Anscombe: Twenty Opinions Common Among Modern Anglo-American Philosophers

Twenty Opinions Common Among Modern Anglo-American Philosophers

Analytical philosophy is more characterised by styles of argument and investigation than by doctrinal content. It is thus possible for people of widely different beliefs to be practitioners of this sort of philosophy. It ought not to surprise anyone that a seriously believing Catholic Christian should also be an analytical philosopher.

However, there are a number of opinions which are inimical to Christianity which are very often found implicitly or explicitly among analytic philosophers. A seriously believing Christian ought not, in my opinion, to hold any of them. Some analytic philosophers who have no Christian or theistic belief do not hold any of them or hold very few of them. But it is so frequent for at least some set of them to be found in the mind of an analytic philosopher, that it is worthwhile to give as complete a list of them as I can. This may be useful as suggesting warnings to some who have not always realised that certain views are inimical to the Christian religion. It may also be helpful to have these opinions collected together so that they can be surveyed together.

1 . A dead man — a human corpse - is a man, not an ex—man. This opinion rejects the understanding of being alive as what existing is for living things.

2. A human being comes to be a person through development of the characteristics which make something into a person. A human being in decay may also cease to be a person without ceasing to be a human being. In short: being a person is something that gets added to a human being who developes properly, and that may disappear in old age or imbecility. The concept of a person becomes an instrument in propaganda for murder. Persons must be respected; not so human beings who are not yet or are no longer persons.

3. We aren't (mere) members of a biological species, but selves. The nature of ‘the self‘ is an important philosophical topic. The notion of a 'self' hangs together with that of a person. Every person is a self . These opinions are assisted by (4) :

4. There is no such thing as a natural kind with an essence which is human nature. This opinion is an effect partly of the philosophy of John Locke and partly of confused thoughts about evolution and a theory of natural selection which is accepted as explaining evolution. Note here that 'biological' has become a despised term. We hear of the ‘merely biological‘ fact of someone‘ s being alive. (And among unfaithful Catholics we hear that the 'biological' virginity of Mary is of no importance for faith. )

5. Ethics is formally independent of the facts of human life and, for example, human physiology. This shews the influence of Kant. There is a touch of this in (6) too:

6 . Ethics is ‘autonomous ' and is to be derived, if from anything, from rationality. Ethical considerations will be the same for any rational being. The strongest note this strikes is: "Who is lord over us? Our lips are our own."

7. Imaginary cases, which are not physical possibilities for human beings, are of value in considering moral obligation. Thus it may be imagined that a woman gives birth to a puppy or that 'people—seeds' float about in the air and may settle and grow on our carpets; this will have a bearing on the rightness of abortion. (7) together with (5) has a parallel in thought about God. No matter of fact about the world implies or follows from anything theological.

8. There are no absolute moral prohibitions which are always in force. This is connected with consequentialism. For you can always imagine circumstances in which actions that Christians know are forbidden seem to be for the best.

9. The study of virtues and vices is not part of ethics. This connects with (5) and the exclusive study of terms like 'right' , ‘wrong’ , 'ought' etc. The student learns to look back and forth between imaginary situations and those terms without intermediate ones such as 'brave', ‘dishonest’ etc.

10. Calling something a virtue or vice is only indicating approval or disapproval of the behaviour that exemplifies it. The behaviour is a fact, the approval or disapproval is evaluation. Evaluations or ‘value judgments‘ are not as such true or false.

11 . It is a mistake to think that 'ought' has properly a personal subject, as in "X ought to visit Y". It properly governs whole statements, as in "It ought to be the case that X is visiting Y". - This is strongly connected with the impersonal conception of moral obligation as related to bringing about the
best state of affairs.

12 . If there is practical reasoning of a moral kind, it must always end in a statement of the necessity of doing such-and—such. So there is no such thing as saying that one thing (e.g. marriage) is good and another (e.g. consecrated virginity) better. — It is noticeable that analytic philosophers often find the notion of mercy incomprehensible and that of desert nearly so.

1 3 . It is necessary, if we are moral agents, always to act for the best consequences.

14 . There is never any morally significant distinction between act and omission as such. This is shewn by producing an example where that difference does not make any difference to the badness of an action.

15. Causation = necessitation, and is universal: so determinism is true. A consequence of this is (16):

16. Either there is no such thing as freedom of the human will, or it is compatible with determinism. (15) and (16) connect with the desire to have complete naturalistic explanations of everything in the world. This naturally leads to (17):

17. Past and future are symmetrical . There is no sense in which the past is determined and the future is not determined.

18 . A theist believes that God must create the best of all possible worlds. This belief about what any theist believes is a great piece of ignorance and a great curiosity.

19 . God, if there is any God, is mutable, subject to passions, sometimes disappointed, must be supposed to make the best decisions he can on the basis of the evidence on which he forms his opinions.

20. The laws of nature, if only they can be found out, afford complete explanations of everything that happens. (20) expresses a belief in the truth of what (15) , (16) and (1 7) manifest a desire for. I put it after (1 8) and (19) because God is not thought of, in the new anthropomorphism, as not subject to the ultimately ruling laws of nature.

In saying these opinions are inimical to the Christian religion, I am not implying that they can only be judged false on that ground. Each of them is a philosophical error and can be argued to be such on purely philosophical grounds.

G E M Anscombe
Faculty of Philosophy, Cambridge