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IsOught Gap
Charles Pigden

No-Ought-From-Is: Humes Afterthought

Is it possible to deduce a moral conclusion from nonmoral premises, an ought from
an is? David Hume famously thought not:
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 surprised 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. [But] 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.
(1978: 46970; see hume, david)

Some think this passage expresses an important truth fraught with metaethical
implications (see metaethics); some think it true but not that important since it tells
us nothing of any consequence about the nature of ethics; and some that it is important
but not true, since it expresses a mistaken dogma which has led many philosophers
down the primrose path to non-cognitivist perdition (see non-cognitivism).

Logical versus Semantic Autonomy

Hume could be denying that it is possible to deduce moral conclusions from
nonmoral premises by logic alone. Or he could be denying that it is possible to
deduce moral conclusions from nonmoral premises with the aid of logic plus analytic bridge principles (because there are no analytic bridge principles linking the
nonmoral and the moral).
This distinction is often slurred over in the IsOught literature. Humes Law
(No-Ought-From-Is) is construed as the claim that no set of nonmoral premises can
entail a moral conclusion. But this formulation is ambiguous since entails is widely
used to cover both the concept of logical consequence and the (importantly different) concept of analytic entailment. A sentence X is a logical consequence of a set of
premises K if and only if there is no interpretation of the nonlogical vocabulary in
the inference such that K is true and X is false. A set of premises K analytically entails
a conclusion X if and only if X can be logically derived from K with the aid of unstated
The International Encyclopedia of Ethics. Edited by Hugh LaFollette, print pages 27932801.
2013 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Published 2013 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/ 9781444367072.wbiee078

analytic bridge principles or truths of meaning. Thus Fritz is unmarried is not a

logical consequence of Fritz is a bachelor because bachelor can be interpreted to
mean philosopher in which case Fritz is a bachelor could be true and Fritz is
unmarried false. But Fritz is a bachelor analytically entails Fritz is unmarried
since Fritz is unmarried can be logically derived from Fritz is a bachelor with the
aid of the analytic bridge principle (true in virtue of the meaning of the word
bachelor) that All bachelors are unmarried.
So we have two distinct theses: the Logical autonomy of ethics, the idea that you
cant get moral conclusions from nonmoral premises by logic alone and the Semantic
autonomy of ethics, the idea that you cant get moral conclusions from nonmoral
premises with the aid of logic plus analytic bridge principles (see autonomy of
ethics). How are they related?
Semantic Autonomy implies Logical Autonomy. If you cant get moral conclusions
from nonmoral premises with the aid of logic plus analytic bridge principles, you cant
get moral conclusions from nonmoral premises by logic alone. But Logical Autonomy
does not imply Semantic Autonomy. If you cant get moral conclusions from nonmoral premises by logic alone, it does not follow that you cant get moral conclusions
from nonmoral premises with the aid of logic plus analytic bridge principles. Some
philosophers seem to think that you can derive Semantic Autonomy from Logical
Autonomy. Not so. For Semantic Autonomy implies that the key moral concepts
good, bad, right, wrong, ought, and so on cannot be defined in terms of
nonmoral concepts or predicates whether natural (to do with human nature or human
reactions) or supernatural (such as predicates connected with the being of God).
Logical Autonomy carries no such implications. Thus Semantic Autonomy implies
semantic nonnaturalism summed up in Moores notorious no-definition definition of
good: If I am asked, How is good to be defined? my answer is that it cannot be
defined and that is all I have to say about it (Moore 1993: 58; see nonnaturalism,
ethical; moore, g. e.). This is not a thesis that can be established on purely logical
grounds, since logic is blind to the meanings of nonlogical expressions.

No-Ought-From-Is and the Naturalistic Fallacy

Which did Hume believe? I suspect Logical Autonomy. For Hume thought that the
moral could be defined in terms of the nonmoral. The hypothesis we embrace is
plain. It maintains that morality is determined by sentiment. It defines [my italics]
virtue to be whatever mental action or quality gives to a spectator the pleasing sentiment of approbation; and vice the contrary (Hume 1975: 289). Thus despite a widespread philosophical consensus to the contrary, Hume disagrees with Moore who
thought it a fallacy the naturalistic fallacy to define the moral in terms of the
nonmoral, and specifically, the psychological (see naturalistic fallacy). Hence
Moores Naturalistic Fallacy thesis is not the same as Humes No-Ought-From-Is.
Humes claim is that you cannot logically deduce an ought from an is, that you cant
use logic to derive a conclusion with explicitly moral content from premises devoid
of moral matter. He is appealing to a commonplace of early modern logical theory,

that in a logically valid inference the premises cannot be true and the conclusion
false because the matter of the conclusion is somehow contained in the premises.

Subversion and the Vulgar Systems

Why did Hume think that a small attention to No-Ought-From-Is would subvert all
the vulgar systems of morality? The vulgar moralists were the many philosophers
Hobbes and Spinoza, through to Locke, Clarke and Balguy who claimed that the
truths of morality were demonstrable (see hobbes, thomas; spinoza, baruch; locke,
john; clarke, samuel; balguy, john). Now a truth is demonstrable if it can be logically deduced from self-evident premises. Hume had proved to his own satisfaction
that no moral truths are self-evident. That still leaves open the possibility that moral
truths can be demonstrated by deriving them logically from self-evident truths of some
other kind. The point of No-Ought-From-Is is to put a stop to the pretensions of the
demonstrative moralists by foreclosing this option. If there can be no moral matter in
the conclusion that is not contained in the premises, then you cannot demonstrate the
truths of morality by deriving them logically from self-evident but nonmoral truths.

The Conservativeness of Logic

But if this is correct, Humes No-Ought-From-Is is simply an instance of the conservativeness of logic, the admittedly metaphorical idea that in a logically valid argument
you cannot get out what you havent put in. By itself No-Ought-From-Is tells us nothing about the nature of moral judgments. The logical gap between fact and value is
on a par with the gap between premises that dont contain the word hedgehog and
conclusions that do (see factvalue distinction). Its a matter of form rather than
content. As such, it does not imply that there is any fundamental difference between
the moral and the nonmoral. It certainly does not imply non-cognitivism, the doctrine
that moral judgments are not truth-apt, true-or-false, but that they serve to express
emotions or convey commands (see non-cognitivism).

Non-Cognitivism and No-Ought-From-Is

This may come as some surprise to readers of Hudsons anthology, The IsOught
Question (1969). Hudson himself seems to think that non-cognitivism and
No-Ought-From-Is are mutually supportive. Many of his contributors attack noncognitivism by way of No-Ought-From-Is or try to defend No-Ought-From-Is in
order to vindicate non-cognitivism. Philosophers like MacIntyre (1959) who acquit
Hume of non-cognitivism feel compelled to deny that he subscribed to No-OughtFrom-Is (for Hume, IsOught deductions only seem altogether inconceivable). But
can you derive non-cognitivism from No-Ought-From-Is?
Perhaps by an abductive argument. If we combine non-cognitivism with the conservativeness of logic we can derive No-Ought-From-Is. If in a logically valid argument you cannot get out what you havent put in, and if moral judgments are

fundamentally different from factual claims (expressing emotions or conveying commands), then you cannot logically derive a moral conclusion from nonmoral premises. However, this is an argument from non-cognitivism to No-Ought-From-Is
which is not what the non-cognitivist needs. But perhaps we can run the argument in
reverse as an inference-to-the-best-explanation. Assume No-Ought-From-Is as a
datum. The best explanation of No-Ought-From-Is combines some kind of non-cognitivism for instance the view that moral judgments are akin to orders with the
conservativeness of logic. The reason we cant get moral conclusions from nonmoral
premises is that in a logically valid argument you cannot get out what you havent put
in and that moral judgments express emotions or convey commands, thus carrying a
semantic cargo that is not to be found in a set of factual or nonmoral premises. So
probably some kind of non-cognitivism is true (Hare 1952: 289; see hare, r. m.) But
this argument rests on a false premise. Non-cognitivism plus the conservativeness of
logic is not the best explanation of No-Ought-From-Is. For there is a better because
simpler explanation, namely the conservativeness of logic by itself.

A Promising Counterexample?
Much of the The IsOught Question is devoted to Searles (1964) attempt to disprove
Semantic Autonomy with the aid of an analytic bridge principle derived from the
institution of promising (though this is not quite how Searle and his opponents see
it; see promises). Searle claims, in effect, that the factual premise
(1) Smith promised to pay Jones $5
analytically entails the moral conclusion
(2) Absent overriding obligations to the contrary, Smith (morally) ought to pay
Jones $5.
Plainly you cant get from 1 to 2 by logic alone, which means that Searle is implicitly
appealing to the alleged analytic bridge principle
(BP) If X promises to Y, then absent overriding obligations to the contrary, X
(morally) ought to Y.
But is (BP) genuinely analytic? I think not. For you can dissent from (BP) without
manifesting a misunderstanding either of the word promise or the institution of
promising. Witness Godwin (1976) who thinks that promising is a pernicious institution and that we are not, in general, obliged to keep our promises. Bizarre as his
opinions may be, it is clear that he understands the institution he denounces. What
is, perhaps, analytic is this:
(BP) If X promises to Y, then according to the rules of the promising game, absent
overriding obligations to the contrary, X ought to Y.

But this does not deliver the conclusion that Searle requires. Thus Searles attempt to
derive a moral conclusion from nonmoral premises seems to be a failure. It confuses
moral obligations with the rules of the promising game (Hare 1964). Semantic
Autonomy is unproven but unrefuted. But even if Searle had succeeded, he would
only have disproved Semantic not Logical Autonomy. For even if you can get moral
conclusions from nonmoral premises with the aid of analytical bridge principles
(derived in this instance from the rules of the promising game), it does not follow
that you can do it by logic alone.

Priors Dilemma
The real threat to No-Ought-From-Is comes from a paper by Prior (1960), which
calls into question not only Logical (and hence Semantic) Autonomy but also the
conservativeness of logic. Consider this inference (Tea-Drinker 1):
(1P) Tea-drinking is common in England.
Therefore
(2P) Either tea-drinking is common in England or all New Zealanders ought to
be shot.
This inference is a counterexample to Logical Autonomy since it is a logically valid
inference in which the conclusion is (arguably) moral though the premise is not. It
is also a counterexample to the conservativeness of logic since there is matter or
nonlogical content in the conclusion that is absent from the premise set. But the
moral content of (2P) seems to be inessential to the inference. We can replace
all New Zealanders ought to be shot with any sentence we like, moral or nonmoral
(including its opposite all New Zealanders ought not to be shot), and we would still
have a valid inference. This suggests that (2P) is not really moral. Fine, says Prior,
then consider the following inference (Tea-Drinker 2):
(1P)
(2P)

Tea-drinking is not common in England.

Either tea-drinking is common in England or all New Zealanders ought
tobe shot.
Therefore
(3P) All New Zealanders ought to be shot.
If (2P) is moral, Tea-Drinker 1 is a valid IsOught inference, and if (2P) is not moral,
Tea-Drinker 2 is a valid IsOught inference. Either way, it seems we have a counterexample to No-Ought-From-Is.

Pigdens Response
Charles Pigdens (1989) response is to redefine and prove a variant of the conservativeness of logic and to derive a revised version of No-Ought-From-Is as a special
case. It builds upon the idea that at least in Tea-Drinker 1 it is possible to replace the

moral content of (2P) with anything whatever salva validitate, that is, without prejudice to the validity of the resulting inference.
First we define the concept of inference-relative vacuity. An expression occurs
vacuously in the conclusion of a valid inference in which X is a logical consequence
of K, if and only if we can uniformly substitute for any other expression of the
same grammatical type, yielding a new sentence X, such that X is also a logical
consequence of K. We can then prove a revised version of the conservativeness of
logic: a nonlogical symbol in the first instance a predicate or propositional
variable cannot occur nonvacuously in the conclusion of a valid inference unless it
appears among the premises. Thus you cant get anything nonvacuous out that you
havent put in. This gives us No-Nonvacuous-Ought-From-Is the thesis that if a
(nonlogical) moral expression (e.g., an ought) occurs in the conclusion of a valid
inference but not in the premises, it suffers from inference-relative vacuity. Thus if
there is an inference from nonmoral premises to a partially moral conclusion a
conclusion containing moral predicates or subsentences the moral content can be
replaced with any expression whatever (of the right grammatical type) including its
opposite. Hence it is impossible to derive substantively moral conclusions
conclusions that tell you to do this rather than that from entirely nonmoral
premises. Logical Autonomy survives but in an amended form.

Schurzs Response
But Pigdens solution suffers from a serious defect. He derives No-NonvacuousOught-From-Is from the claim that in logic you cant get anything nonvacuous out
that you havent put in. But this principle does not apply to logical symbols. Hence
No-Nonvacuous-Ought-From-Is only holds if ought is not treated as a logical
operator. Thus Pigden denies that ought is a logical symbol and hence that deontic
logics are genuine logics (see deontic logic). Right or wrong, this is a controversial
claim and a hostage to philosophical fortune.
Gerhard Schurz (1997) relaxes this assumption but achieves a similar result. He
proves a version of No-Ought-From-Is without denying the validity of deontic logic.
He treats ought both as a logical symbol and as a sentential operator, like the
necessity operator in modal logic. Schurz is agnostic about which deontic logic is
correct, and proves his central thesis, the General Hume Thesis (GH for short) for a
large class of deontic logics without analytic bridge principles. Suppose we have a
Prior-type IsOught inference licensed by deontic logic. The key idea behind GH is
not that we can replace the oughts with anything we like salva validitate but that we
can replace all the predicates within the scope of the oughts with anything we like
salva validitate. Pigdens point is that the ought in Priors (2P) can be replaced with
any grammatically appropriate expression without prejudice to the validity of TeaDrinker 1, yielding such conclusions as:
(2P*)

Either tea-drinking is common in England or all New Zealanders will

beshot.

Schurzs point is that the bit about all New Zealanders being shot can be replaced
with any grammatically appropriate phrase without prejudice to the validity of
Tea-Drinker 1, yielding such conclusions as:
(2P**)

Either tea-drinking is common in England or all Chinese ought to play

the bagpipes.

Either way, the oughts will be irrelevant from a practical point of view. Again this
means that it is impossible to derive substantively moral conclusions conclusions
that tell you to do this rather than that from nonmoral premises. However, GH
itself is an instance of a kind of conservativeness that holds for modal operators
generally, not just the moral ought. (If any modal operator appears in the conclusion of a valid inference but not in the premises, then the predicates within its scope
can be replaced salva validitate.) Pigdens No-Nonvacuous-Ought-From-Is holds
because logic is conservative and Schurzs GH holds because modal logics, including
deontic logics, are conservative (though in a slightly different sense). Hence neither
tells us anything about the fundamental nature of ethics. Both results are metaethically
neutral.

Conclusion
Thus you cannot derive a substantively moral conclusion from nonmoral premises
by logic alone, a point susceptible of proof. But this implies neither non-cognitivism
nor nonnaturalism. The IsOught gap is real but overrated.
See also: autonomy of ethics; balguy, john; clarke, samuel; deontic
logic; factvalue distinction; hare, r. m.; hobbes, thomas; hume,
david;locke, john; metaethics; moore, g. e.; naturalistic fallacy;
non-cognitivism; nonnaturalism, ethical; promises; spinoza, baruch

REFERENCES
Godwin, W. 1976 [1793]. An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Hare, R. M. 1952. The Language of Morals. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hare, R. M. 1964. The Promising Game, Revue Internationale de la Philosophie, vol. 70,
pp. 398412.
Hudson, W. D. (ed.) 1969. The IsOught Question: A Collection of Papers on the Central
Problem in Moral Philosophy. London: Macmillan.
Hume, David 1975 [1748]. Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding and Concerning the
Principles of Morals, ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge and P. H. Nidditch, 3rd ed. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Hume, David 1978 [173940]. A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge and P. H.
Nidditch, 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
MacIntyre, A. 1959. Hume on Is and Ought, Philosophical Review, vol. 68, pp. 45168.

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Moore, G. E. 1993. Principia Ethica, ed. T. Baldwin, rev. ed. Cambridge: Cambridge
UniversityPress.
Pigden, Charles R. 1989. Logic and the Autonomy of Ethics, Australasian Journal of
Philosophy, vol. 67, no. 2, pp. 12751.
Prior, A. N. 1960. The Autonomy of Ethics, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, vol. 38,
pp. 199206.
Schurz, Gerhard 1997. The IsOught Problem: A Study in Philosophical Logic. Dordrecht:
Kluwer.
Searle, John 1964. How to Derive Ought from Is, Philosophical Review, vol. 73, pp. 4358.

FURTHER READING
Pigden, Charles R. (ed.) 2010. Hume on Is and Ought. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan.