Imperatives, oughts, and moral oughts

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Imperatives, oughts, andmoral oughtsHector-Neri Castaneda aa Wayne State UniversityPublished online: 15 Sep 2006.

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The Australasian Journal of Philosophy

IMPERATIVES, OUGHTS, AND MORAL OUGHTS

HECTOR-NERI CASTAN EDA

The issues of most importance in moral philosophy are, no doubt, the problem of the definition of 'morality' and the problem of the justification and ultimacy of moral principles. These are extremely difficult questions. But undue difficulties arise because of both the obscurities surrounding the general concept of 'ought' and the obscurities surrounding the less general concept of 'moral ought'. My purpose here is to explore some of the connections between these two concepts. I am anxious both to unveil some assumptions about these concepts and to secure some 'logical' facts about what we ought morally to do. In particular, I want to argue that: (1) the meaning of 'ought' simpl~citer is not to be analyzed in terms of imperatives, (2) moral oughts are not necessary imperatival, (3) moral oughts need not be overriding, and (4) an overriding, imperatival ought need not be a moral one. In the process of securing these results, I establish both that ou.ghts generally are neither universalizable nor necessarily expresswe of (or connected with) self-interest, and that the possibility of conflicts of duties is essential to morality and the moral oughts. I hope that the discussion of the assumptions and logical facts in question will shed some light into the larger issues about the nature of morality?

1. Ought-Statements. Many philosophers (e.g., R. M. Hare, 2

1 For excellent discussions of topics closely related to the one treated here, see W. K. Frankena, "Recent Conceptions of Morality", in H. N. Castaneda and G. Nakhnikian (eds.), Morality and the Language o.1 Conduct (Wayne State University Press, Detroit, Michigan, 1960), to be cited as 'MLoC' , pp. 1-24, and W. D. Falk, "Morality, Self, and Others", in MLoC, pp. 25-67. See also for allied questions, H. D. Aiken, "The Concept of Moral Objectivity", in MLoC, pp. 69-105; W. S. Sellars, "Imperatives, Intentimas, and the Logic of 'ought ' ," in MLoC, pp. 178-218 and m y " 'Ought ' and Assumption in Moral Philosophy ', The Journal of Philosophy, vol. 57 (1960), pp. 791-803. The points I make in section 1 of this essay are taken, in a modified version, from my ~ peratives, Decisions, and Oughts: A Logico-metaphysical Investigation", in

oC, pp. 235, 268-270. I am grateful to m y colleague George Nakhnikian for having read the first draft of this essay and helping me clarify many points of grammar, sty/e, and substance.

*R. M. Hare, The Language of Morals (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1952), chapters 10-12. It will be eited as 'LM'. In Freedom and Reason (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1963) Hare subscribes to the same view. See section 5 below.

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278 H E C T O R - N E R I CASTANEDA

F. E. Sparshott, 3 P. H. Nowell-Smith, 4 A. J. Ayer, ~, C. L. Steven- son, 6 C. Johnson 7) hold that at least one characteristic function of an 'ought'-sentence consists in its entailing or involving an imperative, or in its being used to tell somebody to do something. Doubtlessly, there is a close connection between imperatives and ought-assertions. But it is not as close as these philosophers have thought; yet to see some of the crucial differences is to gain an insight into both the nature of ought-assertions and the nature of imperatives.

The fundamental role of an imperative sentence is, of, course, to be used to tell someone to do some action. We shall speak of imperatives or mandates to refer to whal is being said, or asserted, in acts of telling someone to do something, even if these linguistic acts are discharged through indicative sentences as, for instance, "You are hereby ordered. . ." or "I am requesting tha t . . . " . An imperative is here analogous to a proposition or a statement. Now, the statements (or propositions) which, if asserted, can be properly asserted by means of sentences containing deontic words like 'ought', 'right', 'wrong', 'permissible', 'may', 'obligatory',

a F. E. Sparshott, An Enquiry Into Goodness (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1958), pp. 245-247, where he subscribes to Hate ' s analysis of 'ought' .

4p. H. Nowell-Smith, Ethics (Penguin Books, London, 1954), pp. 190-199, to be cited as 'ET', etc. " . . . as I have suggested, 'Smith ought to do Y' when spoken by Smith expresses a decision, but when spoken by Jones expresses an injunction" (p. 195). Nowell-Smith adds to the injunctive function of 'You ought to do A' a long list of contextual implications: (a) that the speaker has reasons for his 'ought'-assertion (pp. 190 ft., 152), (b) that he has a pro- attitude toward his bearer 's doing A (pp. 189-194), (c) that his hearer has a pro-attitude toward doing A (pp. 192, 158), (d) that the speaker believes that there is a considerable chance of his advice (or injunction) being acted upon (p. 199), (e) that he believes that his hearer will be entertained, pleased, etc., by doing A (p. 152), (f) that "the consensus of reputable opinion is on his side" (p. 189). All points (a ) - ( f ) presuppose that the characteristic role of "You ought to do A" is to express an injunction or give advice.

5A. J. Ayer, Language, Truth, and Logic (London: Victor Gollancz, 1936), Ch. VI, reproduced in W. Sellars and J. Hospers, Readings in Ethical Theory (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1952), pp. 393-402. For him the imperative involved in the 'ought '-sentence depends on the latter's role in arousing feeling. "The sentence 'You ought to tell the truth' also. involves the command 'Tell the truth', but here the tone of command is less emphatic" than in "It is your duty to tell the t ruth" (Sellars and Hospers, p. 397).

e C. L. Stevenson, Ethics and Language (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1943), chs. II, X, etc. He claims that the imperative "Disapprove of X 's not doing A" is involved in "X ought to do A" (p. 21). 'Ought ' embodies imperatives which try to change the heater 's attitudes (pp. 114 ft.). A change in attitude will be exhibited in doing certain things and no longer doing others thus, "You ought to do A" may be said to embody, for Stevenson, the imperative "Do A", too.

7 C. Johnson, "Commanding and Choosing". Mind, n.s., Vol. LXVI (1957), pp. 63-74. "I shall concede to Hare . . . that any genuinely evaluative use of 'ought ' guides choices, entails an imperative, and is an answer to the question 'What shall I do?' " (p. 63).

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IMPERATIVES, OUGHTS, AND MORAL OUGHTS 279

'must', 'has to', and others we shall call normatives or ought- statements, provided that they formulate evaluations of actions, are concerned with the guidance of choices, enter in deliberations, and are the kinds of statements from which imperatives or decisions are derivable. This is not an analysis of normatives, but only a pre-analytic characterization of the sort of statements of the language of action we are to discuss in this essay, s For simplicity we shall speak of 'ought'-sentences to refer to sentences which express normatives, even if they do not contain the word 'ought'.

It is a notorious fact that imperatives or mandates cannot be conveyed by means of subordinate clauses. This fact is a clue of great importance for distinguishing the nature of imperatives from that of ought-assertions.

Let us consider, first, the special case of the English particles which are normally employed to form conditional sentences. The most commonly used of these particles are: 'if', 'if-then', 'only if', 'in case that', 'provided that', 'in the event that', and 'on condition that'. Consider, for example, the assertions that would be normally made with the sentences: (i) 'If he comes, tell him'. (ii) 'Only if he comes, tell him', (iii) 'In case that he comes, tell him'. The assertions in question are all conditional imperatives (or mandates). Consider, now, the results obtained from the previous sentences by exchanging the roles of the clauses: (ia) 'If tell him, he comes', (iia) 'Only if tell him, he comes', etc. These results are wholly ungrammatical: they are simply not English sentences. The point is that imperative sentences or clauses cannot logically follow any of the normal conditional particles in a sentence.

We shall define a conditioning sentetwe as a sentence (or clause) that follows a normal conditional particle (with the excep- tion of the word ' then') , and a conditional sentence as the sentence (or clause) which is a component of a conditional sentence and is not the conditioning one. This distinction has nothing to do with the customary distinction between the antecedent (or protasis) and the consequent (or apodosis) of a conditional (or hypothetical). The latter distinction is governed by two rules: (a) the antecedent of a conditional sentence is the clause following 'if' or a near- synonym of 'if' (like 'provided that' and 'in the event that '), the consequent is the other clause; (b) the consequent of a con-

s For a more adequate and complete characterization of normatives, imperatives and resolutives (i.e., statements of decision), see H. N. Castaneda, 'Imperatives, Decisions, and Oughts: A Logico-metaphysical Investigation", in MLoC, especially pp. 223-243, 260-292. Some important contrasts between .imperatives and normatives, especially moral normatives, are further examined m Section 5 below.

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280 HECTOR-NERI CASTANEDA

ditional sentence is the clause following 'only if', the antecedent is the other clause. Hence, imperative sentences can function as antecedents, as well as consequents, even though they never function as conditioning sentences. Thus, 'tell him' is the antecedent of 'Only if he comes, tell him' and the consequent of 'if he comes, tell him.'

A crucial logical fact is that imperatives (i.e., mandates) are never expressed by means of conditioning sentence~. This is not just an accident of grammar (common to at least all Indo- European languages as far as I can tell). It relates to the very function of the imperative sentence, namely, to express imperatives. But it goes beyond the grammatical fact about imperative sentences above pointed out. For while the sentence 'If he comes, you tell him' both may be used to formulate a conditional mandate and has a genuine English sentence as converse, namely, 'If you tell him, he is coming', the latter sentence cannot be, in ordinary English, used to formulate the mandate 'You, tell him'. Similarly, while 'I am commanding you to go' formulates, when categorically used, a command, it does not do so after a conditioning particle, e.g.., in 'If I am commanding you to go, then you must go'. 9 The point is simply that a conditioning sentence cannot discharge the function of telling somebody what to do, or to do something on a given occasion. Here we have a pre-philosophical datum, which can serve as a criterion for testing the adequacy of the imperativist analysis of 'ought'. Since ought-statements can be formulated through conditioned as well as conditioning sentences, the analysis fails the test. The same is true of the derived test that the ordinary language of action allows the formulation of statements by means of conditional sentences whose antecedents and consequents are both 'ought'-sentences. Yet ordinary language does not allow both the antecedent and the consequent of a conditional to perform the job of telling someone to do something. Thus, it is not necessary for an ought-statemenl/to involve or include an imperative.

Let us consider, in the second place, oratio c~btiqua and modal contexts. Clearly, ought-statements can play the role of assumptions, suppositions, merely entertained possibilities or considerations. We can, for instance, say truly things like 'Let us suppose that he ought to do A,' 'It is possible that someone should do A' and 'Nobody believes that he ought not to do A.' We see that ought-statements are quite at home in the unassertive roles of oratio obliqua. Mandates, on the other hand, are the sorts of things

This sentence and the two preceding ones have been added oft suggestions made, independently, by Professors William J. Kilgore, Haywood Shuford, and Robert Yoes.

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that cannot be believed, known or conjectured (to be true), for the simple reason that they necessarily lack truth-values. Thus, once again, we find that ought-statements do not necessarily include, or consist of, mandates. The imperative role is simply not essential to a normative.

Let us, finally, consider the contexts of deliberation. Here we find that 'ought'-sentences may be employed to tell a person what to do, but they may also be used to make assertions which cannot be assertions to tell somebody to do something. Consider, for instance, the following train of assertions addressed to Smith:

(1) Inasmuch as you promised Jones to wait for his friend, you ought to wait for Jones' friend;

(2) but inasmuch as both you promised your wife not to wait for Peter, and it has turned out that Peter is Jones' friend, you ought not to wait for Jones' friend;

(3) in this case you must keep your promise to your wife;

(4) therefore, you must not wait for Jones' friend;

(5) hence, don't wait for him.

Here is a normal sample of the sort of reasoning one may go through if asked by Smith to give him advice, He faces a conflict of duties and there are certain facts and principles from which one derives a solution. Clearly, an assertion formulating the whole situation (the conflict, the facts, the principles and the solution) is self-consistent. Thus, the two statements (1) and (2) form a consistent pair. This is precisely the pair that formulates the conflict, but not, of course, a self-contradiction. (In section 5 below we discuss attempts at denying the existence of real conflicts of duties). Now, a statement of the form 'Inasmuch as p, q' (i.e., a statement expressed in a sentence of the form 'inasmuch as p, q') entails both the statement that p and the statement that q. Thus from (1) we can deduce the statement

(6) Smith, you ought to wait for Jones' friend. Similarly, from (2) we can deduce the statement

(7) Smith, you ought not to wait for Jones' friend.

Since the set (1) - (5) is consistent, (6) and (7) are not each other's contradictory. What happens is, of course, simply that the ought to which (6) refers is different from the ought to which (7) refers. Our statement (6) is the statement.

(6a) Smith has a duty (an obligation) to wait for Jones' friend. And (7) is the statement.

(7a) Smith has a duty (an obligation) not to wait for Jones'

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friend. Clearly, (a) is not the contradictory of (7a). From them together we cannot deduce the self-contradiction 'Smith has a duty (an obligation) to both wait and not wait for Jones' friend.' In order to make this deduction we need the additional premise, 'The dutifulness referred to in (6a) is identical with the dutifulness referred to in (7a) ' or 'The oughtness referred to in (6) -~-- the oughtness referred to in (7)? But this premise is not avail- able in the present case. (The very interesting, though vexing, problems of providing criteria for the identity of obligatoriness or oughtness and of providing criteria for the identity of duties or oughts is beyond the scope and plan of this essay.)

It is evident that neither (6a) nor (7a) are, or include, imperatives. Thus, neither (6) nor (7), nor (1) nor (2), are, or include, imperatives. At any rate, it is clear that the ought-statement included in (1), and the ought-statement which is the whole of (1), fail to be assertions telling Smith to wait for Jones' friend. Now, however, we can strengthen our results. We can show that at least one ought statement fails even to entail its corresponding imperative.

Suppose that every statement of the form 'x ought to do A' entailed its corresponding imperative 'X, do A'. Then, since from (1), [i.e., 'Inasmuch as you, Smith, promised Jones, you ought to wait for Jones' friend'] we can deduce (6) ['Smith, you ought to wait for Jones' friend'] we could derive from (1), 'Smith, wait for Jones' friend.' Similarly, from (2) we could derive, 'Smith, don't wait for Jones' friend'. But then, we could derive from (1) and (2) a contradictory pair of imperatives. For, surely, to tell Smith to wait for Jones' friend and also to tell him not to wait for Jones' friend is to make a self-contradictory assertion. Hence, if every ought-statement entailed its corresponding imperative, our set (1)-(5) would entail a self-contradiction. But, as we have seen, (1)-(5) form a consistent set; hence, at least one of the two ought-statements fails to entail its corresponding imperative. Actually, neither statement entails its corresponding imperative; but I will not argue the point.

I concede, however, that every normative entails an imperative. This is because every statement, or quasi-statement, entails an imperative. The proof is simple: every statement p entails and is entailed by the corresponding statement or quasi-statement 'p or (p and q),' whatever q may be; hence, any statement p entails 'p or (p and Mary, go home), ' which is an imperative, since any combination of imperatives with non-imperatives, or imperatives, is an imperative. By the same principle, the contingent or synthetic

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IMPERATIVES, OUGHTS, AND M O R A L O U G H T S 283

imperative "It is raining or (it is raining but Mary, don't go home)'; entails the contingent statement "It is raining. ''1°

In sum, normatives differ from imperatives (or mandates) in three crucial respects: the former can, while the latter cannot, function as conditions, appear in aratio obliqua, and formulate alternative courses of action or deontic possibilities in a piece of deliberation. We shall summarise this by saying that imperatives can olnly b,e used assertively, while normative~ can be used booth assertively and unassertively.

2. The qualified and the unqualified aughts. A clue to the dis- tinctive character of normatives lies in the fact that normatives may be thought, or used, unassertively. In particular, normatives are typically found in deliberation, where they appear as conditions, as considerations, as possibilities or alternatives. The structure of deliberation is precisely that of a sustained reasoning, and its com- plexity is more obvious in the case of a conflict of duties. Here we have a network of oughts, obligations, and wrongs, that are examined, confronted, separated, weighed, and balanced so. as to distil an important ought-statement as conclusion. It may be a first-person normative, from which the speaker or thinker may yet derive a decision; or it may be a second-person normative from which the speaker may derive an imperative conclusion of advice, or command, addressed to his interlocutor. The crucial point, however, is that the characteristic features of oughts are most clearly revealed where there are conflicts of duties, and it is there that we must determine the functions of normatives and the fundamental features of the meaning of the term 'ought', i.e., of the concept of ought.

By saying that the primary role of ought-statements is in deliberation, I do not mean to suggest that imperatives are not employed in inferences. I am convinced that there are inferences involving imperatives, and indeed, in the preceding paragraph I advisedly mentioned that a train of deliberation may culminate in an imperative conclusion. 11

Consider this simple example: "Inasmuch as you promised, you ought to wait for Peter; but if you do you will be disappointing

~0 The principle appealed to here also provides a type of counter-example to the claim that one cannot derive an 'ought ' from an 'is', for a mixed combination of ought-statements with factual statements is itself an ought-statement.

~ZFor arguments in defence of a logic of imperatives see: R. M. Hare, LM, pp. 24 ft.; H. N. Castaneda, "Imperative Reasonings", Philosophy and Phenromenological Research, vol. 21 (1960), pp. 21-49; Lars Bergstr6m, Impera- tives and Ethics (Stockholm University Press, Stockholm, 1962), Ch. 4. For new interesting arguments against the existence of imperative reasonings not yet criticized in print (as far as I know), see W. Sellars, op. cit., pp. 162-173, 212- 214.

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your wife, and you must not disappoint your wife, sa don't wait for Peter". Here we have two normatives:

(i) "Inasmuch as you promised, you ought to wait for Peter,"

and (ii) "You must not disappoint your wife."

We have seen how (i) is not used to tell anybody what to do; on the other hand, (ii) may be said to be used by the speaker of the example to tell the hearer what action to do in his circumstances. The whole utterance presents a sort of conflict of claims on the person and states the grounds for them; the emphasis on the word 'must' expresses that the second claim is more stringent, and, because of it, tells the hearer to satisfy it. The inference is actually an abbreviation of "Inasmuch as you promised Peter to wait for him, you ought to wait for him; but (ii.1) inasmuch as your wait- ing for Peter will disappoint your wife, you ought not to wait for him. (ii.2) Everything relevant to this case being considered, you must not do anything which will disappoint your wife; so, you must not wait for Peter; hence, don't wait for him." In this longer version the two normatives telescoped in (ii) are separated: a second 'ought'-sentence formulates the second claim and its ground, whereas the 'must'-sentence just formulates the solution to the conflict of claims and tells the person what to do. Thus, the must-assertion (ii.2) may be said to imply the imperative, "Don't wait for Peter".

The non-elliptical normatives which merely formulate claims have, as in that example, two characteristics: they are not used to tell somebody what to do, and they include a qualifying expression, e.g., "Inasmuch a s . . . " . However, the normatives which merely formulate the solution to the conflict of grounds or claims:

(a) express that a certain course of action is the most reasonable, everything (relevant) being considered,

(b) are used, if publicly asserted, to tell a person or group of persons what to do,

(c) are conceived of as premises for deriving resolutions or pieces of advice, and

(d) include no reference to specific qualifications or grounds, for otherwise they would not satisfy condition (1).

We shall say that the concept of ought, or an ought, is used unqualifiedly when a person thinks that a certain normative is the case, and the normative in question satisfies conditions (a)-(d). We shall also say that a deontic term, especially 'ought', is un-

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qualified, or used unqualifiedly, when it expresses an ought used unqualifiedly, i.e., when it is part of a normative sentence that expresses a normative satisfying conditions (a) - (d) . In both the abbreviated and the unabbreviated examples, ~ven above, the term 'must' is used unqualifiedly. For the sake of simplicity we shall hereafter assume that we are dealing with unabbreviated cases, so that each normative formulates just one ought-statement and no deontic term is used both qualifiedly and unqualifiedly. Also for the sake of simplicity we shall refer for the most part to deontic terms, rather than to deontic concepts; but it must be understood that we are not committed to a view of thinking that requires that words be uttered "in one's heart," so to speak, in order that a thought occurs. (Indeed, in my view, a language is only required for communication but not for the existence of thoughts or any other propositional state of consciousness.) 12

We shall say that the concept of ought, or an ought, is used imperativally when a person thinks that a certain normative is the case and the normative in question satisfies conditions (b) and (c) above. We shall say that a deontic term, especially 'ought', is used imperativally, or is imperatival, when it appears in a deontic sentence expressing a normative satisfying conditions (b) and (c). Thus, an unqualified use of ought (or 'ought') is, necessarily, an imperatival use of ought (or 'ought').

Not every 'ought' used imperativally is used purely unqualifiedly. In the original enthymematic deliberation, (ii) above contained an imperativaI use of 'must', together with both a qualified and an unqualified use of 'must'. The imperatival and the unqualified uses coincide in unabbreviated utterances in which each claim is formulated together with its ground, and the solution to the conflict is formulated separately.

The preceding distinctions do not explain much. They call attention, however, to certain features of the language of action, and underscore the point already made, viz., that the imperatival uses of, say, 'ought' cannot be the fundamental, or a defining, property of normatives, but rather that the fundamental property of normatives is their involvement with grounds or reasons, with the weighing of these reasons, and with the finding of the most reasonable course of action,

I hasten to explain that I am not expounding the view that the meaning of sentences of the form "X ought to do A" is to be analyzed in terms of "There are (good) reasons for doing A".

x~I have argued for this claim in "Lenguaje, Pensamiento y Realidad", Humanitas (Momerrey, Nuevo Leon, Mexico), vol. 3 (1962), pp. 199-217,

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1 have elsewhere lz attacked this view in both its suggested forms: when 'reason' is taken as a sort of premise, as in the case of Kurt Baier, 14 and when 'reason' is taken as a sort of motive or cause, as hinted at by David Falk. 15 As far as I can see, at least one normative term is strictly indefinable, but I believe that there can be no proof of this. In my view, "Inasmuch as C, X ought to do A" is primarily a first-order (i.e., object-linguistic) statement about the imperative (mandate) "X, do A" and the resolutive " I (X) shall do A" being necessarily justified in the context of C; and "X ought unqualifiedly to do A" is a sort of object-linguistic reflection of the meta-linguistic statement that the imperative (mandate) "X, do A" is necessarily justified in the context of all facts, and the highest purposes, conventions, and decisions to which the speaker and the person X subscribe. I say that purpose E is higher than purpose E' for persons X and Y if X and Y agree in preferring the attainment of E to that of E' in case both cannot in fact be jointly attained. But this is by itself a long and complicated story which cannot be told here? n It should be noted that the mandate "X, do A" may be justified in the sense indicated even if there are powerful reasons for not uttering the imperative sentence 'X, do A'. That is, the justifiedness of the mandate, "X, do A'" does not imply the justifiedness of the mandate "Y, tell X to do A. ''17

3. Moral 'oughts'. The idea of morality is extremely complex. Yet one thing is perfectly straightforward: an essential part of morality as an institution consists of a constellation of moral principles of action. These principles determine that certain acts are morally obligatory, or morally wrong, or morally permissible. One uses these principles to find out what one ought morally to do, or not to do. We shall speak of moral oughts to refer to morally obligatory acts or actions, and of the moral 'oughts' to refer to the uses of deontic terms, especially 'ought', in expressions meant to refer to the moral character of an act or kind of action. In

13 In "Imperatives, Decisions, and Oughts" in MLoC, pp. 245-260. 14K. Baier, The Moral Point o/ View (Cornell University Press, Ithaca,

1958). See also S. Toulmin, An Examination o/ the Place of Reason in Ethics (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1950), pp. 28, 43, 57; and the pene- trating discussion of Toulmin by G. Nakhnikian, "An Examination o£ Toulmin's Analytical Ethics", Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 9 (1959), pp. 59-79.

a~W. D. Falk, " 'Ought' and Motivation" (1947) in Sellars and Hospers (eds.), Readings in Ethical Theory (Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1952), pp. 492-510.

~I have discussed it in nay essays mentioned in footnotes 13 and 11, and in "The Semantics of Prescriptive Discourse (A Reply to Lars Bergstr6m)", Theoria, vol. 28 (1962), pp. 72-78.

1~ This point embodies my only rebuttal of Milton Fisk's discussion of my essay in his perceptive and sympathetic review of MLoC in the Natural Law Forum, vol. 9 (1964), pp. 171-176.

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IMPERATIVES, OUGHTS, AND MORAL OUGHTS 2 8 7

explicit references to the moral character of an act, the deontic terms will be accompanied by the adjective 'moral' (e.g., "Jones has the moral duty to . . . " ) or the adverb 'morally' (e.g., "Jones ought morally to do A" and "It is morally wrong for Jones t o . . . ")

Let us say that the concept of ought is used categorically in an isolated statement of the form "It ought to be the case t h a t . . . " or " X ought to do A." And let us say that an occurrence of the word 'ought' is a categorical 'ought', or is used categorically, if, and only if, it expresses a categorical use of the concept of ought.

From the arguments in section 1 above, we know that moral 'oughts' used in conditioning clauses or in clauses in oratio obtiqua are not imperatival; afortiori, such 'oughts' are not unqualified, either. Yet it remains an open question whether or not moral categorical 'oughts' are always imperatival or unqualified. Thus, we have four questions for investigation:

(A) Is every categorical moral 'ought', necessarily, an imperatival 'ought'?;

(B) Is every categorical imperatival 'ought', necessarily, a , ,,) moral ought . ;

(C) Is every categorical moral 'ought', necessarily, an 'ought' used unqualifiedly?; and

(D) Is every categorical 'ought' used unqualifiedly a moral 'ought'?

It is perfectly clear that qua philosophers we are not interested in the empirical questions whether in fact every categorical moral 'ought' is imperatival or unqualified, or vice versa.

Since the unqualified uses of 'ought" are necessarily imperatival, a negative answer to question (A) implies a negative answer to question (C). Whoever acknowledges that there are real conflicts of moral duties is committed to a negative answer to both questions (A) and (C). W. D. Ross is a case in point. Suppose that Jones is in circumstances Ca and C2 such that he is unable to perform both act A and act B, and that he is bound by two moral principles: (i) "In Ca you ought morally to do A" and (ii) "In C2 you ought morally to do B". In such a case at least one of the two moral oughts will be overridden. Let (i) mention the overridden ought. Hence, when Jones deliberates: " . . . Inasmuch as I am in Ca, I ought morally to do A. But . . . ", he uses an 'ought' which is moral, but not imperatival. Thus, Ross' principles of prima facie duties TM furnish examples o f ought-assertions whose oughts are, though moral, not imperatival.

~sW. D. Ross, The Right and the Good (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1930), pp. 19ff.

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But there are philosophers, like Hare and Nowell-Smith, who define a moral ought as one which is overriding, i.e., as the one which is unqualified and comes out unscathed in a conflict of duties. These philosophers are committed to an affirmative answer to question (C). Hence, they are committed to an affirmative answer to question (A), too. They are, thus, committed to the view that there really are no conflicts of moral duties. (Kant is, perhaps, in the latter group, inasmuch as he insisted that there are no conflicts of duties, but only conflicts of grounds of obligation. He apparently held that the moral oughts are unqualified oughts. At any rate, this is a plausible interpretation of his characterization of Achtung, on the assumption that Achtung can only have a moral law as its object: " Was ich unmittelbar als Gesetz fiir nich erkenne, erkenne ich mit Achtung, welche bloss das Bewusstsein der Unterordnung meines Willens unter einen Gesetze ohne . . . Die unmittelbare Bestimmung des Willens durchs Gesetz und das Bewusstsein derselben heisst Achtung...-.)19

Again, since every 'ought' used unqualifiedly is necessarily an imperatival 'ought', an affirmative answer to question (B) implies an affirmative answer to question (D).

In brief, in the process of looking for our own answer to questions (A) - (D) we must come to grips with some distinguished philosophers' relevant arguments and opinions.

4. Is an overriding categorical 'ought' a moral 'ought'? Let us start with question (D). To many of us the answer is an emphatic "No" . However, there are philosophers (Kant and Prichard, for instance), who have assumed an affirmative answer, and there are others (like Nowell-Smith) who accept a qualified affirmation. No.well-Smith explicitly claims: "I t is logically odd to say, 'This is the (morally) better course; but I shall do t h a t ' " (ET, p. 178), and more generally: "A man's moral principles are 'dominant' in the sense that he would not allow them to be overridden by any pro-attitude other than another moral principle" (ET, p. 307), There is the notorious problem of interpreting Nowell-Smith's "logical oddness" (see ET, 72-75, 83-85, 102-107), which he best characterizes by saying that "a question is 'logically odd' if there appears to be no further room for it in its context because it has already been a n s w e r e d . . , not necessarily senseless, but we should be puzzled to know what it meant and should have to give it some unusual interpretation." (ET, p. 83.) Thus, on p. 178, Nowell-Smith seems to be saying only that normally the moral 'oughts' are over-riding. On p. 307 he is not committing

~I. Kant, Groundwork o] the Metaphysics o~ Morals, Akk, ed., IV, p. 402n,

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himself to answer (D) in the affirmative. The most that his statement amounts to is that either no moral principles enter into a conflict of choices, or if they enter, then the unqualified ought will be moral.

Now Kant does seem to have co.remitted himself to the assumption that

(M) the 'ought' used unqualifiedly is a moral 'ought'.

This is the assumption underlying Kant's claim that moral imperatives (i.e., 'ought'-sentences or normatives) alone are categorical. Since most of the things to be considered in determining what we ought (unqualifiedly) to do are our purposes, Kant is certainly right in saying that qualified normatives whose qualifications relate to purposes are contingent (zu[Sllig), in that their bindingness or imperatival character depends on those purposes; hence, "if we give up the purpose we are relieved of the [qualified] precept [or 'normative']" (op. cit., p. 420). But this does not imply that one cannot get rid of the moral normatives, unless (M) is assumed. Obviously, a being who makes decisions and acts cannot get rid of the unqualified ought; thus, if one assumes (M) such a being cannot get rid of the moral oughts either.

Prichard 2° is the only philosopher I know of who has given an argument in support of (M). He considers the case of a would-be poisoner and discusses the statements made by someone talking to him with the following three sentences:

P: You ought to give him a second dose. Q: If you do not give him a second dose, your purpose will

not be realized. R: You ought to tell the truth.

Prichard acknowledges that at a first glance Q "seems to state our reason for . . . . rather than what we mecm by" P. "But ," he objects, "this cannot be so, for if it were, we should in making the assertion be implying the idea that whenever a man has a certain .purpose, no matter what the purpose be, he ought to do whatever Is necessary for its realization, and no one has such an idea . . . . On the other hand," he goes on, if we we assert R and "are asked what we mean, we should, ordinarily at least, only answer by using what we considered a verbal equivalent such as 'should' or 'duty' or 'morally bound' " (OM, p. 91; my italics).

The whole argument hinges on the italicized 'ought' in Prichard's quotation. First, if it is the same as the one in P,

2oH. A. Pilchard, Moral Obligation (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1950), to be cited as 'MO'.

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290 H E C T O R - N E R I C A S T A N E D A

Prichard is contradicting himself. If the meaning of P is given by Q, then they entail each other. In general, if sentences like P are synonymous with sentences like Q, then, in the sense of 'ought' appearing in P, the proposition "we ought to do every action whose non-performance will result in our purpose not being realized" is analytic. A fortiori, it has to be true. Second, if Prichard's italicized 'ought' is the unqualified one, discussed in Section 2 above, Pilchard is right; it is false that we ought unqualifiedly to do whatever helps the. realization of our purposes. There may be a conflict of purposes, or our purposes may conflict with obligations we acknowledge, and we may give up the purpose to kill the person in question. But Q is not the reason for, but only a reason for P. Moreover, P can be used as imperativally as R, i.e., to tell the hearer exactly what to do--once we have determined that poisoning the person in question is exactly what ought to be done, everything relevant being considered. That is, Q is a reason for, but does not entail, P. But then Prichard is mistaken in believing that Q states what we mean by P. Third, if, besides being unqualified (and imperatival) the italicized 'ought' is also moral, in accordance with (M), then Prichard is correct in holding that Q is not the reason for saying that we ought (in the same sense) to give him a second dose. But this leads to the perplexing conclusion that P is never unqualified or imperatival--because we are disregarding the moral considerations. Yet an immoral person will use P unqualifiedly, knowing very well that he has put moral reasons aside, if by 'moral reasons' we mean definite principles like R or like "One ought not to inflict pain just for the sake of producing suffering." I conclude that Prichard's argument is unsound.

Hare speaks at times 21 as if he were committed to an affirmative answer to question (D). He argues with Kant that for Jones to be justified in claiming that X ought to do A, Jones must be prepared to subsume his judgment under a properly universal 'ought'-principle, i.e., one which contains no proper names or any other singular-referring expression and has only universal quanti- tiers for persons. This is his "thesis of universality". He then proceeds to claim:

Offences against the thesis of universality are logical, not moral. If a person says 'I ought to act in a certain way, but nobody else ought to act in that way in relevantly similar circumstances', then, on my thesis, he is abusing the word

21 In Freedom and Reason, to be cited as 'FR ' , as weU as in pr ivate conversations.

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'ought'; he is implicitly contradicting himself. But the logical offence here lies in the conjunction of two moral judgments, not in either one of them by itself. (FR, p. 32; the first set of italics is mine.)

This quotation does not, quite likely, represent Hare's best opinions on the matter. But it is important to set the record straight. The person who refuses to hold universal(izable) principles cannot be abusing the word 'ought'. At most, he could be abusing the term 'ought morally', if he insisted that his principles determine what he ought morally to do. But this is not the man Hare is describing, unless it were assumed that the unqualified ought the man asserts about himself has to be a moral ought as well. This would be assumption (M) above.

Given the involvement of ought-statements with reasons and deliberation, any 'ought' whatever must, indeed, be governed by a principle of universality, namely:

(P) If X ought to do A, then there is a property 4' such that whoever has 4, ought to do A.

But (P) is different from Hare's (and presumably Kant's) thesis of universalizability. (P) does not require, as the latter does, that the property 4' it mentions be capable of being described without the use of proper names or demonstrative or personal pronouns. In other words, (P) requires only that a singular ought-assertion be capable of being supported by reasons, but says nothing about the kinds of reasons that a person can, or ought to, offer. And this is precisely as it should be.

There is, however, a purely logical principle of unrestricted universality. It is the principle that "Everybody is A" entails "if a exists, a is A." Thus, since a person's use of the word 'I (me, my, myself)' cannot fail to refer to an existing thing, if Jones holds "Everybody ought to do A," then he is committed to " I ought to do A" (as used by him). Thus, on a literal interpretation, statements expressible in sentences of the form (Q) below are inconsistent:

(Q) The rule "Everybody ought to do A" holds, but it does not apply to me. When Jones denies, literally, that the principle applies to him, he is denying that "Everybody ought to do A" entails "I (Jones) ought to do A." To deny this is to incur a self-contradiction, if 'everybody' is used in its literal sense. This, I take it, is the insight in Hate's discussion. But the literal inconsistency of (Q) does not imply that a statement of the form "Every- body but me ought to do A" is inconsistent. And a statement of this kind may be precisely the one which Jones means to make

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when he asserts "The rule 'Everybody ought to do A' does not apply to me." We may, of course, accuse him of abusing his quotation marks.

Thus, Jones does no abuse either to the term 'ought' or to any quotation marks when he holds, say, (R) , "Everybody, but me, ought to refrain from inflicting pain just for the sake of enjoy- ing the sight of pain behaviour." If Jones does not claim that (R) is a moral principle, he would not even be abusing the moral meaning of the term 'ought'. Surely, his principle is morally repugnant, but it violates no principle of logic. Jones may still reason just as much and as well as any of us. He is in a position to give a reason why for everybody else it is wrong to torture a small child, but not for him. He can agree with Hare that in the relevant sense of 'relevant' it is self-contradictory to say: " I ought to act in a certain way, but nobody else ought to act in that way in ret"evantly similar circumstances." In this case the relevant circumstances would be, for Jones, as prescribed by (R) being different from Jones.

In sum, Hare's charge of a logical mistake looks plausible due to the ambiguity of 'relevantly similar circumstances'--as the circumstances ~ mentioned in (P), and as the circumstances satisfying Hare's thesis of universality.

Analogous ambivalences on the universality of (relevant) reason beset M. G. Singer's deep discussion in his General i za t ion in Ethics. e~ A characteristic passage is: 'Nor can the attempt to justify oneself by reference to a "rule" that refers to oneself by name (and which of course would not be a general rule at all) work any better. If John Smith can say "Everyone whose name is John Smith has the right to act in such and such a way," Stan Spatz III can say "Everyone whose name is Stan Spatz I l l has the right to act in such and such a way," and everyone else can invoke a similar " r u l e " . . . . It would follow that everyone has the right to act in whatever way he pleases. Now this is not just false---it is sel f -contradictory ' (p. 23; my italics). In a purely physical sense, of course, everyone can make the assertion Singer quotes. But the issue is whether Stan Spatz III is appealing to exactly the same relevant reason that Smith is appealing to in his statement. The answer is "yes" and "no", depending on what Smith's reason is. On the one hand, if Smith's reason is that whoever has the property

~2Singer's book is one of the most important contributions to moral philosophy in the last decade, and the most authoritative discussion of it. is G. Nakhnikian's "Generalization in Ethics", Review o[ Metaphysics, vol. 17 (1964), pp. 436-461. Nakhnikan has an excellent critical survey of the criticisms of Singer's book published before December, 1963. Alan Gewirth's "The Generalization Principle", The Philosophical Review, vol. 73 (1964), pp. 229-242, is also a good discussion of Singer's book.

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of having a name has a right to do, say, A, then Stan Spatz's statement appeals to the same reason. But if Smith's reason is that whoever has the property of being named "John Smith" has a right to do A, and this is what Singer construes him as asserting, then Stan Spatz III is not appealing to the same reason. Of course, he can (physically) say anything, including "Everyone named Stan Spatz III has a right to . . . ". But the question is: How can Singer rule out Smith's reason? As far as I can see, only by a principle analogous to Hate 's thesis of universality, i.e., by barring proper names and other singular-referring expressions from the description of the circumstances which are regarded as relevant reasons. But the philosophically important thing to understand is that this requirement is simply an additional requirement over and above the other requirements constituting the meaning of 'reason'. And if it is made part of the meaning of reason by definition, then it remains an open question whether statements about rights, wrongs, or oughts, must, logically, have reasons (in this sense).

Singer is discussing moral principles, and he may certainly define 'moral reasons' as properly universalizable in Hate's sense. But we must understand that "Everybody has the right to do as he pleases" is not self-contradictory. It may even be true: In a world in which everybody wishes to do what and only what he ought morally to do, or what he ought to do and what is consistent with it, everything a person of that world wishes to do is morally right.

Furthermore, from the fact that a man, without contradiction, can set up a principle of action according to which only those identical with him have a right to do some action A, it just does not follow that he has a moral right to set up such a principle. Thus, Singer's arguments do not support his (and Hare's) strong thesis of universality, as against (P), but, fortunately, such a thesis is not needed for a defence of morality as the institution we know it to be.

What is really important is to remember that inasmuch as a being who makes plans and acts in the world has to make decisions with long-range consequences, he has to choose the most reasonable course of action, given all the empirical facts of the world and his desires, needs, goals, purposes, ideals, etc. Such a being needs practical reasoning, principles of action, and cannot carry on without deriving what he ought, and ought not, to do from his principles, the facts, his purposes, needs, ends, etc. He has to deliberate, he has to find out what he ought to do on a given occasion. But this ought need not be a moral ought, not even an ought that satisfies the purely formal requirement of universalizability. A man facing a conflict of wants, desires, and goals

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will have as many prima facie oughts or claims as wants, desires, and goals enter into the conflict: These oughts may be belittled by calling them "only hypothetical, ''23 but the name-calling does not alter the fact that, in this conflict of oughts, the man will have to weigh them against each other, in order to find what he ought, everything considered, to do. He may put the universalizable oughts there, as making their claims, and appeal to principles that are in no way moral, which principles contain an ought that, for him, overrides all the others. Thus, 'ought, everything being considered' is not necessarily equivalent to 'ought morally', and it is the former we have referred to as 'ought unqualifiedly'.

I conclude, therefore, that assumption (M) is false, given the meanings of 'moral' and 'morally' we promised to discuss in Sec. 3. Hence, the answer to question (D) is in the negative: The unqualified, overriding 'oughts' are not necessarily moral 'oughts'.

Since every unqualified 'ought' is necessarily imperatival, and we have committed ourselves to the view that the unqualified 'oughts' are not necessarily moral, we are also committed to a negative answer to question (B).

Appendix to Sec. 4: Hare reluctantly half-concedes that 'ought' need not be universalizable in his brief discussion of "the concept oughta, which is prescriptive but not universalizable . . . . The questions that are asked in terms of 'ought,~' are ones which it is perfectly proper to discuss . . . questions of self-interest which is not universalized--self-interest, and the interest of groups, such as my family, and my country, which are defined by reference to an individual . . . but let him not confuse this sort of question with that which is troubling the man who asks "What ought a man (any man) to do when faced with circumstances like this?" (FR, pp. 165f.) What Hare fails to note is that the latter question does not imply universalizability. The principle "I alone have a right to torture" implies "Everybody who is not identical with me has no right to torture." Thus, he who asks "What ought a man (any man) to do in these circumstances?" may very well be asking a question that is materially equivalent to "What ought I (and 1

2a On the topic of deriving oughts f rom facts and ends, goals or purposes, see the very pregnant and clear-headed paper by B. J. Diggs, "A Technical Ought" Mind, n.s., vol. 69 (1960), pp. 301-317. I have discussed the issue in " A r e Hypothetical Imperatives qua Imperative Analytic?", in the Proceedings oy the Xllth International Congress o] Philosophy (Venice, 1958), vol. 7, pp. 85-93, and in the paper cited in footnote 11, especially pp. 46-48. A good and persuasive discussion of this topic appears in Max Black, "The Gap Between 'Is' and 'Should' ", Philosophical Review, vol. 73 (1964), pp. 165-181. See also Jotm Searle, "How to Derive 'Ought ' f rom 'Is ' ", Philosophical Review, vol. 73 (1964), pp. 43-58 and James and Judith Thomson, "How Not to Derive 'Ought ' from 'Is' ", Philosophical Review, LXXIII (1964), pp. 512-516.

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alone) to do in these circumstances?" Moreover, the crucial point remains: a man who faces a conflict of principles, regardless of how universalizable these principles may be, can still ask "What ought I to do?" Indeed, he ought to ask this question if he really wants to find a reasonable course of action, i.e., the one that will bring about the greatest harmony of his interests and goals. And note finally that because his principles of action are not universalizable, it does not follow that they are principles of self-interest. Ete may hold principles of the form "Everybody but me ought to take advantage of everybody else" or "I alone ought to help others."

5. Is every categorical moral 'ought' necessarily overriding?: This is question (C), the most confusing one of the set of questions (A) - (D) . To many of us, for instance, there is nothing logically objectionable (although there is something morally repugnant) in the following excerpts of a train of deliberation:

"S Insofar as we are all subject to moral duties, you ought (morally) not to try to kill your uncle; but since you need the money for your great artistic plans, he wilt not give money to you, and a great genius' primary duty is to realize his extraordinary potentialities . . . . hence, everything considered, you ought to kill him . . . ".

If (S), incomplete as it is, involves no logical inconsistency, then moral duties are not necessarily overriding. But some philosophers would object to the consistency of (S). On the one hand, Prichard would have argued that the italicized 'ought' is either still a moral one, or not an 'ought ' at all. On the other hand, Hare would doubtlessly object to the use of the term 'moral ' as referring to an ought that is not overriding.

An affirmative answer to question (C) is the underlying assumption behind Prichard's celebrated claim that it is absurd to ask "Why should I be moral'?" or "Why ought I to do what I acknowledge to be my moral duty?" His original argument runs as follows: "If , as often happens, we put to ourselves the question: "Why should we do so and so?' we are satisfied by being convinced either that the doing so will lead to something which we want . . . or that the doing so i t s e l f . . , is something that we want or should like . . . this seems to be precisely what we desire when we ask, e.g., 'Why should we keep our engagements to our own loss?'; for it is just the fact that the keeping of our engagements runs counter to the satisfaction of our desires which produced the question. The answer is, of course, not an answer, for it fails to convince us that we ought t o . . . ; even if successful on its own lines, it only makes us want to . . . " (MO, p. 3) For Pilchard the possible conflict

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between one's own interest and one's moral duty on a given occasion is an essential part of the unqualified 'ought', this being the one which solves the conflict and expresses what one ought to do everything considered? 4 Thus, for Prichard, to ask "Why ought I (unqualifiedly) to do my (moral) duty?" is absurd, for once one acknowledges that an action A is one's moral duty one is already acknowledging that one ought unqualifiedly to do A: it is absurd because either it has no answer at all or one already possesses an affirmative answer to it.

In The Language ol Morals Hare defined an evaluative 'ought' as one which entails an imperative (pp. 164, 168ff.). Clearly, in (S) "Insofar as we are all subject to moral duties, you ought (morally) not to try to kill your uncle" is not used to tell the person addressed to do anything. Thus, on Hare's definition, this 'ought' is not evaluative, and since for him a moral 'ought' has to be evaluative, he could claim that 'ought (morally) ' is either abused or used in a derivative sense. Hare could go on to explain that the 'ought' in the first sentence of (S) is really used in an inverted comma sense, to mean either (i) that the hearer's not killing his uncle "is required in order to conform to a standard which people in general, or a certain kind of people not specified but well understood, accept" (LM, 164; 167ff.), or (ii) that the hearer has a feeling that he ought not to kill his uncle (LM, 166 ft.). The same two cases of inverted comma senses are distinguished in FR, p. 52. Yet, nothing of this is evident from (S). The speaker will certainly have to hold that killing is morally wrong, but in uttering (S) he is not mentioning a principle, only making use of it. This just happens to be one among other principles he is appealing to in deciding what to advise his interlocutor. Furthermore, he is telling his hearer what he thinks the latter ought to do, everything considered, even if his hearer has no feelings of respect for human life or of obligation to preserve it. It should be noticed that in accordance with his definition of 'evaluative' in LM, Hare has to deny a real conflict of duties, and has to explain every 'ought' used in connection with possible choices which tells nobody to do any-

24 Prichard's views on the connection between moral duty and interest are carefully criticized in Falk's essay mentioned in footnote 15 above. In this essay, as well as in the essay mentioned in footnote 1 Falk argues, persuasively that there is an 'ought' which expresses the reas°nableness of an action as the action which the agent will be most inclined to do on a careful examination of all the relevant facts. The central analytic part of this claim is the one criticized in MLoC, pp. 251-260. However, this 'ought' of Falk's is akin to my unqualified ' ough t ' . . I have .emphasized the overriding role of the unqualified 'ought' in ctent~eraUon ann its crucial presence in the formulation of premises for the deriva- tion of decision and imperatives. But it may well turn out that something like Falk's causal discussion has to be given for the description of the procedure for finding out what one ought, unqualifiedly, to do, even though this causal discussion cannot provide an analysis of the meaning of 'ought (unqualifiedly)'.

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thing, either as non-evaluative at all or as evaluative in some derivative sense, e.g., as an evaluative 'ought' used ironically or within implicit commas.

In Freedom and Reason Hare has modified his view in a very interesting way, which unfortunately he has not clarified at all. He now claims that 'ought' has two dements in its meaning: descriptive and prescriptive, and that it is part of its meaning that "one may on occasion be emphasized to the neglect of the other." (FR, p. 75.) The prescriptive element is the familiar feature of entailing an imperative. Thus, one might think that Hare could agree, con- sistently, that in (S) the terms 'moral', 'morally', 'duty' and 'ought' are all used correctly and evaluatively. If this were the case, then Hare would be committed to the view that moral 'ougbts' are not necessarily overriding, but this he explicitly denies in FR, pp. 169f. Indeed, here is a problem that Hare should have solved: if the word 'ought' can "bury its other face [the prescriptive one] in the sand" (FR, p. 76), then the word 'ought' can be used evaluatively in an assertion which does not imply any imperatives! But then it is just false that an evaluative use of 'ought' is always one which contains a prescriptive element (FR, pp. 26f, 5ft., 21ft., 169, etc.). 25 (I submit that part of the obscurity and internal tensions of Hare's views on these matters is due to his not making up his mind which definitions or rules apply to the type 'ought' and which ones to its tokens. But I cannot elaborate this point here.)

In FR, pp. 168ff., Hare recognizes a sort of quasi-conflict of moral 'oughts'. Say Black holds:

(a) One ought never to make false statements, and (b) One ought not, in war time, to give away vital informa-

tion to strangers. Hare allows that Black may come to face a moral conflict, if he is in a position in which he cannot comply with both principles. In such a case Hare recognizes that one principle, e.g. (b) may over- ride the other. But he claims that, in such a case, Black modifies his principle (a) to

(a') One ought never to say what is false, except in wartime to deceive the enemy.

Moral principles, says Hare, "cannot be overridden [without change], but only altered or qualified to admit some exceptions . . . .

2t By the same principle of shift of elements, it is also false that an evaluative 'ought' must have a descriptive element. And since Hare claims that the universality of 'ought'-assertions depends on the latter's having descriptive meaning (pp. 10 ft., 15, 30), it would seem, then that Hare's requirement of universalizability is also less solid than it seems Can we "bury it in the sand", too?

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A man's moral principles are those which, in the end, he accepts to guide his life by" (FR, p. 169). This reason for justifying his claim about the alterability of moral principles is precisely the claim that the unqualified or overriding 'oughts' are necessarily moral. But as discussed above in Section 4, this claim is false, if moral principles are to be understood as having some additional feature besides overridingness, even if it is the purely formal feature of universality.

However, we are now examining question (C). Consider, then, Black's situation at time t, the time at which he realizes that he cannot comply with both of his principles (a) and (b). Even if by just a small fraction of a second, t is prior, or can be prior, to the time at which Black resolves his conflict and gives up (a) for (a'). At t Black is in a situation in which, even if he does not realize it, by (a) he ought morally to refrain from making a false statement, and by (b) he ought morally to make a false statement. And anybody who asserted this, anybody who, let us suppose, held Black's principles, would be using at least one token of 'ought' without motivational force, and, a fortiori, without using it unqualifiedly. Hence, Hare's thesis that there are no real conflicts of moral oughts and his thesis of the alterability of moral principles in apparent conflicts, not only fail jointly to provide an affirmative answer to question (C), but require a negative answer: at the time of inception of the apparent conflict of moral principles there is, or there may be, at least one qualified moral ought.

There is, however, a way in which conflicts are genuinely eliminated. A philosopher may hold that in a situation like Black's above, Black does not give up principle (a) for (a'), but comes to realize that his actual moral principle is not (a), as he thought before time t. On this view Black does not know what exactly is the moral principle he holds, and the moral conflict allows him both to discover his ignorance and find out that there is a formulation, (a'), which is nearer than (a) to his unknown principle. This view would get rid of conflicts of duties by making principles of action very mysterious. Yet it would not provide a sufficient premise for concluding that the term 'ought' is used unqualifiedly whenever it is used in a moral sense. Admittedly, on the present view statement (a), for instance, would not formulate what unqualifiedly Black ought morally to do in his situation. Yet inasmuch as the term 'ought' is correctly used in (a) to formulate what probably one ought morally to do, this use of 'ought' in (a) is a moral use, but it is not an unqualified use.

Naturally, one is free to define: "A man's moral principles are those which are universal and . . . and, in the end, he accepts to

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guide his life by" (developing the above quotation from FR, p. 169). This definition makes moral principles either inapplicable or very dominant. If one has moral principles, the resulting unqualified 'ought' in a given case will be a moral one. But from this it does not follow that every moral 'ought' is imperatival or unqualified. For, as the above discussion of Black shows, Black's principles (a) and (b) are principles by which he guides his life, and yet they conflict.

Thus, neither being supreme principles nor being alterable in quasi-conflicts prevents moral assertions from containing a moral, though non-imperatival 'ought'. What is needed for a negative answer to questions (A) and (C) is a more radical view, namely, that an ought-principle is moral only when it overrides other ought-principles. (Whether any principle is altered as the conflict is solved simply does not matter.) This view can, it seems to me. be developed without inconsistency. It will, nevertheless, have some bothersome consequences. For one thing, our man Black of the above example cannot say, for instance, that (a) or (b) are his moral principles simpliciter. He can only say that in the conflictive situation we put him in his moral principle was (b) . The next day, of course, he may find that (b) will yield to some other principle, e.g., (c) "One ought to betray one's country, when one is paid to do so." Now, in Section 3 when we got our problem for philosophical analysis we characterized a moral principle as an assertion about what is morally wrong, or morally right, or what ought morally to be done. If the view (or nomenclature) we are discussing were philosophically adequate, it would provide us with a partial analysis of the analysandum 'moral principle' of Section 3. But it does nothing of the kind. On the present view we can only say that an ought-assertion is a moral principle only if it expresses the overriding ought. Hence, on the present view we cannot speak of what we morally ought to do before we have finished the process of deliberation. This, I take it, is inconsistent with our analysandum idea of a moral principle.

Let us sum up the discussion of the topic of this section. First. it would be only a contingent, empirical fact, if it were a fact, that no man subscribes to more than one supreme principle of action, which principle satisfies the requirements (whatever they may be) for moral principles. Second, it would also be a purely empirical fact, if it were a fact, that the several supreme principles of action a man subscribes to do not lead to moral conflicts, in which one principle pulls him in one direction and another principle pulls him in a different direction and that he is unable to act in both direc- tions. Hence, it is only an empirical fact that the term 'ought' is

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used in an assertion that presents a moral direction delineated by a moral principle, without the token of 'ought' being used impera- tively. Hence, it is only an empirical fact that there are no uses of 'ought' which are both moral and unqualified or overriding.

In consequence, both questions (C) and (A) of Section 3 must also be answered in the negative.

6. Conclusion. The negative answer to all four questions (A)- (D) of Section 3 establishes that the words 'moral ' and 'morally', as they appear in sentences formulating moral principles of action, denote normally a very special qualification, in the sense of Section 2, i.e., a special set of grounds or considerations which determine claims, but may fail to determine the unqualified ought. What characterizes this qualification is too complex for discussion here. 26

It might be thought that the discussion in Sections 4-5 puts me on the side of those philosophers who, in the terminology of Frankena, subscribe to a material conception of morality: "that our judging and deciding is moral if and only if i t is done from a certain point of view which is not definable in purely formal terms; . . . it must also include a material condition . . . [which] must reflect a concern for others or a consideration of social cohesiveness and the common g o o d . . . ,,2r Now, in point of fact [ do subscribe to a material conception of morality in the general way that Frankena describes it. But the arguments in Sections 4-5 do not prove this. These arguments show only that inasmuch as moral principles must satisfy, by definition, certain formal conditions, e.g., Hare's "proper universalizability," the unqualified ought is not necessarily a moral ought; and that inasmuch as there is a mere possibility of a plurality of moral principles there is a possibility of a conflict of principles, so that the moral oughts are not necessarily unqualified. But here we have taken only the first step in the long and difficult road to a defence of a material conception of morality? 8

Wayne State University.

~ I have said something about this in a very obscure paper whose main ideas still seem to me true, "A Theory of Morality", Philosophy and Phenomeno- logical Research, vol. 18 (1957), pp. 339~352. For an excellent attempt at formulating the utilitarian ideal the most appealing material conception of morality, see R. Brandt, Toward a Credible Form of Utilitarianism", in MLoC, pp. 107-143.

2, Frankena, op. cir., in footnote 1, p. 9. 28For the most recent appraisal of the controversy about a material con-

ception of morality see Frankena 's paper cited in footnote 1. There is a good study of the earlier stage of the controversy in Kai Nielsen, "Good Reasons in Ethics: An Examination of the Toulmin-Hare Controversy", Theoria, vol. 24 (1958), pp. 9-28. For further bibliography, see Frankena op. cit., pp. 22-41.

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Imperatives, oughts, and moral oughts