ABSTRACT
How can our nature guide us? Concepts such as nature, which seem to combine reports of fact with judgments of
value, have worried moral philosophers. (There are plenty of other obvious examples, such as Importance, Dirt, Danger, Injury). 1 Calling something natural is sometimes just reporting that it happens; but usually it is also making a suggestion about how to treat it. Often it recommends some sort of acceptance, sometimes strong approval. Putting the point another way, we all believe that understanding what we are naturally fit for, capable of, and adapted to will help us to know what is good for us and, therefore, to know what to do. Common sense takes this view; so does Freudian psychology. So does traditional moral philosophy. Thus, Bishop Butler says that the Empiricist method in morals begins “from a matter of fact, namely, what the particular nature of man is, its several parts, their economy or constitution; from which it proceeds to determine what course of life it is that is correspondent to this whole nature.” 2 And the reason this works is that we can indeed only understand our values if we first grasp the given facts about our wants.
