‘Is’, ‘Ought’ and the Voluntaristic Fallacy

Philosophy 72 (282):537 (1997)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

The view that ‘ought’ cannot be deduced from ‘is’, credited to Hume as a major insight into the nature of morality, is surprisingly easy to refute. What they are doing is evil. Therefore, they ought not to do it. Here we have a case of deducing ‘ought’ from ‘is’. The conclusion follows, because ‘ought not’ is analytic to ‘evil’. ‘Ah, but that's just what is wrong with the example: the premise is not a pure “is”; it contains an “ought”, though this does not appear explicitly.’ This is true, of course; the inference would not be valid otherwise. Still, the example shows that the is/ought principle will not do as it stands.

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,992

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

'Is', 'Ought' and the Voluntaristic Fallacy.Oswald Hanfling - 1997 - Philosophy 72 (282):537 - 548.
The One Fallacy Theory.Lawrence H. Powers - 1995 - Informal Logic 17 (2).
The Naturalistic Fallacy.Julia Tanner - 2006 - Richmond Journal of Philosophy 13.
The Lord Scroop Fallacy.Herman E. Stark - 2000 - Informal Logic 20 (3).
How the Fallacy of Accident Got Its Name.Allan Bäck - 2015 - Vivarium 53 (2-4):142-169.

Analytics

Added to PP
2016-02-04

Downloads
19 (#692,183)

6 months
6 (#222,656)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Citations of this work

No citations found.

Add more citations

References found in this work

No references found.

Add more references