Is And Ought

In his book The Ethical Project, Philip Kitcher (2011) offers a naturalistic account of Ethics, which he dubs Pragmatic Naturalism. Based in evidence from primatology, archeology and anthropology, and some speculation from evolutionary biology, his account is intended to be normative and not merely descriptive, therefore it has to fulfill a challenge posed by Hume (1978) that any normative naturalistic account of ethics has to fulfill: how to bridge the is-ought gap, i.e. how can a prescription of an ethical practice be made from purely descriptive premises. The purpose of this paper is to explore the details of how this challenge could be met using the framework of pragmatic naturalism. My answer will be that pragmatic naturalism is able to give a logically valid argument from ‘is’ to ‘ought’ using descriptive claims and conceptual truths as premises. Its normative force is not delivered as an absolute authority—as some moral realists would like—but that is not a problem for pragmatic naturalism, since it does not have that aim.

There are at least two kinds of normativity. They can easily be distinguished, but nevertheless they are sometimes confused. This article aims to clarify the distinction and thereby to prevent more confusion. The one kind of normativity has to do with what ought to be done, or what ought to be the case. In connection with this kind of normativity, I will use the word “deontic”, a term which is traditionally used in the logic for ought-to-do and ought-to-be.
The other kind of normativity has to do with facts that exist as the result of applying a rule. In connection with this kind of normativity, I will use the word “rule-based”. Rule-based facts are also known as “institutional facts”. 
Being deontic and being rule-based do not exclude each other. However, being deontic is not a subcategory of being rule-based, and neither is it the other way around. Therefore there are two kinds of normativity, which are (onto)logically independent of each other,

Almost sixty years ago Philippa Foot published an article that began: To many people it seems that the most notable advance in moral philosophy during the past fifty years or so has been the refutation of naturalism; and they are a little shocked that at this late date such an issue should be reopened. It is easy to understand their attitude: given certain apparently unquestionable assumptions, it would be about as sensible to try to reintroduce naturalism as to try to square the circle. Those who see it like this have satisfied themselves that they know in advance that any naturalistic theory must have a catch in it somewhere, and are put out at having to waste more time exposing an old fallacy. This paper is an attempt to persuade them to look critically at the premises on which their arguments are based. 1 The paper in question was one of a number written by Foot around the time that were highly successful in reopening the issue of naturalism in ethics. Nowadays no one can just take it for granted that naturalism has been refuted, that there is a sharp distinction (or indeed any clear distinction) between fact and value or that it is impossible to derive an 'ought' from an 'is'. This is not to say that the naturalists have been completely victorious, of course; only that naturalism is today a live option. I shall argue that Foot's paper contains an important insight and an equally important mistake; and that the insight and the mistake are linked. I believe that the thinking behind it has influenced the subsequent course of moral philosophy to a quite remarkable extent and that this has been in some ways beneficial and in some ways harmful – not surprisingly, if I am right in seeing it as containing both truth and error. I do not want to exaggerate the influence of this one paper 2 but I do not know of any other that so neatly encapsulates the coupled insight and mistake. The anti-naturalism that Foot is attacking she characterises as follows: It would not be an exaggeration to say that the whole of moral philosophy, as it is now widely taught, rests on a contrast between statements of fact and evaluations, which runs something like this: The truth or falsity of statements of fact is shewn by means of evidence; and what counts as evidence is laid down in the meaning of the expressions occurring in the statement of fact … It follows that no two people can make the same statement and count completely different things as evidence; in the end one at least of them could be convicted of linguistic ignorance. It also follows that if a man is given good evidence for a factual conclusion he cannot just refuse to accept the conclusion on the ground that in his scheme of things this evidence is not evidence at all. 3 But, on the view she is criticising, [w]ith evaluations, however, it is different. An evaluation is not connected logically with the factual statements on which it is based. One man may say that a thing is good because of some fact about it, and another may refuse to take that fact as any evidence, for nothing is laid down in the meaning of 'good' which connects it with one piece of 'evidence' rather than another. It follows that a moral eccentric could argue to moral conclusions from quite idiosyncratic premises; he could say, for instance, that a man was a good man because he clasped and unclasped his hands and never turned NNE after

[Abstract] David Hume famously claimed that there is a huge gap between a is (fact) statement and an ought (value) statement, as they are two entirely different types of statement, and one cannot derive an ought statement from a is statement. Later, G. E. Moore coined the equally if not more memorable term " naturalistic fallacy, " understood to mean that it is a fallacy to derive an ought statement from a is statement. While this proclaimed dichotomy between is and ought has been held as a dogma by most students of philosophy, there has never been a shortage of attempts to derive ought from is. In this chapter, I shall first examine two formalistic attempts to do the derivation and show why they are not successful. Then I shall discuss a substantive attempt to derive ought from is by contemporary Aristotelian virtue ethicists, particularly Rosalind Hursthouse. I argue that, while such an attempt proceeds in the right direction, its conception of human nature, used as the is statement from which the ought statement is to be derived, is problematic. I shall then examine Zhu Xi's neo-Confucian attempt to derive ought from is, which in general structure is similar to the neo-Aristotelian one but starts with a different is statement. I argue that this neo-Confucian derivation is more promising.

This article describes how the facts in social reality take an intermediate position between objective facts and purely subjective 'facts'. These social facts can in turn be subdivided into constructivist and non-constructivist facts. The defining difference is that non-constructivist facts are completely determined by a consensus between the members of a social group, while constructivist facts are founded in such a consensus but can nevertheless be questioned. Ought fact are such constructivist facts. Because they are founded in social reality, a naturalistic theory of ought facts is attractive. Because constructivist facts are always open to questioning, we have an explanation why the facts of social reality may found ought facts, but are nevertheless not the final word about them.

Neste artigo pretendemos caracterizar a questão da chamada falácia naturalista e avaliar como John Searle a aborda. Para isso, trataremos de forma breve os argumentos de David Hume e G. E. Moore para posteriormente analisarmos como as objeções de Searle à suposta falácia se relacionam com tais abordagens e se obteve êxito.

Mackie’s claim that in general courage benefits its possessor seems inconsistent with his ‘error theory’ of value.  But how plausible is it in itself?  I suggest that his arguments for the claim fail in the same way as the arguments of those who more explicitly embrace ‘virtue ethics’ fail.  We do not know any way of objectively weighing risks against other considerations, of deciding whether something is ‘worth the risk’.  Since I have no PROOF that there could not be a way, I prefer to speak of ‘ignorance’ rather than ‘error’ here.

I argue that Mackie's thesis about courage and self-interest is neither consistent with his 'error theory' of value nor convincing in itself.  The question of the objectivity of value needs to be distinguished from that of whether one value can objectively outweigh or outrank another.  This is so even when the only values under consideration are self-interested ones.