Accueil
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Lawson
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/260186806_Critical_Ethical_Naturalism_An_Orientation_to_Ethics
"The social realm consists of emergent phenomena with their own irreductible causal powers, phenomena whose novelty and irreducibility facilitate, and indeed warrant, a relatively autonomous science of society. This, in brief, is a thesis i have long defended [...] The conception thereby sustained remains, however, thoroughly naturalistic in the sense that social phenomena are demonstrated to be diachronically coherent with phenomena posited in our best theories of the natural domain, and in particular with those of quantum mechanics and evolutionary biology. Alternatively put, it can be shown how social phenomena emerge from, whilst remaining consistent with, and indeed dependent upon, phenomena studied within the non-social natural sciences. The account of social reality defended thus (or in this sense) constitutes a socio-ontological naturalism.
My concern here is to determine the most sustainable ethical orientation that remains consistent with this specific naturalist orientation. That is, my concern here is with elaborating and defending a version of ethical-ontological naturalism, or, as more conventionnally stated, an ethical naturalism.
The account developed, it will be seen, is sufficiently challenging of many systematised alternative ethical positions, as well as of popular conceptions of the nature of moral theorising, as to warrant the label of critical ethical naturalism.
I: Ethical Naturalism.
The term emergent in the opening sentence expresses the idea of novelty, of something unprecedented of previously absent, that somehow arises out of phenomena already in existence. Previously i have argued that emergent phenomena arise as, or as properties of, novel totalities, coming about through a recombination (perhaps involving a modification) of pre-existing elements. In this, the relational organisation of any emergent totality constitutes an essential (emergent) feature of the totality, rendering the causal properties of the latter irreductible to those of the elements that come to be incorporated as components.
[...] In pursuing the possibility of a sustainable ethical naturalism, a first question to pose is whether there similarly exists a relatively autonomous or separate realm of emergent moral phenomena. In other words, are there moral phenomena that are both emergent and ontologically and causally irreductible in the just noted sense of social phenomena, and to which our moral terms (like good and bad etc) uniquely apply ?
I believe that answer is clearly no. Unlike the case of social reality per se the naturalistic orientation i find most sustainable in regards to ethical concerns is somewhat reductionist. Althrough moral discourse indeed has its own categories, such as good, bad, right, wrong, and so forth, it is not clear that these terms refer to irreductible phenomena of some emergent moral realm. Rather they are seemingly always used to pick out phenomena that can equally be referred to using other forms of social, biological, psychological, physical, etc., descriptions (such as human well-being, interest, action facilitative of human well-being, and so forth).
So the kind of ethical naturalism that i find compelling and seek to defend is, as i say, a somewhat reductionist stance in that it holds that there are no separate emergent moral properties that are irreductible to the (rest) of the real/natural world including social reality. Rather ethical of moral trms pick out features of the world that can be, and typically are, simultaneously referred to in more clearly naturalistic terms ; moral terms share the same referents as non-moral terms.
Taking a stand.
An argument sometimes thought to undermine such ethical positions such as i am seeking to develop, turns on the assessment, usually associated with David Hume, that an "ought" cannot be derived from an "is", that, at the meta-ethical level of analysis pursued in the paper so far, a perscritive claim cannot be derived from merely factual or descriptive claims. Although i believe such an argument to be erroneous (we can for example reason that : person X needs to live, the house that X is in [alone] is on fire and the only way for X to survive is to leave the house, then X ought to leave, see Lawson 2013), the insight it contains is that we can draw specific conclusions about conduct only through also making assessments of what is in the interests of a relevant subject of group of subjects, their needs and desires or whatever. The point, then, is that although a naturalistic theory is not undermined by considerations of how prescriptive assessements are formed, it is recognised that factual assessments must include judgements of interests (for example, that it is not in one's interest to be burnt), which in turn explain why other factual judgements (the house is on fire) constitue reasons for action (leaving the house).
This, however, is precisely what ethical naturalist positions do ; they advance substantive theories about human interests. Of course, up until this point i have writing only about the position of ethical naturalism ; i have adopted an outsider or meta-perspective. But to say, more, and indeed to hold [...] an ethical naturalist stance it is necessary to take a stand. Given the sort of reductionnist ethical naturalist account i am proposing, this requires committing oneself to a specific social theory, and specifically to a definite account of that which has so far been described as the human interest. Once this is taken, ought-statements can be inferred directly, though of course conditioned ultimately by a conception of human interest that is thereby (provisionally) taken for granted. It is this latter insigh that human interests are always at some level taken for granted that i assume Hume was really observing.
Here i draw on my own research elsewhere [...] and mostly i do little more than summarise (fallible) results that bear clear relevance for the current topic of discussion. I will though elaborate some of the more contentious claims. According of the conception defended :
1) Human beings have natures such such that each does indeed have "interests" ; more usefully human beings are the sorts of beings that can flourish. Generalised flourishing is thus the basis of ethical thinking, the referent of the ethically good.
2) Morality exists throughout the human world. It concerns actions and objectives and the like. People everywhere act in accordance with actions and/or objectives assessed as being right of wrong of good and bad, etc.
3) Human interests, the bases of our conditions for flourishing, that allow each to flourish, do not reduce to our preferneces. Rather each human being is a bundle of needs including those of realising various capacities, and so forth, where flourishing depends on the fulfilment of these needs. A subset of human needs including capacities and/or capabilities are seemingly shared/universal (e.g., needs and/or powers to develop capacities/capabilities of language use, or generally to partake in forms of social interaction) ; and others are not. All are developed in specific historical and socio-cultural contexts. And all are in some ways subject to continuous transformation.
4) Human beings are inherently relational. By this i do not mean merely that we are embedded in society. Rather we are social-relationally constituded. From the moment we are conceived we are being socially formed. Certainly, from birth onwards, it is very apparent that we are positioned according to gender, class, nation, culture and so on ; and according to our positions we have rights and (eventually) obligations, that relate us to others, whether similarly positioned or positioned contrastively (with our rights matched by the [internally related] obligations of others, and so on). We are thus necessarily socio-relational beings.
5) Human beings have evolved in communities where the survival and flourishing of each depends on the survival and flourishing of the community, and so ultimately of all others. Thus are essentially, as a result of evolutionary development, beings whose ability to flourish is bound up with the ability of all others to do so. It is the interests of each of us that others around us, and ultimately everyone, flourishes ; this is so regardless of similarities and differences, so long as the necessary conditions of flourishing of any one is not necessarily undermining of the flourishing of others.
6) By similar reasoning to 5) we are born into non-human nature too, and constituded through our relations to it. Thus it is in our interests that all of nature flourishes, at least in so far as it is not (intrinsically to us)
Propositions 5) and 6), especially the former, are fundamental here. Far too much time and effort of modern social theory, not least economics, is spent, often under the head of rational choice theory, or social choice theory, "modelling" human beings as though the interests of any one can be determined in isolation of any consideration of the interests of all others.
Only a slight advance in insight is made by those who argue that this is a little extreme and we must recognise that it is not irrational for each person to be concerned for others too. I am suggesting both positions share a false premise : that the real interests of any individual can even be conceived apart from the interests of all others. We have evolved in communities and we have community-oriented natures. We are not merely embedded in society, as some commentators wary of too much individualism are apt to put it ; we are societal creatures. Our flourishing will be flourishing in society.
I am not suggesting that we value others just to the extent that their well being pleases us as self-contained individuals, as if their wellbeing is something like an argument in a utility function. Rather others are a part of what we are, or at least their flourishing is a part of our own, and in this we recognise intrinsic worth in others as we do in ourselves ; we are all part of the same valued human project going forward ; the flourishing of each of us is bound up with that of everyone else.
In fact, just as parents have a responsibility (to the community) for their young children, as do babysitters, say, and just as doctors have responsabilities for patients etc., so we each of us have responsabilities to the community for looking after ourselves. After all we are often best placed to know our specific needs, and be aware of physical pain, etc. Thus, in caring for ourselves we are caring simultaneously for everyone else, for the wider community of which we are part, and we can do so only in ways that are consistent (or not notably inconsistent) with the flourishing of the members of the wider community. Again we do not care for ourselves just for the benefits of others ; we do it for ourselves too. The ethical project is a shared one.
This then is the basis of the position i am systematising as critical ethical naturalism. If terms like good and goodness have the same referent as human interests as construed here, we can say that the ultimate ethical good is general human flourishing. This is what we all ultimately value. Given our social natures this will entail a form of society or community in which we are situated. Of course, as well as having certain commonalities with all other (e.g., capacity for language) and other commonalities with but some others (e.g., age or specific langagues or culture), we each are unique in a multitude of ways. So the ethical goal of generalised flourishing will be a form in which we flourish in our own very different ways ; a situation in which the flourishing of each and any of us is a condition of the flourishing of all others.
So the ethical goal that informs moral activity is a form of society that provides such conditions. This, following Aristotle, can be called the good society or eudemonia. It seems to be the sort of formulation that Marx and Engels have in mind when, in the communist manifesto, they contemplate an "association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all".
Given that there obstacles blocking the achievement of any such good society, including those social mechanisms that frequently prevent each of us from fully recognising the nature of our own real interests (for example that they include the flourishing of all others) then action that can be considered derivatively or morally good or right, is action oriented to removing such obstacles.
Of course, of the imaginable forms of action that could be utilised to remove such obstacles, only those that are consistent in themselves with the goals of human flourishing, qualify as morally good (the good society cannot be brought about by harming or eliminating those that are slow to recognise its value).
As i say, because dominant accounts of ethics and morality are often (formally at least, albert typically less so in their unexplored presuppositions, see below) amongst the obstacles to such a society, as are prevalent layperson accounts which treat an individual's concerns as somehow isolatable from those of most others, the position being defended is, i think, appropriately distinguished as a critical version of ethical naturalism.
II: Moral realism.
It follows, too, that such an ethical naturalism is equally a form of moral realism. Why so ? Any realism has it that there is a world that exists at least in part independently of, and certainly prior to, any knowledge claims that are formed about it. Accordingly, all claims or beliefs about this reality are fallible, and the truth status of any such claims and beliefs depends not on us but on the way the world is.
I have suggested that (axiological) goodness relates to human flourishing, and that this requires conditions in which we can all flourish in our differences. Hence a goal or action is derivatevely morally good if our adopting it contributes (or would contribute) to fulfilling this end, to enabling us to move towards eudemonia, including especially, via the removal of existing obstacles.
Clearly whether or not an action or objective does fulfil this criterion is something about which we, in forming a judgement, may be mistaken. Morally good objectives and actions thus exist independently of our knowledge of them. There is thus a truth of the matter as to whether certain objectives or actions are (morally) good in the relevant sense that it holds independently of what we judge, always fallibly, to be the case. So the position i am elaborating is a moral realist one in a fairly strong sense.
Moreover, to the extent that all actions and objectives are affecting of others, all are moral. The social and the moral domain essentially have the same referent.
How do we seek to identify morally good objectives and actions ? We do so through empirically informed processes of reasoning, oriented to identifying structures and pratrices that obstruct (the path towards achieving) generalised human flourishing, and thereafter forming strategies for transforming them. Such processes are obviously fallible. But then so are the reasoning processes followed in any other form of science.
From the perspective of the conception i am defending, of course, the plurality of actually existing moralities can be (fallibly) explained, evaluated and criticised, and transformative programmes formulated (at best in democratic forums).
Because social reality is open, as indeed are all future forms of social determination, it will be evident that, unlike in the favourite hypothetical setups of professional philosophers, there will rarely be a single objective or course of action to uncover, of forms of action of consideration to be brought to bear in decision taking. Openness underpins plurality in ethics just as it does in social science.
It follows, then, that transfactuality is as relevant a category in moral science as in the other sciences. This term can be contrasted with that of counter-factuality, i.e., something that would happen if certain conditions were different than they are. Rather transfactuality refers to something that, if triggered, is in play whatever is happeining at the level of actual events. For example, gravity as a force does not just operate when isolated in an experimental vacuum. That is, it is not something that would merely operate counterfactually if an experimental vaccum were produced ; it is something that operates transfactually all the time whatever the outcome. It affects the autumn leaf even as it flies over roof tops and chimneys.
The same, i am suggesting is the case of the moral standing of various objectvies and actions in any given context. If it is morally bad to kill others, then this remains true transfactually even if conditions arise whereby other moral considerations dominate in determining a correct actual course of action. Thus the dichotomies of deontology versus consequentialism are seen to be false. Both presuppose closed systems where few exist in the social realm ; and obligatory and consequential (deontological and consequentialist) considerations both play a transfactual role in the open system that is the real world.
The difference between moral considerations and the forces of nature, clearly, is that whereas in the latter case what actually ensues when various forces act in countervailing ways (say the action on the autumn leaf of gravitational, thermodynamic and aerodynamic tendancies), is independent of our deliberations, this is not so in the moral case. The correct (set of) resolution(s), of conflicting moral considerations may be objective, even if consisting in a range of possibilities, but out reasoning processes are always fallible ; we have to seek our best assessments of the right or correct resolutions, where the most useful forum is presumably a democratic, inclusive one facilitative of critical, respectful engagement with others. Certainly any such forum has to be consistent with our understandings of the possibilities for eudemonia." (pp.1-7)
-Tony Lawson, "Critical Ethical Naturalism. An Orientation to Ethics", in Social Ontology and Modern Economics, London and New York, Routledge, 2014, pp.1-22.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/260186806_Critical_Ethical_Naturalism_An_Orientation_to_Ethics
"The social realm consists of emergent phenomena with their own irreductible causal powers, phenomena whose novelty and irreducibility facilitate, and indeed warrant, a relatively autonomous science of society. This, in brief, is a thesis i have long defended [...] The conception thereby sustained remains, however, thoroughly naturalistic in the sense that social phenomena are demonstrated to be diachronically coherent with phenomena posited in our best theories of the natural domain, and in particular with those of quantum mechanics and evolutionary biology. Alternatively put, it can be shown how social phenomena emerge from, whilst remaining consistent with, and indeed dependent upon, phenomena studied within the non-social natural sciences. The account of social reality defended thus (or in this sense) constitutes a socio-ontological naturalism.
My concern here is to determine the most sustainable ethical orientation that remains consistent with this specific naturalist orientation. That is, my concern here is with elaborating and defending a version of ethical-ontological naturalism, or, as more conventionnally stated, an ethical naturalism.
The account developed, it will be seen, is sufficiently challenging of many systematised alternative ethical positions, as well as of popular conceptions of the nature of moral theorising, as to warrant the label of critical ethical naturalism.
I: Ethical Naturalism.
The term emergent in the opening sentence expresses the idea of novelty, of something unprecedented of previously absent, that somehow arises out of phenomena already in existence. Previously i have argued that emergent phenomena arise as, or as properties of, novel totalities, coming about through a recombination (perhaps involving a modification) of pre-existing elements. In this, the relational organisation of any emergent totality constitutes an essential (emergent) feature of the totality, rendering the causal properties of the latter irreductible to those of the elements that come to be incorporated as components.
[...] In pursuing the possibility of a sustainable ethical naturalism, a first question to pose is whether there similarly exists a relatively autonomous or separate realm of emergent moral phenomena. In other words, are there moral phenomena that are both emergent and ontologically and causally irreductible in the just noted sense of social phenomena, and to which our moral terms (like good and bad etc) uniquely apply ?
I believe that answer is clearly no. Unlike the case of social reality per se the naturalistic orientation i find most sustainable in regards to ethical concerns is somewhat reductionist. Althrough moral discourse indeed has its own categories, such as good, bad, right, wrong, and so forth, it is not clear that these terms refer to irreductible phenomena of some emergent moral realm. Rather they are seemingly always used to pick out phenomena that can equally be referred to using other forms of social, biological, psychological, physical, etc., descriptions (such as human well-being, interest, action facilitative of human well-being, and so forth).
So the kind of ethical naturalism that i find compelling and seek to defend is, as i say, a somewhat reductionist stance in that it holds that there are no separate emergent moral properties that are irreductible to the (rest) of the real/natural world including social reality. Rather ethical of moral trms pick out features of the world that can be, and typically are, simultaneously referred to in more clearly naturalistic terms ; moral terms share the same referents as non-moral terms.
Taking a stand.
An argument sometimes thought to undermine such ethical positions such as i am seeking to develop, turns on the assessment, usually associated with David Hume, that an "ought" cannot be derived from an "is", that, at the meta-ethical level of analysis pursued in the paper so far, a perscritive claim cannot be derived from merely factual or descriptive claims. Although i believe such an argument to be erroneous (we can for example reason that : person X needs to live, the house that X is in [alone] is on fire and the only way for X to survive is to leave the house, then X ought to leave, see Lawson 2013), the insight it contains is that we can draw specific conclusions about conduct only through also making assessments of what is in the interests of a relevant subject of group of subjects, their needs and desires or whatever. The point, then, is that although a naturalistic theory is not undermined by considerations of how prescriptive assessements are formed, it is recognised that factual assessments must include judgements of interests (for example, that it is not in one's interest to be burnt), which in turn explain why other factual judgements (the house is on fire) constitue reasons for action (leaving the house).
This, however, is precisely what ethical naturalist positions do ; they advance substantive theories about human interests. Of course, up until this point i have writing only about the position of ethical naturalism ; i have adopted an outsider or meta-perspective. But to say, more, and indeed to hold [...] an ethical naturalist stance it is necessary to take a stand. Given the sort of reductionnist ethical naturalist account i am proposing, this requires committing oneself to a specific social theory, and specifically to a definite account of that which has so far been described as the human interest. Once this is taken, ought-statements can be inferred directly, though of course conditioned ultimately by a conception of human interest that is thereby (provisionally) taken for granted. It is this latter insigh that human interests are always at some level taken for granted that i assume Hume was really observing.
Here i draw on my own research elsewhere [...] and mostly i do little more than summarise (fallible) results that bear clear relevance for the current topic of discussion. I will though elaborate some of the more contentious claims. According of the conception defended :
1) Human beings have natures such such that each does indeed have "interests" ; more usefully human beings are the sorts of beings that can flourish. Generalised flourishing is thus the basis of ethical thinking, the referent of the ethically good.
2) Morality exists throughout the human world. It concerns actions and objectives and the like. People everywhere act in accordance with actions and/or objectives assessed as being right of wrong of good and bad, etc.
3) Human interests, the bases of our conditions for flourishing, that allow each to flourish, do not reduce to our preferneces. Rather each human being is a bundle of needs including those of realising various capacities, and so forth, where flourishing depends on the fulfilment of these needs. A subset of human needs including capacities and/or capabilities are seemingly shared/universal (e.g., needs and/or powers to develop capacities/capabilities of language use, or generally to partake in forms of social interaction) ; and others are not. All are developed in specific historical and socio-cultural contexts. And all are in some ways subject to continuous transformation.
4) Human beings are inherently relational. By this i do not mean merely that we are embedded in society. Rather we are social-relationally constituded. From the moment we are conceived we are being socially formed. Certainly, from birth onwards, it is very apparent that we are positioned according to gender, class, nation, culture and so on ; and according to our positions we have rights and (eventually) obligations, that relate us to others, whether similarly positioned or positioned contrastively (with our rights matched by the [internally related] obligations of others, and so on). We are thus necessarily socio-relational beings.
5) Human beings have evolved in communities where the survival and flourishing of each depends on the survival and flourishing of the community, and so ultimately of all others. Thus are essentially, as a result of evolutionary development, beings whose ability to flourish is bound up with the ability of all others to do so. It is the interests of each of us that others around us, and ultimately everyone, flourishes ; this is so regardless of similarities and differences, so long as the necessary conditions of flourishing of any one is not necessarily undermining of the flourishing of others.
6) By similar reasoning to 5) we are born into non-human nature too, and constituded through our relations to it. Thus it is in our interests that all of nature flourishes, at least in so far as it is not (intrinsically to us)
Propositions 5) and 6), especially the former, are fundamental here. Far too much time and effort of modern social theory, not least economics, is spent, often under the head of rational choice theory, or social choice theory, "modelling" human beings as though the interests of any one can be determined in isolation of any consideration of the interests of all others.
Only a slight advance in insight is made by those who argue that this is a little extreme and we must recognise that it is not irrational for each person to be concerned for others too. I am suggesting both positions share a false premise : that the real interests of any individual can even be conceived apart from the interests of all others. We have evolved in communities and we have community-oriented natures. We are not merely embedded in society, as some commentators wary of too much individualism are apt to put it ; we are societal creatures. Our flourishing will be flourishing in society.
I am not suggesting that we value others just to the extent that their well being pleases us as self-contained individuals, as if their wellbeing is something like an argument in a utility function. Rather others are a part of what we are, or at least their flourishing is a part of our own, and in this we recognise intrinsic worth in others as we do in ourselves ; we are all part of the same valued human project going forward ; the flourishing of each of us is bound up with that of everyone else.
In fact, just as parents have a responsibility (to the community) for their young children, as do babysitters, say, and just as doctors have responsabilities for patients etc., so we each of us have responsabilities to the community for looking after ourselves. After all we are often best placed to know our specific needs, and be aware of physical pain, etc. Thus, in caring for ourselves we are caring simultaneously for everyone else, for the wider community of which we are part, and we can do so only in ways that are consistent (or not notably inconsistent) with the flourishing of the members of the wider community. Again we do not care for ourselves just for the benefits of others ; we do it for ourselves too. The ethical project is a shared one.
This then is the basis of the position i am systematising as critical ethical naturalism. If terms like good and goodness have the same referent as human interests as construed here, we can say that the ultimate ethical good is general human flourishing. This is what we all ultimately value. Given our social natures this will entail a form of society or community in which we are situated. Of course, as well as having certain commonalities with all other (e.g., capacity for language) and other commonalities with but some others (e.g., age or specific langagues or culture), we each are unique in a multitude of ways. So the ethical goal of generalised flourishing will be a form in which we flourish in our own very different ways ; a situation in which the flourishing of each and any of us is a condition of the flourishing of all others.
So the ethical goal that informs moral activity is a form of society that provides such conditions. This, following Aristotle, can be called the good society or eudemonia. It seems to be the sort of formulation that Marx and Engels have in mind when, in the communist manifesto, they contemplate an "association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all".
Given that there obstacles blocking the achievement of any such good society, including those social mechanisms that frequently prevent each of us from fully recognising the nature of our own real interests (for example that they include the flourishing of all others) then action that can be considered derivatively or morally good or right, is action oriented to removing such obstacles.
Of course, of the imaginable forms of action that could be utilised to remove such obstacles, only those that are consistent in themselves with the goals of human flourishing, qualify as morally good (the good society cannot be brought about by harming or eliminating those that are slow to recognise its value).
As i say, because dominant accounts of ethics and morality are often (formally at least, albert typically less so in their unexplored presuppositions, see below) amongst the obstacles to such a society, as are prevalent layperson accounts which treat an individual's concerns as somehow isolatable from those of most others, the position being defended is, i think, appropriately distinguished as a critical version of ethical naturalism.
II: Moral realism.
It follows, too, that such an ethical naturalism is equally a form of moral realism. Why so ? Any realism has it that there is a world that exists at least in part independently of, and certainly prior to, any knowledge claims that are formed about it. Accordingly, all claims or beliefs about this reality are fallible, and the truth status of any such claims and beliefs depends not on us but on the way the world is.
I have suggested that (axiological) goodness relates to human flourishing, and that this requires conditions in which we can all flourish in our differences. Hence a goal or action is derivatevely morally good if our adopting it contributes (or would contribute) to fulfilling this end, to enabling us to move towards eudemonia, including especially, via the removal of existing obstacles.
Clearly whether or not an action or objective does fulfil this criterion is something about which we, in forming a judgement, may be mistaken. Morally good objectives and actions thus exist independently of our knowledge of them. There is thus a truth of the matter as to whether certain objectives or actions are (morally) good in the relevant sense that it holds independently of what we judge, always fallibly, to be the case. So the position i am elaborating is a moral realist one in a fairly strong sense.
Moreover, to the extent that all actions and objectives are affecting of others, all are moral. The social and the moral domain essentially have the same referent.
How do we seek to identify morally good objectives and actions ? We do so through empirically informed processes of reasoning, oriented to identifying structures and pratrices that obstruct (the path towards achieving) generalised human flourishing, and thereafter forming strategies for transforming them. Such processes are obviously fallible. But then so are the reasoning processes followed in any other form of science.
From the perspective of the conception i am defending, of course, the plurality of actually existing moralities can be (fallibly) explained, evaluated and criticised, and transformative programmes formulated (at best in democratic forums).
Because social reality is open, as indeed are all future forms of social determination, it will be evident that, unlike in the favourite hypothetical setups of professional philosophers, there will rarely be a single objective or course of action to uncover, of forms of action of consideration to be brought to bear in decision taking. Openness underpins plurality in ethics just as it does in social science.
It follows, then, that transfactuality is as relevant a category in moral science as in the other sciences. This term can be contrasted with that of counter-factuality, i.e., something that would happen if certain conditions were different than they are. Rather transfactuality refers to something that, if triggered, is in play whatever is happeining at the level of actual events. For example, gravity as a force does not just operate when isolated in an experimental vacuum. That is, it is not something that would merely operate counterfactually if an experimental vaccum were produced ; it is something that operates transfactually all the time whatever the outcome. It affects the autumn leaf even as it flies over roof tops and chimneys.
The same, i am suggesting is the case of the moral standing of various objectvies and actions in any given context. If it is morally bad to kill others, then this remains true transfactually even if conditions arise whereby other moral considerations dominate in determining a correct actual course of action. Thus the dichotomies of deontology versus consequentialism are seen to be false. Both presuppose closed systems where few exist in the social realm ; and obligatory and consequential (deontological and consequentialist) considerations both play a transfactual role in the open system that is the real world.
The difference between moral considerations and the forces of nature, clearly, is that whereas in the latter case what actually ensues when various forces act in countervailing ways (say the action on the autumn leaf of gravitational, thermodynamic and aerodynamic tendancies), is independent of our deliberations, this is not so in the moral case. The correct (set of) resolution(s), of conflicting moral considerations may be objective, even if consisting in a range of possibilities, but out reasoning processes are always fallible ; we have to seek our best assessments of the right or correct resolutions, where the most useful forum is presumably a democratic, inclusive one facilitative of critical, respectful engagement with others. Certainly any such forum has to be consistent with our understandings of the possibilities for eudemonia." (pp.1-7)
-Tony Lawson, "Critical Ethical Naturalism. An Orientation to Ethics", in Social Ontology and Modern Economics, London and New York, Routledge, 2014, pp.1-22.
