In this paper, I examine three mutually inconsistent claims that are commonly attributed to Hume: all beliefs are involuntary; some beliefs are subject to normative appraisal; and that ‘Ought implies Can’. I examine the textual support for such ascription, and the options for dealing with the puzzle posed by their inconsistency. In what follows I will put forward some evidence that Hume maintains each of the three positions outlined above. I then examine what I call the ‘prior voluntary action’ solution. (...) I argue that this position in any form fails to account for synchronic rationality. I then raise more specific objections depending on how we disambiguate the position, which can be read as either granting beliefs derivative voluntariness, or as denying their normative significance; the former version is inconsistent with Hume’s treatment of natural abilities, while the latter falls to a regress given Hume’s thesis regarding the inability of actions and passions to be subject to epistemic normativity. I then propose to reject instead for two reasons: first, the weakness of textual support for such an ascription; secondly, Hume’s explicit recognition of the irrelevance of involuntariness to normative evaluation in the moral case. (shrink)

The is-ought gap is Hume’s claim that we can’t get an ‘ought’ from just ‘is’s. Prior (“The Autonomy of Ethics,” 1960) showed that its most straightforward formulation, a staple of introductory philosophy classes, fails. Many authors attempt to resurrect the claim by restricting its domain syntactically or by reformulating it in terms of models of deontic logic. Those attempts prove to be complex, incomplete, or incorrect. I provide a simple reformulation of the is-ought gap that closely fits Hume’s description of (...) it. My formulation of the gap avoids the proposed counterexamples from Prior and offers a natural explanation of why they seem compelling. Moreover, I show that my formulation of the gap is guaranteed by standard theories of the semantics of normative terms, and that provides a more general reason to accept it. (shrink)

The inoffensive title of Section 1.4.7 of Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature, ‘Conclusion of this Book’, belies the convoluted treatment of scepticism contained within. It is notoriously difficult to decipher Hume’s considered response to scepticism in this section, or whether he even has one. In recent years, however, one line of interpretation has gained popularity in the literature. The ‘usefulness and agreeableness reading’ (henceforth U&A) interprets Hume as arguing in THN 1.4.7 that our beliefs and/or epistemic policies are justified via (...) their usefulness and agreeableness to the self and others; proponents include Ardal (in Livingston & King (eds.) Hume: a re-evaluation, 1976), Kail (in: Frasca-Spada & Kail (eds.) Impressions of Hume, 2005), McCormick (Hume Stud 31:1, 2005), Owen (Hume’s reason, 1999), and Ridge (Hume Stud 29:2, 2003), while Schafer (Philosophers, forthcoming) also defends an interpretation along these lines. In this paper, I will argue that although U&A has textual merit, it struggles to maintain a substantive distinction between epistemic and moral justification—a distinction that Hume insists on. I then attempt to carve out the logical space for there being a distinctly epistemic notion of justification founded on usefulness and agreeableness. However, I find that such an account is problematic for two reasons: first, it cannot take advantage of the textual support for U&A; secondly, it is incompatible with other features of the text. (shrink)

Was Hume here claiming or implying that propositions about what men ought to do are radically different from purely factual propositions, and that they cannot ever be entailed by any purely factual propositions? No, despite Mr Hare, Professor Nowell-Smith, Professor Ayer, Miss Murdoch, Professor Flew, Mr Basson, and The Observer's Brief Guide to philosophy.

My first paper on the Is/Ought issue. The young Arthur Prior endorsed the Autonomy of Ethics, in the form of Hume’s No-Ought-From-Is (NOFI) but the later Prior developed a seemingly devastating counter-argument. I defend Prior's earlier logical thesis (albeit in a modified form) against his later self. However it is important to distinguish between three versions of the Autonomy of Ethics: Ontological, Semantic and Ontological. Ontological Autonomy is the thesis that moral judgments, to be true, must answer to a realm (...) of sui generis non-natural PROPERTIES. Semantic autonomy insists on a realm of sui generis non-natural PREDICATES which do not mean the same as any natural counterparts. Logical Autonomy maintains that moral conclusions cannot be derived from non-moral premises.-moral premises with the aid of logic alone. Logical Autonomy does not entail Semantic Autonomy and Semantic Autonomy does not entail Ontological Autonomy. But, given some plausible assumptions Ontological Autonomy entails Semantic Autonomy and given the conservativeness of logic – the idea that in a valid argument you don’t get out what you haven’t put in – Semantic Autonomy entails Logical Autonomy. So if Logical Autonomy is false – as Prior appears to prove – then Semantic and Ontological Autonomy would appear to be false too! I develop a version of Logical Autonomy (or NOFI) and vindicate it against Prior’s counterexamples, which are also counterexamples to the conservativeness of logic as traditionally conceived. The key concept here is an idea derived in part from Quine - that of INFERENCE-RELATIVE VACUITY. I prove that you cannot derive conclusions in which the moral terms appear non-vacuously from premises from which they are absent. But this is because you cannot derive conclusions in which ANY (non-logical) terms appear non-vacuously from premises from which they are absent Thus NOFI or Logical Autonomy comes out as an instance of the conservativeness of logic. This means that the reverse entailment that I have suggested turns out to be a mistake. The falsehood of Logical Autonomy would not entail either the falsehood Semantic Autonomy or the falsehood of Ontological Autonomy, since Semantic Autonomy only entails Logical Autonomy with the aid of the conservativeness of logic of which Logical Autonomy is simply an instance. Thus NOFI or Logical Autonomy is vindicated, but it turns out to be a less world-shattering thesis than some have supposed. It provides no support for either non-cognitivism or non-naturalism. (shrink)

One of the most persistent issues of contemporary moral theory is the possibility of inferring moral judgments from factual nonmoral judgments. Another way of stating this issue is to inquire into the possibility of inferring "ought-judgments" from "is-judgments." It is generally accepted that the first person to deny the possibility of this inference was David Hume. The denial is supposed to be articulated in the last paragraph of the section of A Treatise of Human Nature entitled "Moral Distinctions not derived (...) from Reason," pages 469-470 in the Selby-Bigge edition. Hereafter I shall refer to this paragraph, the "is-oughtparagraph," as (I-0). The purpose of this article is to show that in (I-0) Hume makes no such denial, and to outline the implications of this revelation. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:64. ON HUME'S IS-OUGHT THESIS The famous thesis of Hume about "is" and "ought" I take to be, as I believe it has generally been taken to be: (1) For any factual statement e and any ethical statement h, h is not deducible from e. My object in these brief notes is neither to defend nor to attack (1), but just to point out certain mistakes which have been (...) made, or are apt to be made, about (1), or about what Hume's thesis is. A. Max Black has taken Hume's thesis to be that "only statements of fact can follow- from statements of facti* ¡ a thesis, Black thinks, which Popper and "many other philos c be ; osophers" believe. That is. Black took Hume's thesis to (2)For any factual e and any non-factual h, h is not deducible. from e. It is certain, however, that Popper does not believe (2), and I hope it is untrue that many other philosophers believe it. For (2) is obviously false, and on the contrary, every factual statement has at least one nonfactual consequence; since from any factual statement 'f, the statement *f or not-f, which is not factual, is deducible. But this leaves Hume's thesis (1) untouched, since there is no excuse for confusing it with the foolish thesis (2). B. If a statement h is not deducible from a statement e, then given e, the falsity of h is possible; or in other words, h has less than maximum probability in relation to e. So part at least of the content of Hume's thesis (1) is: (3)For any factual e and ethical h, P(h/e). (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hume Studies Volume 27, Number 1, April 2001, pp. 3-83 Moral Skepticism and Moral Naturalism in Hume's Treatise NICHOLAS L. STURGEON Section I I believe that David Hume's well-known remarks on is and ought in his Treatise of Human Nature (T 469-70)1 have been widely misunderstood, and that in consequence so has their relation to his apparent ethical naturalism and to his skepticism about the role of reason in (...) morality. My aim in this paper is to display their connection with these larger issues in Hume's work by placing them in a more illuminating light. Readers may wonder whether there is anything left to say about the passage containing these remarks; they may also share Barry Stroud's suspicion that the vast literature focused on this one paragraph has "given it an importance and point out of all proportion to its actual role in the text of the Treatise."2 But I have some new things to say. I agree, moreover, that many recent discussions, in projecting twentieth-century assumptions onto Hume's text, have accorded this passage the wrong sort of importance: that is part of what I want to correct. But getting clear about what Hume is saying here is, I shall argue, a way of moving familiar and obviously central questions about his views on morality into an unfamiliar but revealing focus. Hume's is-ought thesis is commonly, and I believe correctly, seen as an application of his more general skepticism about the capacity of reason to discover "moral distinctions." But that general skepticism is usually taken, in turn, to conflict with those many passages in which Hume Nicholas L. Sturgeon is Professor of Philosophy, Sage School of Philosophy, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853-3201, USA. e-mail: [email protected] 4 Nicholas L. Sturgeon appears to say, in a reductive and naturalistic vein, that ascriptions of moral virtue and vice simply state certain empirical facts, facts about our own sentiments. My central thesis, however, is that Hume's view that there is a logical gap between is and ought is not merely consistent with his reductive naturalism, but actually depends on it. It is precisely because moral ascriptions state the facts that they do about our sentiments that no ought can be derived from an is and, a bit more generally, that reason is unable to discover moral distinctions. Hume's skepticism about reason in ethics depends, I shall argue, on his reductive ethical naturalism. This is not the usual understanding of Hume's views, and it will require careful explanation and defense. I shall proceed in several stages. My first step, in Section II, will be to argue that Hume's naturalism is at least consistent with his skepticism about reason, and in particular with his remarks about is and ought. I shall show this by focusing on a difficulty often taken to epitomize the conflict between these two strains in his thought: namely, that the paragraph containing these remarks (T 469-70: henceforth, the is-ought paragraph) and the one immediately preceding it (which I shall call the matter -of-fact paragraph (T 468-9)) appear, on their most natural readings, flatly to contradict one another.3 On the most common reading of the is-ought paragraph, it assumes the existence of two classes of statements, «-statements and oM^hr-statements, and declares that no member of the latter class can be derived entirely from members of the former. In the preceding paragraph, however, Hume appears in the guise of an ethical naturalist and subjectivist, and, if we take him at his word, simply equates a moral judgment with one asserting what he himself calls a "matter of fact," albeit a psychological fact about oneself: So that when you pronounce any action or character to be vicious, you mean nothing, but that from the constitution of your nature you have a feeling or sentiment of blame from the contemplation of it. (T 469) But, one supposes, if a moral assessment of an action or character is equivalent in meaning to a description of one's sentiments, then it can be derived from that description, and there... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:'Is* and Ought' in Context: Maclntyre's Mistake1 Murray MacBeth (1)What drives Hume to the conclusion that morality must be understood in terms of, explained and justified by reference to, the place of the passions and desires in human life is his initial assumption that either morality is the work of reason or it is the work of the passions and his own apparently conclusive arguments that it cannot be (...) the work ofreason. (2)At the same time as they [Diderot, Hume, Kierkegaard and Kant] agree largely on the character of morality, they agree also upon what a rationaljustification ofmorality would have to be. Its key premises would characterise some feature or features of human nature; and the rules of morality would then be explained and justified as being those rules which a being possessing just such a nature could be expected to accept. (3)[Hume] treats this ground for the justification of the rules of property and this explanation ofthem as holding for all times andplaces, prosperous as well as unprosperous, ever since the rules were first artificially contrived. (4)It isjust suchreasoning which Hume advanced both to explain and to justify the rules ofjustice, conceived as he conceived them, and the obligations imposed by those rules, understood as he understood them. One characteristic common to these four quotations from Alasdair Maclntyre's influential books After Virtue and Whose Justice? Which Rationality? is a yoking which is neither explained nor justified in the surrounding context, of the concepts of explanation and justification. Hume is said to be concerned both to explain and to justify (1) "morality," (2) "the rules of morality," (3) "the rules of property," and (4) "the rules ofjustice," and it seems that in each case he used the same argument to do both. My aim in this paper is to argue that Maclntyre altogether fails to dojustice to the distinctionbetweenjustification and Volume XVII Number 2 41 MURRAY MACBETH explanation, a distinction which is of the utmost importance for the interpretation ofHume—and notjust ofHume's moral philosophy. I take as my target, however, not either ofthe books from which I drew my opening quotations, but a much earlier article ofMaclntyre's, "Hume on 'Is' and 'Ought'," in which the ideas expressed in the above quotations are foreshadowed. An examination ofaspects ofthis article will enable me to show, if I am right, how Maclntyre goes startlingly astray. That 1959 article set in motion a lively discussion of the interpretation of Hume: no less than six articles, by Atkinson, Flew, Hudson, and Hunter, all contributions to the debate sparked off by Maclntyre, are reprinted in either or both of Chappell (1968) and Hudson (1969).6 I am in broad agreement with the criticisms made of his article by Atkinson and Flew; but I think it instructive to identify, as they failed to do, Maclntyre's fundamental mistake, which, I shall argue at the end ofthis paper, resulted from the very kind ofconfusion against which Hume warned his readers, and warned them in precisely that passage with which Maclntyre was primarily concerned, the famous paragraph about "is" and "ought" at the end of the opening section of book 3 of Hume's Treatise. My identification of Maclntyre's mistake involves putting that "is"-"ought" paragraph in context: in both, ambitiously on my part, the broad context of the Treatise as a whole, and also the more immediate context of the opening sections of book 3. Maclntyre wrote his article less as a contribution to an ongoing discussion of Hume than as a contribution to an ongoing discussion of ethical naturalism. Mid-twentieth century anti-naturalists, as Maclntyre pointed out, often invoked the "is"-"ought" paragraph as putting forward a view which was direct a ancestor oftheir own. Hare, for instance, appeals in his article "Universalisability" to what he calls "Hume's Law,"7 with a footnote referring the reader to this paragraph of the Treatise; the "law" in question is, roughly, that "ought"-judgements cannot be deduced from "is"-judgements. Maclntyre argued that such an interpretation of Hume was mistaken; and a crucial part ofhis evidence was the claim that, "ifthe currentinterpretation ofHume'sviews on "is'and'ought... (shrink)

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. (shrink)

As is well known, the Humean account of causal inference gives a central location to inference habits. Some of these habits one can discipline. Thus, one can so discipline oneself as to reason in accordance with the “rules by which to judge of causes and effects”, that is, one can discipline oneself to think scientifically, rather than, say, in accordance with the rules of prejudice, or of superstition. All such judgments, even those of science, are, however, upon the Humean account (...) fallible. Some, or rather very many, have raised the issue about how any such causal judgment or inference is justified. That is, how can such inference habits be justified, shown to be reasonable. Hume meets this challenge by arguing that there are some habits all men do and must have. Because we must have them we ought to have them. They are, therefore, justified. (shrink)

The formulation and proof of Hume’s Law and several related inference barrier theses.

- Peter Railton1 Railton's remark is accurate; contemporary philosophers almost invariably suppose that morality is more vulnerable than empirical science to scepticism. Yet David Hume apparently embraces an inversion of this twentieth century orthodoxy.2 In book I of the Treatise, he claims that the understanding, when it reflects upon itself, "entirely subverts itself" (T 1. 4.7.7; SBN 267) while, in contrast, in book III he claims that our moral faculty, when reflecting upon itself, acquires "new force" (T 3.3.6.3; SBN 619). (...) Such passages suggest Hume's view is that morality's claims on us are justified, whereas the understanding's claims are not -- that scepticism about empirical science, but not morality, is irresistible. However, this interpretation does not accurately reflect Hume's position. Indeed, any interpretation which has Hume concluding that the understanding's claims on us are not justified faces an obvious worry - it makes nonsense of the rest of his naturalistic project, including, but not limited to, his description and justification of our moral faculty. For in defending his account of our moral faculty and, perhaps more clearly, in arguing against those who believe in miracles, Hume inescapably presupposes that the understanding's claims on us are in some sense justified. In light of Hume's meticulous and enthusiastic pursuit of his larger naturalistic project, one might even be tempted to conclude that Hume never really thought his sceptical arguments were sound. It would, however, be a mistake to submit to this temptation -- to do so would be to ignore the last part of book I of the Treatise, in which Hume evidently does find such arguments to be sound. Hume is undeniably impressed by scepticism about the. (shrink)

There seems a potential tension between Hume's naturalistic project and his normative ambitions. Hume adopts what I call a methodological naturalism: that is, the methodology of providing explanations for various phenomena based on natural properties and causes. This methodology takes the form of introducing ‘the experimental method of reasoning into moral subjects’, as stated in the subtitle of the Treatise; this ‘experimental method’ seems a paradigmatically descriptive one, and it remains unclear how Hume derives genuinely normative prescriptions from this methodology. (...) In resolving this problem, I will argue that Hume's naturalistic methodology – that is, his ‘experimental philosophy’, or what has come to be known as his experimental method – consists of the systematization of phenomena pertaining to human nature. In applying his experimental method to normative subjects, Hume systematizes our normative judgements, deriving general principles of normative justification; he then reflexivel... (shrink)

Discussion on whether Hume's treatment of induction is descriptive or normative has usually centred on Hume's negative argument, somewhat neglecting the positive argument. In this paper, I will buck this trend, focusing on the positive argument. First, I argue that Hume's positive and negative arguments should be read as addressing the same issues . I then argue that Hume's positive argument in the Enquiry is normative in nature; drawing on his discussion of scepticism in Section 12 of the Enquiry, I (...) explain a framework by which he provides what I call consequent justification for our inductive practices in his positive argument. Based on this, I argue that his negative argument in the Enquiry should similarly be read as normative in nature. (shrink)

There are various ways of characterising Hume’s dictum that ‘you can’t get an ought from an is.’ Contributors to the literature directly addressing this question focus on logical characterisations of autonomy theses. Such theses maintain that certain logical relations do not obtain between ethical and non-ethical sentences, for instance that no non-ethical sentences logically entail an ethical sentence. I argue that this focus on logical autonomy is a mistake. The thesis so important to our metaethicists is not a logical thesis (...) but a metaphysical one. The relevant metaphysical autonomy thesis maintains that ethical facts are not fully grounded just in non-ethical facts. I defend this characterization. I also defend the converse thesis that all facts partly grounded in ethical facts are ethical facts. I then argue that this pair of theses can help with debates about the plausibility of nihilism and the classification of revisionary metaethical theses. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:'Is* and Ought' in Context: Maclntyre's Mistake1 Murray MacBeth (1)What drives Hume to the conclusion that morality must be understood in terms of, explained and justified by reference to, the place of the passions and desires in human life is his initial assumption that either morality is the work of reason or it is the work of the passions and his own apparently conclusive arguments that it cannot be (...) the work ofreason. (2)At the same time as they [Diderot, Hume, Kierkegaard and Kant] agree largely on the character of morality, they agree also upon what a rationaljustification ofmorality would have to be. Its key premises would characterise some feature or features of human nature; and the rules of morality would then be explained and justified as being those rules which a being possessing just such a nature could be expected to accept. (3)[Hume] treats this ground for the justification of the rules of property and this explanation ofthem as holding for all times andplaces, prosperous as well as unprosperous, ever since the rules were first artificially contrived. (4)It isjust suchreasoning which Hume advanced both to explain and to justify the rules ofjustice, conceived as he conceived them, and the obligations imposed by those rules, understood as he understood them. One characteristic common to these four quotations from Alasdair Maclntyre's influential books After Virtue and Whose Justice? Which Rationality? is a yoking which is neither explained nor justified in the surrounding context, of the concepts of explanation and justification. Hume is said to be concerned both to explain and to justify (1) "morality," (2) "the rules of morality," (3) "the rules of property," and (4) "the rules ofjustice," and it seems that in each case he used the same argument to do both. My aim in this paper is to argue that Maclntyre altogether fails to dojustice to the distinctionbetweenjustification and Volume XVII Number 2 41 MURRAY MACBETH explanation, a distinction which is of the utmost importance for the interpretation ofHume—and notjust ofHume's moral philosophy. I take as my target, however, not either ofthe books from which I drew my opening quotations, but a much earlier article ofMaclntyre's, "Hume on 'Is' and 'Ought'," in which the ideas expressed in the above quotations are foreshadowed. An examination ofaspects ofthis article will enable me to show, if I am right, how Maclntyre goes startlingly astray. That 1959 article set in motion a lively discussion of the interpretation of Hume: no less than six articles, by Atkinson, Flew, Hudson, and Hunter, all contributions to the debate sparked off by Maclntyre, are reprinted in either or both of Chappell (1968) and Hudson (1969).6 I am in broad agreement with the criticisms made of his article by Atkinson and Flew; but I think it instructive to identify, as they failed to do, Maclntyre's fundamental mistake, which, I shall argue at the end ofthis paper, resulted from the very kind ofconfusion against which Hume warned his readers, and warned them in precisely that passage with which Maclntyre was primarily concerned, the famous paragraph about "is" and "ought" at the end of the opening section of book 3 of Hume's Treatise. My identification of Maclntyre's mistake involves putting that "is"-"ought" paragraph in context: in both, ambitiously on my part, the broad context of the Treatise as a whole, and also the more immediate context of the opening sections of book 3. Maclntyre wrote his article less as a contribution to an ongoing discussion of Hume than as a contribution to an ongoing discussion of ethical naturalism. Mid-twentieth century anti-naturalists, as Maclntyre pointed out, often invoked the "is"-"ought" paragraph as putting forward a view which was direct a ancestor oftheir own. Hare, for instance, appeals in his article "Universalisability" to what he calls "Hume's Law,"7 with a footnote referring the reader to this paragraph of the Treatise; the "law" in question is, roughly, that "ought"-judgements cannot be deduced from "is"-judgements. Maclntyre argued that such an interpretation of Hume was mistaken; and a crucial part ofhis evidence was the claim that, "ifthe currentinterpretation ofHume'sviews on "is'and'ought... (shrink)

First Published in 1980. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The essence of Hume’s eighteenth-century philosophy was that all the sciences were ‘dependent on the science of man’, and that the foundations of any such science need to rest on experience and observation. This title, first published in 1932, examines in detail how Hume interpreted ‘the science of man’ and how he applied his experimental methodology to humankind’s understanding, passions, social duties, economic activities, religious beliefs and secular history throughout his career. Particular attention is paid to the English, French and (...) Latin sources that shaped Hume’s theories. This is a full and fascinating title, of particular relevance to students with an interest in the philosophy of Hume specifically, as well as the philosophy of human nature and the methodologies applied to its study more generally. (shrink)

Moral conclusions cannot validly be inferred from nonmoral premises – this principle, commonly called “Hume’s law,” presents a conundrum. On one hand, it seems obviously true, and its truth is often simply taken for granted. On the other hand, an ingenious argument by A. N. Prior seems to refute it. My aim here is a resolution. I shall argue, first, that Hume’s law is ambiguous, admitting both a strong and a weak interpretation; second, that the strong interpretation is false, as (...) shown by Prior’s argument; and, third, that the weak interpretation is true. (shrink)