darthbarracuda wrote:

"Health" is not necessarily a normative idea, although I would think many people would contend that it is. It's something that we want, for sure (we all want to be healthy, strong, fit, sexy, etc), but not necessarily what we ought to be.

There are some distinctions that should be made here.

For instance, these are potentially non-equivalent claims:
- The concept of health is normative.
- Each person ought to be healthy.
If the "ought" in the second is the "moral" "ought", then it might be false, for "ought" implies "can", and some people cannot be healthy (in particular respects).

There are different sorts of "ought" statements that are normative but not moral. "Dogs ought to have four legs." That is not a command to dogs to have four legs. Nor is it a prediction that all dogs, or even a given dog, will have four legs. It's a statement about what is normal for dogs. In that sense, everyone "ought" to be healthy, and health is the norm for humans.

darthbarracuda wrote:

A supermodel ought not to be healthy but rather anorexic if she wants to get the studio shot (which is unfortunate).

Well, first, this is a hypothetical necessity. It depends on the end of getting a studio shot, which depends on her fulfilling a particular social role that bears certain expectations.

It may be the case that everyone who is anorexic, as a matter of natural necessity, is unhealthy. (It's actually rather interesting that you presuppose this, for it supposes that there is some norm of health apart from people's desires.) But it does not follow that someone who has a reason to be very thing also has a reason to be unhealthy, for "having a reason to _______" is an intensional context; extensionally equivalent terms are not intersubstitutable salva veritate.

I would also note that natural law theory does not claim that no one could have a reason to do something contrary to their flourishing. Someone might desire to become healthy but must steal in order to get money for their medical bills. The natural lawyer thinks that some part of stealing involves damage to one's own flourishing (actually a somewhat complicated account, but has to do with willfully destroying legitimate property claims). But they still have a reason to steal; they see what is good-in-the-sense-befitting (the bonum honestum) in health, and therefore they see what is good-in-the-sense-useful in means to health in this particular case. There are "oughts" of practical but not moral necessity, which is why claims like this might have the appearance of counterexamples. But counterexamples they are not; they are really evidence for the Thomist's guise of the good thesis (defended in that Haldane article). That there might be reasons for stealing does not rule out that there might be reasons for not stealing (as the Thomist holds there always will be).

iwpoe wrote:

And in any case, the objection is irrelevant to this particular argument. I was not, either implicitly or explicitly, advocating for forced medical treatment.

Perhaps it is troublesome, though, to call one's ethical theory natural law, then, if one isn't implying that there is any kind of justice applied.

iwpoe wrote:

As I understand you, your objection here to 1 amounts to 'Health is whatever we happen to prefer (with respect to the body).'?

No. Health is health.

iwpoe wrote:

Greg wrote:

If the "ought" in the second is the "moral" "ought", then it might be false, for "ought" implies "can", and some people cannot be healthy (in particular respects).

There are different sorts of "ought" statements that are normative but not moral. "Dogs ought to have four legs." That is not a command to dogs to have four legs. Nor is it a prediction that all dogs, or even a given dog, will have four legs. It's a statement about what is normal for dogs. In that sense, everyone "ought" to be healthy, and health is the norm for humans.

Would you say that all norms are at least hypothetically moral? Do they all, for instance provide that 'Were it possible that X could be done, then X should be done.'?

Well, first, it might depend on how broadly one understands "norms". If "norms" include all of moral, practical, and natural necessity, then I don't think so, for there are certainly cases of practical norms that morally ought not to be done (for example, stealing for the sake of one's health).

Actually, in the domain  of practice, the principle you are suggesting seems to contradict itself. For the possibilities for human action are radically open-ended. I could devote my life to studying philosophy or devote my life to studying biology. On a natural law account, both of those contribute to my flourrishing. But it's not the case that they both morally ought to be done, for it's not the case that I can do both.

I also think that, while there are natural norms for dogs, specifying what's good for dogs, those norms do not have any direct significance for human practical reasoning. The human will is necessitated toward its own good and the common (i.e. human-specific) good. So I am inclined to think that humans are not directly concerned with the norms concerning, for instance, animals, and those don't yield moral necessities immediately.

I am not as sure about that position though, and perhaps I need to think about it. It has potential counterexamples, such as animal lovers and certain sorts of environmentalists, who do seem to be moved by the non-human good. I think there are certain ways of explaining those tendencies. For instance, I have seen Thomist accounts according to which one not torture animals mainly because of the insensitivity and vice that doing so would tend to yield, rather than animal rights. (I think there are certain analogies here to "moral luck" scenarios. In Bernard Williams' case, a truck driver hits a child and could not have avoided it. Why should he feel bad about that? He played a causal role but wasn't responsible. I don't think he was morally culpable, but lacking a certain response in such a case would bespeak a lack of other virtuous conditions, since the case is so similar to others in which he might have been responsible.) But I'm not sold on this reasoning.

Greg wrote:

Being in pain or distress is not being unhealthy; someone who stubs his toe and feels pain is considerably healthier than someone who stubs his toe and does not. Lack of pain is an indication of health only in the appropriate circumstances. But that's to bring a normative notion back in.

If someone is "unhealthy" in what you are saying here, they will experience suffering. For their own sake, they "ought" to do something about it so they don't suffer.

Say I get a migraine. Say I have ibuprofen pills right next to me. Should I take these pills? Yes, for my own well-being. But not in any "normative" sense.

Last edited by darthbarracuda (2/03/2016 10:02 pm)

darthbarracuda wrote:

Perhaps it is troublesome, though, to call one's ethical theory natural law, then, if one isn't implying that there is any kind of justice applied.

There are an infinite number of reasons why a moral imperative might not become a political one. The most usual one is resources. How, for instance, would it even be possible to police all lies?

The use of the word 'law' does indicate a relationship, of course, but it would be a gross confusion to claim that all natural lawyers are eo ipso political advocates.

darthbarracuda wrote:

No. Health is health.

You are surely aware this isn't a reply to 1. I too would, upon the law of identity, agree that health is health, and A is A, and you are you, and God is God, etc.

If health is not normative in character- if it is not a concept of the proper function of the body, or mind, or what have you -then what is it? Your general talk about it does very much seem to be a preference account, which I think is absurd, but I want you to commit to some view or another before I bother to criticize it.