HUME's LAW is often quoted in discussions of moral philosophy.

There is always a danger in commenting upon what somebody wrote or said; the argument can so easily be obscured by considerations of 'what he really meant'. Not wishing to be drawn into such discussions - be they about Hume or Jesus or Marx or whomsoever - I propose to discuss a statement often attributed to Hume while leaving to other people the questions of authenticity of source and sufficiency of accreditation. After all, if Hume did not say it then someone else might have said it and its merits, as a statement, remain the same. To deny this is to deny the fallaciousness of argumentum ad hominem.

Briefly, it is attributed to Hume that "you cannot derive an OUGHT from an IS". (It being understood that, in this connection, that 'ought' is used in a moral sense).

My thesis is that this attributed statement is either trivial or highly misleading - depending upon the construction that is placed upon OUGHT.

If OUGHT is taken in the sense of 'categorical imperative' (an imperative that stands on its own, irrespective of circumstances, motives or anything else) then OUGHT is, ipso facto, unrelated to to any IS element. The Law is then trivially true.

If OUGHT is taken in the sense of 'hypothetical imperative' then the case is very different.

A hypothetical imperative is one that runs thus: if an outcome [O] be desired then the action [A] OUGHT to be taken (or avoided). So hypothetical imperatives operate strictly on the way world IS and have no force in default of the relevant IS factors.

The issue is thus: are moral imperatives categorical or hypothetical? If they are the former than, as has been suggested, the Law is trivially true. If they are the latter then the Law is misleading.

My contention is that there are, known to me, no moral imperatives that are indisputably categorical imperatives; the real moral imperatives are, so far as I can tell, essentially hypothetical.

By this I mean, referring to the fact that, by nature and not by choice, we are social animals, the hypothetical moral imperatives run thus : if we wish society to flourish (and ourselves to flourish in it) THEN certain moral precepts must be honoured in practice. The OUGHT elements that matter are directly related to the IS elements in life - individual and social. (I assume that to not wish that both society, and self, should flourish would be perverse - unnatural, counter-intuitive etc.).

At this point I have been questioned as to whether my use of the word 'flourish' might constitute "smuggling moral values into the discussion of how moral values arise". If this is a fair criticism then it might amount to accusing me of circularity at some point. I think I can refute that criticism.

Human society is an ecosystem within the natural world and is both like and unlike many another ecosystem (as indeed ecosystems are all both like and unlike one another in various ways). There are many different ecosystems that are capable, recognisably, of flourishing ..... a pond, an anthill, a forest .... and there is no moral dimension in this flourishing; the participating species simply function together in a more or less sustained fashion.

The flourishing of our ecosystem - human society - is no more a moral phenomenon than is the flourishing of a pond, a forest, an anthill; its flourishing is, or is not, a fact about it that depends upon certain facts about us and our recognising the consequence of those facts.

The relevant facts are these: 1) we have instincts that are necessary to our being a social species and 2) these instincts do not match perfectly, or even sufficiently, the requirements of sustainable social being. There is, as a direct consequence of this mismatch, a discipline deficit that needs to be reduced or, ideally, to be eliminated. Morality is the required means of dealing with the discipline deficit and the moral values that we might try to identify relate directly to the profile of that deficit. It is precisely this mismatch in human life that calls for morality and it is precisely the match between instinct and social cohesion that makes morality a non-applicable category in, say, an anthill.
The problem is to analyse the human discipline deficit, to identify the profile of the mismatch; that is the business of moral philosophy. This is done by attempting to identify moral values.

Russell wrote something to the effect that 'the good life is informed by truth and moved by kindliness'. He was thereby identifying two moral values - truth and kindliness. When we read his autobiography, and the standard biography by Caroline Moorhead, we learn a good deal about Bertie's multiple womanising. Admittedly this was evidently amiable on his part and consenting on their part but the fact remains that he did make use of women in a way that was essentially exploitative - albeit gentle and well mannered. In view of this aspect of Russell's life it is not surprising that the vale of respecting the autonomy of others - other people's 'space' - did not feature in his definition of the good life. Moreover, Russell's formative years were lived during the high Victorian zenith and so he took for granted the optimism about Progress that was then the norm.

Perhaps we can identify four OUGHT elements that spring from the realities, the IS elements manifestly relevant to the flourishing of human life - the values of truth, kindliness, respect for personal autonomy and respect for the planet as the shared home of all terrestrial species.

Required moral values can doubtless be identified differently, and expressed differently, but I claim that some such set of values can be derived from our observation and experience of ourselves and the world in which we live. The 'naturalistic fallacy' is not a fallacy at all.

Of course, the application and, where needed, the reconciliation of the several natural moral values (ethical inquiry) is outside the scope of this essay.