Semantic Normativity and Naturalism

2007

Auslegung: a Journal of Philosophy, 1981

Cath. Law., 1980

Veatch's "sharp questions" are directed to those who deny that morals and ethics have any basis in nature or the facts of nature; to those who believe in a "wall of separation dividing 'is' from 'ought' and facts from values"; to those who "insist that ethical principles can have no grounding in fact and in nature"; to those who suppose an "absolute independence of ethics as over against metaphysics, or of morals with respect to a knowledge of nature," so that "principles of morals and ethics are really not to be thought [of] as being in any sense principles of being or of nature at all"; and to those who "consider the human good as being such an end or ends as human beings have an inclination towards" rather than "the ends that truly perfect human beings." Veatch's questions and objections, therefore, are not properly directed to either Germain Grisez or to myself. Neither Grisez nor I subscribe to any of the foregoing denials, affirmations, and suppositions; indeed, we reject them all. Neither of us has published anything which might reasonably be interpreted, in its context, as involving or entailing any such view. My invitation to Professor Veatch then, is twofold: first, to read what we have written, strictly and fully; second, and more importantly, to examine some of the serious questions which my book' addresses to those who interpret Aquinas and Aristotle in Veatch's manner.2 Who would guess, from Veatch's polemic, that I reached the same result in my book using the "Euthyphro test" as did Veatch. This was * Reader in Law, Fellow and Praelector in Jurisprudence at the University College, Oxford.

Cambridge University Press eBooks, 2018

With Hume's texts I follow a slight variation on the Hume Society's system of reference: title, book, section, and paragraph numbers followed by page references to the Selby-Bigge/Nidditch or Miller editions, following a forward slash.

2000

A logical investigation of the Is-Ought problem is in a subtle position with respect to the question of ethical cognitivism. It has to presuppose at certain portion of cognitivism, but it has to remain ignorant with respect to rest of it. Let me therefore start my talk with a differentiation in the concept of cognitivism. What a logical investigation of the Is-Ought problem has to assume is what I call (1.) Semantic Cognitivism: (a) Normative (ethical) assertions have semantical contents which can be represented as propositions, and (b) these propositions can be semantically evaluated by a meta-logical 'truth' or 'correctness' predicate.

Studia Philosophiae Christianae, 2018

Bernard Williams in his essay Ought and moral obligation (OMO) takes a stand on the proper logical interpretation of ‘ought’ sentences. He claims that ought being central to ethical reflection, that is, ought issuing personal requirements to agents, is to be interpreted like any ordinary ‘ought’ – as a propositional operator that is not indexed to a person. The driving idea behind Williams’s logical point about ‘ought’ seems to be that logical interpretation of ‘ought’ sentences with moral content in terms of indexed ought lacks semantic significance. John Broome disagrees. In a series of his recent writings devoted to an analysis of the notion of normative ought, he defends the view opposite to the one fostered by Williams. According to Broome, indexation of ‘ought’ to agent matters for extra-logical reasons; it is a way of exhibiting that ought has its normative owner, which in turn is important for determining the holder of responsibility for the ought in question. In the paper I argue that Broome may be right, but his arguments do not show that fact. In particular, I claim that he is wrong in thinking that indexation in terms of ownership is useful in the analysis of ‘ought’ sentences with agentive content, and thus nicely applies to moral ought being a paradigmatic example of such sentences. According to my diagnosis, Broome’s positive view about the semantic and ethical significance of interpreting agentive ought as indexed ought, suffers from one central problem. It alludes to an unsuccessful substantive semantics of ‘indexed ought’ that fails to give an accurate explanation of the meaning of the ought in question. I conclude the paper by offering an alternative to Broome’s substantive semantics of ‘indexed ought’, and explain why I think that it fares better in capturing the nature of the agentive ought.

Studia Philosophiae Christianae, 2019

Joanna klIMczyk 'oUgHt', ownersHip and agentiVe oUgHt: reMarKs on tHe seMantic Meaning of 'indexed oUgHt' Abstract. Bernard Williams in his essay Ought and moral obligation (OMO) takes a stand on the proper logical interpretation of 'ought' sentences. He claims that ought being central to ethical reflection, that is, ought issuing personal requirements to agents, is to be interpreted like any ordinary 'ought'-as a propositional operator that is not indexed to a person. The driving idea behind Williams's logical point about 'ought' seems to be that logical interpretation of 'ought' sentences with moral content in terms of indexed ought lacks semantic significance. John Broome disagrees. In a series of his recent writings devoted to an analysis of the notion of normative ought, he defends the view opposite to the one fostered by Williams. According to Broome, indexation of 'ought' to agent matters for extra-logical reasons; it is a way of exhibiting that ought has its normative owner, which in turn is important for determining the holder of responsibility for the ought in question. In the paper I argue that Broome may be right, but his arguments do not show that fact. In particular, I claim that he is wrong in thinking that indexation in terms of ownership is useful in the analysis of 'ought' sentences with agentive content, and thus nicely applies to moral ought being a paradigmatic example of such sentences. According to my diagnosis, Broome's positive view about the semantic and ethical significance of interpreting agentive ought as indexed ought, suffers from one central problem. It alludes to an unsuccessful substantive semantics of 'indexed ought' that fails to give an accurate explanation of the meaning of the ought in question. I conclude the paper by offering an alternative to Broome's substantive semantics of 'indexed ought' , and explain why I think that it fares better in capturing the nature of the agentive ought.

Charles R ed. (2010) Hume on ‘Is’ and ‘Ought’, Houndmills, Palgrave, pp. 1-38. , 2010

This contains 1) A methodological meditation in blank verse, defending a broadly collegial vision of the history of philosophy, as applied specifically to Hume. 2) A conspectus of the debate on the role of No-Ought-From-Is within the Treatise itself. What does Hume mean by ‘deduction’ and are the deductions from Is to Ought actually or only seemingly inconceivable? Why after having made so much of NOFI in the Treatise does Hume drop it in the EPM? 3) A summary of the debate surrounding Heathcote’s contention that NOFI is an instance of Hume’s Ockhamist ‘Master Argument’. 4) A potted history of the reception of NOFI from Reid and Bentham to Hudson. 4) A conspectus of the debate on the meta-ethical implications of NOFI, specifically targeting the idea that it implies either non-naturalism, non-cognitivism, expressivism or a fact/value split (I say ‘none of the above’). 5) A survey of four major responses to Prior’s famous counterexamples both to NOFI and to the conservativeness of logic (the thesis that in a valid argument you don’t get out what you haven’t put in). These are the New Zealand Plan (due to me) which devises and proves an amended version of NOFI (No-Non-Vacuous-Ought-From-Is), the Austrian Plan (due to Gerhard Schurz) which devises and proves another version of NOFI (No-Ought-Relevant-Ought-From-Is), the Scottish/Australian Plan (due to Gillian Russell and Greg Restall) which defends a revised version of NOFI by constructing and proving an implication barrier thesis, and the relevantist solution, (represented in this collection by Edwin Mares) which defeats Prior’s dilemma by lopping off one of its horns. 6) A summary of the debate about Stephen Maitzen’s interesting claim that though it may be impossible to derive substantively moral conclusions from FORMALLY non-moral premises, it is possible to derive substantively moral conclusions from SUBSTANTIVELY non-moral premises, thus rendering the formal proofs of his opponents redundant. (I say his argument presupposes an implausible form of taxonomic essentialism.)

2016

Handbook) or my jokes about George IV (ditto).] 0: INTRODUCTION Hume is widely supposed to have argued-and even perhaps to have proved-that you can't get an ought from an is, moral or evaluative conclusions from non-moral or 'factual' premises (T, 3.1.1.27/469-70). Searle is supposed by some (not least by himself) to have proved otherwise, to have shown that it is at any rate possible to derive an evaluative-though not, perhaps, a moralconclusion from purely "factual" or descriptive premises. The idea that such derivations are impossible is in Searle's view a fallacy-the Naturalistic Fallacy Fallacy. (Searle 'How to Derive "Ought" from "Is"' 1964: 125) Searle's basic idea is that certain kinds of performative speech acts-such as saying 'I will' in the course of a properly constituted marriage service-involve undertaking duties or obligations. That the bride and the bridegroom are undertaking certain duties is analytic, at least in the sense that if you don't understand at least roughly what the bride and the bridegroom are now supposed to do, you don't understand either the relevant speech-acts or the language-game in which they are embedded. Even a couple who go through the traditional marriage service-which, of course, includes the promise to forsake all others, keeping only unto thee-with the private and mutual reservation that theirs is to be an open marriage, do so in the knowledge that they are privately cancelling one of the obligations that married couples usually undertake. Thus to say that someone has performed a speech-act such as getting married, or making a promise-surely a factual, descriptive or empirical claim-entails that they have certain duties or obligations and thus, at least prima facie, that there are certain things that they ought to do. More generally, human institutions have a normative dimension to them. To understand the game of chess is to understand that if I put you in check, you ought to move your king, to block my attack or to take the attacking 1 1 Earlier versions of this chapter were read at Nottingham, Birmingham, Otago, Cambridge, Oxford and Düsseldorf. I thank the audiences for their comments, especially the Düsseldorf logicians. piece. Thus it follows from the factual or descriptive claim that Carlsen has just checked Anand that Anand is obliged to move his king, to block the attack or to take the attacking piece. I have several aims in this paper. To begin with, I want to insist on a distinction that Searle and his contemporaries generally failed to make: the distinction between the Logical Autonomy of Ethics and the Semantic Autonomy of Ethics. Several versions of the Logical Autonomy of ethics are provable (and thus true) but none implies the Semantic Autonomy of Ethics, which is a much more debatable claim. Secondly, I shall be arguing, as a subsidiary thesis, that Hume only subscribed to the Logical Autonomy of Ethics and that he was committed to claims which implicitly contradict Semantic Autonomy. Thus Hume thought, or at least implied, that with the aid of the relevant observations and explanations it is indeed possible to deduce an ought from an is, moral conclusions from "observations concerning human affairs", though the deductions in question require analytic bridge principles that are, in fact, false. If the Naturalistic Fallacy Fallacy is indeed a fallacy, it is a fallacy that Hume did not commit. Thirdly, I shall argue that Searle's views are not incompatible with Logical Autonomy but only Semantic Autonomy, which is fortunate for him, since if they were incompatible with Logical Autonomy, they would be provably false. Fourthly, I shall argue that, in so far as Searle succeeds in deriving evaluative conclusions from factual or descriptive sentences, the conclusions are not genuinely moral. The oughts in question are not moral or unqualified oughts. In so far as I can derive the conclusion that I ought to keep a promise from a set of non-moral premises, the conclusion won't be that I ought to keep the promise tout court, nor even that I ought to keep the promise other things being equal, but that other things being equal, I ought to keep the promise according to the rules of the promising game. Similarly, in so far