Tutorial #1. The Status of Morality. Ought and Is. Discussion Questions

After having read David Hume, ‘Moral Distinctions not Derived from Reason’ in Ethical Theory, think about these questions. Note An HTML Edition of the relevant reading from Hume’s A Treatise of Human Nature can be found from eBooks@Adelaide "The University of Adelaide Library": HERE

• Can you derive an ‘ought’ from an ‘is’?
• What is the difference, if any, between a claim like “You ought to buy the next round of drinks” and one like “You ought to keep your promises”?
• Does the fact that most drivers in Italy run red lights entails that running a red light is right? Why?
• Do we have a “sense impression”, or experience, for rightness and wrongness?
• Is morality objective, and if so in what sense(s)?
• How do you understand “naturalism” in moral philosophy?
• Can ethics be considered as a “natural social science” - see Greene's article?
• What can, if anything, scientific evidence contribute to our understanding of morality?
• In which sense, according to Hume, justice is an “artificial virtue”? What is his argument?
• Why ought one to keep a promise, or ought not to steal? What are the grounds for these rules? Are they different from the grounds of a rule such as “you ought not to burp while eating dinner”?
• If we were Vulcans, would anything change in the status of morality?

note the cartoon above is by Stephen M. Campbell