HOW TO DERIVE "BETTER" FROM "IS"
Aaron Sloman · 2006
ONE type of naturalistic analysis of words like good, ought, and better defines them in terms of criteria for applicability which vary from one context to another (as in men, typewriter, method of proof), so that their meanings vary with context. Dissatisfac? tion with this crude naturalism leads some philosophers to suggest that the words have a context-independent nondescriptive meaning de? fined in terms of such things as expressing emotions, commanding, persuading, or guiding actions. There are well-known objections to both approaches, and the aim of this paper is to suggest an alternative which has apparently never previously been con? sidered, for the very good reason that at first sight it looks so unpromising, namely the alternative of defining the problematic words as logical constants. This should not be confused with the program of treating them as undefined symbols in a formal system, which is not new. In this essay an attempt will be made to define a logical constant Better which has surprisingly many of the features of the ordinary word better in a large number of contexts. It can then be shown that other important uses of better may be thought of as derived from this use of the word as a logical constant. The new symbol is a logical constant in that its definition (i.e., the specification of formation rules and truth conditions for statements using it) makes use only of such concepts as entailment, satisfying a condition, relation, set of properties, which would generally be regarded as purely logical concepts. In particular, the definition makes no reference to wants, desires, purposes, interests, pre? scriptions, choice, nondescriptive uses of language, and the other paraphernalia of non-naturalistic (and some naturalistic) analyses of evaluative words.