Page:Philosophical Review Volume 11.djvu/74

58 'description' and 'explanation,' the superficial character of which the author takes pains to set forth, we may nevertheless hold that our ultimate metaphysical notions exert a more intimate and determining influence upon our theory of morality than upon the physical sciences in general. It is certainly one of the tasks of metaphysics to ascertain what the ontologic significance of human personality maybe, and what relation it bears to the universe at large. And our attitude towards this question must inevitably affect our view of the problem of human conduct; whereas to the physicist it is of little moment what decision metaphysics may reach regarding the ultimate constitution of matter. If one's metaphysics leads to a view of man simply as one object among other objects, and the 'self' as the mere result of psychological and biological necessities, then the naturalistic categories that are applicable to all natural science will be considered as adequate also for the description of moral phenomena. But the very same facts of experience must necessarily be otherwise described, if one entertains a radically different conception of the 'self.' And our description will be an equally faithful 'empirical' account. This discussion can, however, be raised more profitably in a later portion of the present review.

Mr. Taylor has devoted several pages in his second chapter, which considers "some arguments in favor of a metaphysical ethic," to the conventional distinction between 'normative' and 'descriptive' science. He is of the opinion that the distinction between the 'ought' and the 'is' is not to be confined to the sphere of moral science—a fact which, he thinks, "may easily be seen by an appeal to the current language of unprejudiced thought" (p. 53). Logic, æsthetics, mathematics, in short, all science is normative. The only distinction is one of degree and not of kind. "What ought to be in all departments of inquiry, means what is demanded in order to make our accounts of experience consistent with what is assumed to be known of its general formal characteristics" (p. 56). "If ethics tells us how we ought to act, and æsthetics what we ought to admire, and logic how we ought to reason, histology, for instance, tells us what we ought to see under the microscope" (p. 54). Surely this is rather an easy solution of a distinction that some of us have fondly believed to be more deeply rooted, and it is rather startling to be told that we are obligated to see certain things under the microscope in the same sense that we are obligated to refrain from murder. Within the sphere of moral action, the obligation certainly has a reference to a different kind of voluntary control than that which can be exercised upon the cross-sections within the field of vision under a microscope. And an appeal to the common