Oltre la ghigliottina di Hume

Abstract

After having introduced some preliminary notions (including “good”, “obligation” etc.), this paper addresses the meaning and the structure of Hume’s Guillotine (GH). It distinguishes between GH1 (the prohibition of translating a normative sentence in a descriptive one) and GH2 (the prohibition of deriving normative conclusions from merely descriptive premises). Then it will investigate GH2 with respect to some formal languages and it will explain the possibility of introducing “bridge-principles” connecting the alethic domain to the deontic one. Moreover, it will call into question some traditional arguments introduced by scholars to overcome the two GH pillars and it will also offer more rigorous arguments for justifying the overcoming of GH. In particular, it will explore the nature of the link between “Ought” and “Is”. For this purpose, it drew attention to Hintikka’s “bridge.principle”, describing the obligation as a kind of necessity. More precisely, the proper necessity of obligation qualifies as the impossibility of providing a counter-example.