Abstract
In this chapter we both demarcate the subject-matter and formulate the aims of the ensuing investigations. We explain in what sense this is an investigation into the philosophical foundations of institutions and normative systems. We distinguish six sets of philosophical problems which will be dealt with in this book. Our aim is to develop a family of interconnected theories that provide a unitary systematic account of our problems. We will take some pains to collect, describe and organize a large amount of data, so that our theorization can be both comprehensive and well supported.
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The thesis that general requiredness characterizes morality is, in different forms, part of a persistent error in the history of moral philosophy. It often appears as the claim that a moral ought is overriding or vice versa. See H-N. Castañeda, The Structure of Morality (Springfield, Illinois: Charles Thomas Publisher, 1974), Ch. 7 for a critical examination of those and other theses, which are versions of the identification of moral thinking with practical thinking. This is a pervasive thesis. It is propounded by Kant, e.g., in the Grundlegung when he discusses the third proposition of moral value (A.K.K. ed., pp. 400–402). (See Chapter 1 §5 below.) Prichard follows Kant on this matter and even chastizes him for calling hypothetical imperatives imperatives, where ‘imperatives’ refers to ought-judgments. See his ‘Moral Obligation’ (1937) in Moral Obligation (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1950). Leonard Nelson holds the same view in his System of Ethics, transl. from the German original of 1932 by N. Guterman (New Haven: Yale University Press; London: Oxford University Press, 1956). Hare’s uneasy equating of oughts with moral oughts comes from both his characterization of ought-judgments as implying imperatives and his view that ‘ought’ if used evaluatively is universalizable. See his The Language of Morals (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1950), especially pp. 164–178, and his Freedom and Reason (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1963), especially 7–50 and 86–224. Hare’s view on ‘ought’ is examined in H-N. Castañeda, ‘Imperatives, Decisions, and Oughts’, in H.-N. Castañeda and G. Nakhnikian, eds., Morality and the Language of Conduct (Detroit, Michigan: Wayne State University Press, 1963).
See H-N. Castañeda, The Structure of Morality, Chapter 8.
For a detailed reformulation and rebuttal of Hume’s guillotine see H-N. Castañeda, ‘On the Conceptual Autonomy of Morality’, Nous 7 (1973), where there is an argument for bridging implications connecting Ought and Is. Some philosophers have argued that Hume himself did not spouse Hume’s guillotine. I believe that he did spouse it when he formulated it, but perhaps he did not spouse it at other times. On this issue see the papers by A. C. Maclntyre, A. Flew, R. F. Atkinson, G. Hunter, and W. D. Hudson in W. D. Hudson, ed., The Is-Ought Question (London: Macmillan and Company Ltd., and St. Martin’s Press, 1969). See below Chapter 11 §4-§5 and Chapter 13 §1.
I have expressed my views on the possibility of a private language in detail. See H-N. Castañeda, ‘The Private Language Argument’, with replies to comments by V. Chappell and J. F. Thomson, in R. O. Jones, ed., The Private Language Argument (London, England: Macmillan and Company Ltd., 1971), and ‘The Private Language Problem’, in Paul Edwards, ed., The Encyclopedia of Philosophy (New York: Macmillan and Free Press, 1967).
To mention only a famous example, from the fact that we do not in daily life say “I know that I am in pain” it does not follow that there are no such facts as one being in pain or as one knowing that one is in pain. Another famous example: from the (alleged) fact that we do not say truly ‘I am now dreaming’ it does not follow that dreams are not states of consciousness. See Norman Malcolm, Dreaming (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul; New York: The Humanities Press, 1959), and H-N. Castañeda, ‘Criteria, Analogy, and Other Minds’, The Journal of Philosophy 69 (1962): 533–546.
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© 1982 D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland
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Castañeda, HN. (1982). Introduction: Tasks and Problems. In: Castañeda, HN. (eds) Thinking and Doing. Philosophical Studies Series in Philosophy, vol 7. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-9888-5_1
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