We have learned that pieces of advice and commands are not generally statements, as they have no propositional content, can't be true or false, and thus can't serve as premises or conclusions in logical arguments. But you might wonder about certain common moral or ethical utterances, such as "You ought to call your mother." Is this advice, an order, or might it have propositional content? Context is important in such cases, and the question turns on whether there are objective criteria we might use to determine whether it is true or false. (See the Philosophy Toolkit for what I mean by 'objective' here). If, for example, your mother is ill, and left a message asking you to call her, we have grounds for thinking you really do have a strong obligation -- and a good reason -- to call her (she is, after all, your mother). In this case, it seems, "You ought to call your mother" is true. If, on the other hand, she died two years ago, it is clearly false, since you can't have an obligation to do something impossible. Either way, we're dealing with a bona fide statement.
As in determining whether a passage contains an argument, the intention of the speaker/writer is paramount to determining whether a string of words constitutes a statement, but other things equal it is generally best to treat moral or ethical pronouncements as statements, unless you have strong reasons not to in a specific case.
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3 comments:
Here's a contrast to help think it through: is the speaker simply saying "Do it!" or is the speaker saying "It is the case that your mother has earned your respect and attention."? If the tone and context suggest the latter, then it's a statement (even though in some cases it may well be false!).
How, whence we come upon a statement such as that ("You should call your mother"), are we ever to realize that it is a statement. I understand when you explain it, however I would never have come to that conclusion on my own. Just curious.
Hakuna Matata!
I think it's natural to assume that utterances of this sort are statements. Certainly they often have the form of statements, and in other ways we treat them as though they could be true or false (give reasons for and against them...). We only get confused because of a popular misconception that utterances involving values are purely subjective, when clearly they are not.
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