Clarification

I did not make my points very clear in my last two posts, so I will try and do a better job with that here. As for my comments on Foot, the essense of my complaint dealt with what I believed to be the arbitrariness of her criteria for determing that something was a good one of its kind. For example, take two rabbits one of which has traits that are good for survival while possessing terrible traits for reproduction whereas the other rabbit has traits that are good for reproduction while possessing terrible traits for survival. From here I want to know which is a better rabbit on Foot's account. (Clearly a rabbit that has good traits for both goals would be better than these two, but right now I only want to talk about these two rabbits.) My point is that the only way that an evaluation can be made favoring one rabbit over the other is by emphasizing survival or reproduction and what I can not see is how such an emphasis can be made without being arbitrary. What is it about rabbitness that favors one set of qualities over another? I don not think that Foot answers this question at all.

As for my counter-example, I think that the thought I had may have merit but my exposition of it was poor. What I was trying to say is that given that on a McD type theory one can be motivated to act on the basis of facts without needing any sort of feelings or sentiments, then a virtuous person could do the right thing without having any feeling about it whatsoever or even any desire with regards to it. If this is true, then it would also seem to be true that on a McD type view a person could be motivated by aspects of reality (just the facts) to do X, while all his feelings of compassion and sympathy made him desire to do Y. I think that it could also be that a McD type view could say that doing X is the right thing to do in these circumstances regardless of the fact that compassion and sympathy point one toward doing Y. Now if this is true and feelings, sentiments, emotions, wants and desires play no role in the moral quality then it seems as thought it would be possible for a totally heartless individual (so long as he acts rightly) to be a model of virtue, while a person full of compassion (who acts on that basis) to be a model of vice. Now, of course, it is doubtful that compassion and right action on a McD type view are often at odds, but there certainly seems to be a logical space for them to be so. And, if this is true, my point is that the compassionate act may be viewed as wrong given a McD conception. These seems very odd to me and unlikely to be true. So then to clarify, my point is that there is a possible gap for the McDowell sort of theory between acting rightly and acting compassionately. My worry is that the consequence of such a gap seems very implausible.