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Fact and Moral Value
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 October 2008
What connexion is there between factual statements concerning God or man and moral judgments? That is the question which occasions this paper. Not long ago moral philosophers were wont to say that there is a logical gap between the two sorts of utterance to which I have just referred: that nothing follows in terms of moral value from a statement of fact, no ‘ought’ from any ‘is’. They recognised only one restriction on what may be said in terms of ‘ought’ by what has been said in terms of ‘is’, namely that ‘ought’ implies ‘can’. It is manifest nonsense to say that anyone ought to do what he cannot do. But, this apart, they thought it possible without contradiction or anomaly to hold any conceivable factual belief and at the same time subscribe to any conceivable moral judgment. They would have held that it makes perfectly good sense to say, for example, ‘This is God’s will but it ought not to be done’ or ‘Men are not pigs but a good man will live like a pig’. Bizarre such judgments may be, they would have said, but nonsensical they are not. They conceived it to be their main business, as moral philosophers, to erect warning notices along the edge of the is-ought gap so that contemporary moralists would not fall headlong into it as so many of their predecessors, in less enlightened ages, had done.
page 129 note 1 The papers in this Section were read at the annual meeting of the Christian Philosophers' Group which was held at the Queen's College, Oxford during September 1968.
page 129 note 2 There is even dispute as to whether Hume himself believed in it: cf MacIntyre, A. C., ‘Hume on “Is” and “Ought”’, Philosophical Review, 1959Google Scholar and comments thereon by Atkinson, R. F., Philosophical Review, 1961Google Scholar, Flew, A., and Hunter, G., Philosophy 1962 and 1963Google Scholar, and myself, Philosophical Quarterly, 1964. These papers are included with others in The Is-Ought Qusslion, edited by Hudson, W. D. (Macmillan) forthcoming.Google Scholar
page 130 note 1 This account of institutional facts is written in the light of inter alia, Anscombe, G. E. M., ‘Modern Moral Philosophy’, Philosophy, 1958CrossRefGoogle Scholarand Searle, J. R. ‘How to Derive “Ought” from “Is”’, Philosophical Review, 1964.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
page 130 note 2 There are institutions, e.g. money, which it would be odd to describe as either activities or relations.
page 131 note 1 Op. Cit., pp. 3–7.Google Scholar
page 131 note 2 ‘On Brute Facts’, Analysis, 1958.Google Scholar
page 131 note 3 E.g. Ross, W. D., Foundations of Ethics (Oxford 1939), p. 85.Google Scholar
page 133 note 1 Cf. Flew, A., ‘On not deriving “ought” from “is”’, Analysis, 1964 and Searle, op. cit., p. 57 n.Google Scholar
page 133 note 2 E.g.Flew, , op. cit.Google Scholar
page 133 note 3 I argue this against Flew in ‘The “is-ought” controversy', Analysis, 1965.Google Scholar
page 134 note 1 ‘On Brute Facts’, p. 70.Google Scholar
page 134 note 2 Cf. The Language of Morals (Oxford 1952), chap. 7. I ought perhaps to say that the account of Hare's philosophy which I criticise below takes no account of his later writings. I consider his philosophy far more sympathetically and carefully in Modern Moral Philosophy (forthcoming from Macmillan).Google Scholar
page 135 note 1 Cf. Warnock, G. J., Contemporary Moral Philosophy (London 1967), p. 79, note 27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
page 136 note 1 Warnock, . op. cit., p. 47.Google Scholar
page 136 note 2 See especially Foot, P., ‘Moral Beliefs’, Proc. Art. Soc., 1958.Google Scholar
page 137 note 1 Phillips, D. Z. and Mounce, H. O. ‘On Morality's Having a Point’, Philosophy, 1965.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
page 137 note 2 Op. cit., p. 318.Google Scholar