From Nature Goodness To Moral Goodness

In this paper,I will defend Philippa Foot ’s moral naturalism.Foot argues that moral evaluations of human behavior and will can be derived from facts about human life.Following Michael Thompson,Foot believes that there is a special kind of evaluation of living things following "natural norms".According to natural norms,a living thing is evaluated according to whether some of its characteristics constitute for its life as a member of its species.Foot believes that although the content of the evaluation is different,moral evaluation of human behavior and will also follow the same logic form.Some philosophers disagree with Foot in her naturalistic view.They argue that since humans can reflect on and thus act against their own natural state,natural states of humans do not have the rational force as moral evaluations do.This kind of objection is called “step-back” objection,which is one of the most powerful objection towards Foot’s view.In response to "step-back" objection,Foot and other naturalists appeal to practical reason response.According to this response,human beings are creatures of practical reason in their nature.Practical rationality,as the nature of human beings,is binding on human behavior.Some philosophers pointed out the problems of practical reason response: only when human beings are not the agents of abstract principles of practical rationality,the practical reason response works.That is,the practical reason response requires naturalists to give an explanation of practical rationality based on human natural facts.In this paper,I try to give an explanation of practical rationality from the stance of naturalists.I think that only when practical reason is simply understood as instrumental rationality,the practical reason response fails.But there is a problem with the this kind of interpretation of practical rationality.According to this interpretation,practical reason is not truly normative.I will argue that a naturalistic interpretation of moral judgment can limit the ends of the agents,thereby giving an explanation of practical reason based on human natural facts.