Natural Moral Law

Question 1

Natural Moral Law is

Answer 1

• scientific/empirical approach to morality
• objective universal laws
• Aristotle: there are laws that can explain the way the world works and the same goes for ethics
• deontological

Question 2

What are the 4 layers to the law

Answer 2

• eternal (unknowable will of God)
• divine (what we learn through revelation
• natural
• human (legislation)

Question 3

Explain Natural Moral Law

Answer 3

• through observation and reason, we can see that we naturally tend towards God’s will
• “do good avoid evil” - fundamental natural moral law
• 5 primary precepts are teleological (WORLD)
• secondary precepts are deontological + derive from PP
• Apparent good (distracts from PP) + real goods
• Doctrine of Double Effect

Question 4

Strengths of Natural Moral Law

Answer 4

• More flexible due to mixture of teleological with deontological
• it uses reason and observation and that will stop you from observing the world incorrectly
  CP: Cartesian scepticism
  CCP: This applies to all empirical theories not just NL
• NL merely observes tendencies and it may produces generalisations, but these are generalisations of the majority

Question 5

Weaknesses of Natural Moral Law

Answer 5

• If the primary are more important than secondary, could you justify abandoning the deontological aspect of theory and make it teleological => potential for internal contradiction between deontological + teleological
• the assumption that people naturally tend towards God seems to have become irrelevant
• ordered society: revolutions?
• Defending innocent: link to ordered society and that the innocent in wars tends to be clalatral damage
• quantum mechanics shows there is disorder in the world => moral laws cannot be ordered
• only reflect the social conditions of his time (cf cultural relativism)
• Hume’s ‘Is – ought’ gap: there is no logical connection between a factual statement and a valued judgement (opinion) as you cannot convince people objectively of your opinion based on a fact; even if we agreed that humans do follow PP, it doesn’t logically follow that we ought to do it