'Is' to 'ought'

Abstract

THINK there are still some dark corners in the 'ought'-'is' debate, although others are now brighter. Professor Flew (ANALYSIS 25.2, December 1964) insists on the distinction, which he says Mr. J. R. Searle (Philosophical Review LXXIII, 1964) recognises but does not take to heart, between 'the employment of a term like promise in a detached anthropological description of a social practice; and the use of the same term, without reservation, by a committed participant' (p. 31). This distinction supports a strong objection against Searle's attempted derivation of an 'ought' from factual premisses. But the distinction needs further refinement. For what is it to 'characterize something unreservedly as a promise' (p. 31)? The reservations have to do not with the characterization but with the commitment to the institution