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Abstract
Philippa Foot, in her 2001 book Natural Goodness, argues that moral goodness belongs to a special category of goodness she calls natural goodness. Natural, in this context, is synonymous with intrinsic and autonomous. This is a category of goodness which is properly attributable only to living organisms themselves and to their parts, characteristics, and operations. Each organism, when operating well, actualizes a form of life characteristic of its species. A feature, or operation of an organism is good, according to natural goodness, if it is an Aristotelian necessity for some aspect of the life of the organism. Foot believes that her account of natural goodness implies a framework for moral discourse, within which moral disputes can take place. I argue that Foots account of natural goodness is incapable of grounding a useful framework, because humans are not in a position to construct a reasonably comprehensive account of human nature, which grounds moral judgments according to Foots theory. Foots project can be salvaged by adopting an account of normative evaluation that is grounded in Foots foundationalist account of natural goodness, but which also takes into account the problem of incomplete knowledge. I propose such an account of normative evaluation, and argue that it grounds a framework for moral discourse by recognizing, not only, the insights of Foots account of natural goodness, but also the fact of our incomplete knowledge.