Chapter 7 第 7 章

Teleology and the Naturalistic Fallacy
目的论与自然主义谬误

The birth of modern science was in many ways predicated on the banishment of Aristotelian, scholastic metaphysics, particularly its notions of immaterial forms and teleological final causes. Contrary to ancient and medieval metaphysics, matter does not act in certain regular ways because of an invisible soul or form, but because of impersonal, absolute natural laws. Substances are not best seen as organisms with an internal developmental orientation (telos), but as machines that act according to, as Descartes puts it, the arrangement of their parts.

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In banishing forms and teleology, several new metaphysics become ascendant: (1) metaphysical materialism (e.g., Hobbes and Hume), according to which reality is nothing but matter controlled absolutely and mechanistically by Newtonian laws of nature; (2) metaphysical dualism (e.g., Descartes and Kant), according to which the immaterial mind is the sole exception to an otherwise mechanistic material universe; or (3) metaphysical idealism (e.g., Berkeley and Hegel), according to which reality is ultimately mind. Focusing on developing experimental habits of patient observation, early scientists found they could learn how the “machinery” of nature works. The result, of course, has been wildly successful. The track record of science is beyond dispute.
现代科学的诞生在许多方面取决于对亚里士多德式的学者形而上学，特别是其非物质形式和目的论终极原因概念的摒弃。与古代和中世纪的形而上学相反，物质之所以以某种有规律的方式活动，并不是因为有一个看不见的灵魂或形式，而是因为有非个人的、绝对的自然规律。物质最好不要被看作是具有内在发展方向（目的论）的有机体，而应被看作是按照笛卡尔所说的其各部分的排列而行动的机器。

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在摒弃形式和目的论的过程中，几种新的形而上学占据了主导地位：（1）形而上学唯物主义（如霍布斯和休谟），根据他们的观点，现实不过是受牛顿自然法则绝对和机械控制的物质；（2）形而上学二元论（如笛卡尔和康德），根据他们的观点，现实不过是受牛顿自然法则绝对和机械控制的物质；（3）形而上学二元论，根据他们的观点，现实不过是受牛顿自然法则绝对和机械控制的物质、笛卡尔和康德），根据他们的观点，非物质的心灵是机械主义物质宇宙的唯一例外；或 (3) 形而上学唯心主义（如伯克利和黑格尔），根据他们的观点，现实归根结底是心灵。早期科学家注重培养耐心观察的实验习惯，他们发现自己可以了解自然界的 "机器 "是如何运转的。结果当然是取得了巨大的成功。科学的成就毋庸置疑。

For our present project on environmental metaphysics, it is particularly important to note that it is the banishment of teleology that creates and justifies a strong bifurcation between fact and value. For it was the form that defined the telos and it was the telos that defined the “good for” that being, which provided a metaphysical tether between being and value. By cutting that tether, value is set adrift. Matter is meaningless and valueless, “vacuous actuality.” Whether the passive bits of reality are organized like
对于我们目前的环境形而上学项目而言，尤其重要的是要注意到，正是目的论的被放逐造成了事实与价值之间的强烈分岔，并使之合理化。因为正是形式定义了目的论，正是目的论定义了存在的 "善"，这就在存在与价值之间提供了一条形而上学的纽带。切断了这条纽带，价值就会漂泊不定。物质是无意义、无价值的，是 "虚无的实在"。无论被动的现实碎片是像
this (say, a towering sequoia) or that (say, a pile of logs) does not matter intrinsically. Value and the good are not features of reality that can be discovered and understood by understanding the telos or aim of a being, for there are no such things. Matter behaves mechanistically. The universe of value shrinks, for the dualist, to the absolute value of the immaterial mind or, for the materialist, to a subjective projection onto an otherwise meaningless, valueless world.

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That is, one is left with two different forms of axiological anthropocentrism. According to the former (for dualists), humans alone (or, with Kant, rational beings) have intrinsic value for they alone have a mind in an otherwise clockwork universe. According to the latter (for mechanistic materialists), nothing has intrinsic value, for value is merely a subjective projection. Without valuers, there is no value. The dark penumbra of the naturalistic fallacy looms.
这个（比如一棵高耸入云的红杉树）或那个（比如一堆原木）在本质上并不重要。价值和善不是现实的特征，不能通过理解存在者的目的或目标来发现和理解，因为不存在这样的东西。物质的行为是机械的。在二元论者看来，价值的宇宙缩减为非物质心灵的绝对价值；在唯物主义者看来，价值的宇宙缩减为对无意义、无价值的世界的主观投射。

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也就是说，我们将面临两种不同形式的公理人类中心主义。根据前者（二元论者），只有人类（或康德所说的理性生命）才具有内在价值，因为在一个发条式的宇宙中，只有人类才有思想。根据后者（机械唯物主义者），没有任何东西具有内在价值，因为价值只是一种主观投射。没有估价者，就没有价值。自然主义谬误的黑暗半影隐约可见。

This is the background metaphysical context for the protracted debates within environmental ethics over intrinsic value.

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Indeed, given this, it should come as no surprise that many environmental philosophers seeking to defend the intrinsic value of nonhuman nature have realized that this requires the recovery of some form of teleology (see, e.g., Paul Taylor and Holmes Rolston).

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But how is this possible if admission through the doors of contemporary science can only be purchased by the repudiation of teleology? And what about the naturalistic fallacy? Generally speaking, even those environmental philosophers who seek to defend some form of teleology explicitly (e.g., Taylor or Rolston) do not provide a metaphysical justification for this position. At most, they seek to show how their recovery of teleology does not run afoul of contemporary evolutionary biology and ecology. But what is decidedly lacking is an account of reality that is fully consistent with the world revealed by contemporary science, but which also provides a coherent account of the ways in which reality is or is not teleological. That is, what is missing is an adequate environmental metaphysics. This chapter seeks to remedy that omission.
这就是环境伦理学内部关于内在价值的长期争论的形而上学背景。

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事实上，有鉴于此，许多试图捍卫非人类自然内在价值的环境哲学家意识到，这需要恢复某种形式的目的论（参见保罗-泰勒和霍姆斯-罗尔斯顿等人），这一点不足为奇。

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但是，如果只有否定目的论才能进入当代科学的大门，这怎么可能呢？自然主义谬误又是怎么回事？一般来说，即使是那些试图明确为某种形式的目的论辩护的环境哲学家（如泰勒或罗尔斯顿），也没有为这一立场提供形而上学的理由。他们最多只是试图说明他们对目的论的恢复如何不与当代进化生物学和生态学相抵触。但他们明显缺乏的是对现实的解释，这种解释既与当代科学所揭示的世界完全一致，又对现实是或不是目的论的方式提供了连贯的解释。也就是说，我们缺少的是适当的环境形而上学。本章试图弥补这一缺失。

To be sure, we cannot here fully examine or defend the metaphysics of teleology.

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The more modest but still important goal of this chapter is to frame a discussion of the metaphysics of teleology with the goal of properly recognizing the metaphysical relationship of fact and value. Specifically, in the first section I examine the unique accounts of “developmental teleology” presented by both Charles Sanders Peirce and Alfred North Whitehead. Given this unique model of teleology and the metaphysics on which it is based, we find in the second part that the specter of the naturalistic fallacy need only haunt systems grounded in faulty metaphysics.
可以肯定的是，我们无法在此对目的论的形而上学进行全面的研究或辩护。

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本章的目标较为谦逊，但仍然很重要，那就是以正确认识事实与价值的形而上学关系为目标，来构架对目的论形而上学的讨论。具体而言，在第一节中，我将研究查尔斯-桑德斯-皮尔斯和阿尔弗雷德-诺斯-怀特海对 "发展目的论 "的独特论述。鉴于这种独特的目的论模式及其所依据的形而上学，我们在第二部分中发现，自然主义谬误的幽灵只需萦绕在以错误的形而上学为基础的体系中即可。

Peirce and Whitehead on Teleology
皮尔斯和怀特海论目的论

In a series of Monist essays published from 1891 to 1893, Peirce critiques the failings of “necessitarianism,” developing the contours of a nondualistic metaphysics.

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For instance, in April of 1892, Peirce published “The Doctrine of Necessity Examined” in which he argued that the Laplacian necessitarianism of late nineteenth-century science made genuine spontaneity and life impossible.

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Peirce revolts against this “mechanical philosophy” on both epistemological and metaphysical grounds. First, in barricading the “road to inquiry,”

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necessitarianism commits the gravest of epistemological sins. “To say that there is a universal law, and that it is a hard, ultimate, unintelligible fact, the why and wherefore of which can never be inquired into, at this a sound logic will revolt.”

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Yet, for Peirce, certainty is not fully achievable not only because of the finitude of human knowers, but because of the dynamism of the known. It is impossible, Peirce argues, to account for the “variety and diversity of the universe” unless we recognize “pure spontaneity or life as a character of the universe, acting always and everywhere though restrained within narrow bounds by law, producing infinitesimal departures from law continually, and great ones with infinite infrequency.”

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在 1891 年至 1893 年发表的一系列 "一元论 "文章中，皮尔斯批判了 "必然主义 "的失败，提出了非二元论形而上学的轮廓。

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例如，1892 年 4 月，皮尔斯发表了《必然学说考》，他在文中指出，19 世纪晚期科学的拉普拉斯必然主义使得真正的自发性和生命成为不可能。

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皮尔斯从认识论和形而上学两个方面反对这种 "机械哲学"。首先，在封锁 "探究之路 "时，

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必然主义犯下了认识论上最严重的罪行。"说有一个普遍规律，而且它是一个坚硬的、终极的、不可理解的事实，其原因和理由是永远无法探究的，对此，一个健全的逻辑是会反驳的"。

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然而，在皮尔斯看来，确定性是不可能完全实现的，这不仅是因为人类认识者的有限性，而且还因为已知事物的动态性。皮尔斯认为，除非我们承认 "纯粹的自发性或生命是宇宙的一种特性，它无时不在，无处不在，尽管被法则限制在狭小的范围内，但却不断产生无限微小的偏离法则的情况，而巨大的偏离法则的情况则无限频繁"，否则就不可能解释 "宇宙的多样性和差异性"。

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Peirce expanded his assault on the mechanist philosophy three months later in “The Law of Mind.” Here, Peirce rightly notes that to truly overcome the mechanist model requires the abandonment of an irrational dualism in which mind is an inexplicable island in an ocean of clockwork machines. It is not enough to account for the evolution of living forms if one describes the basic constituents of reality in terms that make the evolution of life itself impossible. A mechanistic account of nature is unable to account for the emergence of living or mental beings. In contrast, Peirce conceives “matter to be mere specialised and partially deadened mind.”

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Thus, continuity and spontaneity, or what he terms “synechism” and “tychism,” are two pillars of Peirce’s speculative metaphysics. Yet, by themselves, continuity and spontaneity are insufficient to account for our evolutionary cosmos. Though spontaneity or chance is a fundamental character of reality, this chance is, Peirce writes, “to some degree regular.”

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Indeed, as he will go on to argue, it is teleological.
三个月后，皮尔斯在 "心灵法则 "一文中扩大了他对机械论哲学的攻击。在这里，皮尔斯正确地指出，要真正克服机械论模式，就必须放弃非理性的二元论，在这种二元论中，心灵是钟表机器海洋中的一座无法解释的孤岛。如果一个人对现实的基本构成要素的描述使得生命本身的进化成为不可能，那么仅仅解释生命形式的进化是不够的。机械论的自然观无法解释生命或精神存在的出现。与此相反，皮尔斯认为 "物质仅仅是特化和部分死化的心灵"。

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因此，连续性和自发性，或者他所说的 "synechism "和 "tychism"，是皮尔斯投机形而上学的两大支柱。然而，就其本身而言，连续性和自发性并不足以解释我们的进化宇宙。虽然自发性或偶然性是现实的基本特征，但皮尔斯写道，这种偶然性 "在某种程度上是有规律的"。

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事实上，正如他接下来要论证的，它是目的论的。

Although the discussion of this third principle is not named and is fully investigated by Peirce for several more months-until the publishing of “Evolutionary Love” in January of 1893-his interest in teleology is already apparent at the end of “The Law of Mind,” which concludes with an important discussion of the teleological role of personality.
尽管皮尔斯对这第三个原则的讨论没有点名，也没有在几个月后--直到 1893 年 1 月出版《爱的进化》--进行充分研究，但在《心灵法则》的结尾，他对目的论的兴趣已经显露无遗，该书最后对人格的目的论作用进行了重要讨论。

Peirce begins by noting that personality does not occur at an instant. No manner of close inspection of a time-slice of one’s life could discover the role of personality in coordinating one’s actions in pursuit of a goal. “It has to be lived in time; nor can any finite time embrace its fullness.”

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Personality, Peirce writes, “implies a teleological harmony in ideas.”

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Our personality is an instance of a teleological orientation that guides and informs our every decision. Yet, as Peirce notes, this is not a traditional, Aristotelian form of teleology in which there is a single, “predeterminate end” toward which the organism runs on rails.

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Peirce’s point is that our personality at once guides and is guided by our decisions. Our personality is what helps determine the ends at which we aim, and the actions taken in pursuit of them, but the decisions made and actions taken constitute the person that we are. Thus, personality at once determines and is determined by the decisions taken.
皮尔斯首先指出，人格不是一瞬间形成的。无论如何仔细观察一个人一生的时间片断，都无法发现人格在协调一个人追求目标的行动中所起的作用。"它必须生活在时间中；任何有限的时间也无法包容它的全部"。

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皮尔斯写道，人格 "意味着观念的目的论和谐"。

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我们的人格就是目的论取向的一个实例，它指导并告知我们的每一个决定。然而，正如皮尔斯所指出的，这并不是一种传统的、亚里士多德式的目的论，在这种目的论中，存在着一个单一的、"预定的目的"，有机体在轨道上向着这个目的运行。

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皮尔斯的观点是，我们的个性既指导着我们的决定，也被我们的决定所指导。我们的个性有助于决定我们所追求的目标以及为追求这些目标而采取的行动，但所做的决定和所采取的行动又构成了我们这个人。因此，个性既决定了所做的决定，也被所做的决定所决定。

This is critically important to emphasize as it demarcates a clear difference between Peirce’s (and Whitehead’s) conception of teleology and the much-maligned ancient and medieval notions. Indeed, I think Peirce has made a momentous discovery. Peirce is defending what I believe is a novel and underappreciated form of teleology. In both determining and being determined by our decisions, our personality is not a “predeterminate end”; it is, Peirce writes, a “developmental teleology.”

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Recall that, for Aristotle, the end or telos of an organism was perfectly determinate and unchanging. While a substance may not necessarily achieve its end, there is one and only one end at which an organism aims. This is in large part due to the fact that, for Aristotle, the final cause corresponds to the formal cause. What an organism is defines what it is to become. The acorn aims (nonconsciously) at becoming an oak tree, not a dog, nor a salamander, nor a venus flytrap. Although there is a sense of dynamic orientation toward an end for Aristotle, the form that defines an organism’s telos is eternal, fixed, and hermetically sealed off from all other ends.

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Early modern science defined itself in opposition to this teleological view of nature. Though biologists study complex, living organisms that seem to strive, fight, pursue, and desire, biology today is still partly defined by the extent to which it provides nonteleological, mechanistic accounts.

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强调这一点至关重要，因为它划定了皮尔斯（和怀特海）的目的论概念与备受诟病的古代和中世纪概念之间的明显区别。事实上，我认为皮尔斯做出了一项重大发现。皮尔斯所捍卫的，我认为是一种新颖的、未得到充分重视的目的论形式。皮尔斯写道，在决定我们的决定和被我们的决定所决定的过程中，我们的人格并不是一个 "预定的目的"；它是一种 "发展的目的论"。

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回想一下，对亚里士多德来说，有机体的目的或终极目的是完全确定和不变的。虽然物质不一定能实现其目的，但有机体的目的是唯一的。这在很大程度上是由于亚里士多德认为最终原因与形式原因相对应。有机体是什么，就决定了它要成为什么。橡子的目标是（无意识地）成为一棵橡树，而不是一条狗、一只蝾螈或捕蝇草。虽然亚里士多德有一种朝向目的的动态取向感，但定义有机体目的的形式是永恒的、固定的，并且与所有其他目的密不可分。

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早期的现代科学与这种目的论自然观相对立。尽管生物学家研究的是复杂的、活生生的生物体，这些生物体似乎在努力、战斗、追求和渴望，但今天生物学的部分定义仍然取决于它在多大程度上提供了非目的论的、机械论的解释。

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The problem Peirce has with classical Aristotelian teleology is that, in effect, it sets the organism on rails, moving toward one and only one destination. It is not processive or developmental. Since the end is predetermined, there is no true growth or genuine novelty. “Were the ends of a person already explicit, there would be no room for development, for growth,
皮尔斯对经典亚里士多德目的论的质疑在于，它实际上是将有机体置于轨道上，朝着一个且仅有一个目的地前进。它不是过程性的，也不是发展性的。由于目的是预先确定的，因此不存在真正的成长或真正的新颖性。"如果一个人的目的已经明确，就没有发展和成长的余地、
for life; and consequently there would be no personality. The mere carrying out of predetermined purposes is mechanical.”

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If, as Peirce believes, pure spontaneity or life is a character pervading every element of reality, then there must be room for genuine growth.
因此，也就不存在人格。仅仅执行预定的目的是机械的"。

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如果像皮尔斯所认为的那样，纯粹的自发性或生命是现实中每一个元素都具有的特性，那么就一定有真正成长的空间。

Of course, Peirce’s target is not Aristotle, whose teleology had long since been successfully banished by the likes of Bacon, Hobbes, Descartes, and, later, Hume. Instead, Peirce’s comments about “predeterminate ends” are aimed at what we might now call “genetic determinism.” Though mechanists such as August Weismann claimed to champion Darwin, Peirce rightly noted that for Weismann and those who have come to follow in his footsteps, “nothing is due to chance, but that all forms are simple mechanical resultants of the heredity from two parents.”

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当然，皮尔斯的目标并不是亚里士多德，他的目的论早已被培根、霍布斯、笛卡尔以及后来的休谟等人成功驱逐。相反，皮尔斯关于 "预定目的 "的评论针对的是我们现在可能称之为 "遗传决定论 "的东西。虽然奥古斯特-魏斯曼（August Weismann）等机械主义者声称拥护达尔文，但皮尔斯正确地指出，对于魏斯曼和那些追随他的人来说，"没有什么是偶然的，所有的形式都是双亲遗传的简单机械结果"。

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It seems that Peirce’s brief but important introduction of teleology at the end of “The Law of Mind” may have brought him to conclude that synechism and tychism are not, by themselves, sufficient to account for the development of the universe. He needs to have an account of teleology that avoids making the emergence and development of life, mind, and consciousness (1) a mere accident or (2) a necessary outcome of a preordained end. As I take it, this is the task of his dramatically titled 1893 Monist essay “Evolutionary Love.”
看来，皮尔斯在《心灵法则》结尾处对目的论的简短而重要的介绍，可能使他得出了这样的结论："叙事论 "和 "叙事论 "本身不足以解释宇宙的发展。他需要对目的论有一个解释，避免使生命、心灵和意识的出现和发展（1）仅仅是一个意外，或（2）是一个预设目的的必然结果。我认为，这就是他在 1893 年发表的题为 "进化之爱"（Evolutionary Love）的一元论文章的任务。

Peirce opens with a poetic observation: “Philosophy, when just escaping from its golden pupa-skin, mythology, proclaimed the great evolutionary agency of the universe to be Love. Or, since this pirate-lingo, English, is poor in such-like words, let us say Eros, the exuberance-love. Afterwards, Empedocles set up passionate-love and hate as the two coordinate powers of the universe.”

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Peirce at once identifies with and distinguishes himself from this ancient philosophical tradition of locating the reason for the development of the cosmos in love or eros. He agrees that love defines the ultimate teleological impulse of reality, but that the “exuberance-love” of eros-which, at least for Empedocles, is set at odds with strife-is not the form of love that drives the development of reality. Recall that Aristotle claimed it was eros that defined the ultimate final cause of the unmoved mover, for it is able to move others without itself being moved.

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皮尔斯以富有诗意的观察开篇："当哲学刚刚从它的金蛹--神话--中挣脱出来时，就宣称宇宙的伟大进化机构是爱。或者说，由于英语这个海盗语言缺乏类似的词汇，让我们说'爱神'（Eros），即旺盛的爱。之后，恩培多克勒又把激情之爱和仇恨作为宇宙的两种协调力量"。

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皮尔斯既认同又区别于这一古老的哲学传统，即把宇宙发展的原因归结为爱或厄洛斯。他同意爱定义了现实的终极目的论冲动，但情欲的 "旺盛之爱"--至少在恩培多克勒看来是与纷争相冲突的--并不是推动现实发展的爱的形式。记得亚里士多德曾说过，正是爱神定义了 "不动者 "的终极终极原因，因为爱神能够感动他人而自己却不被感动。

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Instead of this asymmetrical teleological account of love as eros, Peirce turns to the “ontological gospeller” St. John, who “made the One Supreme Being, by whom all things have been made out of nothing, to be cherishing-love” or agape.

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Peirce notes that, unlike eros, agape is not the contrary of hate or strife, but it is “a love which embraces hatred as an imperfect stage of it.”

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Thus, Peirce argues, the evolution of the cosmos is
皮尔斯没有把爱作为 "情欲 "这种不对称的目的论论述，而是转向了 "本体论福音书作者 "圣约翰，他 "把万物由无造出的唯一至高存在说成是珍惜之爱 "或 "爱加倍"（agape）。

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皮尔斯指出，与 "爱神"（eros）不同，"爱"（agape）并不是仇恨或争斗的对立面，而是 "一种将仇恨作为其不完美阶段加以包容的爱"。

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因此，皮尔斯认为，宇宙的进化是
driven not by eros (the love of perfection that moves without itself being moved), but by agape (the cherishing love that both moves and is moved by the other).

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Notice the isomorphism between these accounts of teleology and his discussion of the developmental teleology of personality from “The Law of Mind.” Whereas the movement of eros is linear, the movement of agape “is circular, at one and the same impulse projecting creations into independency and drawing them into harmony.”

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Only agape, not eros, makes true novelty, growth, and development possible. “Love, recognising germs of loveliness in the hateful, gradually warms it into life, and makes it lovely.”

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这不是由 "爱神"（eros）（对完美的爱，这种爱会感动他人，但自己却不会被感动）驱动的，而是由 "爱神"（agape）（珍惜的爱，这种爱既感动他人，也被他人感动）驱动的。

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请注意这些目的论的论述与他在《心灵法则》中对人格发展目的论的论述之间的同构性。情欲的运动是线性的，而爱欲的运动 "是环形的，在同一冲动下，既把创造物投射到独立中，又把它们引向和谐"。

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只有爱，而不是情欲，才使真正的新颖、成长和发展成为可能。"爱，在可恨的事物中发现可爱的萌芽，逐渐温暖它，使它充满生机，变得可爱"。

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Thus, in an important sense, Peirce’s account of agape deepens and expands his account of developmental teleology and synechism outlined in “The Law of Mind.” Specifically, he distinguishes three different forms of cosmological evolution: “anacasm,” “tychasm,” and “agapasm.” Anacastic evolution is evolution by “mechanical necessity”; tychastic evolution is “evolution by chance or fortuitous variation”; and agapastic evolution is “evolution by creative love.”

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Peirce argues that, whereas evolution via chance (tychasm) is “heedless” and evolution via inward necessity (anacasm) is “blind,” evolution via love (agapasm) brings about change “by an immediate attraction for the idea itself . . . , by the power of sympathy, that is, by virtue of the continuity of mind.”

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Thus, Peirce explains, agapastic evolution is distinguished from the pure spontaneity of tychasm and the mechanical necessity of anacasm in its “purposive character.”

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The cosmos is evolving not on rails toward a predetermined end nor because of an unintelligible and meaningless randomness, but toward an end that is itself in the process of development. Love is “warming”

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life into existence, inviting it to become, to flourish, to grow. Though there is the invitation to become more, each organism, in its own decisions relative to this aim, helps constitute the nature of the end. The end and aim of the universe has a bias toward diversity and variety on the one hand and regularity and order on the other, but there is no necessity in this trajectory. There is, as Holmes Rolston puts it, a heading but no head.

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The decisions made are affected by this loving orientation, but the character (personality) of this loving orientation is itself determined by the decisions. Progress is not guaranteed. The universe is, as Whitehead would later write, an adventure.

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因此，在一个重要的意义上，皮尔斯对 "爱 "的论述深化并扩展了他在 "心智的法则 "中对发展目的论和系统论的论述。具体来说，他区分了三种不同形式的宇宙进化："无性"（anacasm）、"有性"（tychasm）和 "无性"（agapasm）。无性进化是 "机械必然性 "的进化；有性进化是 "偶然或偶然变化的进化"；无性进化是 "创造性的爱的进化"。

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皮尔斯认为，偶然性进化（tychasm）是 "无意识的"，内在必然性进化（anacasm）是 "盲目的"，而爱的进化（agapasm）则 "通过对理念本身的直接吸引...... "带来变化。......，通过同情的力量，即凭借心灵的连续性"。

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因此，皮尔斯解释说，爱的进化在其 "目的性特征 "上区别于 "tychasm "的纯粹自发性和 "anacasm "的机械必然性。

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宇宙不是在轨道上朝着预定的目的进化，也不是因为无法理解和毫无意义的随机性，而是朝着本身就处于发展过程中的目的进化。爱正在 "温暖"

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生命的存在，邀请它成为生命、繁荣生命、成长生命。虽然我们在邀请生命变得更多，但每个有机体都在为实现这一目标而做出自己的决定，从而帮助构成了目的的本质。宇宙的目的和目标一方面偏向于多样性和多样性，另一方面偏向于规律性和秩序，但这一轨迹并不存在必然性。正如霍姆斯-罗尔斯顿所言，有标题却没有头。

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所做的决定受到这种爱的取向的影响，但这种爱的取向的特征（个性）本身是由决定所决定的。进步是没有保证的。正如怀特海后来所写，宇宙是一场冒险。

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Three decades later, Whitehead joins his Classical American Pragmatist cousins in their fight against dualism and mechanistic materialism, developing a speculative philosophy that defends both microscopic (what I will call local, but which has historically often been referred to as “proximate”
三十年后，怀特海与他的美国古典实用主义表兄弟们一道，与二元论和机械唯物主义作斗争，发展出一种投机哲学，既捍卫微观的（我将称之为局部的，但在历史上通常被称为 "近似的"），也捍卫 "近似的"（"近似的"）。
teleology) and macroscopic (what I will call cosmic or ultimate teleology) teleology. Like Peirce before him, Whitehead is provoked by what he sees as the inadequacies of the mechanistic view of reality defended by scientific materialism, which eliminates all meaning, value, and purpose from reality. In its place he defends a “reformed subjectivism,” according to which every element of reality, from the subatomic to the galactic, is a subjective unification of and reaction to the impress of the past. The becoming concrete (“concrescence”) of each occasion of reality (“subject-superject”) is guided by its “subjective aim.”

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This subjective aim provides a “lure for feeling,” setting out a range of “real possibility” achievable by the nascent subject-superject.

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Importantly, for Whitehead, each moment of reality, each event or actual occasion determines what it is to be in its teleological process of becoming. The subject does not gradually uncover a predeterminate end, as with the classical account of the sculptor removing the marble to reveal the form within. Rather, the subject becomes itself in its attempt to eliminate the indeterminacy implied in its subjective aim, its telos. The sculptor decides what she is making in the act itself. As Whitehead puts it in Process and Reality, “The subject-superject is the purpose of the process originating the feelings. The feelings are inseparable from the end at which they aim; and this end is the feeler. The feelings aim at the feeler, as their final cause. The feelings are what they are in order that their subject may be what it is. It is better to say that the feelings aim at their subject, than to say that they are aimed at their subject.”

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Thus, similar to but independent of Peirce, Whitehead is defending a “developmental teleology” at every level of existence. The universe is composed of nothing but teleological subject-superjects.
怀特海认为，科学唯物主义所捍卫的机械论现实观消除了现实中的一切意义、价值和目的。与在他之前的皮尔斯一样，怀特海认为科学唯物主义所捍卫的机械论现实观存在不足，消除了现实中的所有意义、价值和目的，这激起了他的不满。取而代之的是他所捍卫的 "改革的主观主义"，根据这种观点，现实的每一个元素，从亚原子到银河，都是对过去印象的主观统一和反应。现实的每一个场合（"主体-超主体"）的具体化（"具体化"）都受其 "主观目的 "的指导。

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这种主观目的提供了一种 "感觉的诱惑"，为新生的主体--超对象设定了一个可以实现的 "现实可能性 "的范围。

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重要的是，对于怀特海来说，现实的每一时刻、每一事件或实际场合都决定了它在其目的论的成为过程中是什么。主体并没有逐渐揭示出一个预定的终结，就像雕刻家揭开大理石以显示其内在形式的经典描述那样。恰恰相反，主体在试图消除其主观目标、目的所隐含的不确定性的过程中成为了自身。雕塑家在行为本身中就决定了她正在创造什么。正如怀特海在《过程与现实》一书中所说："主体-超主体是产生感受的过程的目的。感受与它们所要达到的目的密不可分；而这个目的就是感受者。感受以感受者为目标，感受者是感受的最终原因。感受之所以是感受，是为了使主体成为主体。与其说感情是以它们的主体为目标的，不如说感情是以它们的主体为目标的"。

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因此，怀特海与皮尔士相似，但又独立于皮尔士，他在存在的每一个层面上都为 "发展目的论 "辩护。宇宙无非是由目的论的主体-超主体构成的。

For Whitehead, the local teleology of each actual occasion’s subjective aim is set within a broader, cosmic teleological orientation of the universe.

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Showing that Plato is never far from his mind, in Adventures of Ideas Whitehead discusses the “Platonic Eros”

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that urges the "victory of persuasion over force.

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对怀特海来说，每个实际场合的主观目标的局部目的论都被设定在宇宙更广泛的、宇宙目的论的取向之中。

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怀特海在《观念的历险记》中讨论了 "柏拉图式的爱神"

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，它敦促 "说服战胜武力"。

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In his [Plato’s] view, the entertainment of ideas is intrinsically associated with an inward ferment, an activity of subjective feeling, which is at once immediate enjoyment, and also an appetition which melts into action. This is Plato’s Eros, which he sublimates into the notion of the soul in the enjoyment of its creative function, arising from its entertainment of ideas. The word Eros means ‘Love,’ and in The Symposium Plato gradually elicits his final conception of the urge towards ideal perfection.

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Thus, again similar to Peirce before him, Whitehead claims that the teleology of the universe aims at “intensity and variety.”

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Indeed, he defines the “essence of life” as the “teleological introduction of novelty.”

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The role of the Platonic Eros is in providing the ultimate lure toward the creation of intensity and variety; it is the urge toward the ideal perfection for each occasion.

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“Eros is the urge toward the realization of ideal perfection.”

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Thus, along with Frederick Ferré, I have argued that Whitehead defends a kalogenic metaphysics.

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The universal aim of the creative advance is the production of beauty. The creative advance does not just aim at novelty; the lure for feeling involved in the subjective aim of each occasion is a lure, an invitation to become a harmonious and intense ordering of experience. Every being is lured toward higher forms of beauty. “The teleology of the Universe is directed to the production of Beauty.”

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As much as I am committed to Whitehead’s account of beauty, I’ve always found confusing his appeal to the love of eros to account for the universal aim of beauty. Of course, given his fondness for his work, Whitehead’s appeal to Plato is entirely unsurprising. Yet, despite this, my concern is that, at its root, eros is the form of love that moves others without itself being moved. This, of course, is why Aristotle described the relationship between the unmoved mover and nature as eros. The perfection of the unmoved mover is the ultimate final cause of nature, but the unmoved mover is impassive, self-thought thought eternal thinking of nothing but itself; it is walled off from and only externally related to the world.

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Now, I grant that this is Aristotle’s conception of divine eros, not Plato’s, but it is not clear to me that Plato’s account fairs much better. Though I am appreciative of, indeed committed to, Plato’s claim that the good and the beautiful are one and that the universe is aimed at the achievement of the good and the beautiful, even in Symposium Plato’s account of eros seems to me to be an account in which the beauty of others draws them in but is itself unaffected by the relationship. Beauty for Plato is a static, eternal form-not an evolving, open-ended adventure. Thus, my suggestion is that Whitehead’s system would benefit from a reciprocal form of love, such as agape.

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To be true to his relational and open-ended metaphysics, Whitehead would do well to follow Peirce’s lead in conceiving of the teleological orientation of the universe in terms of agape, rather than eros. Indeed, there is reason to believe that true creativity and growth is incompatible with eros, that Whitehead needs Peirce’s agapastic account of cosmological evolution.

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As Carl Hausman argues in “Eros and Agape in Creative Evolution: A Peircean Insight,” “There is reason to insist that the kind of love which
operates in creativity cannot be adequately described exclusively in terms of eros.”

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Hausman argues that eros impels the movement from incompleteness to completeness through the attraction of the perfection of the other. The subject aims at this completeness because of the lure, the attractive nature of the end that fulfills it. The problem with this account, he notes, is that it does not really permit true creativity, true novelty, and growth because the end sought after is predetermined. As Hausman puts it:

If eros were the exclusive dynamic principle of a process, that process would not be creative, for it would not allow for a change in the subject as determined by its initial direction. The subject would appropriate what it lacks, but it would have no way of varying its growth against the background of established goals and patterns of development. Novelty in the intelligible structure of the outcome would be absent. The structure of the process, the manner of developing, and the character of the subject would be predetermined according to the conditioning called for in the telos. The process would evolve in accord with a pattern, as an acorn evolves into an oak tree. $^{52}$

Of course, as Hausman goes on to point out, this is not compatible with the open, dynamic, processive account of teleological development that Whitehead so carefully develops. The subjective aim that is a lure for feeling is not like an Aristotelian form; process does not run on rails to a predetermined end. Genuine novelty is possible because the end itself changes in light of the decisions of the subject. As Whitehead himself notes:

The feelings are inseparable from the end at which they aim; and this end is the feeler. The feelings aim at the feeler, as their final cause. The feelings are what they are in order that their subject may be what it is. It is better to say that the feelings aim at their subject, than to say that they are aimed at their subject. An actual entity feels as it does feel in order to be the actual entity it is. The creativity is not an external agency with its own ulterior purposes. All actual entities share with God this characteristic of self-causation. $^{53}$

If Whitehead is to maintain a teleologically oriented but truly open developmental process, then agape, not eros, is the form of love that char-
acterizes the universal drive to achieve beauty, for agape is that form of love that affects while itself being affected. Hausman summarizes the key difference between eros and agape well.

Eros is love that is expressed by what seeks something more perfect, or more fulfilling, than what is possessed by the lover in the absence of union with the beloved. Thus, eros is expressed by what seeks something more perfect, or more fulfilling, than what is possessed by the lover in the absence of union with the beloved. Agape, on the other hand, is love expressed by an agent already fulfilled in its own terms, and it is directed not as a seeking but as a concern for the beloved. Agape is not the power to overcome dependence; it is the power to overflow in interdependence toward an other which is not something to be identified with but which may be dependent and in need of the love that overflows. $^{54}$

Given this interpretation, it seems to me that agape better captures the openended, creative adventure of the universe Whitehead sought to characterize. True growth and genuine novelty require the cherishing love of agape, not the sterile perfection of eros. “In creating valuable novelty, a subject is not impelled by a desire to fulfill itself. Instead, it offers itself by permitting its creation to grow in its own terms. Thus, paradoxically, in offering itself, it generates the excellence which, out of agape, it gives to its creature. Creative love must be agapastic.”

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On the other hand, Peirce’s strength in accounting for agapastic cosmic teleology is not matched in his account of individual creative teleology. In a sense, Whitehead’s weakness (cosmic teleology) is Peirce’s strength, and Peirce’s weakness (local teleology) is Whitehead’s strength. Peirce does not really give an adequate account of individual creativity. Although he speaks thoughtfully about the developmental teleology involved with personality, he does not give a metaphysical account of the teleological development of subjects in general. The reason for this likely has to do with his fundamental commitment to “synechism,” or metaphysical continuity. Although Peirce and Whitehead were both mathematicians who were concerned with overcoming mechanism and dualism, they took alternative metaphysical paths in their attempts to provide an alternative, with Peirce embracing the pure continuity of synechism and Whitehead embracing a relational atomism. In a sense, each philosopher’s project can be seen as a different response to

Zeno’s paradox. Or, to put it differently, both Peirce and Whitehead were concerned with how the past really affects the present.

For Peirce, the past cannot merely be “vicariously” in the present. Rather, the past must be present by “direct perception.” “That is, it cannot be wholly past; it can only be going, infinitesimally past, less past than any assignable past date. We are thus brought to the conclusion that the present is connected with the past by a series of real, infinitesimal steps.”

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For Peirce, then, there is no need to explain how the smallest bit of reality is achieved, because there is no smallest bit. The doctrine of synechism is that reality is “infinitesimally” continuous.

Though equally concerned with accounting for how the past “gets inside” and affects the present, Whitehead rejects Peirce’s notion of infinitesimals. Whitehead would concur with James, who in Some Problems of Philosophy writes, “Your acquaintance with reality grows literally by buds or drops of perception. Intellectually and on reflection you can divide these into components, but as immediately given, they come totally or not at all.”

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Whitehead embraced this model via his “reformed subjectivism” in which reality is composed of irreducible “drops” of experience that are internally related to past subjective achievements. “There is a becoming of continuity, but not continuity of becoming.”

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I wade into these murky and turbulent metaphysical waters with significant trepidation. My own background in mathematics is inadequate to feel confident in my appreciation of these two competing solutions to Zeno’s paradox and the problem of the one and the many. However, wade I must. I feel a bit like James: “Being almost blind mathematically and logically, I feel considerable shyness in differing from such superior minds, yet what can one do but follow one’s own dim light?”

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Although I am deeply sympathetic with Peirce’s emphasis on continuity and his embrace of a panpsychism in which matter “is not completely dead, but is merely mind hide-bound with habits,”

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I ultimately find that Peirce is unable to account for the pure continuity of experience at which he aims. Indeed, to go one step further, I would argue that Peirce’s doctrine of synechism is only possible with an account of internal relatedness such as that developed by Whitehead.

I am not convinced that Peirce’s synechism explains the real presence of the past in the present. If, as Peirce noted in “The Law of Mind,” the past is not “wholly past,” then it must in some real sense be in the present. That the beads on the string, to use Bergson’s phrase, are infinitesimally past merely infinitely repeats, but does not truly solve, the problem of how
one moment comes to be in the next. In this respect, an infinitesimally near past is no different than a more distant past. Both fail to explain how the past “gets inside” the present. Thus, without an account of internal relatedness, Peirce cannot in fact achieve the genuine continuity at which he aims. For this reason, I ultimately find that Peirce would greatly benefit from Whitehead’s relational atomism. (See chapter six of this volume on individuals.) In particular, what is needed, I contend, is an account of “individual” teleological achievement that grounds novelty and spontaneity in the “decisions” of subjective centers of experience.

Thus, although Whitehead gives a very useful and detailed account of the teleological growth and development of every actual occasion, his account of cosmic evolution via eros seems somewhat in tension with his otherwise relational account and would benefit from an agapastic account. On the other hand, while Peirce gives a rich and interesting account of cosmic evolution via the cherishing love of agape, he lacks a developed account of individual teleological development such that each occasion is internally and constitutively related to the past. Thus, Whitehead’s system would benefit from Peirce’s account of agape, and Peirce’s system would benefit from Whitehead’s account of concrescence.

To summarize this first section, one of the great neglected achievements of the process-pragmatist tradition is its conception of developmental teleology. In a way, both Peirce’s and Whitehead’s metaphysics may be seen as giving accounts of metaphysical or cosmological evolution. They take the lessons from Darwin and ask: If there are organisms that strive in this way, what must the universe be like? This brings both of them to embrace a form of teleology, but, chastened by three hundred years of modern science, this is not your philosophical grandparent’s teleology.

Philosophers, especially those looking to reintroduce teleology into environmental ethics, will find allies in Peirce and Whitehead, who each developed an important, novel form of teleology that is distinct from, and avoids many of the problems ascribed to, the static teleology of philosophers like Aristotle. Peirce and Whitehead develop a unique developmental teleology that recognizes goal-directed activity, but within an open-ended, dynamic, and processive universe-a universe that is evolving toward a future that is not predetermined. The universe and the individuals populating it have a heading, but not a particular destination. Like a Star Trek captain, the universe’s mission is to boldly go into the creative advance, but where this will take us is not fully determined.

In providing a naturalist metaphysical account of reality that rejects dualism and materialism and its notion of vacuous actuality, it finally becomes possible to overcome the false bifurcation of fact and value that plagues so much of environmental ethics. As we will see in the next section, by grounding ethics in an adequate environmental metaphysics, we need no longer be afraid of the naturalistic fallacy. By mending the tether between the structure of reality and value, we can recognize that, sometimes, understanding what something is-what its aims and purposes and goals are-does tell us how we ought to relate to it.

Moore, Whitehead, and the Naturalistic Fallacy

The shadow of Moore’s naturalistic fallacy has long loomed over environmental ethics and its attempts to construct a more adequate worldview that recognizes the intrinsic value and beauty of nature. Many philosophers within environmental ethics, concerned about such an accusation, seek to show how their project does not run afoul of this fallacy. Fewer philosophers discuss whether what Moore describes is rightly seen as a fallacy at all. In this section I will argue that Moore’s defense of the naturalistic fallacy is predicated on an implicit and undefended view of reality (metaphysics) that is itself mistaken. Just as a solution to the mind-body problem is only needed if one first creates the problem by adopting a dualistic metaphysics, one will find that the naturalistic fallacy only has bite if one accepts as given a Humean materialist metaphysics and the resulting bifurcation of fact and value. If instead one adopts, as I do here, Whitehead’s fallibilistic, openended, speculative metaphysics that conceives of reality as composed not of static material substances with properties or parts that can be considered in isolation, but of inherently temporal events whose very becoming represents a unique, teleological achievement of beauty and value, then the naturalistic fallacy evaporates. We will find that we need not bring together-fact and value; is and ought; metaphysics and ethics-that which was never apart. But let’s return to the beginning of this story, as it were, starting with the relationship between G. E. Moore and Whitehead.

It is interesting to note at the outset the considerable biographical intersections between Alfred North Whitehead and George Edward Moore, both of whom can rightly be seen as key figures in the history of analytic philosophy.

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The two philosophers were of roughly the same age, with Whitehead born in 1861, a mere twelve years earlier than Moore. These
twelve years separated their respective admissions to Trinity College in Cambridge in 1880 and 1892, respectively. Both were elected as Fellows of Trinity (Whitehead in 1884 and Moore in 1898). Though at Trinity Whitehead taught mathematics and Moore philosophy and one would (co)author Principia Mathematica and the other Principia Ethica, they crossed paths regularly via their memberships in both the Cambridge Apostles and the Aristotelian Society. In these venues they would likely have directly engaged with each other’s ideas at regular intervals. That they were good colleagues and indeed on friendly terms is confirmed by the survival of nearly a dozen personal, handwritten letters from Whitehead to Moore over the span of nearly twenty years, from 1917 to

1936 .^{62}

Finally, it is somewhat tragic to note that, despite their considerable importance to early twentieth-century philosophy, the work of both philosophers fell into relative obscurity as the century progressed. It is interesting to keep these many points of connection between these two figures in mind as we proceed to bring their respective philosophical projects into conversation in this chapter.

Given these biographical connections, if I were more adventurous and a better writer, it would have been enjoyable to present this section in the form of an actual dialogue between the two philosophers. Alas, what follows is a straightforward presentation, first an exposition of Moore’s Principia and his defense of the naturalistic fallacy, and then a critical response to Moore from the perspective of Whitehead’s philosophy of organism.

Moore and the Naturalistic Fallacy

Moore’s 1903 Principia Ethica starts with the claim that-as “the general enquiry into what is good”

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-the first question of ethics is, “What is good?” 64 The problem with this question, Moore contends, is that “good” cannot in fact be defined. He likens “good” to the color yellow, noting that both are utterly simple notions and, therefore, cannot be defined.

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“It [i.e., ‘good’] is one of those innumerable objects of thought which are themselves incapable of definition, because they are the ultimate terms by reference to which whatever is capable of definition must be defined.”

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We describe other things in terms of good (or yellow), but not the reverse. The sunflower is yellow, but yellow is not like anything. As a simple concept lacking parts, it cannot be defined. “Good,” he contends, is equally indefinable.

Despite the fact that “good” cannot be defined, a chief goal of ethics is to determine the “unique property of things” such that they are good.

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Whatever “good” is, it is not a property that “we can take up in our hands,
or separate from it even by the most delicate scientific instruments, and transfer to something else. It is not, in fact, like most of the predicates which we ascribe to things, a part of the thing to which we ascribe it.”

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Much of Moore’s Principia focuses on demonstrating the inadequacy of the two dominant attempts to provide an account of what makes something good: one he calls “naturalistic ethics” and the other “metaphysical ethics.” Let us take each in order.

Notably for environmental ethicists, discussion of “naturalistic ethics” is primarily focused on the attempt to conceive of intrinsic value. Initially it would seem that environmental ethics and its interest in defining the scope of direct moral concern by defining the nature of intrinsic value is in keeping with Moore’s understanding of ethics. However, the problem, according to Moore, is that too many philosophers think by naming these “natural properties” they can thereby define what makes something good, that these properties are what define intrinsic value. This, Moore contends, is the root of the “naturalistic fallacy.”

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“To hold that any proposition asserting ‘Reality is of this nature’ we can infer, or obtain confirmation for, any proposition asserting ‘This is good in itself’ is to commit the naturalistic fallacy. And that a knowledge of what is real supplies reasons for holding certain things good in themselves is either implied or expressly asserted by all those who define the Supreme Good in metaphysical terms.”

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One cannot legitimately infer from the nature of reality any statement about what is good in itself. To do so is to commit the naturalistic fallacy or the taking of some “natural properties” of things and substituting those for what is “good,” what has “intrinsic value.” That is, the “naturalistic” method of ethics “consists in substituting for ‘good’ some one property of a natural object or a collection of natural objects; and in this replacing Ethics by some one of the natural sciences. In general, Psychology has been the science substituted, as by J. S. Mill; or Sociology, as by Professor Clifford, and other modern writers.”

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It is important to see the senses in which Moore’s understanding of “good” and “intrinsic value” are informed by and presuppose a subject-predicate logic and a substance metaphysics (a point to which I will return when considering our Whiteheadian response). For instance, in defending against “naturalistic ethics,” Moore notes that, unlike other natural properties of objects, whose “existence . . . is independent of the existence of those objects,” the property “good” cannot be “existent by itself in time.”

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Moore attempts to demonstrate that the error of substituting some natural property for “good” (i.e., the naturalistic fallacy) is shown by appealing to the idea that what is “good” cannot exist by itself in time.

Can we imagine “good” as existing by itself in time, and not merely as a property of some natural object? For myself, I cannot so imagine it, whereas with the greater number of properties of objects-those which I call the natural properties-their existence does seem to me to be independent of the existence of those objects. They are, in fact, rather parts of which the object is made up than mere predicates which attach to it. If they were all taken away, no object would be left, not even a bare substance: for they are in themselves substantial and give to the object all the substance that it has. But this is not so with good. If indeed good were a feeling, as some would have us believe, then it would exist in time. But that is why to call it so is to commit the naturalistic fallacy. It will always remain pertinent to ask, whether the feeling itself is good; and if so, then good cannot itself be identical with any feeling.

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This is crucial, as it demonstrates that Moore, in keeping with a latent Cartesian metaphysics, sees no essential relationship between time and actuality. This is a point on which he and Whitehead will diverge, as we will see shortly. For now, it is sufficient to note that Moore is presupposing a metaphysics that conceives of reality as composed of “substances” or “objects” with “properties” that attach to them, and that there are some properties that can exist independently of a substance and some that cannot. Unlike other properties, “good” is not a property that can “exist by itself in time.” This is why it is a fallacy to substitute some natural property, which is separable and can exist by itself in time, for “good,” which cannot exist by itself in time. The very notion of the naturalistic fallacy is based on a substance metaphysics and a subject-predicate logic.

In contrast to naturalistic approaches to ethics, which commit the naturalistic fallacy, “metaphysical ethics” propose some metaphysical theory that explains what makes something “good.” First, it is important to note that Moore takes “metaphysical” as the contrary of and indeed “in opposition to” what is “natural.”

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Whereas naturalistic ethics are concerned with the properties of natural objects that exist in time, he conceives of metaphysics as concerned with objects or properties that “do not exist in time”-that is, they are “eternal”-and are therefore not “part of Nature.” 75 That is, to put it differently, as Moore conceives of it, metaphysics investigates what is “not a part of Nature” or what is, by definition, therefore “supersensible reality.”

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Perhaps the easiest example of “metaphysical objects” are Plato’s

Forms, which are both supersensible and eternally outside of time. Plato’s attempt in Republic to define the good via the divided line simile and the allegory of the cave is an example of metaphysical ethics as Moore defines it.

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Moore’s assessment of the value of metaphysical ethics is swift and negative. The answer to the question “What bearing can Metaphysics have upon the question, What is good?” is simple: “obviously and absolutely none.”

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Or, if it does have relevance to ethics, “it must be of a purely negative kind.”

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This follows directly from Moore’s definition of metaphysics. If metaphysics is, by definition, concerned exclusively with supersensible, eternal reality that is, again, by definition, not able to be affected by our actions, then what possible relevance to ethics could metaphysics have? As we will soon discuss, it would be hard to imagine a view of metaphysics more diametrically opposite of Whitehead’s than Moore’s. (See chapter one of this volume on Whitehead’s distinctive approach to metaphysics.)

Given that both naturalistic and metaphysical ethics fail to help us understand what is good, what has intrinsic value, how are we to make progress in answering the fundamental question of ethics? Moore’s answer is reminiscent of Descartes’s Meditations on First Philosophy. Just as Descartes deployed his so-called methodical doubt in order to discover a firm and immovable “Archimedean point” on which to found all certain knowledge,

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Moore develops what he calls the “isolation method” for determining what has intrinsic value. As its name suggests, to determine what is good or has intrinsic value, we need only “consider what things are such that, if they existed by themselves, in total isolation, we should yet judge their existence to be good.”

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If, in “total isolation,” something is still judged good, then it has intrinsic value. Employing this method, Moore contends that only two things have intrinsic value, in that only they are good even if they existed by themselves in total isolation: “the pleasures of human intercourse and the enjoyment of beautiful objects.”

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Moore proposes an interesting thought experiment to illustrate his point:

We can imagine the case of a single person, enjoying throughout eternity the contemplation of scenery as beautiful, and intercourse with persons as admirable, as can be imagined; while yet the whole of the objects of his cognition are as absolutely unreal. I think we should definitely pronounce the existence of a universe, which consisted solely of such a person, to be greatly inferior to the value to one in which the objects, in the existence of which he believes, did really exist just as he believes them to do; and
that it would be thus inferior not only because it would lack the goods which consist in the existence of the objects in question, but also merely because his belief would be false. That it would be inferior for this reason alone follows if we admit, what also appears to me certain, that the case of a person, merely imagining, without believing, the beautiful objects in question, would, although these objects really existed, be yet inferior to that of the person who also believed in their existence.

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A universe constituted solely of one person who imagines enjoying beauty and interacting with other people is “greatly inferior” to one in which one does not only imagine but is in fact enjoying beauty and engaging with other people. Initially, this seems surprisingly similar to Whitehead’s claims regarding beauty (see chapter four, this volume). Yet closer examination reveals this is only a passing resemblance. For it is not beautiful things in the world that are themselves of intrinsic value but only “certain states of consciousness.”

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It is the enjoyment of beautiful objects (and the pleasures of being with other humans) that are of intrinsic value, not the objects themselves. Or it is the true belief in the enjoyment of the beautiful objects (and pleasures of being with other people) that is of intrinsic value.

Having rejected naturalistic ethics, for Moore, it is not that some entities have intrinsic value. If I understand Moore rightly, not even humans have intrinsic value. In keeping with the Humean metaphysics that he seems to presuppose, no thing has intrinsic value, including humans. (For more on this point, see chapter two of this volume on intrinsic value.) Value is the projected feelings of valuers onto an actually valueless world. As Hume put in his Treatise:

An action, or sentiment, or character is virtuous or vicious; why? because its view causes a pleasure or uneasiness of a particular kind. In giving a reason, therefore, for the pleasure of uneasiness we sufficiently explain the vice or virtue. To have the sense of virtue, is nothing but to feel a satisfaction of a particular kind from the contemplation of a character. The very feeling constitutes our praise or admiration. We go no farther; nor do we enquire into the cause of the satisfaction. We do not infer a character to be virtuous, because it pleases: but in feeling that it pleases after such a particular manner, we in effect feel that it is virtuous.

The case is the same in our judgments concerning all kinds of beauty, and tastes, and sensations.

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There is no connection between the structure of reality (metaphysics) and value or goodness. In keeping with Hume’s view, what has intrinsic value, according to Moore, is the enjoyment of beauty and the pleasure of human intercourse, nothing more. And it is solely for their sake that ethics exists.

What has not been recognized is that it is the ultimate and fundamental truth of Moral Philosophy. That it is only for the sake of these things-in order that as much of them as possible may at some time exist-that any one can be justified in performing any public or private duty; that they are the raison d’etre of virtue; that it is they-these complex wholes themselves, and not any constituent or characteristic of them-that form the rational ultimate end of human action and the sole criterion of social progress: these appear to be truths which have been generally overlooked. $^{86}$

Whitehead, Value, and Naturalistic Metaphysics

In considering Whitehead’s position, let us begin in reverse order, starting with Moore’s argument against “metaphysical ethics.” If “metaphysics” concerns supersensible “objects” that are “outside of time,” as Moore contends, then metaphysics does indeed have nothing useful to say about ethics. But, as we’ve discussed throughout the present volume (see especially chapter one), this is not the only way of conceiving of metaphysics. Indeed, from the perspective of the philosophy of organism, Moore’s definition of metaphysics is unrecognizable. For the philosophy of organism, metaphysics is the attempt to develop a logical, coherent, applicable, and adequate account of every element of experience. It is a working hypothesis and open to revision. It has no more claim to absolute certainty than physics, which is to say, none at all. And the same is true of ethics (see chapter two, “Morality in the Making,” on a fallibilistic account of ethics).

Further, whereas for Moore ethics is either naturalistic (concerned with objects in time) or metaphysical (concerned with objects that are not in time), for Whitehead nothing is “outside of time” because the very act of coming to be is the realization of a quantum of space-time. Indeed, it
is not an exaggeration to say that the whole of Whitehead’s philosophy is an extended effort to take the problem of time seriously, a conception of time fundamentally informed by advances in relativity and quantum physics. Thus, whereas Moore sees naturalistic and metaphysical accounts as contraries, Whitehead defends a naturalistic metaphysics founded on the “ontological principle”

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that beyond the events of the universe there is nothing. However, more is at stake here than the meaning of key terms. More important is that Moore’s view of ethics is itself predicated on a view of the structure of reality that is mistaken, and it is this mistaken metaphysics that generates and justifies his famous naturalistic fallacy.

Recall the point made in the introduction to this chapter that modernity was born out of the explicit and often vehement rejection of all immaterial forms and the teleology that came with them. Despite the differences between them, Hobbes, Bacon, and Descartes worked hard to banish scholasticism and its Aristotelian hylomorphism wherein all living beings are form-matter composites teleologically developing toward an end. It is not the form or psuchê or internal principle of organization and change that organizes a being’s matter (i.e., material cause), defines what a being is (i.e., formal cause), and what its characteristic powers and potentials are (i.e., final cause or telos). No. To make progress in natural philosophy (now called science), early modern philosophers tell us that we must recognize that there are no immaterial forms; there are no teloi guiding the maturational patterns and organizations of matter; there are but the unflinching mechanistic laws of nature.

Note two key features of both metaphysical dualism and metaphysical materialism: (1) nature, matter, res extensa is purely passive, vacuous, mechanistic, and valueless, and (2) individuality is defined primarily in terms of independence. The most striking version of the latter is found in Descartes, who defines a substance as “that which requires nothing other than itself in order to exist.”

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These two (metaphysical) claims are the basis for the bifurcation of fact and value and the ultimate justification for the distinction between is and ought. It is on these metaphysical foundations that Moore’s fallacy is built. The problem with both of these claims-vacuous actuality and independence of existence-is that, I contend, they are utterly mistaken.

Let’s consider the isolation test and the substance metaphysics on which it is based. As we explored in chapter six, contemporary science has revealed that substances so defined do not seem to exist. According to Moore’s vaunted isolation method, we are to "consider what things are such that, if they existed by themselves, in total isolation, we should yet judge their