Episode 60: Fabrizio Cariani shares some thoughts about oughts
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Why is defining the word “ought” so philosophically challenging?
Hey, Matt Techman here from Elucidations. Before we get going today, I just thought I'd ask if you're a fan of the show, to maybe go to our iTunes page and leave a rating and a review, and that way more people can discover it. Alright, thanks.
Hello and welcome to Elucidations, the philosophy podcast recorded at the University of Chicago. I'm Matt Teichman, and with me today is Fabrizio Carajani, assistant professor of philosophy at Northwestern University, and he is here to share with us some of his thoughts about aughts. Fabrizio Cariani, welcome.
Thank you, Matt.
So there's a lot of work being done in philosophy right now on the meaning of the word ought. You might think that's a lot of effort to just to put into one little word. Why is it so difficult to say what the word ought means?
Well, that's a great question. There are basically three reasons, I think, maybe more than three, but at least three reasons for that. One of them is that it's an extremely flexible word. So you can say something like, It ought to rain tomorrow, you can say, There ought not to be wars, or Jill ought to stay at home. All of these sentences use the word odd, but they seem to use it in very different ways. So it ought to rain tomorrow seems to make a prediction. Philosophers have taken to calling this uh the epistemic interpretation of odd. There ought not to be wars and uh Jill ought to stay at home seem to have to do with how things ideally would be. So there wouldn't be wars if things were ideal or if Jill was doing what she's required, she would stay at home.
Now, there is all this variety of meanings or variety of possible meanings and uh sort of stunningly though in each particular context the word seems to acquire a very precise meaning and so there is this tension between on the one side this very great range of possible meanings and on the other side the fact that we somehow always manage to latch on one specific way of understanding what the word means. Another thing that's a little difficult with art is that uh one of the meanings that it can have seems to be tied to morality. So if I tell you, Matt, you ought not to tell lies. That seems to say that you're under some kind of moral imperative not to tell lies. And that means that the a discussion of the meaning of art carries with it very difficult questions about how we give a theory of moral discourse and moral communication.
So all of this, I think, are reasons to think that art is a very difficult word to understand.
Okay, so we have these sort of different senses of the word ought. We have uh what philosophers have called the deontic reading of aught, which has to do with, you know, saying that like one possibility is better than another possibility or something like that, maybe. Or, you know, some state of affairs is ideal, uh maybe even moral. And then we have this other sense of the word ought that philosophers have called epistemic, which has more to do with saying something about what you know or your state of knowledge at the time and what seems to follow from your state of knowledge at the time.
What are the deontic and epistemic readings of “ought” and how do they differ?
So are these just two completely different words that happen to sound the same? Um are they just sort of like homonyms, or is there a a unified meaning that the word odd has across all these different cases?
Thanks Matt for introducing the term deontic. As you say, the deontic interpretations of odd are those interpretations that have to do with requirements and obligations, what would be better for people to do. As you also rightly point out, there are two views about the meanings of odd. On one view, there is just one meaning with different contextual resolutions, and uh on the other view there are distinct meanings. Thanks. Now I think it would be nice if the one meaning uh view was true. And uh I think especially Angelica Kratzer has given us the resources to see how that might even be possible. So Kratzer suggests thinking of models in general, but maybe art in particular, as having a structure like
In view of what we know, in view of what is prescribed by uh your requirement, something and something ought to be the case.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
Why is defining the word “ought” so philosophically challenging?
0:00–3:35
2
What are the deontic and epistemic readings of “ought” and how do they differ?
3:35–6:23
3
How does Angelika Kratzer’s unified model try to reconcile the two readings?
6:23–9:32
4
In what ways does the modal verb “must” differ from “ought”?
9:32–12:44
5
How does the coffee‑machine example illustrate the contrast between “ought” and “must”?
12:44–15:54
6
Why does the meaning of “ought” depend on contextual alternatives?
15:54–18:55
7
What makes modality (ought, must, may, can) a crucial topic for philosophy of language?
18:55–22:01
8
What are the main take‑aways and open questions from Fabrizio Cariani’s analysis?
22:01–26:27
Speakers
1 identifiedMore from Elucidations
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