From Practical Reason to Natural Law

Ryan MillerLonergan on the Edge 2012

http://bc.academia.edu/RyanMiller

Scope

In• Motivate the problem• Show inadequacies of

Lonergan, Veritatis Splendor, and Rhonheimer accounts

• Offer a positional account

Out• Arguments against

disbelievers in Natural Law• Reading Aquinas, Lonergan,

VS & Rhonheimer– http://bc.academia.edu/Ryan

Miller/Talks/70331/

• Applications to difficult cases– deportation?– capital punishment

Veritatis Splendor: Subjectivism in the Crosshairs

• *actions* are the content of moral norms• some actions are absolutely prohibited– e.g. fornication, murder

• reductio of intention-only definition of actions• reductio of results-only definition of actions

Lonergan’s Critical Realism in Ethics

Ethical method, as metaphysical…can steer a sane course between– the relativism of mere concreteness and the – legalism of remote and static generalities;

and it can do so, – not…by vaguely postulating prudence, but

methodically, – because it takes its stand on the ever recurrent

dynamic generality that is the structure of rational self-consciousness

Lonergan and Veritatis Splendor

Differences• importance of deduction• relation of subjectivity and

objectivity• prohibitions vs striving for

authenticity

Similarities• no relativism

– objectivity is possible in ethics

• fallibility of the human– ethics is not a matter of the

will

• natural law is connected to human reason

• only sketch a method

Rhonheimer’s Phenonmenology

• When Jim chooses to have [sex] with Jane

• Jim…not only chooses a behavioral pattern [sex with a female]

• because Jane either is or is not his wife• a circumstance…given…prior to choice• not…inherent in the behavioral pattern

as such; it is recognizable only by reason and it confers on the chosen behavior an inherent, though not simply naturally given, ‘form.’

• The behavior could not be chosen at all apart from this ‘form.’

• Therefore, provided Jim and Jane are not married, Jim necessarily chooses, not just ‘intercourse with a female’ but ‘fornication.’

Rhonheimer’s Distinctions

• Activity– mere physical activity • activity considered according

to some natural species• lying on the bed

– human activity• has an intention built into it• lying in order to rest

• Intention– intention that enters into an

activity – further intention that goes

beyond the activity

The Recursion Problem

• But how much intention is needed for basic intentional actions? Suppose somebody asks me what I am doing, and I answer that I am ‘moving my finger.’ Presumably, my response has provided mere bodily activity.

• Now I add, ‘I am moving my finger in order to pull the trigger.’ Is this intention of pulling the trigger enough to provide a basic intentional action? Why, you might ask, am I pulling the trigger? In order to fire the gun. Is ‘firing a gun,’ then, a basic intentional action, or do I need to go further yet in my intentions? I am firing the gun in order to make a noise. Is ‘making a noise’ a basic intentional action?

• I am firing the gun in order to make a noise in order to signal the start of the race. Do I now have a basic intentional action? Or, on the other hand, is making a noise a basic intentional action, and signaling the start of the race is a further intention beyond the activity?”

The Multiple Description Problem

RhonheimerWhen someone wants to make sure that his son has a good education, he chooses the action ‘saving money,’ not ‘putting money into a bank account’; for, whether he puts money into an account or whether he keeps it at home in a safe, they are both only two different ways of carrying out or executing the intentional act of ‘saving money’.

JensenWhy not say, as any ordinary person would, that the individual chooses to save money as well as to put money into a bank account? Notice that ordinary usage would easily substitute ‘means’ for ‘ways’ (in ‘two different ways . . .’); putting the money in the bank and putting the money in a safe are certainly two different means of saving money.

A Lonerganian Solution

“Objects of desire are values only inasmuch as they fall under some intelligible order, for the value is the possible object of choice, choice is an act of will, and the will is intellectual appetite that regards directly only the intelligible good.”

Killing in Self Defense

• Take the difference between ‘self-defense’ and ‘the choice of killing in order to save one’s life.’

• On the level of ‘reasons’ regarding the further end, both cases are identical: the reason for acting is to save one’s life. But if you look at the action not from outside, but from the acting person’s perspective, you will notice that there is a different choice (and so there is a different object, too).

• In legitimate self-defense, what engenders my action is not a will or a choice for the aggressor’s death. A sign of this is that I use only violence proportionate to stop his aggression. This may lead me to kill him (praeter intentionem), but the reason for my action is not wanting him to be dead (for the sake of saving my life); rather it is wanting to stop his aggression. Thus there is a difference of intention on the level of concrete chosen behavior, and that means, on the level of the object.

The Multiple-Condition Problem

“In his treatment of self-defense, Rhonheimer claims that when the physical violence is proportioned to the act of defending oneself, then the physical killing of the aggressor is not an intentional killing. In this regard, Rhonheimer strays from Aquinas’s view, as well as from subsequent developments of double effect reasoning. Aquinas clearly states that the defender must not intend to kill his assailant, and then he adds—as an additional condition—that the act of defense must be proportioned to the good achieved. For Rhonheimer, proportionality is not an additional condition; rather, proportionality enters into the very notion of intention. Surprisingly, Rhonheimer’s position here is precisely that of the founder of proportionalism, Peter Knauer.”--Jensen

Theft by the Starving

• With theft it is slightly different. Property is not simply ‘what I have in my hands’ but ‘that to which I am entitled’ or ‘that to which I have a right.’

• Such entitlements and rights, in a given situation, do or do not exist (and this precisely does not depend on consequentialist reasoning).

• But situations may change: unlike a person’s life, property…is a contingent matter, relativized by higher principles of justice.

• So there are situations of extreme necessity in which no one is reasonably entitled to say to the starving: ‘This is my property; you have no right to it.’ If the starving one takes what he needs to survive, it will simply not be the action we call ‘theft,’ meaning an action that is contrary to justice.

The Circularity Problem

“Since rights have not been clearly defined, one is left with the impression that moral actions are defined, circularly, by the application of morally loaded concepts, even as Proportionalists claim concerning moral absolutes, for example, adultery is simply sexual relations outside of marriage that is wrong.”--Jensen

A Lonerganian Solution“…Prior to becoming engaged of one's own choice, one already is engaged in the process by the fact of one's desires and aversions, by one's intelligent grasp of the intelligible orders under which they can be satisfied, and by one's self-consciousness of oneself as an actually rational knower and a potentially rational doer…One's own rational consciousness is an accomplished fact in the field of knowing, and it demands in the name of its own consistency its extension into the field of doing…The operative moral imperative…demands, not consistency in the abstract, but consistency in my consciousness, not the superficial consistency purchased by the flight from self-consciousness nor the illusory consistency obtained by self-deception and rationalization nor the inadequate consistency that is content to be no worse than the next fellow, but the penetrating, honest, complete consistency that alone meets the requirements of the detached, disinterested, unrestricted desire to know.”

More Concretely: by Analogy to Lust & Pornography

• Difficult to determine “what is pornography?” or “is this thought willful?”

• But we can still say they’re wrong, morally, and this is determined by intersubjective wisdom (thus the role of the confessor against license and scrupulosity)

• And we can rate movies to reduce socialization of children into lust

• So that’s how theft/property work: the law is a pragmatic balancing

• Just like any civil disobedience, follow the law unless it’s completely unjust law and unjust system.

Extant Problems

• Development of Lonergan’s Ethics (Duffy)• More precision (Me-ACPA)• Out of Aquinas (Mongeau)• Relation to New Natural Law (Snell)• Phenomenology of wisdom? (Vasquez)• How do “human rights” work? (Parekh)

Questions?

Ryan MillerLonergan on the Edge 2012

http://bc.academia.edu/RyanMiller

Citations

• Rhonheimer, Martin. The Perspective of Morality: Philosophical Foundations of Thomistic Virtue Ethics. Translated by Gerald Malsbary. New. Catholic University of America Press, 2011.

• Rhonheimer, Martin. The Perspective of the Acting Person: Essays in the Renewal of Thomistic Moral Philosophy. Edited by William F. Murphy. Catholic University of America Press, 2008.

• Jensen, Steven J. “Thomistic Perspectives?” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 86, no. 1 (February 10, 2012): 135–159.

• Lonergan, Bernard. Insight: A Study of Human Understanding. Edited by Frederick E. Crowe and Robert M. Doran. 5th ed. CWL 3. University of Toronto Press, 1992.