Abstract
In the first chapter, I set out an assumption, that what is good in human action and disposition has a great deal to do with what contributes to human happiness and fulfilment, and tends to minimise human misery and frustration.1 The arguments of the intervening chapters have largely depended on this assumption, which will now be justified in the face of some sophisticated philosophical objections which have been raised against it. The principal objection may be summarised as follows. To say that an action or disposition tends to promote happiness or to minimise misery is to make a judgement of fact about it; to say that it is good or bad is to make a value-judgement. But there is no valid inference from any set of merely factual judgements to any judgement of value.
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References
Cf. pp. 1–3 above.
David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, III, i, 1; G. E. Moore, Principia Ethica (Cambridge, 1956) chs 1 and 2.
John Wisdom, Philosophy and Psychoanalysis (Oxford, 1953) p. 103.
Cf. A. G. N. Flew, ‘Theology and Falsification’, in Flew and R. C. MacIntyre (eds), New Essays in Philosophical Theology (London, 1955) p. 97.
R. G. Collingwood, The Principles of Art (Oxford, 1938) p. 7.
R. M. Hare, ‘Geach: Good and Evil’ in Philippa Foot (ed.), Theories of Ethics (London, 1967) p. 78.
Foot, Theories of Ethics, Introduction, p. 9.
Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (Oxford, 1958) 1, sec. 66f.
Hare, ‘Geach: Good and Evil’, p. 79.
Ibid.
I have argued this at length in ‘Remarks on the Foundations of Aesthetics’, British Journal of Aesthetics (January, 1968).
Hare, ‘Geach: Good and Evil’, pp. 78–80.
On the notions of ‘happiness’ and ‘fulfilment’, cf. pp. 1–5 above.
J. S. Mill, System of Logic, I, viii, 7. Cf. A. N. Prior, Logic and the Basis of Ethics (Oxford, 1949) pp. 10–11.
Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, I, 66f.; Aristotle, Metaphysics, III, 2.
Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, I, 79.
J. R. Searle, ‘How to Derive “Ought” from “Is”’, reprinted in Foot, Theories of Ethics, pp. 101–14.
Foot, Theories of Ethics, Introduction, p. 11.
The ruling of Thomas Aquinas, that the unjust prescriptions of a tyrant put no one under obligation, is closely comparable (Summa Theologica, Ia, IIae, xc, 1).
Cf. cases where the happiness of some is promoted at the cost of the unhappiness of others; or where an act is intuitively bad to one set of persons and not to another.
Exactly at what point the ‘obvious preponderance’ ceases to be such is impossible to determine. But that the boundary between the categories is not sharp does not imply that the categories themselves are useless or the distinction they mark illusory. To take an analogy, it is impossible to determine exactly where in England the Midlands end and the South begins, but this does not prevent, say, Nottingham from being quite definitely in the Midlands and Winchester being quite definitely in the South.
Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, III, i, 1.
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© 1981 Hugo Meynell
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Meynell, H. (1981). The Objectivity of Value-Judgements. In: Freud, Marx and Morals. New Studies in Practical Philosophy. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-05640-8_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-05640-8_6
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