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Ethology and Ethics
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 February 2009
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In my argument in this paper I shall assume rather than try to prove the proposition, surely not on the face of it an unreasonable one, that the question of what actions, dispositions and circumstances are such as to frustrate human beings, and what are such as to make them comparatively happy and fulfilled, has a great deal of bearing on the question of what actions and dispositions are good or bad. I shall also assume that the way in which human persons or societies can achieve fulfilment, or fail to achieve it, is explicable largely on the basis of the way in which man as a species has evolved. Few people, except those strongly affected by philosophical fashion, will wish to deny the first of these propositions. What one might call the hard utilitarian thesis, that goodness is to be defined in terms of contribution to happiness or fulfilment, may involve the ‘naturalistic fallacy’, may be vulnerable to the arguments of Moore, Hare and others. But I shall not commit myself here to the hard utilitarian thesis, since I am not insisting that goodness may be defined in terms of contribution to human happiness or fulfilment, but only that the question of how far anything contributes to human happiness or fulfilment has a vital bearing on the question of whether and to what extent it is good. I do not think that many people really doubt the truth of this proposition, unless they confuse it with the hard utilitarian thesis.
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- Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1970
References
1 30.
2 72.
3 Mill weakens his own case quite unnecessarily by trying to justify the principle of justice in terms of that of utility. Cf. Professor A. D. Woozley, ‘What is Wrong with Retrospective Law?’ (Philosophical Quarterly, 01 1968, p. 51).Google Scholar
2 Cf. SirBerlin, Isaiah, ‘Does Political Theory Still Exist?’ (Philosophy, Politics and Society, ed. Laslett and Runciman, II, 27).Google Scholar
1 Translated by Latzke, Marjorie (London 1966).Google Scholar
6 The references are all, except where otherwise stated, to the page-numbers of On Aggression.
7 Cf. the account of ‘language-games’ in Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations.
8 An undergraduate studying politics told me that his teachers condemned Lorenz's book on the grounds that it was ‘reactionary’. This is just the sort of criticism that is not relevant.
9 Eysenck, H. J., in his The Scientific Study of PersonalityGoogle Scholar, has some caustic and justifiable comments on the effect of these ideological preconceptions on research.
10 Man and Aggression, edited by Montague, M. F. Ashley (O.U.P. 1968)Google Scholar, is a collection of writings critical of Lorenz. The quality of some of these is astoundingly bad; others of better quality will be referred to below.
11 Stewart, Omer C., ‘Lorenz/Margolin on the Ute’, Man and Aggression, 103–15.Google Scholar
12 In this paragraph I am replying summarily to some of the more serious objections to Lorenz's theory in the volume Man and Aggression.
13 This fallacy was pointed out to me by Dr. J. M. Cullen.
14 ‘Man has No “Killer” Instinct’, Man and Aggression, 27–36.Google Scholar
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