Andrew Alwood (Cornell University)
"Preserving Hume’s Law"
Since Hume, philosophers have been divided over whether an ‘ought’ can be derived from an ‘is’. In this paper, I defend a precise version of Hume’s law that focuses on the meanings of ‘ought’- and ‘is’-terms, and on the relations between them. The truth of this version is required for a certain project in evaluative semantics: the project of explaining how certain terms are evaluative in virtue of their meaning. I dismiss potential counterexamples from the literature and I also foray into issues about thick concepts.