In last week's Wed-Head I said a little about Scotland's greatest philosopher, David Hume (1711-1776). In something of a change of plan, this week I am going to exhibit one of his most famous arguments (and probably the only such to be readily understandable). As a thinker Hume's greatness lies, for the most part, in his hugely influential metaphysical scepticism, but the reader will be relieved instead to be presented with his most celebrated argument in the field of ethics, the conclusion of which, on a standard interpretation, has subsequently come to be known as 'Hume's Law'**. [[ **not to be confused with Hume's Fork: same philosopher, different subject matter - though I suppose that Hume's having all of a Law, a Fork, a Problem and a Scepticism is some testimony to his brilliance. None of these labels are due to Hume himself, though, and the normal formulation of 'his' Law (see next) is not actually Hume's either. ]] Hume's Law (so-called) states simply that "one cannot (validly) derive an 'ought' from an 'is'," meaning that no matter how many facts you accrue you cannot possibly deduce a value judgement from them and them alone. No value judgement can ever emerge as the logical consequence solely of just bare facts - something else is always involved (like moral intuition, say; or something 'from the heart' at any rate). To choose the obvious, most egregious example, according Hume's Law you cannot, from the fact that six million civilians were killed in the Hitlerian holocaust, conclude by logic alone that Hitler was wrong, bad, or evil. Of course, no sane or reasonable person doubts that - but Hume's claim, correctly understood, is that reason alone is not a sufficient foundation for morality - something else must be going on, too. Furthermore, Hume is pretty confident that he has succeeded in proving it; here is what he says (source: A Treatise of Human Nature - see postscript below):- "In every system of morality, which I have hitherto met with, I have always remarked, that the author proceeds for some time in the ordinary way of reasoning, and establishes the being of a God, or makes observations concerning human affairs; when of a sudden I am surprized to find, that instead of the usual copulations of propositions, is, and is not, I meet with no proposition that is not connected with an ought, or an ought not. This change is imperceptible; but is, however, of the last consequence. For as this ought, or ought not, expresses some new relation or affirmation, it is necessary that it should be observed and explained; 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. But as authors do not commonly use this precaution, I shall presume to recommend it to the readers; and am persuaded, that this small attention would subvert all the vulgar systems of morality, and let us see, that the distinction of vice and virtue is not founded merely on the relations of objects, nor is perceived by reason." This famed quotation comes right at the end of an introductory discussion of morality, and I have included a longer excerpt in postscript in which, thankfully, Hume provides his readers with a couple of examples. The reader will have to judge whether the examples are persuasive and, indeed, whether I have made a fair fist of conveying his meaning. The reason I've tried to do so is because it provides probably the best link to the living philosopher who has had the deepest influence on my own thinking, John R. Searle. However, going through the reasons why I want to say something about John Searle will require enough context as to need several paragraphs of their own (so Hume will have to wait for a bit). The short version is that I'm running low on material for these columns. The longer version is that, of course, that short version is utter rubbish: I've got plenty to write about but, as things stand, the present remit is too narrow. There are other problems, too: they're taking up too much time (not least because I'm having to scratch around for subjects) and, more abstractly, I'm supposed to be a community councillor, not a journalist (or even a 'journactivist', which I'd be somewhat happier about). True, the coronavirus lockdown has made it rather easier to find the time to write - but hopefully that won't remain the case for very much longer, no? So, unless I stop altogether, I have three options:- * Take the summer off * Go fortnightly * Do both of these I've got a holiday coming up at the end of the month anyway, though as it's a staycation that won't make it impossible for me to post something. My 'guest' column last week was an experiment to see whether I could, in effect, 'go fortnightly' without ceasing to post something every week. Also, there's some light at the end of the tunnel in that if I'm able to spend more time on other civic projects then I'll have - lo and behold - many more to topics write about (or so I'm hoping). But in the meantime... There's no such thing as writer's block: one can be blocked on a project, sure, but one can always find something to write about. So, I've come to understand that my Wed-Head authorly constipation stems from my feeling unable to widen the common theme - broadly, civic strengthening - for want of context. And I quickly realised that the biggest obstacle was the fact that John Searle is hardly a household name. However, of all Searle's various publications, his two books on 'social ontology' (roughly: the philosophy of society and especially of social facts, eg that Kate Forbes is my MSP - and yours too, probably) are so essential an undergird to my civic thinking that trying to get much more of that across without acknowledging Searle's contribution would be, if not impossible, at least extremely unnatural - as well as arguably less than honest. I read the first of the two books, The Construction of Social Reality (1995), nearly a quarter of a century ago whereas I don't think I got hold of the second, Making the Social World (2010), until perhaps the year before last (not that it much matters: the latter is largely a restatement and elucidation of the former, and makes only very limited refinements). Both of them lean quite heavily on his earlier Intentionality (1983), "the hardest book I ever wrote; it took me ten years to write that book" and (predictably) Intentionality is not a very easy read**. So I'm setting myself a fair challenge, I suppose, if I'm to convey the essential points without becoming bogged-down in logic-chopping. But I think the game is worth the candle. And, anyway: I like challenges. (If you like good books, my pick from Searle's ouvre would actually be Rationality in Action (2001); more relevantly, his 1999 summary of his own overall worldview, Mind, Language and Society, is short (c. 160 pages), clear, and mercifully free of philosophical technicalities). [[ **Aside: the current Wikipedia article about Searle is of very mixed quality; the section on Intentionality is really pretty good, perhaps even very good; the section on The Construction of Social Reality, though, is based on a complete misunderstanding of Searle's intent, which wasn't to do original sociology but original philosophy: there's a huge difference! You would do much better to read the authoritative introductory paragraphs of <https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/social-ontology> to get a feel for the field; a search for Searle on that page finds twenty occurrences, incidentally, and only two authors have more entries in the (extensive) bibliography, rather refuting Wikipedia's take on the work. ]] Last week I pledged to explain - next week - "exactly why" I was choosing then to guest-post Craig Smith's overview of the Scottish Enlightenment, and I intend to keep that promise. Then for the next two weeks, which co-incide with my staycation in Fife, I'll try to arrange two more guest-editions of Wed-Head. As I say, I should be able to get online to post them on (or, at worst, a day or two before) 25th August and 1st September - and I've identified one appropriate piece already. Then I'll post an new, original Wed-Head on the 8th September and continue, possibly fortnightly, thereafter if all goes well. (Aye: caveat, caveat - I really dislike giving hostages to fortune. I'm very fond of the old feminist joke: How do you make God laugh? Tell her your plans.) My plan is by mid-September, say, to be ready over the course of a couple or so Wed-Head columns to set out with tolerable clarity what minimum of Searle's explanatory apparatus I need properly to ground, for instance, the Deontic Empowerment principle I advanced in Wed-Head xvii (7th July). For today, I will confine myself to justifying my earlier claim that Hume's Law (again: so-called) provides "probably the best link" from David Hume to John Searle. That is because Searle began to 'make his name' with a fairly dry and somewhat technical 1964 paper, How to Derive 'Ought' from 'Is'**. (Philosophers, incidentally, are perhaps the only people who pay tribute to each other - and especially to their intellectual forebears - by criticising the hell out of them. For a philosopher, to be attacked is to be taken seriously; to be ignored is to be dismissed. As with politicians, notoriety is in every way preferable to obscurity.) [[ **I have tracked down two PDF copies online: <https://booksc.org/dl/11598854/c3ca26> and <https://3lib.net/dl/1326359/7e9358>; one or t'other should work. ]] By the title, Searle's target is obviously Hume's Law; nonetheless, Searle concurs with the popular judgement that Hume himself is indeed the greatest philosopher to write in English (as do I; see last week's Wed-Head). Searle's counter-argument is limited in scope: I doubt he'd contest my Hitlerian example above, for instance - nor Hume's claim that "Moral distinctions [are] not derived from reason" (see postscript). Rather, he is thinking of statements like "Sally broke her promise." This looks like a straightforward factual claim: it says (more-or-less) that Sally gave an unqualified assurance that she would do some thing, but that in the event she did not do it after all. Assuming they're true, those are just plain, simple facts about what Sally did and didn't do, right? The point Searle would stress here is that Sally did not merely announce her intention to do whatever it was: she promised to do it. A promise is not merely a peculiarly emphatic form of statement of intent - indeed, treating promise-making as such is, according to the American Psychological Association, an indicator for Sociopathic Personality Disorder of all things. Promises are supposed to be kept. For Searle, it is impossible to state the bald, plain fact that Sally broke her promise without implicitly evaluating Sally's conduct, because the 'oughtness' of promise-keeping is internal to (inseparable from, intrinsic to, 'built-in' to, etc) the meaning of promise-making. Contra Hume's Law, Searle insists that "the traditional metaphysical distinction between fact and value cannot be captured by the linguistic distinction between 'evaluative' and 'descriptive' because all such speech act notions are already normative." Whether this is contra Hume himself the reader will have to judge helped, perhaps, by the extract postscripted below, as promised earlier - a promise kept (unlike Sally's). I cannot hope to get all the way from 1964 to 1983 to 1995 in a couple of columns without cutting a myriad of corners. Perhaps I've set myself an impossible task? But hey, at least it'll give me plenty to write about before the next meeting of your community council on the 21st September. And the reason I think it might be worth doing is that it enables local community building and organisation to be placed on an (I think) impregnably sound logical, philosophical and ultimately moral foundation, at least to the extent that local democracy can be called a 'moral' enterprise. Which, as Elvis Presley put it, "if it ain't true, in oughta be." PS: Earlier I described Searle's 1964 paper as 'dry', and for the most part it is. In fairness, though, I perhaps ought to include this quotation from it: "[..] consider the following example. We are in our half of the seventh inning and I have a big lead off second base. The pitcher whirls, fires to the shortstop covering, and I am tagged out a good ten feet down the line. The umpire shouts, 'Out!' I, however, being a positivist, hold my ground. The umpire tells me to return to the dugout. I point out to him that you can't derive an 'ought' from an 'is'." PPS: As presaged above, the following is a fuller excerpt** (basically the last four paragraphs of the relevant 'section', ie chapter) from David Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature, Book III: 'Of Morals', Part I: Of Virtue and Vice in General, Section I: "Moral distinctions not derived from reason." [[ **source: <https://www.gutenberg.org/files/4705/4705-h/4705-h.htm#link2H_4_0085>. ]] Of all crimes that human creatures are capable of committing, the most horrid and unnatural is ingratitude, especially when it is committed against parents, and appears in the more flagrant instances of wounds and death. This is acknowledged by all mankind, philosophers as well as the people; the question only arises among philosophers, whether the guilt or moral deformity of this action be discovered by demonstrative reasoning, or be felt by an internal sense, and by means of some sentiment, which the reflecting on such an action naturally occasions. This question will soon be decided against the former opinion, if we can shew the same relations in other objects, without the notion of any guilt or iniquity attending them. Reason or science is nothing but the comparing of ideas, and the discovery of their relations; and if the same relations have different characters, it must evidently follow, that those characters are not discovered merely by reason. To put the affair, therefore, to this trial, let us chuse any inanimate object, such as an oak or elm; and let us suppose, that by the dropping of its seed, it produces a sapling below it, which springing up by degrees, at last overtops and destroys the parent tree: I ask, if in this instance there be wanting any relation, which is discoverable in parricide or ingratitude? Is not the one tree the cause of the other's existence; and the latter the cause of the destruction of the former, in the same manner as when a child murders his parent? It is not sufficient to reply, that a choice or will is wanting. For in the case of parricide, a will does not give rise to any DIFFERENT relations, but is only the cause from which the action is derived; and consequently produces the same relations, that in the oak or elm arise from some other principles. It is a will or choice, that determines a man to kill his parent; and they are the laws of matter and motion, that determine a sapling to destroy the oak, from which it sprung. Here then the same relations have different causes; but still the relations are the same: And as their discovery is not in both cases attended with a notion of immorality, it follows, that that notion does not arise from such a discovery. But to chuse an instance, still more resembling; I would fain ask any one, why incest in the human species is criminal, and why the very same action, and the same relations in animals have not the smallest moral turpitude and deformity? If it be answered, that this action is innocent in animals, because they have not reason sufficient to discover its turpitude; but that man, being endowed with that faculty which ought to restrain him to his duty, the same action instantly becomes criminal to him; should this be said, I would reply, that this is evidently arguing in a circle. For before reason can perceive this turpitude, the turpitude must exist; and consequently is independent of the decisions of our reason, and is their object more properly than their effect. According to this system, then, every animal, that has sense, and appetite, and will; that is, every animal must be susceptible of all the same virtues and vices, for which we ascribe praise and blame to human creatures. All the difference is, that our superior reason may serve to discover the vice or virtue, and by that means may augment the blame or praise: But still this discovery supposes a separate being in these moral distinctions, and a being, which depends only on the will and appetite, and which, both in thought and reality, may be distinguished from the reason. Animals are susceptible of the same relations, with respect to each other, as the human species, and therefore would also be susceptible of the same morality, if the essence of morality consisted in these relations. Their want of a sufficient degree of reason may hinder them from perceiving the duties and obligations of morality, but can never hinder these duties from existing; since they must antecedently exist, in order to their being perceived. Reason must find them, and can never produce them. This argument deserves to be weighed, as being, in my opinion, entirely decisive. Nor does this reasoning only prove, that morality consists not in any relations, that are the objects of science; but if examined, will prove with equal certainty, that it consists not in any matter of fact, which can be discovered by the understanding. This is the second part of our argument; and if it can be made evident, we may conclude, that morality is not an object of reason. But can there be any difficulty in proving, that vice and virtue are not matters of fact, whose existence we can infer by reason? Take any action allowed to be vicious: Wilful murder, for instance. Examine it in all lights, and see if you can find that matter of fact, or real existence, which you call vice. In which-ever way you take it, you find only certain passions, motives, volitions and thoughts. There is no other matter of fact in the case. The vice entirely escapes you, as long as you consider the object. You never can find it, till you turn your reflection into your own breast, and find a sentiment of disapprobation, which arises in you, towards this action. Here is a matter of fact; but it is the object of feeling, not of reason. It lies in yourself, not in the object. 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. Vice and virtue, therefore, may be compared to sounds, colours, heat and cold, which, according to modern philosophy, are not qualities in objects, but perceptions in the mind: And this discovery in morals, like that other in physics, is to be regarded as a considerable advancement of the speculative sciences; though, like that too, it has little or no influence on practice. Nothing can be more real, or concern us more, than our own sentiments of pleasure and uneasiness; and if these be favourable to virtue, and unfavourable to vice, no more can be requisite to the regulation of our conduct and behaviour. I cannot forbear adding to these reasonings an observation, which may, perhaps, be found of some importance. In every system of morality, which I have hitherto met with, I have always remarked, that the author proceeds for some time in the ordinary way of reasoning, and establishes the being of a God, or makes observations concerning human affairs; when of a sudden I am surprized to find, that instead of the usual copulations of propositions, is, and is not, I meet with no proposition that is not connected with an ought, or an ought not. This change is imperceptible; but is, however, of the last consequence. For as this ought, or ought not, expresses some new relation or affirmation, it is necessary that it should be observed and explained; 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. But as authors do not commonly use this precaution, I shall presume to recommend it to the readers; and am persuaded, that this small attention would subvert all the vulgar systems of morality, and let us see, that the distinction of vice and virtue is not founded merely on the relations of objects, nor is perceived by reason.
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