So what Hume was talking about when he addressed this is just that people sometimes come to is conclusions on the basis of ought statements and ought statements on the basis of is statements. Hume makes that point that no rule in deductive logic renders this move valid. You would have to defend some introduction rule for ought. Or I guess throw out deductive logic.
That said, cousin_it’s argument can be saved with a rather uncontroversial premise: The reason we don’t want to send this person adrift is because we believe the “He will continue to be tortured even though we aren’t observing him.” This seems uncontroversial, my problem with the argument is that a) I’m not sure the hypothetical successfully renders the case “unobservable” and b)I’m not sure our evolved moral intuitions are equipped to rule meaningfully on such events.
people sometimes come to is conclusions on the basis of ought statements and ought statements on the basis of is statements. Hume makes that point that no rule in deductive logic renders this move valid. You would have to defend some introduction rule for ought.
That is the first (Hume’s) half of the argument. The second half is G.E. Moore’s “open question” argument which tries to show that you can’t come up with a valid introduction rule for ought by the obvious trick of defining “ought” in terms of simple concepts that don’t already involve morality.
The irony here is the Hume is remembered for the “is/ought” thing even though he immediately proceeded to provide an account of “ought” in terms of “is”. The way he did it is to break morality into two parts. The first part might be called the “moral instinct”. But this is a real feature of human nature; it exists; it can be examined; it is something that lives entirely in the world of “is”.
Of course, no one who thinks that there is something “spiritual” or “supernatural” about morality is particularly bothered by the fact that moral instincts are completely natural entities made out of “is” stuff. They maintain that there a second part to morality—call it “true morality”—and that the “moral instinct” is just an imperfect guide to “true morality”. It is the “true morality” that owns the verb “ought” and hence it cannot be reduced to “is”.
Hume is perfectly happy to have the distinction made between “moral instincts” and “true morality”. He just disagrees that “true morality” is on any kind of higher plane. According to Hume, when you look closely, you will find that true morality, the ideal toward which our moral instincts tend, is nothing other than enlightened rational self interest, together with a certain amount of social convention—both of which can quite easily be reduced to “is”.
So, I’m claiming that Hume made the first part of the argument precisely because he intended to define “ought” in terms of “is”. But Moore came along later, didn’t buy Hume’s definition, and came up with the “open question” argument to ‘prove’ that no one else could define “ought” either.
Isn’t the problem that ought already has a definition?
“ought” is defined as “that stuff that you should do”
This definition sounds circular because it is. I can’t physically point to an ought like I can an apple, but “ought” is a concept all human beings have, separate from learning language.
“is” is actually another example of this.
So the reason you can’t define ought is the same reason that you can’t define an apple as those red roundish things and then define an apple as a being capable of flight.
We can define new words, like Hume-ought, Utilitarian-ought, Eliezer-ought, based on what various people or schools of thought say those words mean. But “ought=Hume-ought” or whatever is not a definition, it’s a statement of moral fact, and you can’t prove it unless you take a statement of moral fact as an assumption.
Isn’t the problem that ought already has a definition?
“ought” is defined as “that stuff that you should do”
In a sense, that is exactly the point that Moore is making with the “open question” argument.
But the situation is a bit more complicated. The stuff you should do can be further broken down into “stuff you should do for your own sake” and “stuff you should for moral reasons”. I.e. “ought” splits into two words—a practical-ought and a moral-ought.
Now, one way of looking at what Hume did is to say that he simply defined moral-ought as practical ought. A dubious procedure, as you point out. But another way of looking at what he did is that he analyzed the concept of ‘moral-ought’ and discovered a piece of it that seems to have been misclassified. That piece really should be classified as a variety of ‘practical-ought’. And then, having gotten away with it once, he goes on to do it again and again until there is nothing left of independent ‘moral-ought’. Dissolved away. What’s more, if you are not strongly pre-committed to defending the notion of an independent moral ‘ought’, the argument can be rather convincing.
And as a supplementary incentive, notice that by dissolving and relocating the moral ‘ought’ in this way, Hume has solved the second key question about morality: “Now that I know how I morally ought to behave, what reason do I have to behave as I morally ought to behave? Hume’s answer: “Because ‘moral ought’ is just a special case of ‘practical ought’.
And as a supplementary incentive, notice that by dissolving and relocating the moral ‘ought’ in this way, Hume has solved the second key question about morality: “Now that I know how I morally ought to behave, what reason do I have to behave as I morally ought to behave? Hume’s answer: “Because ‘moral ought’ is just a special case of ‘practical ought’.
Despite being a fellow-traveler in these areas, I had no idea Hume actually laid out all these pieces. I’ll have to go read some more Hume. I tend to defend it as straightforward application of Sidgwick’s definition of ethics coupled with the actual English meaning of ‘should’, but clearly a good argument preceding that by a century or two would be even better.
And, indeed, to drop all figurative expression, what hopes can we ever have of engaging mankind to a practice, which we confess full of austerity and rigour? Or what theory of morals can ever serve any useful purpose, unless it can show, by a particular detail, that all the duties, which it recommends, are also the true interest of each individual? The peculiar advantage of the foregoing system seems to be, that it furnishes proper mediums for that purpose.
So what Hume was talking about when he addressed this is just that people sometimes come to is conclusions on the basis of ought statements and ought statements on the basis of is statements. Hume makes that point that no rule in deductive logic renders this move valid. You would have to defend some introduction rule for ought. Or I guess throw out deductive logic.
That said, cousin_it’s argument can be saved with a rather uncontroversial premise: The reason we don’t want to send this person adrift is because we believe the “He will continue to be tortured even though we aren’t observing him.” This seems uncontroversial, my problem with the argument is that a) I’m not sure the hypothetical successfully renders the case “unobservable” and b)I’m not sure our evolved moral intuitions are equipped to rule meaningfully on such events.
That is the first (Hume’s) half of the argument. The second half is G.E. Moore’s “open question” argument which tries to show that you can’t come up with a valid introduction rule for ought by the obvious trick of defining “ought” in terms of simple concepts that don’t already involve morality.
The irony here is the Hume is remembered for the “is/ought” thing even though he immediately proceeded to provide an account of “ought” in terms of “is”. The way he did it is to break morality into two parts. The first part might be called the “moral instinct”. But this is a real feature of human nature; it exists; it can be examined; it is something that lives entirely in the world of “is”.
Of course, no one who thinks that there is something “spiritual” or “supernatural” about morality is particularly bothered by the fact that moral instincts are completely natural entities made out of “is” stuff. They maintain that there a second part to morality—call it “true morality”—and that the “moral instinct” is just an imperfect guide to “true morality”. It is the “true morality” that owns the verb “ought” and hence it cannot be reduced to “is”.
Hume is perfectly happy to have the distinction made between “moral instincts” and “true morality”. He just disagrees that “true morality” is on any kind of higher plane. According to Hume, when you look closely, you will find that true morality, the ideal toward which our moral instincts tend, is nothing other than enlightened rational self interest, together with a certain amount of social convention—both of which can quite easily be reduced to “is”.
So, I’m claiming that Hume made the first part of the argument precisely because he intended to define “ought” in terms of “is”. But Moore came along later, didn’t buy Hume’s definition, and came up with the “open question” argument to ‘prove’ that no one else could define “ought” either.
Isn’t the problem that ought already has a definition?
“ought” is defined as “that stuff that you should do”
This definition sounds circular because it is. I can’t physically point to an ought like I can an apple, but “ought” is a concept all human beings have, separate from learning language.
“is” is actually another example of this.
So the reason you can’t define ought is the same reason that you can’t define an apple as those red roundish things and then define an apple as a being capable of flight.
We can define new words, like Hume-ought, Utilitarian-ought, Eliezer-ought, based on what various people or schools of thought say those words mean. But “ought=Hume-ought” or whatever is not a definition, it’s a statement of moral fact, and you can’t prove it unless you take a statement of moral fact as an assumption.
In a sense, that is exactly the point that Moore is making with the “open question” argument.
But the situation is a bit more complicated. The stuff you should do can be further broken down into “stuff you should do for your own sake” and “stuff you should for moral reasons”. I.e. “ought” splits into two words—a practical-ought and a moral-ought.
Now, one way of looking at what Hume did is to say that he simply defined moral-ought as practical ought. A dubious procedure, as you point out. But another way of looking at what he did is that he analyzed the concept of ‘moral-ought’ and discovered a piece of it that seems to have been misclassified. That piece really should be classified as a variety of ‘practical-ought’. And then, having gotten away with it once, he goes on to do it again and again until there is nothing left of independent ‘moral-ought’. Dissolved away. What’s more, if you are not strongly pre-committed to defending the notion of an independent moral ‘ought’, the argument can be rather convincing.
And as a supplementary incentive, notice that by dissolving and relocating the moral ‘ought’ in this way, Hume has solved the second key question about morality: “Now that I know how I morally ought to behave, what reason do I have to behave as I morally ought to behave? Hume’s answer: “Because ‘moral ought’ is just a special case of ‘practical ought’.
Despite being a fellow-traveler in these areas, I had no idea Hume actually laid out all these pieces. I’ll have to go read some more Hume. I tend to defend it as straightforward application of Sidgwick’s definition of ethics coupled with the actual English meaning of ‘should’, but clearly a good argument preceding that by a century or two would be even better.
Try this