COMMENSAL ISSUE 91

Dear Theo,

You discuss (C90, p.36) whether one can conclude an ought statement from a description of what is. The purpose of Chess is to save the king. A situation can thus arise where you conclude you ought to take the opponent’s rook or sacrifice the knight to save the king. This unobjectionable derivation of an "ought" from an "is" in a game can be transferred to an ethical situation. The purpose of the plotters against a tyrant is to save persecuted people from death. A situation can thus arise where you conclude you ought to kill the tyrant or sacrifice your life in attempting to do so. "Ought to kill" is not analytic to "tyrant"; it is not a moral imperative deduced from the word "tyrant". It derives logically from the plotter’s purpose. This is an unobjectionable derivation of an ethical "ought" from an "is".

I am now going to give you personally four "oughts" which you will be able to exchange for what is the case.

1. You are the editor, so you ought to exercise editorial control ("so you ought" = "that means your job is").
2. Because paying members contribute disproportionately to Commensal funds you ought not to expect us to pay for printing a dozen pages of vapourising by one member ("you ought not to expect" = "I object").
3. This is a democratic SIG so you ought to print a returnable questionnaire on a tear-off back page to ascertain the views of the membership and not rely on a straw poll ("ought to" = "it is within our rights to ask you to")

Suggested Questions

1. Do you want correspondents to be limited to replying to one topic?
2. Do you want replies to the same topic to be grouped together ?
3. Should replies to an article be limited to three follow-up editions with the original writer being invited to make a final response ?
4. Which of the two dozen suggestions for renaming Commensal do you favour ? It ought to be Mensa Minder ("it ought to be" = "I want it to be").
5. Would you like a philosophical or practical question to be posed for each issue, inviting replies of up to 100 / 200 words ?

Roger Farnworth

P.S. Thanks for all the work you do.

Previous Article (in Commensal 87)

Roger : This "is/ought" business is a complicated matter and I get more confused the more I think about it ! The main issue is what on earth is at stake in the question, because often it seems to be such a silly assertion. I raised the following example with Professor Hanfling:-

If I interpret his response correctly, Professor Hanfling agrees that proponents of the is/ought question, if not Hume himself, would understand it thus. He wouldn’t rely on an example like this, but would stick to examples of murder & promise-keeping, but does think that there is a logical connection between "distress" and "ought", but which needs spelling out.

My point has been that people disagree over what is a moral duty, so such duties aren’t facts, and therefore aren’t part of the "is". We definitely disagree about whether or not it’s right to assassinate a tyrant. Orthodox Christian teaching is that you shouldn’t - not that this view is necessarily one that I share, but it shows that it’s not a fact that you ought to do so.

I often wonder whether there’s confusion - which you’ve helpfully drawn our attention to - between the logical & moral uses of "ought". It’s obvious in the example from chess. There’s no moral compulsion to play so as not to lose (except if you’re playing as part of a team), but it is irrational to do otherwise. Similarly, it may be rational or expedient to kill the dictator, but not necessarily moral. I may have read somewhere (or maybe only dreamt it in a bat-state) that consequentialism is thereby not a moral theory at all.

As for your suggested "oughts", firstly, this SIG isn’t democratic & your bete noire doesn’t even think democracy is a good thing ! I’ll exercise my free will and general disagreement with their hold over me and ignore them this time round. However, if there’s a general upswell of popular feeling in support of your views, I’ll listen to it; from a strictly rational rather than moral standpoint, you understand ! I don’t think Commensal is currently experiencing a crisis, so I’m not currently of a mind to hold a referendum to resolve one. Last time the Editor did that sort of thing the newsletter disappeared from the scene for 3 years.

Theo