Collective Acceptance and the Is-Ought Argument
Ethical Theory and Moral Practice (forthcoming)
| Abstract | According to John Searle’s well-known Is-Ought Argument, it is possible to derive an ought-statement from is-statements only. This argument concerns obligations involved in institutions such as promising, and it relies on the idea that institutions can be conceptualized in terms of constitutive rules. In this paper, I argue that the structure of this argument has never been fully appreciated. Starting from my status account of constitutive rules, I reconstruct the argument and establish that it is valid. This reconstruction reveals that the soundness of the argument depends on whether collective acceptance as such can generate obligations. Margaret Gilbert has argued that it can, and thus far some of her central arguments have not been addressed. The upshot is that the Is-Ought Argument deserves to be taken seriously once again | |||||||||
| Keywords | No keywords specified (fix it) | |||||||||
| Categories | ||||||||||
| Options |
|
|||||||||
Download options| PhilPapers Archive |
Upload a copy of this paper Check publisher's policy on self-archival Papers currently archived: 5,701 |
| External links |
 |
| Through your library | Configure |
Similar books and articlesF. Hindriks (forthcoming). Restructuring Searle's Making the Social World. Philosophy of the Social Sciences.
Graham Oppy (2002). Paley's Argument for Design. Philo 5 (2):161-173.
Jan Willem Wieland (2012). Regress Argument Reconstruction. Argumentation 26 (4):489-503.
Roland Paul Blum (1970). The True Function of the Generalization Argument. Inquiry 13 (1-4):274 – 288.
K. Brad Wray (2001). Collective Belief and Acceptance. Synthese 129 (3):319-33.
George Krzywicki Herburt (1959). The Analytic and the Synthetic. The Duhemian Argument and Some Contemporary Philosophers. Philosophy of Science 26 (2):104-113.
Chris Provis (2004). Negotiation, Persuasion and Argument. Argumentation 18 (1):95-112.
C. Waidacher (1997). Hidden Assumptions in the Dutch Book Argument. Theory and Decision 43 (3):293-312.
Bill Wringe (2010). Global Obligations and the Agency Objection. Ratio 23 (2):217-231.
Harvey Siegel (1999). Argument Quality and Cultural Difference. Argumentation 13 (2):183-201.
Bryce Huebner (2008). Do You See What We See? An Investigation of an Argument Against Collective Representation. Philosophical Psychology 21 (1):91 – 112.
Paul Oppenheimer & Edward N. Zalta (2011). A Computationally-Discovered Simplification of the Ontological Argument. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 89 (2):333-349.
Julia Tanner (2006). Marginal Humans, The Argument From Kinds, And The Similarity Argument. Facta Universitatis 5 (1):47-63.
Frank Hindriks (2009). Constitutive Rules, Language, and Ontology. Erkenntnis 71 (2):253 - 275.
Analytics
Monthly downloads |
Added to index2012-03-20Total downloads31 ( #39,358 of 549,122 )Recent downloads (6 months)1 ( #63,361 of 549,122 )How can I increase my downloads? |
My notes
Discussion
