Oughts and Ends

As this ought, or ought not, expresses some new relation or affirmation, ‗tis necessary that it shou'd be observ'd and explain'd' and at the same time that a reason should be given; for what seems altogether inconceivable, how this new relation can be a deduction from others, which are entirely different from it. Hume never actually asserted what has come to be called ‗Hume's Law': that you cannot validly derive a proposition containing an ‗ought' from propositions stating only what is the case. But he did pose a challenge that many have thought impossible to meet: to analyze ‗ought' purely in terms that are not normative, evaluative, or deontic. It is not difficult to provide plausible analyses of ought-propositions into propositions that state what is the case. For example Reasons-Ought: X ought to φ =(df.) X has more reason to φ than to act in any other way instead; Value-Ought: X ought to φ =(df.) It is better that X φs than that X does anything else instead. These analyses, however, are not constituted wholly of terms that are ‗entirely different' from ‗ought': ‗reasons' and ‗better' are similarly normative, and similarly thought to be in need of analysis or explanation by those who see a need to analyze ‗ought'. Philosophers who follow G. E. Moore in rejecting ‗analytic naturalism' about normative terms deny that any other kind of analytic definition is possible. In a recent statement of this view, Allan Gibbard writes that ―no correct definition can break out of the normative circle, a circle of ought-like terms.‖ (2003, p. 6) I shall propose a theory of the semantics of ‗ought', consisting of six theses, which I call the end-relational theory. This theory is reductive or broadly naturalistic, decomposing ‗ought' into a complex of nonnormative terms or concepts, and is thus a ‗cognitivist' account, although it has a significant expressivist or noncognitivist element. There are many reasons for wanting such a reductive analysis, but I shall not address them here; the case for the theory will be based 2 solely upon its intrinsic theoretical virtues and its plausibility and fit with the data. It claims to be interpretive rather than revisionary: to identify the meaning with which ordinary speakers use the word. It also claims to be exhaustive, capturing all legitimate uses of ‗ought'. This virtue, which distinguishes it from all competing accounts presently finding favour with philosophers, provides the …