cheat on my taxes too.’ Hume said you can never draw conclusions from is sentences
to ought sentences. Nevertheless it is exceedingly common, not least in newspaper
articles, political party programs, and speeches. Would you like some examples?”
“Please.”
“ ‘More and more people want to travel by air. Therefore more airports ought
to be built.’ Do you think the conclusion holds up?”
“No. It’s nonsense. We have to think of the environment. I think we ought to
build more railroads instead.”
“Or they say: The development of new oilfields will raise the population’s
living standards by ten percent. Therefore we ought to develop new oilfields as
rapidly as possible.”
“Definitely not. We have to think of the environment again. And anyway, the
standard of living in Norway is high enough.”
“Sometimes it is said that ‘this law has been passed by the Senate, therefore all
citizens in this country ought to abide by it.’ But frequently it goes against people’s
deepest convictions to abide by such conventions.”
“Yes, I understand that.”
“So we have established that we cannot use reason as a yardstick for how we
ought to act. Acting responsibly is not a matter of strengthening our reason but of
deepening our feelings for the welfare of others. “Tis not contrary to reason to prefer
the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger,’ said Hume.”
“That’s a hair-raising assertion.”
“It’s maybe even more hair-raising if you shuffle the cards. You know that the
Nazis murdered millions of Jews. Would you say that there was something wrong
with the Nazis’ reason, or would you say there was something wrong with their
emotional life?”
“There was definitely something wrong with their feelings.”
“Many of them were exceedingly clear-headed. It is not unusual to find ice-cold
calculation behind the most callous decisions. Many of the Nazis were convicted after
the war, but they were not convicted for being ‘unreasonable.’ They were convicted
for being gruesome murderers. It can happen that people who are not of sound mind
can be acquitted of their crimes. We say that they were ‘not accountable for their
actions.’ Nobody has ever been acquitted of a crime they committed for being
unfeeling.”
“I should hope not.”
“But we need not stick to the most grotesque examples. If a flood disaster
renders millions of people homeless, it is our feelings that determine whether we
come to their aid. If we are callous, and leave the whole thing to ‘cold reason,’ we
might think it was actually quite in order that millions of people die in a world that is
threatened by overpopulation.”
“It makes me mad that you can even think that.”
“And notice it’s not your reason that gets mad.”
“Okay, I got it.”
Berkeley
…like a giddy planet round a burning sun…
Alberto walked over to the window facing the town. Sophie followed him.
While they stood looking out at the old houses, a small plane flew in over the
rooftops. Fixed to its tail was a long banner which Sophie guessed would be