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Hume On Is And Ought

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

W. D. Falk
W. D. Falk*
Affiliation:
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
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Extract

Unlike old soldiers, the rhetoric of the great neither dies nor fades away. And so Hume's celebrated ‘is-ought’ passage still provokes debate.

Hume was worried about the relation between ought statements and those supporting them: between ‘tolerence brings peace’ or ‘is God's will’, and ‘so one ought to be tolerant’. He denies the deducibility of the latter from the former, as the ‘ought’ expresses ‘a new relation or affirmation’, ‘entirely different from the others’. And this is commonly taken as saying that the ought statement is ‘different’ and non-deducible, because it is no longer a ‘purely factual statement’, to wit one that makes another ordinarily testable truth claim.

However, recent criticism, by W. D. Hudson and others, points out that Hume says other things seemingly inconsistent with this. In the passage, he mentions ‘ought’ and ‘virtue’ interchangeably, and ‘tolerance is virtuous’ as in the same boat as ‘one ought to be tolerant’. But, also, he treats the virtue of an action as sensibly discernible by the approbation which it evokes, and takes us to mean by a virtuous action that we will approve of it on contemplation.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 6 , Issue 3 , September 1976 , pp. 359 - 378
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1976

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References

1 Is and Ought, ed. W. D. Hudson

2 Hume, David An Inquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, ed. Hendel, Charles W. (New York: The liberal Arts Press, Inc., 1957), pp. 5–6.Google Scholar

3 Hume, David A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. Selby-Bigge, L.A. (London: Clarendon Press, 1967), pp. 456ff.Google Scholar

4 Treatise 456.

5 Treatise 456.

6 Treatise 276.

7 Compare Falk, W. D. “Hume on Practical Reason”, Philosophical Studies XXVII (1975), pp. 1–18.Google Scholar The account of Hume in Section Ill of the present paper follows closely that given on pp. 4–6 of the above-mentioned article.

8 Treatise 276.

9 Treatise 475.

10 Inquiry p. 6.

11 Inquiry p. 108.

12 Inquiry p. 109.

13 Treatise 468.

14 Treatise 469.

15 Ibid.

16 Treatise 458.

17 Inquiry, p. 112.

18 Ibid.

19 Treatise 469.

20 Treatise 475; Inquiry, p. 107.

21 Inquiry, p. 112.

22 Inquiry, p. 108.

23 Inquiry, p. 112.

24 Inquiry, p. 6.

25 Ibid.