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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 January 2009
The view that ‘ought’ cannot be deduced from ‘is’, credited to Hume as a major insight into the nature of morality, is surprisingly easy to refute. (1) What they are doing is evil. (2) Therefore, they ought not to do it. Here we have a case of deducing ‘ought’ from ‘is’. The conclusion follows, because ‘ought not’ is analytic to ‘evil’. ‘Ah, but that's just what is wrong with the example: the premise is not a pure “is”; it contains an “ought”, though this does not appear explicitly.’ This is true, of course; the inference would not be valid otherwise. Still, the example shows that the is/ought principle will not do as it stands.
1 This can also be shown by the following example: Smith wants (is desirous) to get X. The best way to get X is by doing Y. Therefore, Smith ought to do Y. Such examples are sometimes dismissed as producing mere ‘hypothetical imperatives’. The idea seems to be that the ‘wants’ of the first premise appears again in the conclusion, so that no ‘new relation’, of the kind questioned by Hume, is involved. (Cf. J. L.Mackie Ethics 65-66). What the conclusion is really saying, on this view, is that if Smith wants X, then he ought to do Y. But this is not what the conclusion is saying and there is no justification for interpreting it in this way. Someone who made the hypothetical statement would probably be in the position of not knowing, but merely supposing (hypothesizing), that Smith wants to get X; whereas someone who states the argument I have given would be in the position of knowing that Smith wants to get X. His argument is that since Smith wants to get X, he ought to do Y: the categorical conclusion would follow, other things being equal, from those premises.
2 Phil. Review 1964,Google Scholarreprinted in Hudson, W. D., ed., The Is/Ought Question (Macmillan 1969). Searle took a different course in a later discussion.CrossRefGoogle ScholarSee Speech Acts, ch. 8.Google Scholar
3 See papers by McLellan, J. E. and Komisar, B. P. and by James, Thomson in Hudson, op. cit.Google Scholar
4 Hume seems not to have noticed that his insight about terms of merit applies equally to terms of demerit, such as murder. (This example occurred, of course, in a separate discussion.) If he had, he would have seen that ‘ought not’ is analytic to ‘murder’, as I have argued above. And conversely, on the positive side, he might have seen that his examples of terms of merit could be used to illustrate the validity of arguments from ‘is’ to ‘ought’.—In the above discussion I have conceded that courage and other virtues are subject to a ceteris paribus qualification. But is this really so? Would we be prepared to describe, say, a foolhardy action as ‘courageous’? The arguments of Plato and Aristotle on this topic are too easily dismissed by Blackburn with his examples of ‘mad courage’ and ‘Dutch courage’. The latter is an idiom peculiar to English and one might well deny that what it names is really courage.Google Scholar
5 Mackie, however, among others, has suggested that moral concepts in general are institutional, so that recognition of the relevant moral ‘facts’ depends on one's endorsement of the corresponding institutions (Mackie 81).
6 For further discussion see Hanfling, O., ‘Promises, Games and Institutions’, Procs. of Arist. Soc. 1974-1975.Google Scholar
7 It might be questioned whether Hare's description is sufficient for the application of ‘courageous’. Might not the action be one that would be described as ‘rash’ or ‘foolish’, rather than ‘courageous’? (Cf. Plato, Protagoras.)Google Scholar
8 Hare's position has been criticized in a different way by Williams. He points out that one would not know how to apply a ‘purely descriptive’ counterpart of ‘courage’ to future cases, because what holds this concept together—what enables us to apply it—is the ‘evaluative perspective in which this kind of concept has its point’ (Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, 141). There is no value-free descriptive use which would capture the meaning of this word minus the commendatory element. This is an important observation, though perhaps Hare could retreat to the claim that the evaluative meaning can be detached in each case in which the word ‘courage’ had been applied. (There would be a kind of ‘token-token’ correspondence between the normal and ‘purely descriptive’ uses.) But, as I have argued, Hare's suppositions, even if granted, cannot serve to rescue the is/ought principle from counter-examples.Google Scholar
9 For a more recent comparison of moral with logical values, see Schueler, G. F. in Mind, October 1995.Google Scholar
10 I am grateful to Peter Hacker and, especially, to David Cockburn for help with previous drafts.