ARNOLD BRECHT'S POLITICAL THEORY REVISITED Political ...

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THE POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEWER
those who believe that the "is" (nature) contains an "ought" dimension
and those who either deny it or at least insist thay any such
dimension of the "is" is unknowable or unknowable "scientifically."
Obviously, if the "is" floes contain or embrace an "ought" dimension,
then premises which describe what "is " may therefore embrace
aspects of its "ought" dimension and consequently provide a sound
basis for conclusions expressed in the normative (or "ought") mode.
Only if it is explicitly or implicitly denied that there is a scientifically
demonstrable "ought" dimension to the "is," does the argument from
deductive analytic logic appear to disclose an unbridgeable gulf between
the "is" and the "ought."
It appears, then, that the argument from deductive logic per se
does not provide a sufficient support for "the withdrawal of science
from moral value judgments." "Analytic" statements as such can tell
us nothing about the world as it "is." The assertion or the denial of
the existence of an "ought" dimension in nature, like any other
descriptive account of the world as it is, is what is termed a "synthetic"
proposition in the Kantian tradition which Brecht accepts.
And it is understood that "science" is primarily characterized by
such "synthetic" propositions rather than "analytic" ones. Moreover,
"science," understood as the most careful and self-conscious inquiry
into the various dimensions of what "is," proceeds inductively from
the observation of particulars to the formulation of generalizations
or universals. Therefore the stricture stipulated by the rules of
deductive logic would appear to be of questionable applicability to
the process of scientific induction. But Brecht emphasizes that "[t]he
decisive point of the Gulf Doctrine...is that it extended the ban on
switches from Is to Ought beyond deductive to inductive reasoning."
Thus, "deriving major premises of Ought-form from observation of
facts" was condemned as "unscientific."
9. (540). "Once it had been seen that inferences from Is to Ought could never be
validly drawn in a purely logical manner, Scientific Value Relativism was around the
corner. But something else was necessary to enforce its acceptance. It had to be
recognized (1) that every conscious pursuit of goals or purposes, whether moral,
amoral or immoral, contains elements of evaluation; (2) that every selective evaluation
(better than') of ultimate standards and, therefore, in particular every moral evaluation
is either identical with, or at least associated with, ideas or feelings about what
ought to be done or approved, whose validity cannot be logically derived from facts;
and (3) that the validity of ultimate standards of evaluation is not only logically
undemonstrable but cannot be proved in any other scientific manner" (215).