Reason and Experience

Author(s): Kurt Baier

Source: Noûs, Vol. 7, No. 1 (Mar., 1973), pp. 56-67
Published by: Wiley
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2216184
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 RASON AND EXPERIENCE 57

to favor. A theory often called "Prescriptivism" has been advanced

by R. M. Hare [5] and [6] and others such as P. H. Nowell-Smith
[9], Hector-Neri Castanieda [3], Alf Ross [10], and G. H. von
Wright [14] and [15]. Prescriptivists embrace all or most of the
following tenets:

(i) practical discourse is designed to give verbal guidance;

(ii) giving verbal guidance is answering practical questions,
that is, questions of the form 'What shall I do?' and 'What ought
I to do?' ([3], 222-223, 235; [6], 1, 46; [5], 55ff.; [9], ch. 1);
(iii) practical questions can be properly answered only by
Prescriptives, that is, utterances which satisfy two requirements:
(a) the "Speaker Mental Requirement" or SMR (as I shall call
it): sincerely using the sentence is intending that the person
referred to should do what he is told to do ([6], 13); and (b) the
"Addressee Mental Requirement" or AMR: sincerely assenting
to the sentence, if it is addressed to one, and if now is the time at
which one is told to do something, and if it is in one's (physical
and psychological) power to do it, is doing it or at least resolving
to do it ([6], 20);
(iv) the most fundamental moral ought statements are Pre-
scriptives ([6], 167f., 172; [3], 264-270, 274);
(v) practical reasoning consists in logically deriving practical
conclusions;
(vi) whereas the most general propositions from which the-
oretical conclusions are derived are in the nature of scientific
laws objectively establishable on the basis of empirical observation,
the most general propositions from which practical conclusions
are derived are essentially one's own preferential choices ([6],
54f., 74-78). Thus our practical conclusions, and our intentions
formed in accordance with them, though logically derivable from
universal premisses, lack an empirical base: an 'ought' cannot be
derived from an 'is.)

I agree with the Prescriptivists that there is specifically

practical reasoning; that it involves the logical derivation of pra-
tical conclusions from universal premisses; and that whereas
practical conclusions are logically related to intentions, theoretical
conclusions are related to beliefs; but I reject the other doctrines
of Prescriptivism. My main disagreement is with (vi), but here I
can indicate only briefly why I disagree. What I want to argue
against in this paper is (i) - (iv), for I believe that these errors
have made (vi) more plausible. A belief in (vi) in turn supports

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 58 NOUS

Hume's notorious paradoxes and obscures the true explanation

of the important difference between belief- and intention-forma-
tion, and the connected difference between theoretical and
practical reasoning.

2. My opposing account construes ought statements (OSs)

as "warrant statements" (WSs).1 WSs assert the existence of
reasons of a certain kind and force to accept something, e.g.,

(1) (a) There is evidence (b) that the level of mercury in

fish is rising.

(2) (a) There is good reason (b) for you to increase your
home-owner's insurance immediately.

WSs have a warrant and a material component. The former,

e.g. (la) and (2a), asserts the existence of a warrant for accepting
something. The latter, e.g. (lb) and (2b), formulates that thing.
Although OSs do not look like WSs, since they do not clearly
demarcate their warrant from their material component, they
are, as we shall see, equivalent to WSs. Note however, that not all
material components (MCs) are of the same type, and that OSs
often do not indicate the type of MC involved. Thus,

(3) The photos ought to be ready by now

is ambiguous as between two different types of MC: (b') that the

photos are ready by now, and (b') that the photos are to be ready
by now. I call MCs of type (b') "declaratives" and their OSs,
"declarative OSs." Similarly, I call MCs of type (b'), "directives,"
and their OSs "directive OSs."
It is easy to convey my distinction between declaratives and
directives by an example. Suppose the sentence

(4) The Procession enters the Town Hall at 10 a.m.

occurs on the printed itinerary of some procession. Spectators may

then interpret (4) as a prediction of when the procession will enter
the Town Hall, while its leaders may interpret it as an instruction of
when to lead the procession into the Town Hall. The spectators
thus give (4) a declarative use, the procession leaders a directive
use.
It is not so easy, however to find a satisfactory terminology
in which to define these two terms. Perhaps the most important
similarities and differences between declaratives and directives

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 REASON AND EXPERIENCE 59

are captured by saying that while both are linguistic acts with
propositional content, they differ from one another in that they have
different criteria for evaluating speaker performance.
Linguistic acts: By this I mean acts performed by a person
knowing a given language, using words of that language, intending
them as words of that language, and using them so as to make sense.2
Propositional content: By this I mean what Hare means by
'phrastic' ([6], 17 ff.) and Searle means by 'propositional content'
([11], 29 ff.). Where a linguistic act involves a sentence of subject-
predicate form, it has propositional content, but the converse is
not always true: (4) has propositional content, but so has the phrase
'The Procession's entering the Town Hall at 10 a.m.,' which is
not a sentence though it may perhaps be said to "contain" or
"exhibit" predication. If this is allowed, then we can say that a
linguistic act has propositional content if and only if the expressions
employed in it contain or exhibit predication.3 Having propositional
content thus does not require that the verb phrase used in predica-
tion be tensed or indicate a mood. To have propositional content,
a linguistic act must use expressions by whose use the speaker
singles out something and specifies its character, or changes relating
to it. The propositional content of a linguistic act can be said to
accord or not to accord with the character of, or the changes relating
to, what it singles out or is about. Of course, not all linguistic
acts have propositional content. 'How do you do,' 'Damn' do not
([11], 30).
Evaluation of speaker-performance: Different types of remarks
are evaluated in various ways ([2], esp. Lct. II). Although both
declaratives and directives employ expressions with propositional
content, possibly the same propositional content (as in (4)), speaker
performance is of course evaluated on the basis of different criteria,
for the function of declaratives is different from that of directives.
The very purpose of a declarative is to produce a sentence or
expression with a propositional content which accords, rather than
does not accord, with the character of, or the changes relating
to, what it is about. Hence, accordance is a criterion of positive,
non-accordance of negative, evaluation of the speaker's perfor-
mance. Terms such as 'true-false,' 'correct-incorrect,' 'exact-
inexact,' 'accurate-inaccurate' specify ways in which a speaker's
declarative performances may excel or fall short.
By contrast, the purpose of a directive is to produce a
sentence with a content, which singles out a part or aspect of the
world, and specifies its character, or some changes relating to it,

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 60 NOUS

in such a way that that part or aspect of the world could (at least
conceivably) be made to accord with that specification. Hence,
accordance cannot be a criterion of positive (non-accordance of
negative) evaluation of the speaker's performance, though it may
be a criterion of the evaluation of the part of the world singled out.4
Rather, the criterion of the evaluation of the speaker's performance
is this: Would the conformity of the character of, or the changes
involving, the part of the world singled out, with the specifications
contained in the sentence, be a good or a bad thing from some point
of view ?
Thus, whereas the merit of a declarative depends on its
specifications having been formulated so as to accord with the
nature of what it is about, the merit of a directive depends on the
goodness (from some point of view) of the consequences of acting
so that what the directive is about conforms with the directive's
specifications of it.5
Hence, every sentence which can be used as a directive can
also be used as a declarative, but the converse is not true. Thus,
'There ought to be a prime in every decade up to 100' can only
be a declarative, not a directive, OS, since 'Let there be a prime
in every decade, etc.' cannot be interpreted as a directive, but
only as a supposition, i.e. a declarative. There is no sense in
trying to make it the case that there is a prime in every decade,
etc.6
My thesis that OSs are WSs can therefore be summed up
as follows:

(5) X ought to be (do) Y There are reasons of a certain

kind and force to accept the proposition that X is Y (X is
to do Y).

Thus, whether the material component of an OS is a declarative

or a directive, it is always a sentence or expression with propo-
sitional content and so can be said to express a proposition, though
to call it a declarative or directive is to imply that it is to be taken
as having different functions. The indicative and infinitive (ger-
undive) moods usually serve as indicators of these two distinct
functions.

3. Even a cursory survey of the main linguistic features of

OSs shows the superiority of the WS analysis of OSs over the
Prescriptivist. Castafieda lists some five characteristics significantly

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 REASON AND EXPERIENCE 61

distinguishing OSs from imperatives. (For details see [3].) But

for our purposes the two most important points-not mentioned
by Castafieda-are that (a) directive OSs can be consistently
combined with requests which are incompatible with the directives
embedded in them, e.g. 'I know you ought to do Y, but please
don't do it,' and (b) directive OSs can be consistently combined
with expressions of intention ("resolutives") which are incompat-
ible with the directives embedded in them, e.g. 'I know I ought
to do Y, but I won't do it.' They are the most important for our
purposes because, while on a WS analysis (a) and (b) are not
surprising, they constitute denials of the very defining criteria
of Prescriptivity: SMR and AMR. If (a) and (b) are true of all
OSs, including directive ones, then this is sufficient to refute a
general Prescriptivist account of them. To avoid outright refutation
by the facts, Prescriptivists would have to concede that (a) and
(b) do not hold of all directive OSs. In fact, Hare maintains that
there are two senses of 'ought,' "the sociological" and "the psy-
chological" ones ([6], 167), of which (a) and (b) do hold, but that
these two senses presuppose a third and most fundamental
Prescriptive sense, of which (a) and (b) do not hold, and that these
three are all the senses there are ([6], 167 ff. For later modifications
see [5], 75 ff.).
Granting, for argument's sake, that Prescriptivism could be
modified sufficiently to account for the fact that some important
moral OSs, e.g. so-called "prima facie oughts," do not satisfy
SMR and AMR (cf. [3], 268-269), there is still the question of
whether there are any OSs, fundamental or peripheral, important
or unimportant, moral or non-moral, which satisfy SMR and AMR.
When we look for such candidates, we can indeed come up with
uses of 'ought' where it would be odd to violate SMR or AMR.
But the reason always is something extraneous to the meaning of
'ought' or the function of OS. It is always something like the
special words employed or the special context in which the
statement is made. It appears, in other words, that the Pres-
criptivist theory of the nature of moral discourse, and practical
discourse in general, is based on matters wholly accidental to the
nature of OSs and practical discourse generally. I have space for
only one example in order to clarify the point.

4. First, note that although one frequently hears it said that

OSs are used for giving commands, requests, and all the other
linguistic acts in which the embedded directives are asserted

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 62 NOUS

(cf., e.g., [3], 262, 264; [9], 198; [15], 158; [14], Ch. 6, esp.
pp. 100-104), this is simply a mistake. As an example, consider:

(6) You ought to do A, and that's an order.

The explanation of this error is, in my opinion, the miscon-

ception of guidance which is a great deal more widespread than
Prescriptivism itself. Hare ([6], 163 ff.), Nowell-Smith ([9], 11 if.),
Castafieda ([3], 275-276), and others think that 'What shall I
do?' is a request for guidance, and that only Prescriptions can
give explicit final answers to such questions. Hare grants that
even the "plain judgment of fact" 'The train is about to start'
may give some guidance, but only in a "weak sense," that is,
only together with an additional imperatival premiss (say 'When
the train is about to start, those who want to travel on it ought to
board it.'). Only together with this additional premiss does this
remark entail the imperative, 'Board the train,' which alone is
"action-guidance in the strong sense." By contrast, 'You ought
to board the train,' in virtue of entailing the imperative, 'Board
the train,' gives guidance in the strong sense. ([6], 163-164.)
However, 'What shall I do ?' is not always a request for
guidance; when not, explicit answers are not the giving of guidance,
accepting such answers is not accepting guidance. Thus, the
cleaning woman's 'What shall I do now, sir ?' is normally a request
for orders, not for guidance. If the cleaning woman does ask for
guidance, as when she asks 'What shall I do?' after telling her
employer that her daughter sniffs glue, then 'Probably the best
thing would be to see Dr. Jones, the psychiatrist who specializes
in this' is an answer, is giving guidance, because it purports to be
the solution to the practical problem about which guidance is
sought, but it is not Prescriptive, or "action-guiding" in Hare's
strong sense.
If the answer really constitutes guidance, then the person
who is given guidance can, in an important sense, assent to it,
that is, agree that it is a (good) solution to his problem, yet not
ipso facto resolve to follow it. 'Assenting' is thus ambiguous as
between 'believing' and 'heeding.' It is only if one fails to notice
that 'What shall I do ?' is sometimes not a request for guidance,
but for orders, suggestions, ideas, and the like, assenting to which
really can mean nothing else but setting oneself to act as one was
told, that one can think that assenting to an answer to a genuine
practical question must also be resolving to adopt the proffered
solution to one's problem.

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 REASON AND EXPERIENCE 63

5. My example will be designed to show that and explain

why it looks as if normally OSs did satisfy SMR, whereas in fact
they do not. Thus, it has to be admitted that

(7*) The kettle ought to be boiling by now, but (I know

it in my bones) it is not,
and

(8*) You ought to leave now, but please don't,

sound odd, and it looks as if this could be due only to the fact
that (7*) and (8*) violate SMR, i.e. that these OSs entail their
MCs, so that (8*) entails both 'Leave now' and 'Please don't
leave now,' thus creating an absurdity. However, violation of
SMR cannot be the explanation of this oddity, for

(7') The kettle ought to be boiling by now, but (look) it isn't,

and

(8') I know (believe you when you say) that you ought to
leave now, but please don't,
do not sound odd. Yet if (7*) and (8*) violated SMR, so would
(7') and (8'). The explanation of the oddity of (7*) and (8*) is
due rather to the differences in context implied by the different
formulations of (7') and (8'). Normally, OSs are uttered when the
addressee does not know (wants guidance) concerning the MC
involved, hence it is one of the generally understood (and normally
correct) presumptions that the speaker does not have (adequate)
reason to reject the MC involved. Given a normal context, as
suggested by the formulation of (7*) and (8*), these two are odd
because they violate this normally applicable presumption.
However, in contexts in which both speaker and addressee know
that the other knows (or believes) that a given MC is false, the
normal presumption is rebutted, and so there is nothing odd about
a remark that violates it. If my wife says. 'The kettle ought to be
boiling by now,' it would normally be odd for her to add (thus
turning her remark into (7*)), 'But it is not.' For if she is telling
me that I have adequate reason to think that the kettle is now
boiling, it is absurd to add that it is not. But if, after getting up
to make the tea, I report back 'It isn't boiling yet,' and she replies
'But it ought to be by now' (thus in effect uttering (7')), then what
she says is not odd at all. For now we both know that the relevant
MC ('the kettle is boiling now') is false, and so her OS cannot
be read as telling me that I have adequate reason to believe it.

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 64 NOUS

And since (7') implies or strongly suggests such a context, it does

not even sound odd.
However, the explanation of the non-deviance of (8'), and of
similar remarks involving directive OSs, is importantly different.
Unlike (7'), (8') and
(9') A is indeed what you ought to do, but please, for my sake,
to show me that you love me, etc., don't do it,

imply or strongly suggest that the context is perfectly normal.

The speaker concedes that there is adequate reason for the ad-
dressee to accept the directive MC, but he nevertheless appeals
to him to set reason aside for the speaker's sake. As Kant held
against Hume, the promptings of desire may clash with the pointers
of practical reason.
Belief-formation is not subject to desire, the way intention-
formation is. One cannot believe that p if one is convinced that
one has the strongest possible reason not to believe that p, i.e.
concLusive evidence against p; for believing that one has such
reason entails not believing that p is true. Belief-formation is
thus logically dependent on certain judgments of the force of a
particular reason to believe something. And, as I mentioned in
the beginning, one may not be able to help forming such a judg-
ment. By contrast, intention-formation is not thus logically
dependent on one's judgment of the force of reason to act. One
(logically) can decide to do A even when one judges one has the
strongest possible reason not to do A. In thus forming one's
intentions, one behaves contrary to reason, one is capricious or
cussed or worse, but there is nothing self-contradictory in such
behavior, as there would be in claiming that one had conclusive
evidence against p, yet believed that p.

6. Prescriptivism is made more plausible by failure to notice

this asymmetry between theoretical and practical reason. Both
errors are facilitated by confusing OSs with must-statements.
Unlike OSs, certain sorts of must-statements really satisfy SMR
and AMR. For example,

(9*) The kettle must be boiling, but it is not;

(10*) I know you must do A, but please don't do it;
(11*) I must do A, but I won't;
really are deviant because self-contradictory. When I tell my
wife that the kettle is not boiling, she cannot repeat 'But it must
be' without expressing incredulity.

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 REASON AND EXPERIENCE 65

Could one not then salvage Prescriptivism simply by

substituting for a Prescriptivist account of OSs a Prescriptivist
account of must-statements? No, for the Prescriptivist failure
to state correctly the pragmatic implications of 'ought' and 'must'
is trivial by comparison with misconstrual of the asymmetry
between theoretical and practical reasons. The fact that no one
can say to me 'I know you must go, but please don't' (except in
the "inverted commas" use of 'must') is unimportant because
he can always make his point without impropriety by saying
instead, 'I know you ought to go, but please don't,' whatever in
his judgment be the force of the reason I have for going. Pres-
criptivity (SMR and AMR) is thus an unimportant characteristic
of practical discourse. Concentration on remarks in the imperative,
which typically are Prescriptive, can obscure what is central:
the relation to practical problems and their solutions, and so the
possibility of evaluating the speakers' performances as sound/
unsound, depending on the merit of the solutions offered. Once
one has shaken off the command model and with it the picture
of practical discourse as a verbal form of throwing one's weight
about, one can begin to look for that which gives empirical backing
to the general proposition from which one derives solutions to
one's particular practical problems. Of course, this cannot be
observation, but there are other sources of experience. The child
once burnt, twice shy has learned from (bitter) experience, not
(at least not solely) by observation, to keep away from flames,
unlike the Peeping Tom who has learned by observation that 80 per
cent of the couples in his street favor the face-to-face position.

7. I have argued that OSs are WSs and that it is a mistake

to think of any of them as Prescriptives. The error is a consequence
of construing practical discourse as essentially imperatival or
command-like. It is worth nailing this error because it lends
plausibility to another more important one: that all practical
questions are requests for guidance and that such requests are
requests for Prescriptives. This in turn obscures an important
parallel between belief- and intention-formation: that requests
for guidance (unlike requests for Prescriptives) are requests for
solutions to practical problems which are properly met by pur-
ported solutions, by what there is reason to do, just as requests
for information are properly met by what there is reason to
believe. The Prescriptivist's failure to distinguish between
Prescriptives and purported solutions to practical problems,

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 66 NOUS

together with the widespread erroneous identification of experience

with observation, lends additional plausibility to the view that
the universal premisses of practical reasoning are not empirically
based and that this explains the difference we noted between
belief- and intention-formation. I have argued that this difference
has another explanation, namely, that whereas acknowledging
evidence for something as conclusive (which may sometimes be
inescapable) entails believing what it is evidence for, acknowledging
that one has the strongest possible reason for doing something
does not entail intending to do it. I have argued that when we
compare the two chains stretching from experience to the final
theoretical and practical conclusions, respectively, we find that the
sought weaker link in the practical chain is not that between
experience and first premisses, but between the final practical
conclusion and intention.7

REFERENCES

[1] G. E. M. Anscombe, Intention (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1957).

[2] J. L. Austin, How To Do Things With Words, ed. J. 0. Urmson (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1962).
[3] Hector-Neri Castafieda, "Imperatives, Decisions, and 'Oughts': A Logico-
Metaphysical Investigation," Morality and the Language of Conduct (Detroit:
Wayne State University Press, 1963): 219-299.
[4] Robert Fogelin, Evidence and Meaning (New York: Humanities Press, 1967).
[5] R. M. Hare, Freedom and Reason (New York: Oxford University Press, 1963).
[6] R. M. Hare, The Language of Morals (New York: Oxford University Press,
1952).
[7] Otto Jesperson, The Philosophy of Grammar (London: Allen & Unwin Ltd.,
1924): Ch. IX, 117.
[8] A. J. Kenny, "Practical Inference," Analysis 26 (1966): 65-75.
[9] P. H. Nowell-Smith, Ethics (London: Penguin Books, 1954).
[10] Alf Ross, Directives and Norms (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1968).
[11] John R. Searle, Speech Acts (Cambridge: University Press, 1969).
[12] S. E. Toulmin, The Place of Reason in Ethics (Cambridge: The University
Press, 1950).
[13] Roger Wertheimer, The Significance of Sense (Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 1972).
[14] G. H. von Wright, Norm and Action (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul,
1963).
[15] G. H. von Wright, Varieties of Goodness (New York: Humanities Press,
1963).

NOTES

1 I first encountered this sort of account in [12]. It has since been developed
by several philosophers, among them Robert Fogelin [4], from whom I borrow
much, including the term 'warrant statement.' Roger Wertheimer's book [13]
came to my notice too late to be taken into account.

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 REASON AND EXPERIENCE 67

2 A linguistic act thus differs from J. L. Austin's "rhetic act" in that it need
not contain referring expressions or indeed make reference to anything, e.g.
'Blast!' or 'How do you do.' Since it is not clear to me whether Austin thought
every speech act necessarily involved a "locutionary" and/or "illocutionary" act,
I must leave open the question of the relation between my linguistic acts and his
"speech acts."
3 The difference between non-sentential expressions exhibiting predication
and subject-predicate sentences would seem to be that the former are not acts of
communication, since they are shorn of any indication of the extent of speaker
endorsement. Without such indication the speaker has not put forward a remark
of any type, whether declarative, directive, interrogative, or whatever.
4 Accordance need not be a criterion of positive evaluation: the behavior of
the bank guard whose behavior accords with the bank robber's directive 'Hand
over the money' is usually evaluated negatively.
5 In these necessarily brief and therefore perhaps somewhat cryptic remarks,
I believe myself to be following ideas expressed by G. E. M. Anscombe in [1]
and also A. J. Kenny in [8]. I may well have misunderstood them, however. For
when, in a symposium with Professor Anscombe in 1968, I made these points
acknowledging my debt to her, she seemed to wish to disown them.
6 For a related point, cf. [3], 266.
7 This paper is a condensed amalgam of several papers read during the last
few years at various universities in Canada, New Zealand, and this country. I
want to thank those, too many to list, whose comments and criticisms have helped
me get clearer about the issues. I must, however, acknowledge my special in-
debtedness to my colleagues Richard Gale and David Kurtzman, and above all
to Annette C. Baier who carefully went through various drafts, spotted many
errors and made many constructive suggestions I have adopted.

On the Conceptual Autonomy

of Morality
HECTOR-NERI CASTANEDA

INDIANA UNIVERSITY

My purpose here is to elucidate both the so-called Ought-Is

problem and the structure of its solution. Thus, I discuss some of
the main types and the truth of ethical naturalism. I claim: (1) the
conceptual autonomy of morality is a special case of the autonomy
of practical thinking; (2) the conceptual autonomy of practical
thinking consists in the unanalyzability of some practical concepts,
e.g., ought; (3) in spite of such unanalyzability, there must be
bridging implications that connect oughts and facts; (4) the
solution to the Ought-Is problem requires as a fundamental step

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