ABSTRACT
Earlier I discussed several projects for giving ethical thought a foundation. None of those arguments claimed to put us in a position to deduce ethical conclusions, by logically deriving values from facts, for instance, or practical recommendations from mere descriptions of the world, or an ought from an is. The Kantian approach looked for the preconditions of being a rational agent that supposedly introduced ethical considerations. People who rejected those considerations would be confused in their practical relation to the world, or, if there were a logical conflict involved, it would be not between an ought and an is but between various oughts, each of which they were committed to accepting. Aristotle's concern, again, is basically to determine what we have most reason to pursue. His own account of this borrows from a teleological account of nature that we cannot now accept, but it does not turn on logically deducing values from something else.
