Abstract

This chapter argues that any attempt to derive a “moral Ought” from an “Is” with a justificatory goal, if successful in its “derivation” part, would face a trilemma in its “justification” part: it would have us consider each human action as morally obligatory or prohibited; or presuppose a moral norm that cannot be derived from facts; or fail to explain why the linguistically based distinction between factual statements from which moral norms can be derived and those from which they cannot should count as morally relevant. One way of avoiding this trilemma is to interpret the possible derivation of “Ought” from “Is” as related not to ethical justification, but to the problems of social ontology.