Morality As A Natural Phenomenon: Ethics In The Context Of Naturalism

In the early decades of this century, there have been substantial literatures in the context of interdisciplinary studies of human morality. Many scholars believe that these literatures make a significant contribution to deepening our understanding of the phenomenon of morality.However, the conservative ethicists will insist that moral phenomenon is a matter of value, and the discussions on value are completely different from that of fact. They believe that we can not answer what we should do issue from the inquiry of facts, so the above literatures are not of much significance on the traditional ethics or political philosophy.A theoretical tradition which persists in using the empirical method is known as "naturalism", and it has a long tradition. In the face of naturalism, there have always been two main objections in philosophy:one is Moore's "naturalistic fallacy" and the other is the "Hume's law" acknowledged and developed by Richard Hare. Moore claims that we can not define the moral property as the natural attributes, for instance, defining the "good" as "can maximize utility".The former exists in the field of thought while the latter can be observed in the experience.A logical fallacy will be made if we try to connect the former with the latter. The second objection is often considered to be proposed in the third volume of David Hume's "A Treatise of Human Nature".Purportedly, Hume believes that we can not derive the moral judgments of what to do from the statements of facts. If attempting to do so, a logical error will also be committed.This paper will explore the legitimacy of the naturalistic ethics. We will discuss these two allegations against naturalism to study whether they are really powerful or highly misleading. Based on the study of this point, to show the potential advantages of naturalism, this paper will also introduce a moral theory with strong flavor of naturalism, namely, Ken Binmore's "Natural Justice" theory. This theory can be seen as the inheritance and development of John Rawls's "Justice as Fairness" theory. However, it is quite different in style from the original theory of Rawls. It no longer depends on a number of controversial metaphysical assumptions, but builds the foundation on real humanity obtained from the evolution. This paper will examine the similarities and differences between this theory and the traditional contract theory, and discuss its merits and defects.