The Possibilities of Moral Advice

Abstract

Professor Max Black tells us¹ that as a recognition of its remarkable philosophical influence, he proposes ‘to assign to the principle that only factual statements can follow from exclusively factual statements the title “Hume’s Guillotine”’.² He ends his paper by describing this principle as ‘a dogma which ought by now to have been finally exploded’.³ I assume that the ‘by now’ refers, not to the end of the article, but to the present state of contemporary moral philosophy, where the number of those prepared to assist in exploding the principle in question increases quarterly.