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    Carmelics

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    LoyalLoyalJusticeJustice
    Made withinDC&Austin
    Statements
    321,452
    Perspectives
    108,905
    Topics
    42
    Home/Original/inverse
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    Inverse View

    It is not the case that Aquinas's ethics does not invalidly attempt to deduce 'ought' from 'is'

    ?Set your confidence on the premises below to see your aggregate.

    Reasons For

    2 perspectives
    Reason for 1 of 2
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    • 1.Aquinas grounds the first precept of natural law ('good is to be done') in the metaphysical claim that good is what all things seek by nature.
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    • 2.Deriving normative force from a teleological fact about natural inclinations still moves from 'is' (what nature seeks) to 'ought' (what reason prescribes).
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    • 3.The appeal to 'undeduced' practical principles conceals rather than eliminates the naturalistic inference embedded in Aquinas's account of the good.
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    Reason for 2 of 2
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    • 1.MacIntyre and Lisska argue Aquinas's ethics is defensible precisely because it embeds norms in natural teleology, but this concedes that 'is' facts about human nature do normative work.
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    • 2.If human nature's teleological structure is doing the justificatory work, then the practical principles are not truly self-evident but functionally derived from metaphysical biology.
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    • 3.A principle whose content is fully determined by facts about natural ends cannot be 'undeduced' in the sense required to escape Hume's guillotine.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
    ?
    • 1.Aquinas repeatedly affirms that practical reason's first principles are undeduced
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    • 2.If practical reason's first principles are undeduced, then the sources of all relevant 'oughts' cannot be deduced from any 'is'
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