On the interpretation of Hume

Abstract

(I) In his ‘Hume on Is and Ought’ …. Mr Geoffrey Hunter discusses the now famous passage on is and ought (Treatise, m. i. I). (It is perhaps worth underlining, parenthetically, that now. For in Prin- cipia Ethic a Moore did not even mention the passage; indeed, there is no reference at all to Hume in the Index.) Hunter challenges what he calls ‘the Brief Guide interpretation’ (BGI). This consists in asserting that Hume here was ‘claiming or implying that propositions about what men ought to do are radically different from purely factual propositions, and that they cannot ever be entailed by any purely factual propositions’.