“Ought”-Judgments and “Morally Ought”-Judgments
Moral “Ought”-Judgments and “Morally Ought”-Judgments

Summary/Abstract: In this paper I distinguish moral “ought”-judgments, meaning “ought”-judgments that qualify as moral judgments, from “morally ought”-judgments, meaning “ought”-judgments whose “ought” is either prefaced (or followed) by the word “morally” or construable as so prefaced. Specifically, I argue that the former class of judgments is wider than the second. (As I show in section 3, this is not to argue for the already familiar distinction, or putative distinction, between a broad and a narrow sense of “moral.”) I also speculate as to why the distinction exists, and, more important, show that it has important consequences. For instance, it undermines a tempting argument for moral subjectivism.

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