Title: The is-ought problem
First published: 1997
Description: Can OUGHT be derived from IS? This book presents a systematic investigation of this time-honored philosophical problem by means of modern alethic-deontic predicate logic. Two comprehensive introductory chapters into the philosophical and logical foundations make the text understandable also for non-logicians ethicists, social scientists and students of philosophy. New in this study are two leitmotifs: relevance and metalogical generality.

It turns out that is-ought inferences indeed exist, but they are all irrelevant in a precise logical sense. New proof techniques allow to establish this result for very broad classes of logics. A profound philosophical investigation of the question of analytical or strongly intersubjective is-ought bridge principles supplements the logical study. The final results imply incisive limitations for the justifiability of ethics as opposed to empirical science.
Subjects: Deontic logic, Inference, Logic, Hume, david, 1711-1776
People: David Hume (1711-1776)
LC classification: BC199.I47 S37 1997