Phi202

For natural law theorists, natural/right reason discerns the good.

Not just the right course of action for all rational beings but the nature of the good life for beings possessing our natures (including the 'non-rational' inclinations)

provide clues to reason as to what is intrinsically good/valuable

E.g all creatures are inclined to self-preservation so life is good all creatures are inclined to procreation, so family life is good. Sociability/friendship, knowledge, play, aesthetic experience, practical reasonableness

all of these things come under 'religion' in Finnis's list of intrinsic good. Would be good as ends even if they were never means to further goods.

That knowledge is good, play is good, etc are basic forms of human good. I.e basic premises in our moral reasoning.

Self-evident axioms like those in geometry (except that they are practical axioms, about what to do, rather than theoretical axioms). They intersect with another axiom:

the good is to be pursued

in conjunction with, e.g. knowledge is good, you get, Knowledge is to be pursued.

Properly speaking, knowledge is good if evaluative, i.e says that something is intrinsically (as an axiom) valuable.

In contrast, knowledge is to be pursued. is equivalent to it is the right thing to do to pursue knowledge (or one ought to pursue knowledge) Think of this as making an implicit command: pursue knowledge!

Tells you what to do, i.e. is normative.

Sometimes, people speak of knowledge is good as normative in a loose sense possibly because they think of it as being put together with the good is to be pursued to yield this strictly normative view (knowledge is in the mind, is not implicitly normative it is purely descriptive.)

For someone like Finnis pursuing the good and maximising the good is not the same thing.

How does this differ from consequentialism? (Consequentialism identifies certain goods and enjoins you to pursue them, such goods are aesthetic experience [G.E Moore] - the right thing to do is to maximise the good) The difference lies in the fact that the natural law theorist denies that pursuing the good involves maximising it. Rather, it involves abiding by certain exceptionless laws that our reason tells us reflects those goods.

Because the various basic good are incommensurable you can't weigh up an outcome involving much knowledge and little friendship against the converse.

(If you must use such terminology, natural law ethics is both deontological and teleological - Finnis).

Doesn't this picture amount to reasoning

Most people are inclined to X

Therefore X is natural

Therefore X is an intrinsic good

Therefore X ought to be pursued

(In controvention of the is-ough distinct of Hume?)

Recall, Hume in effect says that to accept the normative 'ought' claim requires implicitly accepting the command which involves being inclined to obey it. Whereas, you can rationally accept (says Hume) any descriptive claim while not being inclined in any particular way.

So Finnis accepts the is-ought distinction but denies that he is deducing the normative and/or evaluative claims from descriptive claims. Rather, they are self-evident (the normative and/or evaluative claims).