when
they have done this that the naturalistic philosophers proper--those
who are empiricists--and those whom I have called ‘metaphysical’ part
company. These two classes of philosophers do, indeed, differ with
regard to the nature of scientific laws. The former class tend to
suppose that when they say ‘This always accompanies that’ they mean
only ‘This has accompanied, does now, and will accompany that in these
particular instances’: they reduce the scientific law quite simply
and directly to the familiar type of proposition which I have pointed
out. But this does not satisfy the metaphysicians. They see that when
you say ‘This would accompany that, _if_ that existed,’ you don’t mean
only that this and that have existed and will exist together so many
times. But it is beyond even their powers to believe that what you do
mean is merely what you say. They still think you must mean, somehow
or other, that something does exist, since that is what you generally
mean when you say anything. They are as unable as the empiricists to
imagine that you can ever mean that 2 + 2 = 4. The empiricists say this
means that so many couples of couples of things have in each case been
four things; and hence that 2 and 2 would not make 4, unless precisely
those things had existed. The metaphysicians feel that this is wrong;
but they themselves have no better account of its meaning to give
than either, with Leibniz, that God’s mind is in a certain state, or,
with Kant, that your mind is in a certain state, or finally, with Mr
Bradley, that something is in a certain state. Here, then, we have the
root of the naturalistic fallacy. The metaphysicians have the merit
of seeing that when you say ‘This would be good, if it existed,’ you
can’t mean merely ‘This has existed and was desired,’ however many
times that may have been the case. They will admit that some good
things have not existed in this world, and even that some may not have
been desired. But what you can mean, except that _something_ exists,
they really cannot see. Precisely the same error which leads them to
suppose that there must _exist_ a supersensible Reality, leads them to
commit the naturalistic fallacy with regard to the meaning of ‘good.’
Every truth, they think, must mean somehow that something exists; and
since, unlike the empiricists, they recognise some truths which do not
mean that anything exists here and now, these they think must mean
that something exists _not_ here and now. On the same principle, since
‘good’ is a predicate which neither does nor can exist, they are bound
to suppose either that ‘to be good’ means to be related to some other
particular thing which can exist and does exist ‘in reality’; or else
that it means merely ‘to belong to the real world’--that goodness is
transcended or absorbed in reality.
 
 
=74.= That such a reduction of _all_ propositions to the type of those
which assert either that something exists or that something which
exists has a certain attribute (which means, that both exist in a
certain relation to one another), is erroneous, may easily be seen by
reference to the particular class of ethical propositions. For whatever
we may have proved to exist, and whatever two existents we may have
proved to be necessarily connected with one another, it still remains
a distinct and different question whether what thus exists is good;
whether ei

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