of the New Natural Law Theory.
To support the incommensurability thesis, the proponents of the New Natural Law theory (John Finnis, Germain Grisez, Joseph Boyle, William May, Robert George, Alfonso Gomez-Lobo and others) point out that "good" is not used univocally. In order to be commensurable, the various goods with which ethics (or politics) is concerned must share the same ratio.
I don't have access to an introductory logic text to clean this part up--but would the NNLT defenders agree that good is not being used randomly and therefore purely equivocally? That there is a reason why the same word is being used? That good is being used analogically? And therefore there is some sort of order that grounds the analogy? (Moreover, if they make a distinction between a logical order and a moral order, would the logical order grounding the use of the name "good" in ethics/politics be either identical to or dependent upon the ordering of the goods within ethics/politics?) And would not the relation of before and after between the various goods permit a comparison of them to be made?
If this reasoning is sound, would something in the analytic philosophy background of some of the proponents prevent them from admitting this point?
"Good" is said of both ends and means, but in different ways, and it is said of the different ends analogously as well. If there is an order among ends, then is there not, as a result, an order among 'goods' as well?
Miscellaneous:
Alfonso Gomez-Lobo - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The President's Council on Bioethics: Alfonso Gómez-Lobo, Ph.D.
Monday, January 26, 2009
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