Question

For Hume, no one could describe objective reasons for thinking that a man ought to do something generally, becuase there was no way to derive an ought from an is. But, if a classical view of causality (which Hume of course rejects) is introduced, for instance, the four causes of Aristotle, it seems like an ought can follow simply from an is. For Aristotle, final causality described what a thing is for. If we discern, for instance, that the human reproductive system is for procreation, then we have defined the final cause of the human reproductive system. Then, it seems to follow from the fact that the human reproductive system is for procreation that it ought to be used for procreation, and not in a way that is contrary to procreation, just as a knife is used to cut material, and not to stitch material back together again.

Have any authors responded to Hume's is/ought problem by invoking final causality?

Answer 1

Some authors, like Alasdair MacIntyre, have revisited Aristotle's final causality to challenge Hume's is/ought problem, suggesting that understanding an object's purpose can indeed guide us toward how it ought to be used.

Step-by-step explanation:

Authors have indeed responded to Hume's is/ought problem by invoking final causality. One such author is Alasdair MacIntyre, who in his work After Virtue, seeks to revive a virtue-based ethic in the tradition of Aristotle, counteracting the divorce of facts from values depicted in Hume's philosophy.

While Hume posited that moral evaluations cannot be derived from factual descriptions, Aristotle's conception of the four causes, particularly the final cause or telos, implies that knowing what something is for enables one to infer how it ought to be used. The human reproductive system's final cause or purpose in Aristotle's view would indeed dictate its proper use. In this paradigm, if a thing's essence includes its purpose, then understanding its 'is' can guide us to its 'ought'.

This application of Aristotle's teleology offers a different approach to ethics grounded in the nature and ends of things, incorporating a normative dimension implied by their purposes. Such an ethical framework diverges from Hume's assertion that factual statements cannot entail moral prescriptions.