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David Hume

Hume on Is and Ought

Charles Pigden considers Hume’s famous claim that you can’t deduce an ‘ought’ from an ‘is’.

According to David Hume, his Treatise of Human Nature “fell dead-born from the press, without reaching such distinction, as even to excite a murmur among the zealots.” Since Hume’s day his still-born baby has undergone a mighty resurrection and the murmur of commentators, whether zealots or otherwise, has risen to a continuous roar. One of the most talked-about paragraphs in that talked-about book occurs at the end of section 3.1.1, ‘Moral Distinctions Not deriv’d from Reason’:

“In every system of morality, which I have hitherto met with, I have always remark’d, 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 surpriz’d 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.

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