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A New Look at the Logic of the ‘Is’-‘Ought’ Relation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 October 2005

Joel J. Kupperman
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Abstract

In the 1950's some prominent philosophers suggested a logical relation weaker than entailment between primarily descriptive statements and ethical conclusions. The paper revisits this suggestion. It examines four ways in which ethical statemnts can be supported by descriptions and evaluations. This provides a similarity bteween some kinds of reason-giving in ethics and familiar cases of logical inference, making it plausible to speak of a logic. The similarity however is limited, and the strength in ethics of descriptive reasons is never precise and always somewhat contestable.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy , Volume 80 , Issue 3 , July 2005 , pp. 343 - 359
Copyright
© The Royal Institute of Philosophy 2005

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