Scots Philosophical Association

University of St. Andrews

From `God' to `Is' and From `Is' to `Ought'

Author(s): John King-Farlow
Source: The Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 7, No. 27 (Apr., 1957), pp. 136-148
Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the Scots Philosophical Association and the
University of St. Andrews
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136

FROM ' GOD' TO 'IS ' AND FROM ' IS' TO ' OUGHT'

I
It is small consolation to be offered a superb technique for arranging
and relating our beliefs when we want to be sure what to believe: and this
is most painfully true when the subject is morals or religion. Here we have
the added difficulty that it is so easy to believe what experience rudely
suggests is false-in comparison with believing what we slightly suspect is
senseless. Of course the enemies of metaphysics have it both ways: they
can accuse us either of an illogical abuse of language or of pontificating from
the logic of our language which happens to incorporate a particular Weltan-
schauung. For all this it remains surprising that so many thinkers, Christians
included, have yielded to the fanfare of certain analysers of language and
abandoned the traditional notion that ethical judgements are objective
statements of fact. To abandon this notion, Professor A. J. Ayer has claimed,
is to abandon the equally time-honoured notion that philosophy's business
is to tell us how to live. Ayer's sweeping claim may involve doubtful history
as well as doubtful logic; but the retreat from objectivism helped to make
respectable and even fashionable the tragi-comic gesture of those philoso-
phers who turn their back on the basic riddles of human existence.
In an attempt to remove the apparent logical necessity for this retreat
I shall first examine an old battlefield, the concept of God as an ens neces-
sarium. I ask the reader not to look here for any startling new arguments
but rather for a pattern of invalid attack on metaphysics which can then
be partially retraced in the field of morals.

II
We may feel slightly better excused for raking up old arguments for the
logical possibility of an ens necessarium since Professor J. J. C. Smart saw
fit to publish an old lecture on The Existence of Godin an issue of the Church
Quarterly Review for 1955. The part of this article which concerns us is
Smart's attempted demolition of the Cosmological Argument, which he
summarises : " The first part of the argument boils down to this : 'If any-
thing exists, an absolutely necessary being must exist'. The second part
of the argument is to prove that a necessarily existing being must be an
infinitely perfect being, that is, God." Smart follows certain Thomists in
showing that Kant's criticism attacking the second part of the argument
involves a logical 'howler'. He continues: "The trouble comes in the
first stage of the argument . . . (which) purports to argue to the existence
of a necessary being : and by ' a necessary being ' the cosmological argument
means 'a logically necessary being', i.e. 'a being whose non-existence is

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 FROM GOD TO 'IS' AND FROM ' IS' TO 'OUGHT 137

inconceivable in the sort of way that a triangle's having four sides is in-
conceivable'". Smart goes on to argue that only propositions, and not
things, are necessary and " no existential proposition can be logically neces-
sary, for we saw that the truth of a logically necessary proposition depends
only on our symbolism, or to put the same thing in another way, on the
relationship of concepts ". In fact "the concept of a logically necessary
being is a self-contradictory concept, like the concept of a round square '..
Theists had answered this argument long before Smart lectured by claiming
that the necessity of God's being need not be a logical necessity : but rather
a 'has to be' of God's own nature and not of our ways of thought. Smart
does not consider this but allows a possible 'theological' necessity for
God's existence: this, however, only means that a theist could not deny
that existence without violently upsetting his religious attitudes. Such a
necessity could be no help to metaphysical arguments. The first part of
this anti-metaphysical pattern to notice then is the choice of a highly am-
biguous slogan like " The concept of a logically necessary being is a self-
contradictory concept ", its demonstration in one sense; and the claim that
it is valid in all senses that interest metaphysics.
Our next step is to see that certain theists have been over-hasty in
disavowing the logical necessity of God's being after advocating an essential
necessity. After all, Professor J. N. Findlay in trying to disprove God's
existence in Mind 1948, was surely right to argue that the religious aspira-
tion of man when fully developed wants nothing less than a logically neces-
sary God; (and such an existence Findlay argues, on grounds fairly similar
to Smart's, is impossible or senseless). Even I. M. Crombie while defending
theology has written, "All existential statements are contingent. . . . We
can never involve ourselves in a breach of the laws of logic merely by
denying that something exists." Professor G. E. Hughes, after defending
God's essential necessity, writes, " The theist had better not try to deny the
statement that no tautology can be existential ".
It will help us to illuminate the ambiguity of the phrase ' logical necessity '
if we try to understand why Hughes takes fright at ' God exists' beginning
to look like a tautology. I think the fear of calling ' God exists ' a tautology
or even a logically necessary truth is an undetected local infection left by
an old philosophical disease now largely exorcised: that of treating the
analytic-synthetic distinction as an absolute not a relative distinction.
Given that this distinction is only relative, the pointlessness of Hughes'
fear can be shown by casting it as a sort of syllogism : " If 'God exists' is
in one sense and at one level a necessary truth; if therefore for an infinite
mind 'God exists' can be compared in one sense to a tautology for a finite
mind; if tautological propositions (for finite minds) are sometimes trivial
or superfluous; then 'God exists' must always be a trivial or superfluous
proposition in every sense and on every level ".
This pious anxiety of Hughes is spared further embarrassment by the
advance of logic-a similarly sweet relief came in time to thinkers loath to

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 138 JOHN KING-FARLOW

admit that God could square the circle. For a proposition may be synthetic
to one man and analytic to another, depending on the relative fullness and
tightness of the thinker's concepts. " Huzza ! " says Tom Jones, " Eureka !
Gold is soluble in aqua regia ". " Get thee gone, ignoramus ", says his 18th
century professor, " I cannot conceive of gold as anything but such. Either
it is soluble in aqua regia or it is not gold ! " Compare two situations and a
shift of function for a proposition: the professor telling the best pupil to
test x to see whether it is gold and saying, " Gold is, of course, soluble in
aqua regia;" the professor begging his small daughter not to drop his
signet ring in the aqua regia and explaining, " Gold dissolves in aqua regia
-like sand castles in the sea ". Similarly, if, given certain conditions
relevant to the speakers, 'God exists' could be logically necessary or taut-
ologous, what apparently functions as a vital religious claim would not
become for all purposes a white elephant like 'A white elephant is a white
elephant. ' When Christ outraged the Pharisees in the Temple precincts by
saying "I am ", the function of His proposition was to make a claim to
His hearers and add to their knowledge if they had ears to hear, i.e.
it functioned as a logical kinsman of " This egg always has existed and always
will exist ". So little did His hearers know of Him that it would be anything
but absurd for them to question His eternal existence (hardly more absurd
than questioning the eternity of an egg). Yet-the theist may profitably
argue-Christ could see an absurdity in His asking Himself seriously even
in words " Need it be that God exists ? "-for He had insight into the Divine
essence and words reflect concepts, private as much as public concepts;
such a question would function for Him as a logical kinsman of "Is an
egg an egg ? "
The word 'logical' as it is popularly and naturally used is bound up
with the ' logical grammar ' of the word ' meaning '. Two of the commonest
senses that can usefully be given to the word 'meaning' are 'the way we
do understand and use words' and 'the way we should and would under-
stand and use words if our concepts were properly adequate to reality'.
For examples of the second sense : a commissar says to a visiting American
reporter who speaks of the lack of freedom, " You don't know what freedom
means "; Mrs. C. says to her daughter who wants to marry a man she met
yesterday-because " We're so much in love "-" You're only sixteen, you
don't know what love means ". Now religious aspiration demands that
God's existence be logically necessary, that it should follow from the very
meaning of' God '. Smart thinks this demand absurd in every sense because
"the conventions of our symbolism clearly leave it open for us to affirm
or deny an existential proposition '. Findlay even concluded that therefore
we are forced down on the atheist side. But this demand is only absurd
when we are thinking of meaning in the first sense; the religious aspirant
can rest quite content in believing that to achieve a God-concept appropriate
to the reality would alter the conventions of our symbolism, would blow
them sky high. Some anti-metaphysicians might now grow a little restless

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 C
FROM GOD TO 'IS' AND FROM 'IS TO OUGHT 139
and reach for a cruder weapon. " Well then, by setting your metaphysics
beyond my logical destruction you divest it of any possible interest. What
possible confirmation could experience give to a concept like your ens neces-
sarium-whether it must exist essentially or logically or any old how ? "
The theist may well follow Saint Thomas in believing that we can have no
direct insight into the Divine essence. Yet he can still insist to his attacker
that successful meditation on the contingency of things can give a faint
inkling of the necessary God with which they are to be contrasted; that
reflection on the kind of Creator religious aspiration demands may again
yield such an inkling ; that such experience and confirmation are experience
and confirmation enough. Enough even to confirm the Cosmological
Argument.
An anti-metaphysical pattern is now clear: the petitio principii which
results from obscuring verbal ambiguities, the faulty analysis which neglects
popular usage and confuses logical levels; the claim against experiential
confirmation thrown out as self-evident. Let us see if we cannot partially
retrace this pattern in considering questions central to ethics.

III
No ' is ' can entail an ' ought ', they say. And compare Mr. R. M. Hare's
belief in the relevance for ethics of the rule that an imperative conclusion
can only follow from at least one imperative premise. And compare certain
metaphysical naturalisms still dear to Christian theology-like " goodness
and being are the same " and " goodness is the natural object of desire ".
In an article in Mind (April 1956) D. H. Monro mentions as one obstacle
to ethics " the logical impossibility of deriving an ought from an is ". But
this phrase, as its popularisers tend to forget, is highly ambiguous: in at
least one sense 'no is entails an ought' is analytic, can be made a logical
truth by virtue of definitions. But the superficial type of analyst begs the
whole question that it is true in every sense. For example, if reality is
non-moral-or, in Miss Iris Murdoch's words, if morality does not " adhere
to the stuff of the world "-then reality cannot be such as to lay obligation
upon us (in the way 'heteronomous' metaphysicians claim). That at least
is analytically true. But the logical necessity of the proposition in this
sense lends no force whatsoever to the arguments of a Hume, a Stevenson
or a Hare. Again, if reality is non-moral then perhaps we must cast syl-
logisms with apparently moral conclusions (should we desire to over-ration-
alise moral reasoning) in something like the way Hare suggests in The
Language of Morals. At least one of the premises, then, must involve an
autonomous moral principle : a principle not decided for us by reality but
chosen by the agent. And here the principle may look grammatically like
a factual proposition about reality, e.g. that divorce is wrong; but the essence
of the principle is evaluation, radically different from the indicative, logically
akin to the imperative.
But of course this account is not the product of inexorable analysis, only

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140 JORN KING-FARLOW

the implication of anti-metaphysical dogmatism neatly worked out. To

clarify this would only involve repeating the points of Miss Murdoch's
broadcast talk on Ethics and Metaphysics and of her paper in Supplementary
Volume XXX of the Aristotelian Society on Vision and Choice in Morality.
In these she has shown with great insight how the spirit of contemporary
liberalism, with its passionate insistence on mutual tolerance among men of
different ethical standpoints, is reflected in the concealed dogma of con-
temporary moral philosophers-that no matter of absolute facthood is at
stake in true ethical disputes (because morality does not " adhere to the
stuff of the world"). Until we swallow this dogma, Hare's chain of reasoning
is not even suspicious-it simply cannot get started. Miss Murdoch may, I
suggest, herself be at fault in saying in her paper, " I have wished to deny
the claim of the current view to picture morality as such. The current view
pictures a type of morality ". 'Current' thinkers certainly often have a
strongly moral outlook, maybe a common liberal ethic; but their logical
doctrines about ethics are surely incompatible with their attitude. I agree
with Monro's words on page 181 of his article: " It is obviously contra-
dictory to take as one's basic moral principle : 'No moral principle is better
than any other'. The truth is that the relativist contention is not a moral
principle ". But I agree, not in Monro's sense that such a contention has
no place in moral philosophy as such (but perhaps in pure philosophy):
rather I agree in the sense that such a contention is the very negation and
rejection of morality and all value. And such a contention is ultimately in-
volved in the ' autonomous ' view of a Kant, a Hare or (sometimes avowedly)
a Sartre-provided we can get them to be consistent advocates of their own
systems. To prove that 'autonomy' and a moral outlook cannot logically
be combined would involve vast efforts against the vested interests of the
centuries ; besides, such a proof is not required for our purposes here : meta-
physical ethics are freed from logical objections if we can but confirm Miss
Murdoch's assertion that here we have one-if not the only-legitimate
type. It remains worth suggesting here that, when 'autonomists' get
down to serious value judgements of their own, they in effect revert to the
heteronomous logic of absolute values (e.g. Hare's touching tribute to his
wife in the preface to The Language of Morals; or Marcel's queries as to the
logic of Sartre's value judgements on the Resistance, The Philosophy of
Existence, p. 64; or Monro's point that Toulmin and Hare have to let some-
thing like " an old fashioned moral intuition " in the back door in order
to limit their relativism and confine the description 'moral' to behaviour
patterns satisfying certain formal criteria). It is also worth suggesting that
men's natural and recurrent feelings of guilt-whatever their source-can
only find genuine conceptual expression in a heteronomous and transcendent
outlook: " Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurrit".
It may well be, however, that seven devils come to replace the one that
Miss Murdoch's largely destructive work has banished. We must proceed
to remove two deep-seated inhibitions against metaphysical objectivism in

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 FROM ' GOD TO 'IS AND FROM 'IS TO ' OUGHT 141

ethics which she has not exorcised; to emphasise that such an objectivism
-whether true or false in describing reality-is the only fair analysis of
present day moral language when uttered in deadly earnest, so that an
' ought' as commonly understood would be something worth deriving from
an 'is'; and finally to give an account of the metaphysician's transition
from 'is' to 'ought' (considering the passage in Hume which appeared
to confirm the bifurcation).
We can start with an obvious point of the utmost importance, the
neglect of which (despite avowed distinctions between descriptive and
normative ethics) inspires almost all anti-metaphysical analysis. We must
distinguish-not always, but in so many ethical contexts-two separate
enquiries : the enquiry " What is the logic of popular moral discourse ? "
and the enquiry " What is the truth in reality about morals ? " (compare
the Cartesian ring of mind-body language and the possibility that an utterly
different conceptual apparatus would be more appropriate to the facts).
The anti-metaphysical fervour of the logical positivists quietly transmitted
to the emotive and imperative schools seems to force on philosophers palpably
false analyses of popular ethical judgements. This is partly because they
carry their crusade through confusion into the wrong enquiry and partly
because they fail to distinguish their highly sophisticated personal inter-
pretation of moral words from the popular logic.
The way ordinary people argue questions of right or wrong, when in
earnest, glaringly postulates an objectivist and heteronomous analysis.
The mysterious, awe-inspiring ring of moral judgements (when given and
taken in earnest)-a ring vaguely noted by Hare en passant-is glaringly
metaphysical, the logical counterpart of at least a vague belief in the trans-
cendent. Subjectivism and logical negations of 'absolute values' glaringly
contradict the logical pattern of serious ethical and aesthetic talk among
typical people. Conversely it is painfully obvious that concrete metaphysical
beliefs like Christianity's confirm this logic and sharpen it beyond the
norm, whereas the secularisation of our society has begun to blunt it. But
propositional objectivity, heteronomy and metaphysics remain the basic
constituents of our moral language: we need only listen ! Our analysis of
present moral concepts would have to be the same, even if somehow we
could discover that there is no underlying metaphysical reality to justify
them. Just so our analysis of pre-Socratic or Newtonian physical concepts
must remain the same even when we find they do not fit the facts. Not the
analysis but the concepts must be changed. It is not the business of this
paper to 'prove ' metaphysical ethics, only to suggest that its methods are
not shipwrecked by linguistic analysis or logical enquiry and to hint that
life might prove too much for a sceptic's comfort.

IV
There remain two especially reasonable inhibitions against our descriptive
claims and these must be tackled first if an 'ought' is to be shown as a

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142 JOHN KING-FARLOW

possible fact, and a fact worth deriving from an 'is'.

(a) Monro writes in the article previously mentioned, possibly confusing
the two enquiries : " The philosopher is unlikely in the prevailing climate of
opinion to feel satisfied with traditional forms of non-naturalism, with a
transcendental world of values for example or with simple unanalysable
non-natural qualities ". This is true indeed. But without subscribing to
Significant Form or the Guardians' vision of ro ayaTO3vwe can admit that
these theories have all-important parallels with the logic of English ethics
and aesthetics. Why do they sound so much like a bookworm's caricature
of the way we talk, why does common sense find them betesnoires ? Let us
consider the significant differences between the way normal people mean
ethical and moral propositions and the way edoi-worshippers and in-
tuition-addicts mean them. Both intend a close logical kinship (propositional
objectivity) between such statements and the matter of fact ones we would
all agree to call descriptive. But normal people attach nothing like so
much importance to the grammatical form of the expressions. When we
say " X's character is good ", or "X wishes to cultivate goodness in his
children ", our use of adjective or noun conjures up for us no vague images of
moral qualities or objects. We believe we are stating a fact (not just ex-
pressing admiration, decision, etc.), but for us the form of the statement
seems coincidental, not essential: that is, it really does not seem anything
at all. We feel we could put the same fact in a different way grammatically
with next to no loss of accuracy-and such a feeling is of course no feeling
at all. (We do not think a fleeting passer-by is interesting: because we
simply do not think about him again). But the Platonist may well think of
remote objects like superluminous triangles in connection with remarks
about goodness and justice; the intuitionist may well think of inner eyes
contemplating the non-natural quality of someone's actions or sculptures.
Dr. F. Waismann has often pointed out the important conceptual difference
grammar can make to the way we think about colour. His examples have
a valuable parallel with moral statements. For suppose classical Athenians
could only register moral judgements like the condemnation of tyrants
with verbs--i8LKo(rLv otrvLpavvo----or adverbially-ad&KosEX'o,(rTv oL T71pavvoL.
Suppose they could never speak of the tyrant as a8LKOs. or of the tyrant's
a8tLKa. In either case Plato's metaphysics might have been radically
different. Now it is a plain fact that we can express moral judgements
adverbially or by verbs, by nouns or adjectivally, and with almost equal
fluency. When metaphysicians like Plato lay enormous stress on the nouns
of moral judgements, I personally believe this approach is metaphysically
very misleading. When others imitating G. E. Moore-whose Principia
Ethica is indeed the greatest metaphysical treatise written in the English
language-lay great stress on the predicative side of ethics I personally
believe they are often extremely helpful in leading us to metaphysical
insight. But no one can accept either party's account as sufficiently balanced
to correspond to the logic of our ethical judgements. At least, however,

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 FROM 'GOD TO 'IS' AND FROM 'IS' TO 'OUGHT' 143

they are objective and metaphysical and so have something to do with

popular ethics. On the other hand any sharply defined descriptive analysis
is bound to fail, however metaphysical: compare the fantastic attempts
that may still go on to find a clearcut, descriptive distinction between
' right' and ' good ' or 'poetry ' and ' prose '. They resemble the attempts
of Wittgenstein's fly in the bottle to find a clearcut shape identical to a
vague one. We will use the vague word metaphysical 'order' to good
advantage: it is bound to frustrate the fly in his present frame of mind.
Stevenson's technical term 'dispositional' in connection with ethical
meanings is very illuminating. Ethical words popularly used in our secular
society have no precise metaphysical target-only an obvious metaphysical
direction.
This should make it clear that in classifying moral statements with those
of normal matters of fact (as propositions) we are not committing ourselves
to looking silly in our own eyes by joining the Platonists or intuitionists.
And of course by admitting that the language of morals is still metaphysical
and objectivist we are no more committed to metaphysics than an atheist
would be a Christian if he allowed that Christ's claims were supernatural
ones. On the other hand, Christians may feel reassured that this loose type
of intuitionist-style talk involves no difficulty in accommodating a Natural
Law doctrine.
(b) One further inhibition must be dealt with. This is occasioned by
the fact that moral talk is frequently given functions very unlike those of
plain pieces of news. Mr. Hare has written, " Moral judgements cannot be
merely statements of fact and, if they were, they would not do the jobs
that they do do or have the logical characteristics that they do have. In
other words moral philosophers cannot have it both ways; either they must
recognise the irreducibly prescriptive element in moral judgements or else
they must allow that moral judgements as interpreted by them do not
guide actions in the way that, as ordinarily understood, they obviously
do" (cf. Ayer, Philosophical Essays, pp. 232-33). Well, I say, suppose an
aboriginal fisherman puts a piece of fishgut (one of the commonest objects
in his everyday experience) on a hook and casts his line into the water. He
pulls it up later and finds to his anger that the fishgut is still there but no
fish. I say, " Rsambo, what's that you've got there on the end of the hook ? '
He says : " What you catch fish with ", but I tell him I don't want that
answer and he replies: " Oh, I know your English word: bait. " " Yes,
but what kind of bait ? " " For fish of course, now stop asking questions
and let me fish ". Checkmate : Rsambo is too preoccupied with the function
to tell me what the object is. Hare makes the same kind of mistake: of
course moral facts can be what we use as bait or as pricks for that matter.
Professor Braithwaite says in his review of Hare's book (Mind 1954):
" This analysis suggests that it is not helpful to treat this fundamental,
declaratory use of moral terms as resembling in a philosophically important
respect that of imperatives. What moral subscriptions resemble are ex-

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144 JOHN KING-FARLOW

pressions of resolve: so much so that both are naturally called resolves ".
Well, if I were accompanied by an anthropologist who rarely got off his
hobby-horse and I asked him : " Say, Freddie, what's that triangular thing
Rsambo's got on the end of his line ? " he might say, " That's an infallible
token that his tribe are still living in the Bronze Age ". " Yes, yes, but
what is it ? " " It symbolises the arm of mother earth and is considered to
ensure a safe return ". By now I begin to resent people's preoccupation
with functions, their excluding the possibility that another kind of answer
might be required. A rope may be used as a laundry line, a sounding line,
a noose and a lasso, but it remains a rope. It is to be noted of course that
we give innumerable functions to sentences that Hare would call descriptive.
Consider :
Joe tells a tyrannical father he is in doubt whether to do National Service
or finish his studies first. Father says: " Soldiers usually forget how to
study ". He says no more, but Joe has received an order. But suppose
Joe asks an easy-going father if he ought to repay a fiver lent by Uncle
Archie five years ago. Father says: "Well, really, you ought to repay
debts and, if you want to be in the right, I'd do so-but Uncle Archie has
long since forgotten and you could use the money for books ". Once we
refuse to join Hare in confusing " What should I do ? " with " What shall
I do ? " his phrase " the irreducibly prescriptive element " loses its sting.
Now metaphysicians often call themselves students of being, of " the highest
being " : they are therefore extremely concerned with the possible reference
to reality of what Mr. Hare regards in moral terms as pure prescription
and Professor Stevenson as pure persuasion-just as I wanted to know what
kind of bait it was. Metaphysicians consider the possibility that there might
even be prescriptive facts. To expand Miss Murdoch's suggestion a little:
for the metaphysicians the moral does " adhere to the stuff" of reality-
the reality we talk about in statements we allow both to be strictly pro-
positional (as opposed to grammatical propositions which are functionally
different or logically absurd) and to be strictly true (as opposed to lies and
pointless fables and empty symbols and so on). Back on the descriptive
level: we find that moral words grade and condemn and exhort but they
do so morally; and the essence of morality (its 'logical grammar') lies
not only in its possible reference to behaviour but also in its implicit reference
to a metaphysical order. The regularity of certain functions given to moral
statements does not indicate a non-propositional logic but does serve to
illuminate the essence of the human predicament.
Nevertheless this discussion has not sought to convince the anti-
metaphysician that his opponent is right about reality, only that moral
discourse bears a metaphysical analysis. Otherwise the 'ought' of normal
discourse would not be worth deriving from an 'is' at great trouble : only
metaphysical facts would have a degree of interest for human agents that
ejaculations, persuasive definitions and well meaning bits of advice could
not be expected to possess.

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 FROM GOD TO 'IS AND FROM 'IS TO 'OUGHT' 145

V
But how do we get from an 'is ' to an ' ought' ? This we set out to ask
and can now try to answer. We are relatively clear about the experience
of commanding and being commanded; and The Language of Morals more
than any other book has over-emphasised our interest in this experience
when we want to illuminate ethics. Other celebrated champions of analysis
have stressed persuading, resolving and grading. But how little interest
comparatively has been shown in the quite central experience, that of
obligation. (Toulmin in The Place of Reason in Ethics has indeed tried to
consider it but he was fatally preoccupied by the premise, an old Shibboleth,
that the meaning of a statement lies in the method of its verification). How
much have we considered the feeling (feeling as occurrence, feeling as dis-
position), that we are in someone's debt for life, that we ought to do some-
thing even if it costs us dear ? It is preposterous to abandon conscience
and guilt to psychology when they make an essential contribution to the
logical apparatus of ethics. Do we always have such feelings, and suffer
them to become beliefs, as a result of decisions of principle,1 are not such
decisions the very result of the experience of obligation ? The frequency
of our moral decisions from long ingrained but conscious general principles
is not in question : but is it not often the case that situations where we get
this feeling strike us as unique, obliging us to act here and now but not
committing us to a regular action or even a repeat performance ? When a
man decides he should give an inordinately large sum of money to a charity,
is this invariably like a decision of principle ? Or, if not, is it invariably
the result of principles (or even concepts) inculcated in childhood or later
on by government propaganda ? There is something fatuous in claiming
that X makes a decision of principle, because, although the case strikes him
as unique, he is logically bound to agree, if some sophist puts it to him, that,
should life turn around, go back and put him in identical circumstances,
he ought to do the same again. It's like a stolidly correct batsman's principle
to play wild shots whenever the game is hopelessly drawn, he is indisputably
top of the averages, the bowler is a wicketkeeper, the ball is wide, five
minutes remain for play and he is announcing his retirement after the
game ! It is for these situations that Platonist or intuitionist style talk of
perception of ethical facts comes into its own. Mr. J. D. Mabbott has put
iMiss Murdoch and R. W. Hepburn in the symposium mentioned make a very
similar case against the eternal insistence on 'principles '. My points in this and the
next paragraph were written before seeing their papers-and can be established, I
suggest, by almost anyone willing to attempt a modicum of unbiassed introspectionc
The symposiasts seem to be making out reality as a sort of Duck-Rabbit which can
legitimately be seen in several ways whereas the underlying suggestion of this paper
(while it covers a fair amount of similar ground) is that reality is more like a distant
mountain obscured in the mist. The mountain can quite pardonably be mis-seen but
there is only one true way of seeing it. The symposiasts' call for tolerance is a legitimate
one until the true vision is achieved-and not a moment longer. cf. Luke 9.62 : " Nc
man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is worthy of the kingdom
of God ". Above all I wish to reject their possible implication that an is-ought transition
must depend on pre-established attitudes and concepts: such a view would achieve
the ontological emasculation of insight and revelation alike.

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146 JOHN KING-FARLOW

this beautifully: " In the last resort moral insight or approval is not accep-
tance of rules but appreciation of values ". So too Gabriel Marcel : " If I
examine myself honestly and without reference to any preconceived body
of ideas, I find that I do not ' choose ' my values at all, but that I recognise
them. ... ' Video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor' ". So here the meta-
physician can take a stand on deriving ' ought' from the ' is '; he can say:
"To see this situation as it really is entails seeing our own obligation in it ".
Intuitionist-style talk also comes into its own in the innumerable cases
where men hold vague and unspecific principles: " We shouldn't take too
much liquor ", " We shouldn't be too devoted to our ambitions ", " Some-
times we should do something for other people ". (With the latter compare
Mill's account of duties of imperfect obligation). Here the agent feels
that such and such a case falls or does not fall under such a principle. Here
again Hume may explain the feeling as irrational feeling; the psychologist
as the result of forgotten forces like environment and educational factors;
Hare as the result of an autonomous decision. But the metaphysician, who
often considers such explanations quite adequate, will sometimes insist
upon his own explanation : " perception of values at stake ", " moral in-
sight ", "realisation that the facts lay an obligation upon him ".
Hume is widely believed to have fixed the impassable mirage between
'is ' and ' ought' when he wrote : "In every system of morality which I
have hitherto met with I have always remarked that the author proceeds
for some time in the ordinary way of reasoning and establishes the being
of a God and makes observations about human affairs; when of a sudden
I am surprised to find that instead of the usual copulations of propositions
'is' and 'is not' I meet with no proposition that is not connected with
an 'ought' or an ' ought not'. . . . A reason should be given for what
seems altogether inconceivable, how this new relation can be a deduction
from others which are entirely different from it ". Hume's account of
causality suffers from an overdose of one sort of example. His account
here2 of ' is ' and ' ought ' suffers from a failure to consider his own example
properly. For one thing he avowedly assumes what he 'demonstrates':
that ' ought' is a relation entirely different from ' is '' For another thing
he is blind to the way that meditation on the Christian's ' is ', on God's
necessary existence and our derivative contingency, on His unwarranted
love for His ungrateful creatures, on the human predicament of total debtors
born to be blessed and redeemed to be blessed : how his own example might
generate moral awakening and lead us from being to owing and so from
21 am quite shamelessly taking this passage at the face value it bears torn out of
the context of Hume's much more complex account of morals. The reader may feel
perfectly justified in following suit because it is the standard misinterpretation of
Hume's passage (so frequently quoted in isolation from his whole thought), which has
been utilised by modern philosophers when they gun for objectivist ethics. It is Hume
so misconstrued that I here endeavour to refute: in reality of course he did believe
in his own novel connection between 'is' and 'ought' although he rejected the de-
ductive ethics of Locke and Samuel Clarke. The real Hume must be countered less
by analysis and more in terms of his own appeal to human experience.

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 FROM 'GOD' TO (IS' AND FROM 'IS' TO 'OUGHT' 147

'is ' to ' ought'. Hume can of course claim that only feeling is thus created,
but the metaphysician insists that it is insight: all we need to say is that
logic alone cannot here forbid the deriving of 'is' from ' ought ', cannot
laugh it out of court. Perhaps an analyst will claim that such reasoning
entails particular moral premises like "God is good ", "Creatures are
morally indebted to Creators ", etc. Particular moral premises ? But these
are the conclusions ! " Then this cannot be reasoning if there is no clear
moral premise and you get a clear moral conclusion ". But this is just the
prejudice we are trying to remove. What we really do is to show that the
full meaning of an apparently neutral ' is ' already embraces morality. We
cross the gap from a superficial view of the premise to a profound one. And
to cross this gap is to reach the conclusion. (Here again our special sense
of meaning must be kept clear).
Christians may dispute with one another how far the transition can be
attributed to successful contemplation rather than special revelation. But
I think I would take many Christians with me in holding that the gap is
generally crossed near the blurred frontiers of faith and reason, of inspiration
and perception, sometimes further on one side, sometimes further on the
other. Instances may often need to be called supra-rational but we cannot
write them all off as irrational.

VI
Even the limited sympathy I have been showing for intuitionist-style
talk may seem incompatible to some Christians with certain metaphysical
naturalisms in the Christian tradition, the ' identification' of Goodness with
Being and the ' definition' of the Good as the real object of desire. And the
anti-metaphysician on the other hand may still want to insist that Goodness
cannot mean what really is, or even what we really desire : do we still neglect
Moore's demonstration that we can significantly query whether what is is
good and what is really desired is good ? First, to the Christian objector
the obvious point can be made that intuitionist-style talk is eminently
serviceable to Christianity after minor repairs: for intuitionists live in the
old metaphysical world with a new vocabulary, notably 'intuition' for
' soul' and 'non-natural' for ' super-natural'. Second, we can reply to
the anti-metaphysician (and further satisfy the Christian) along equally
obvious lines. There need be no clash between intuitionism and metaphysical
naturalism because they should operate at different levels of understanding.
The former is the beginning of metaphysical insight and the level at which
we need to work in everyday life. The latter is a quite profound level-a
series of truths sometimes revealed and occasionally contemplated. As we
saw, two of the commonest senses that can profitably be given to the word
meaning are " the way we do understand and use words " and "the way
we should and would understand and use them if our concepts were more
adequate to the reality ". It is in something like this second sense that
metaphysical naturalism makes its claims; to refute it by reference to the

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148 JOHN KING-FARLOW

first sense is super-fallacious. W. K. Frankena made a spirited attack on

Moore's 'naturalistic fallacy' in Mind 1939 : but Saint Thomas forestalled
him by many centuries and made the importance of logical levels abundantly
clear when he wrote:
" Goodness and being are identical in reality, but the term goodness
conveyswhat the term being does not, namely the quality of being desirable ".

VII
Very sketchily this paper has tried to rearrange parts of a defence work,
parts ancient and modern, against two of the favourite attacks on meta-
physics to-day; to show that certain appeals to logic are valueless once we
sort out ambiguities and appropriate logical levels; to show that claims
against the experiential verification of metaphysics must therefore take
their place in the queue with other falsifiable assertions-not jump ahead
as palpable tautologies. If a man sincerely wants to know what there is
to metaphysics or religion, he had better look and see.
JOHN KING-FARLOW
Royal Air Force, Kirton-in-Lindsey.

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