Triết học Đạo đức của William Wollaston - Luận án Tiến sĩ tại CUNY bởi Yael Sofaer

City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects CUNY Graduate Center 6-2014 The Moral Philosophy of William Wollaston Yael Sofaer Graduate Center, City University of New York How does access to this work benefit you? Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.edu/gc_etds/285 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: AcademicWorks@cuny.edu THE MORAL PHILOSOPHY OF WILLIAM WOLLASTON by YAEL SOFAER A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty in Philosophy in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, The City University of New York 2014 2014 YAEL SOFAER All Rights Reserved ii This manuscript has been read and accepted for the Graduate Faculty in Philosophy in satisfaction of the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Rosenthal Date Chair of Examining Committee Iakovos Vasiliou Date Executive Officer Stefan Bernard Baumrin John Kleinig Peter Phillips Simpson Supervisory Committee THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK iii Abstract THE MORAL PHILOSOPHY OF WILLIAM WOLLASTON by Yael Sofaer Adviser: Professor Stefan Bernard Baumrin This dissertation provides the first thorough exposition of the moral theory proposed by William Wollaston in his treatise The Religion of Nature Delineated (1724), and demonstrates it to be an innovative contribution to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries project of developing a moral theory by reason alone (in which lie the origins of contemporary moral realism); with the foundational principle of acting in accordance with nature as the standard of morality. Wollaston s treatise contains an unrecognized innovation: the principle that rational agents express propositions by their actions that, as propositions, have truth values which makes it possible to determine the moral status of such actions by evaluating these truth values.

The principle that actions express propositions to the same extent that verbal statements express propositions bridges the gap between ideas in the mind and the facts of the world (i. It defines the deliberate actions of moral agents as natural events which can thus be evaluated in the same way that all natural objects and events are evaluated. Actions of moral agents can then be evaluated as to whether they are consistent or inconsistent with all other parts of nature. The correspondence between the truthfulness or falsehood of the propositions that moral agents express by their iv deliberate actions, and the empirical facts of the world, provides a focused method of evaluating the moral status of such actions in accordance with the empirical standard of moral realism.

Also, in Wollaston s system, as it is the nature of human beings to seek happiness, and as acting in accordance with nature is the means of attaining happiness, the production or destruction of happiness determines the degree of the moral rightness or wrongness of actions. The dissertation also demonstrates that the prevalent criticisms of The Religion of Nature Delineated which have caused it to be largely disregarded do not engage the theory and are often directed at straw men. The Response to Wollaston’s Theory. The Eighteenth Century: Popularity and Influence.

The Nineteenth Century: Decline and Dismissal. The Twentieth Century: Sporadic Interest. Wollaston’s Moral Theory. The Structure of The Religion of Nature Delineated.

The Reliability of Reason: Section III, “Of Reason, and the Ways of Discovering Truth”. The Standard of Morality: Section II, “Of Happiness”. The Moral Theory of RND: Section I, “Of Moral Good and Evil”. The Extent of Moral Obligation: Section IV, “Of the Obligations of Imperfect Beings with Respect to Their Power of Acting”.

Wollaston’s Application of His Moral Theory. Religion: Section V, “Truths Relating to the Deity. Of His Existence, Perfection, Providence, etc. The Basis of Political Theory: Section VI, “Truths Respecting Mankind in General, Antecedent to All Human Laws”.

Political Theory: Section VII, “Truths Respecting Particular Societies of Men, or Governments”. Domestic Life: Section VIII, “Truths Concerning Families and Relations”. Virtue and the Soul: Section IX, “Truths Belonging to a Private Man, and Respecting (Directly) Only Himself”. The Misleading Observers Straw Man.

Thomas Bott and His Followers. The “All Immorality Is Lying” Straw Man. Joel Feinberg’s Response to Hume. The Description Error.

INTRODUCTION The Rev. William Wollaston (1659-1724) was one of the most famous and highly esteemed writers of his time, and yet in the century following his death, his reputation fell into sharp decline until he became an object of disrespect in the writings of Hume, Price, Bentham, and others. A fair-minded contemporary reader, I think, will find that Wollaston did have something important and original to say, however confused his manner of saying it, so that is one reason for reexamining his major work, The Religion of Nature Delineated (1722)—Joel Feinberg.1 William Wollaston, author of The Religion of Nature Delineated (1724) (hereinafter referred to as RND), was a popular and highly regarded moral philosopher in the eighteenth century, yet in the nineteenth century he fell into disrepute. He was no longer read and his moral theory was ridiculed and dismissed.

This view has persisted to the present. In this dissertation I will provide the first thorough exposition of Wollaston’s moral theory and demonstrate it to be an innovative contribution to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries’ project of developing a moral theory by reason alone (in which lie the origins of contemporary moral realism); with the foundational principle of acting in accordance with nature as the standard of morality. Also, that it contains a largely unrecognized innovation: the principle that rational agents express propositions by their actions—that, as propositions, have truth values—which makes it possible to determine the moral status of such actions by evaluating these truth values. I will also demonstrate that the prevailing dismissal of this theory is based on arguments which fail to engage it and instead attack straw men.

Wollaston’s moral theory is usually classified as rationalist, but not clearly described. It is 1 Joel Feinberg, “Wollaston and His Critics,” The Journal of the History of Ideas 38, no. 1 most commonly, and incorrectly, described as being somehow similar to Samuel Clarke’s theory of fitness,2 with Wollaston sometimes labeled a disciple of Clarke and subject to descriptions such as this: The moral rationalists claimed, for example, that moral distinctions are based on transcendental principles and immutable relations that oblige all rational creatures and that can only be discerned by the use of reason. An exaggerated view of the power of reason leads the rationalist to suppose that reason can pierce its way into the realm of transcendental values.3 However, Wollaston had no such visions of transcendental normative realms nor does his theory resemble Clarke’s doctrine of intuitively observable fitnesses; rather, he devised a rule for deriving moral judgments from propositions concerning empirical experience.

Wollaston fits into the category Stephen L. Darwall defines as Empirical naturalist internalism: An empirical naturalist tradition, comprising Hobbes, Cumberland, Hutcheson, Hume, and, in most moods, Locke, was driven primarily by the desire to account for normativity in a way consistent with an empiricist epistemology and naturalist metaphysics.4 Central to Wollaston’s theory is his innovative idea that agents express propositions by their actions as well as their words. This provides a means of assigning truth values to actions. Doing so enables judging actions morally on the basis of the foundational principle that the 2 Hume’s description of rationalism as “affirm[ing] that virtue is nothing but a conformity to reason; that there are eternal fitnesses and unfitnesses of things, which are the same to every rational being that considers them,” best describes Clarke’s thesis.

David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. David Fate Norton and Mary J. Norton, Introduction by David Fate Norton (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000): 294 (3. 3 David Fate Norton, “Hume, human nature, and the foundations of morality” in The Cambridge Companion to Hume, edited by David Fate Norton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993): 156.

Darwall, The British Moralists and the Internal ‘Ought’: 1640-1740 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 14. 2 standard of morality is accordance with nature; this is joined with the epistemic principle that the definition of truth is accordance with nature. This foundational principle of acting in accordance with nature originated in Stoicism and was the prevailing standard of moral theory.5 The idea that actions express propositions provides a systematic method of evaluating whether actions are in accordance with nature. In addition, Wollaston offers a secondary justification for why acting in accordance with nature is right—because it is the method of attaining happiness.

As happiness is the criterion of Epicureanism this makes Wollaston’s theory a fusion of Stoic and Epicurean elements, which adds to its interest. This fusion is accomplished in two steps. In the first, a rule for practicing the Stoic principle of acting according to nature is promulgated (RND Section I). In the second, it is established that seeking happiness is in accordance with human nature (RND Section II).

As human nature is part of nature, this is encompassed within the Stoic principle of acting in accordance with nature. The Epicurean principle is made subordinate to the Stoic principle as Wollaston warns that acting in accordance with nature does not mean acting in accordance with the brutish part of human nature. In the rationalist project, the Stoic principle of following nature was joined with the project of science, leading to the attempt to derive universal moral laws from nature in the same manner that scientists, especially Newton, derived universal physical laws from nature. The rationalist project was proposed by John Locke, who believed morality could be scientifically demonstrated.

I am bold to think, that morality is capable of demonstration, as well as 5 “[Wollaston’s] theory is.the prevailing deist-stoic theory of ‘living according to nature,’ and is in fact what Wollaston intended it to be, an interpretation and partial clarification of that ancient theory. Wollaston holds with the Stoics that actions are wrong because they are ‘contrary to nature. 3 mathematics; since the precise real essence of the things moral words stand for may be perfectly known; and so the congruity or incongruity of the things themselves, be certainly discovered, in which consists perfect knowledge.6 A founding participant in this project was Richard Cumberland. Cumberland was the first man to produce a full-fledged doctrine of natural law in which both the general methods and the specific findings of modern natural science, or natural science as it developed after Galileo, were used to define man's moral duties.7 Thus, Cumberland defines morality as being a subset of the laws of nature: The laws of nature are the only solid foundations of all morality and civil polity.

8 Cumberland’s innovation was to bring logic to bear on moral issues. The principle he developed is that an immoral action expresses a logical contradiction because it expresses two opposing propositions concerning the same category of being, namely human. For, that rational agent most certainly contradicts himself, who prescribes one rule for his own private conduct, and a quite different rule for the conduct of other rational beings, who partake of the very same nature with himself (I. This differs from advocating the golden rule, or the general, widespread idea of fairness.

A person who affirms a proposition concerning conduct for himself, but denies the same proposition concerning someone else (or vice versa), while both are the same category of 6 John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690), ed. Spelling, italics, capitalization, and punctuation have been modernized. All subsequent Locke quotes in this chapter are from the Essay. 7 Murray Forsyth, “The Place of Richard Cumberland in the History of Natural Law Doctrine,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 20, no.edu/journals/hph/summary/v020/20.

8 Richard Cumberland, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Laws of Nature, translated, notes, and appendix by John Towers (Dublin: Samuel Powell, 1750), http://galenet.com/servlet/ ECCO, document no. CW3322449132, Prolegomena, section 1:ix. Subsequent references to this work are by part number, chapter number, section number, and page number.