Abstract

ARGUMENT ABOUT whether in any significant sense we can derive an ought from an is has been persistent and intractable. Fifteen to twenty years ago it was orthodoxy in analytical philosophical circles to claim that for all their other differences Hume and Moore were right in agreeing that in no significant sense can we derive an ought from an is. At present there is no orthodoxy or even anything like a dominant view and, given our current understanding of how language works and our understanding of moral and ideological discourse, we could not possibly reasonably remain content with old orthodoxies or take the question to be as straightforward as it was often thought to be.