Abstract
AbstractThis paper advances a reductive semantics for ‘ought’ and a naturalistic theory of normativity. It gives a unified analysis of predictive, instrumental, and categorical uses of ‘ought’: the predictive ‘ought’ is basic, and is interpreted in terms of probability. Instrumental ‘oughts’ are analyzed as predictive ‘oughts’ occurring under an ‘in order that’ modifer (the end-relational theory). The theory is then extended to categorical uses of ‘ought’: it is argued that they are special rhetorical uses of the instrumental ‘ought’. Plausible conversational principles explain how this end-relational ‘ought’ can perform the expressive functions of the moral ‘ought’. The notion of an ‘ought-simpliciter’ is also discussed.
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Reference39 articles.
1. Anscombe, G. E. M. (1958). Modern moral philosophy. Philosophy, 33, 1–19.
2. Barker, S. (2000). Is value content a component of conventional implicature? Analysis, 60, 268–279.
3. Bloomfield, P. (2001). Moral reality. New York: Oxford University Press.
4. Broome, J. (1999). Normative requirements. Ratio, 12, 398–419.
5. Copley, B. (2006). What should ‘should’ mean? (manuscript).
Cited by
50 articles.
订阅此论文施引文献
订阅此论文施引文献，注册后可以免费订阅5篇论文的施引文献，订阅后可以查看论文全部施引文献