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Why Moral Norms Cannot be Reduced to Facts: On a Trilemma in Derivations of Moral “Ought” from “Is”

Prof. dr hab. Wojciech Załuski

Jagiellonian University in Kraków

Abstract: The paper aims at formulating a certain trilemma that applies to justifying moral norms. The trilemma can be succinctly stated as follows: any attempt to derive a “moral-ought-statement” from an “is-statement” with a justificatory goal (i.e. to justify the “moral-ought-statement”), even if it were successful in its “derivation” part (i.e. logically correct), would be unsuccessful in its “justificatory” part for one of the following three reasons: (1) it would consider each human action of which a factual statement can be made as morally obligatory, thus “justifying” a large number of implausible moral norms; or (2) it would presuppose a moral norm not derivable from facts; or (3) it would not explain why the distinction – made based on extra-moral criteria – between those factual statements about human actions from which moral norms can be derived and those from which they cannot be derived should count as morally relevant. The trilemma is illustrated in the paper by an analysis of Searle’s well-known attempt at deriving “ought” from “is”. Some further implications of the trilemma regarding the proper way of justifying moral norms are also examined.

Keywords: ought-statements, is-statements, logical derivation, ethical justification, Searle, Anscombe, naturalistic ethics, divine ethics

Language: English

Received: 11.03.2019
Accepted:
11.11.2019

Published: Number 2(20)/2019, pp. 63-74.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.36280/AFPiFS.2019.2.63

Download file: Download
Number of downloads: 260

Filed Under: Articles Tagged With: Anscombe, Divine ethics, ethical justification, is-statements, logical derivation, naturalistic ethics, ought-statements, Searle

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Keywords

holy war sincerity principle sanction theory radical Enlightenment obligation Legal ontology Sattherwaite public legitimacy law and language psycholinguistics michał peno maximal morality the attitudes of the legislator Ludwig Wittgenstein legal disagreement skepticism deliberative public philosophy juriscentrism society constitutional pluralism apoliticality conventionalism interpretation interest of the individual jurisprudence Searle three central positivist theses legal consciousness popular constitutionalism Gustav Radbruch Devlin sources of law concepts of criminal law Michel Foucault polis constitutional consciousness evolution of law lawyers’ language modernity theoretical disagreement constitutional interpretation pluralism transitional justice utopia cognitive science Divine ethics the principle of social participation rule of law state without a name decision-making character of interpretation

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