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Her
research has been mainly in moral philosophy: metaethics, and substantive and
applied ethics. But she has also written on rights theory, and also on topics
in ancient philosophy, for instance, Stoic fatalism, and weak will in Plato.
Her book Hume, Reason and Morality: A Legacy of Contradiction,
was published in February 2006 by Routledge in their Eighteenth Century
Philosophy Series. An early review, describing it as "an extremely
important book with which anyone attempting to interpret or use Hume's
arguments will need to contend", can be found on the Notre Dame
Philosophical Reviews web-site.
Also, Jonathan
Dancy reviews it in the Times Literary Supplement (February 9 2007) where he
writes of this "excellent book" that it contains "the most
serious and detailed attempt to come to grips with Hume's notorious argument
that I know of" and thereby makes
"a significant contribution to our understanding".
The Philosophy Department of
Dr Botros
has recently reviewed books on happiness and cosmopolitanism for the Guardian Newspaper Saturday Review.
Dr Botros
has acted as a referee for the publisher Routledge, Cambridge University Press, New York and for journals
such as The Philosophical Quarterly
, Hume Studies and The Journal of Medical Ethics.
She
chaired a session at the 33rd International Hume Conference in
Dr Botros
can be contacted at sophie.botros@sophiebotros.com.
BOOKS
Hume,
Reason and Morality: A Legacy of Contradiction : Routledge:
Covering an important theme in Humean studies, this book focuses on Hume's hugely influential attempt in book three of his Treatise of Human Nature to derive the conclusion that morality is a matter of feeling, not reason, from its link with action. It claims that this argument contains a fundamental contradiction that has gone unnoticed in modern debate. It combines historical-scholarly work and contemporary analysis that seeks to expose this contradiction and therefore provide a contribution to current scholarship in this area.
Beginning by pointing out that a contradiction concerning whether reason can influence action, or is wholly powerless, occurs in the intermediary premiss, it moves on to draw out the consequences for recent meta-ethics of the failure to acknowledge this contradiction. Finally, highlighting the root of the argument's power in an article of naturalistic dogma, the book suggests how it may be possible to restore to our moral concepts their traditional and integral link with both truth and motivation.
The ideal readership would include moral philosophers interested in meta-ethics and practical reason, and Humean scholars.
Contents:
Part 1: Hume's Practicality Argument
Introduction (click to read)
1. A Contradiction, not an Ambiguity
2. Validity and the ‘Moderate' Version
3. Metaphysics and the ‘Extreme' Version
4. Sentimentalists, Secondary Qualities and Sensations
5. The Inconsolable ScepticPart 2: The Practicality Argument Today
6. Morality's Dynamism
7. Desires, Beliefs and ‘Direction of Fit'
8. A Riddle and a Buried Assumption
9. The Case of Owen Wingrave Final RemarksApart from the reviews already mentioned, a review by H.O.Mounce can be found in Philosophy, October 2006. Also see in this connection Botros, Sophie "On a supposed contradiction in Hume", Philosophy Vol.82,October 2007 (forthcoming).
In the course of reviewing my Hume, Reason and Morality: A Legacy of Contradiction (Mind, Vol.116, July 2007), Neil Sinclair raises two questions of interpretation which richly deserve independent discussion.
The first question takes off from the ‘practicality’ argument formulated by Hume in Treatise 3.1.1, and the troublesome ambiguities surrounding its second premise. I proposed that, in order to resolve them, we should take Hume, when he stresses the utter motivational impotence of reason, to have in mind the moral rationalists’ notion . Sinclair agrees (734) that Hume both “has rationalist opponents in mind in 3.1.1” and “objects to their view that ‘eternal fitnesses’ can influence the will (3.1.1:23)”. But he rejects that proposal on grounds that “at no point in this discussion does Hume even hint at using ‘reason’ to refer to [their] fitnesses”. The proposal is not to the effect that Hume explicitly announced such a use of ‘reason’ - nothing so deliberate or systematic on Hume‘s part. But, quite independently of the proposal’s merits, the implication of Sinclair’s claim, that Hume never did on any occasion use ‘reason’ to refer to the rationalists’ notion, and that we are never entitled to substitute ‘reason’ for ‘fitnesses’, is contentious.
Given that the rationalists are the main target of 3.1.1, it would be astonishing if Hume never used ‘reason’ in this section to refer to their concept. Indeed we need only look as far as paragraph 4 to find an example. Here Hume expounds their position in terms of (Clarke‘s) “ eternal fitnesses and unfitnesses of things” and (Cudworth’s) “ immutable measures of right and wrong”. But he prefaces his exposition by making the general point that “according to [all these systems] virtue is nothing but a conformity with reason”. What else could ‘reason’ refer to here but his rationalist opponents’ concept?1
Sinclair will perhaps point out that he does not claim, or imply, that Hume never uses ‘reason’ to refer to his rationalists’ opponents’ reason, but rather that he never uses it to refer to their ‘fitnesses and unfitnesses’. But this would suggest that Hume drew a sharp distinction between the moral rationalists’ concept of reason, or rationality, and their concept of ‘fitnesses and unfitnesses’. But this is not true. Hume is quite explicit that (Clarke’s) “eternal immutable fitnesses and unfitnesses of things” and (Cudworth’s) “eternal measures of good and evil”, though they are relations existing outside us, are rational . Thus he does not content himself with saying (para.4) that these “eternal measures” are the same to “every rational being that considers them”, which would be consistent with reason as merely a mental activity of ours. He speaks of them (para.23) as themselves “ eternal rational measures of right and wrong” (my italics). In this way, as any great philosopher should, he does justice to Clarke’s and Cudworth’s repeated identification of ‘reason’ with ‘the reason of things’2 or ‘the reason of the world’3 , at the same time as utterly repudiating their view.
Sinclair might now suggest that his own phrase “in this discussion” refers only to paragraph 23 which he cites as the source of his quotation. Actually Hume neither refers to ‘eternal fitnesses’ nor denies their influence on the will in that paragraph. But even if we concentrate on paragraph 22, where he does say these things, it is unclear how this could help. We have seen, first, that it is unwise, if not impossible, to try to prize apart the rationalists’ notion of reason from their notion of ‘the fitnesses and unfitnesses of things’, since for them ‘reason’ is essentially ‘the reason of the world’ or ‘the reason of things’. Secondly, there is no evidence that Hume was ever so foolish as to make this mistake. We are therefore entitled to take his rejection of their view that these ‘eternal fitnesses’ could influence the will as also a rejection of their view that reason could do so. But it is then hard to maintain that he would have regarded his famous descriptive phrase “perfectly inert” as inapplicable to the rationalists’ notion of reason. On the contrary, it must have seemed, from his point of view, highly applicable. The rationalists cannot, he might have said, posit such an inert concept of reason as the basis of anything so active as morality. We should not of course immediately jump to the conclusion that when Hume described reason as “perfectly inert” (3.1.1:8), the rationalist concept was, or even may have been, implicated. That demands much more argument which I will not repeat here.
The second question of interpretation relates to the ‘direction of fit’ account of desire and belief. Sinclair does not agree that this account presupposes that ‘it is a good thing for there to be a fit between desire and the world…..in every instance of desire ’. He comments (734): “It would certainly be a surprise to defenders of the direction-of-fit account that it implied such evaluative claims”. But these “evaluative claims” are merely paraphrases, or ways of drawing out the implications (since otherwise they are intolerably obscure) of Humberstone’s remark, in his classic discussion4 that, when there is this fit “We have a sense of things going right”, and Zangwill’s remark5 that when there isn’t this fit, “That’s a fault in the world”. It is a real question whether the ‘direction of fit’ account can be given without substantive use of evaluative language.
NOTES
1. Nor is this the first time Hume has used “reason” in a sense which he proposes to repudiate. To cite just one other example, at 2.3.3:1, he speaks of those systems of morality of which the chief distinguishing feature is “the supposed pre-eminence of reason over passion” , and goes on that in these systems “The eternity, invariableness and divine origin of the former have been displayed to the best advantage”. Clearly “the former” refers to “reason”.
2. Clarke, Samuel (1728) A Discourse of Natural Religion, selections reprinted in D.D. Raphael (ed.) (1969) British Moralists 1650-1800, I: Hobbes-Gay: 231.
3.Cudworth, Ralph (1731) A Treatise Concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality, reprinted in Raphael, ibid: 134.
4.Humberstone, L.(1992) “Direction of fit”, Mind 101:72
5.Zangwill, N.(1996) “Direction of fit and normative functionalism” Philosophical Studies 91:177.
SOPHIE BOTROS, Institute of Philosophy, School of Advanced Studies, London University.
PUBLISHED
PAPERS
"Acceptance
and Morality": Philosophy,
Vol.58, No.226, Cambridge University Press, October 1983, pp.433-453. Abstract.
"Freedom,
Causality, Fatalism and Early Stoic Philosophy": Phronesis, Vol.XXX, No. 3, Vangorcum-Assen-Netherlands,
December 1985, pp.274-304. Abstract.
"Precarious
Virtue": Review Article of M. Nussbaum's The Fragility of Goodness, Phronesis, Vol.XXXII, No. 1, Vangorcum-Assen-Netherlands,
1987, pp.101-131.
"Abortion,
Embryo Research and Foetal Transplantation: Their Moral
Interrelationships" in Medicine,
Medical Ethics and the Value of Life, ed. Peter Byrne, John Wiley,
1989, pp.47-79.
"Equipoise,
Consent and the Ethics of Randomized Clinical Trials" Ethics and Law in Health Care and Research,
ibid, 1990, pp.9-24.
"Ethics
in medical research: uncovering the conflicting approaches", in Manual for Research Ethics Committees,
compiled and edited by C. Foster, Sanofi Winthrop and King’s College,
London, 1992.
"What's
wrong with rights?" Ethics in
Obstetrics and Gynaecology, ed. Bewley & Ward,
"Rights
and the four principles" in Principles
of Health Care Ethics, ed. by R, Gillon, Wiley:
"Acts,
Omissions and Keeping Patients Alive in a Persistent Vegetative State" in Philosophy and Technology, Royal Institute of
Philosophy Supplement:38, ed. Roger Fellows,
"An
Error about the Doctrine of Double Effect" in Philosophy, Vol. 74, No. 287, Cambridge University Press,
January 1999, pp. 71-83. Abstract.
"Response
to W.Kaufman's "On a Purported Error about the Doctrine of Double Effect:
a Reply to
"On a supposed contradiction in Hume" in Philosophy,
Vol.82, October 2007 (forthcoming)."
REPLIES
A reply
to Dr. Botros’s "Acceptance and Morality" is Downing F. Gerald,
"A Stoical submission", Philosophy,
Vol. 61, No. 124, January 1986, and to her "Freedom, Causality, Fatalism
and Early Stoic Philosophy" is Sharples, R.W., Phronesis, 1986:31, pp 266-279.
W.
Kaufman’s reply to her "An Error about the Doctrine of Double
Effect" can be found in Philosophy,
Vol. 75, No. 292, pp 283-295.
MAIN
ENCYCLOPAEDIA AND DICTIONARY ARTICLES AND REVIEWS
"Consentement
Informe" (Informed consent) in Dictionnaire
de Philosophie Morale, Presse Universitaires de France, 1995.
"Faire
et Laisser Faire" (Acts/ Omissions) in Dictionnaire
de Philosophie Morale, Presse Universitaires de France, 1995.
The
Gentleman In Trollope: Individuality and Conduct, by Shirley Robin Letwin: Philosophical Quarterly, Vol 33, No 133,
Basil Blackwell, October 1983, pp 408-409.
Ethics and Human Action in Early Stoicism
by Brad Inwood, in Philosophical Books,
Vol. 27, No.3, July 1986, pp 142-144.
Agency
and Necessity by A. Flew and G.Vesey, Philosophical
Books, Vol. 29, No.2, Basil Blackwell, April 1988, pp 94-96.
From
Morality to Virtue by Michael Slote, Philosophy,
Vol. 70, No. 272, Cambridge University Press, April 1995, pp 290-292.
SOME
CONFERENCE PAPERS
1984: Dr
Botros was a discussant at the invitation of Professor Peter Winch in the
reading group, directed by him, on Wittgenstein's Blue Book held in
1990:
"Moral philosophers and Medical Ethics" presented at a Conference
entitled "La Semaine de Reflexion
Ethique"
1990:
"A philosopher’s perspective" in Medical Scientific Advance, Its Challenge to Society, Report
of Ciba Foundation discussion meeting.
1992:
"Informed Consent, Autonomy and Rights" presented at a Conference
entitled "Moral and Political
Philosophy: French and American Perpectives" organized in
PUBLIC
PROJECTS AND CONFERENCE ORGANIZATION/CHAIRING 1989-1990
Dr Botros
established (April 1989) a Public Affairs Unit as a project of the Centre of
Medical Law and Ethics and obtained a grant of £10,000 from King's Research
Development Fund enabling the Unit to hire a research assistant and run
seminars in the Houses of Parliament to coincide with the passage through
Parliament of the Human Embryology and Fertilization Bill.
Between
January and June 1990 she organized, and spoke at, four meetings on the Human
Embryology and Fertilization Bill, two in the House of Lords, and two in the
House of Commons. She also chaired the last two meetings.
She also
gave private briefing during this period to Members of Parliament, for
instance, on the Human Fertilization and Embryology Bill, and on the ethics of
animal research and experimentation.
1991-2:
Dr Botros was Co-Director of King's College Centre for Philosophical Studies,
Philosophy Dept., King's College London.
WORKING
PARTIES
1991: Dr
Botros was a member of the Working Party on Clinical Trials and Randomization,
set up by cancer specialist Michael Baum (Royal Marsden).
1991-1993:
Dr Botros was Medical Ethics Adviser to the All Party Parliamentary Group on
Aids.
An Error about the
Doctrine of Double Effect
This
paper claims as erroneous the current widespread view representation by,
amongst others, Foot, Nagel, Mackie and Quinn, of the Doctrine of Double Effect
(DDE) as primarily condemning, as intrinsically bad, actions involving
intentional harm. The DDE's Four Conditions are in fact used solely for
justifying certain intrinsically good actions with both intended good and
unintended bad effects. Though some of these writers assign a minor
justificatory role to the DDE this is incompatible with their attribution to it
of a primary prohibitive role. Not only is the conduct cited by these writers
as justifiable under the DDE so morally innocuous as to require no
justification, but any attempt to justify it by appeal to the DDE leads to
incoherence. We finally suggest reasons for this misinterpretation in current
concerns with the structure of deontological moral theories.
Freedom,
Causality, Fatalism and Early Stoic Philosophy
It is
argued that the Early Stoics were not soft determinists at least as
traditionally understood, since their refusal to analyse freedom in terms of
the power to do otherwise meant that they did not recognize even the
possibility of a conflict between freedom and determinism. A form of soft
determinism is next considered in which freedom may be ascribed even in the
absence of alternative possibilities of action, and which might be helpful in
interpreting the early Stoics’ analogy between a dog ties to a wagon and
men in relation to fate. It is finally proposed that the Stoics, in identifying
freedom with the distinctive causal structure of action rather than with the
absence of external constraint or coercion be regarded as propounding a type of
agent causalism, divested however of any anti-determinist libertarian
connotations.
Using
literary examples, an attempt is made to reinstate the acceptance of ill
fortune as philosophically intelligible and morally credible. The acceptance of
legal punishment by Dostoyevsky’s Raskolnikov and Stendhal’s Julien
Sorel is shown to challenge Utilitarian values. However the intelligibility of
accepting natural disasters as punishments is questioned. Finally the
acceptance of death by Tolstoy’s Ivan Illich is shown by contrast with
the so called ‘Muselmanner’ in