Oughts and Hypothetical Imperatives

[Leontiskos]

There are likely reasons I value x, such as nature and nurture reasons, but it doesn't seem like there is something about the universe that makes valuing x correct and not valuing x incorrect or vice versa.

But what are nature and nurture if not "the universe"?

Let me introduce a new idea. You are a scientist. Don't scientists value truth? And isn't it true that truth ought to be valued? So if we take a proposition, "The Pfizer vaccine is x% effective against the virus," affirming that proposition as true is the standard way of valuing the proposition, and denying it as false is the standard way of disvaluing it. Now if a scientist wishes to defend the proposition they will ultimately be saying, "You should value the proposition (as true) [because the universe]." Or, "You should value the proposition (as true) [because this is the way reality is, and it is good to affirm that what is, is]." More proximately the scientist would say, "You should value the proposition (as true) because such-and-such a study used reliable scientific methodology to support the truth of the proposition."

To be clear, it seems to me that identifying and affirming true things is a human act, and one that ought to be carried out. Surely a scientist would not disagree with me.

If our moral beliefs are arguments (insofar as making a hypothetical imperative is an "argument"), we can sometimes do it wrong since we're fallible, so we sometimes correct ourselves.

Why think that hypothetical imperatives are subject to argument but categorical imperatives are not?

[Good_Egg]

I don't understand what it would mean to say there is something about the universe that means I ought to do x even if I don't value x. What would that mean?

If you do believe in X (where X is something like keeping promises or refraining from murder), can you see that such a moral value is not quite the same kind of thing as a preference for chocolate cake ?

Moral values are imperatives, demanding that you act accordingly always. They may have to give way to other moral values, but they assert a duty not to trade them off against non-moral values.

Whereas your preference for chocolate cake can co-exist quite happily with a preference for ice cream...

Taking one step back, the hard question here is "why be moral ?" Why should I do whatever it is that morality demands ?

One conceivable answer is along the lines of "because it is in my long-term interest to do so." If you choose such an answer, then I think maybe it does follow that all moral oughts collapse to prudential oughts, to the question of how do I best serve that long-term interest ?

And it also allows a richer picture of human psychology, which can include conflicts between long-term interest and short-term desire.

Whereas if your answer to the hard question is "because I will it so" then I suggest you're stuck with this reductive picture where will/value is simple and all choices are about effective means to bringing about what it is that you will.

I think I'm arguing for a different, somewhat tautological answer to the hard question. You should be moral because by definition that is what you should do. Which doesn't satisfy our need to understand, but puts all the content into the question of what acts are moral or immoral. Having established the category in a purely formal sense.

[Leontiskos]

But I don't understand what it would mean to say there is something about the universe that means I ought to do x even if I don't value x. What would that mean?

We can take the moral realist's proposition, "If x is good, then for any P, P ought to do x," but then we're left without knowing what "good" means. I understand "good" when "x is good" means something like "x aligns with my values." But otherwise, what would it be? Defined by what?

The moral realist positions I am familiar with simply don't believe that there are categorical imperatives which are not good, or that in your terms "are not valued."

In the thread "Are there eternal moral truths?" I argued at some length that 'good' is bound up with that which is desirable, but whether we want to tie the good to the desirable or the valuable, some positive subjective valuation must certainly hold.

This means--adopting your language of 'valuing' for the sake of argument--the intelligent moral realist will always be arguing that you should value x because x is objectively valuable. They will never argue that you should carry out acts with zero psychological motivation. As you rightly imply, such an act would be impossible.

[Astro Cat]

Self-Lightening Good_Egg Leontiskos

I have a fully loaded weekend, I’ll get back to y’all this coming week

[Consul]

As a moral noncognitivist, my main complaint against moral realism is that I'm not sure what it would mean for an ought to be true unless that ought is couched in terms of a hypothetical imperative: for instance, "if I value x, then I ought to do y."

You may have read it already, but here's Philippa Foot's 1972 paper "Morality as a System of Hypothetical Imperatives" (PDF)!

Also see:

* Philippa Foot > Against Moral Rationalism: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/phil ... aiMoraRati

* Kant's Moral Philosophy > Categorical and Hypothetical Imperatives: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant ... #CatHypImp

* Instrumental Rationality > Kant on Hypothetical Imperatives: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rati ... #KanHypImp

By the way, I'm a moral noncognitivist too; and I basically endorse Richard Hare's prescriptivism:

QUOTE>
"'Ought' -judgements are prescriptive, and in this respect like imperations, because in their typical uses agreement with them, if genuine, requires action in conformity with them, in situations where the action required is an action of the person agreeing. I deliberately say 'in their typical uses' , because, as is well known, there are other uses, which have generated a vast literature. Such are uses by the weak-willed person, 'acratic' or 'backslider' who does not do what he agrees he ought to, because he very much wants not to (…), and by the 'satanist' who does what he agrees he ought not to, just because it is what he ought not to (…). This is not the place to add to this literature; the point here is just that typical and central uses of 'ought' require compliance if they are to count as sincere. By contrast, constative speech acts require only accordant belief.

However, moral judgements are not just like ordinary imperations. They share with constative speech acts a very important feature, namely that when I say 'I ought to do that ', I have to say it because of something about the act that I say I ought to do. This is a feature of all uses of 'ought ', and not just of moral uses. It is true that imperations too are normally issued for reasons. But they do not have to be. If a drill serjeant is trying to see whether a new recruit will obey him, he may say to him 'Right turn', and may have no reason at all for saying this rather than 'Left turn'. But with 'ought' it is different. To take a non-moral example: suppose that instead they are doing a tactical exercise and the instructor says 'You ought to attack on the right '. There has to be a reason in the facts of the situation why they ought to attack on the right rather than on the left."
(pp. 11-2)

"'Ought' , I want to say, is a logical word. It is a deontic modal operator. Its logical properties and function are closely analogous to those of the other modal operators like 'it is necessary that'. The difference is that, whereas the other modal operators govern descriptive statements, 'ought' governs prescriptions (…). 'Ought'-statements entail imperatives with the same content, just as sentences beginning 'It is necessary that . . .' entail indicative statements with the same content. So we could summarize my account of 'ought' by saying that it is the modality standing to prescriptions as 'necessary' stands to descriptive statements."
(p. 136)

(Hare, R. M. Sorting Out Ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.)

"[P]rescriptivists hold that moral statements are expressions of volition (in a broad sense in which it covers Kant's rational will and Aristotles boulesis or rational desire)."
(p. 21)

"[P]rescriptivists hold that in making a moral statement we are expressing our rational will; and if someone else wills something different, the disagreement has to be resolved by reason."
(pp. 21-2)

(Hare, R. M. "Prescriptivism." In Objective Prescriptivism and Other Essays, 19-27. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.)
<QUOTE

QUOTE>
"prescriptivism. A theory about the meaning of moral terms such as ‘good’, ‘right’, and ‘ought’. Its principal advocate has been R. M. Hare. The theory draws a contrast between descriptive meaning, whereby language is used for stating facts, and the ‘prescriptive’ meaning which is characteristic of moral language. Moral terms are used primarily for guiding action, for telling people what to do. As such they are similar to imperatives, which also have prescriptive meaning. Moral discourse is not, as the emotive theory of ethics had seemed to suggest, a manipulative process of playing on people’s feelings. It is a rational activity, addressed to others as rational agents. It is, however, logically distinct from the activity of descriptive discourse, and hence no statements of fact can entail any conclusion about what one ‘ought’ to do."

("Prescriptivism." In The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, edited by Ted Honderich, 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. pp. 752-3)

"Prescriptivism sees moral judgments as a type of prescription, or imperative. Moral judgments, like the simple imperative 'Close the door', don’t state facts and aren't true or false. Instead, they express our will, or our desires.

Ought judgments are universalizable prescriptions. 'You ought to do this' is equivalent to 'Do this and let everyone do the same in similar cases.' So moral beliefs express our desire that a kind of act be done in the present case and in all similar cases—including ones where we imagine ourselves in someone else's place.

Prescriptivism shows how can we be both free and rational in forming our moral beliefs. Moral beliefs can be free because they express our desires and aren’t provable from facts. They can be rational because the logic of 'ought' leads to a method of moral reasoning that engages our rational powers to their limits.
Moral beliefs are subject to two basic logical rules:

U. To be logically consistent, we must make similar evaluations about similar cases.
P. To be logically consistent, we must keep our moral beliefs in harmony with how we live and want others to live.

Rule U holds because moral judgnents are universalizable: it’s part of their meaning that they apply to similar cases. Rule P holds because moral judgments are prescriptions (imperatives), and thus express our will, or our desires, about how we and others are to live.

Prescriptivism’s GR [Golden Rule] consistency condition, which follows from these two logical rules, claims that this combination is inconsistent:

* I believe that I ought to do something to another.
* I don’t desire that this be done to me in the same situation.

This consistency condition is a more precise version of the traditional golden rule ('Treat others as you want to be treated'). We violate it if we think we ought to do something to another but don’t desire that this be done to us in the same situation.
To think rationally about ethics, we need to be informed, imaginative, and consistent; the most important part of consistency is to follow the golden rule. This approach can show that Nazi moral beliefs are irrational—since Nazis wouldn’t be consistent in their moral beliefs if they knew the facts of the case and exercised their imagination."

(Gensler, Harry J. Ethics: A Contemporary Introduction. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 2011. pp. 63-4)
<QUOTE

[Astro Cat]

As a moral noncognitivist, my main complaint against moral realism is that I'm not sure what it would mean for an ought to be true unless that ought is couched in terms of a hypothetical imperative: for instance, "if I value x, then I ought to do y."

You may have read it already, but here's Philippa Foot's 1972 paper "Morality as a System of Hypothetical Imperatives" (PDF)!

Also see:

* Philippa Foot > Against Moral Rationalism: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/phil ... aiMoraRati

* Kant's Moral Philosophy > Categorical and Hypothetical Imperatives: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant ... #CatHypImp

* Instrumental Rationality > Kant on Hypothetical Imperatives: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rati ... #KanHypImp

By the way, I'm a moral noncognitivist too; and I basically endorse Richard Hare's prescriptivism:

QUOTE>
"'Ought' -judgements are prescriptive, and in this respect like imperations, because in their typical uses agreement with them, if genuine, requires action in conformity with them, in situations where the action required is an action of the person agreeing. I deliberately say 'in their typical uses' , because, as is well known, there are other uses, which have generated a vast literature. Such are uses by the weak-willed person, 'acratic' or 'backslider' who does not do what he agrees he ought to, because he very much wants not to (…), and by the 'satanist' who does what he agrees he ought not to, just because it is what he ought not to (…). This is not the place to add to this literature; the point here is just that typical and central uses of 'ought' require compliance if they are to count as sincere. By contrast, constative speech acts require only accordant belief.

However, moral judgements are not just like ordinary imperations. They share with constative speech acts a very important feature, namely that when I say 'I ought to do that ', I have to say it because of something about the act that I say I ought to do. This is a feature of all uses of 'ought ', and not just of moral uses. It is true that imperations too are normally issued for reasons. But they do not have to be. If a drill serjeant is trying to see whether a new recruit will obey him, he may say to him 'Right turn', and may have no reason at all for saying this rather than 'Left turn'. But with 'ought' it is different. To take a non-moral example: suppose that instead they are doing a tactical exercise and the instructor says 'You ought to attack on the right '. There has to be a reason in the facts of the situation why they ought to attack on the right rather than on the left."
(pp. 11-2)

"'Ought' , I want to say, is a logical word. It is a deontic modal operator. Its logical properties and function are closely analogous to those of the other modal operators like 'it is necessary that'. The difference is that, whereas the other modal operators govern descriptive statements, 'ought' governs prescriptions (…). 'Ought'-statements entail imperatives with the same content, just as sentences beginning 'It is necessary that . . .' entail indicative statements with the same content. So we could summarize my account of 'ought' by saying that it is the modality standing to prescriptions as 'necessary' stands to descriptive statements."
(p. 136)

(Hare, R. M. Sorting Out Ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.)

"[P]rescriptivists hold that moral statements are expressions of volition (in a broad sense in which it covers Kant's rational will and Aristotles boulesis or rational desire)."
(p. 21)

"[P]rescriptivists hold that in making a moral statement we are expressing our rational will; and if someone else wills something different, the disagreement has to be resolved by reason."
(pp. 21-2)

(Hare, R. M. "Prescriptivism." In Objective Prescriptivism and Other Essays, 19-27. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.)
<QUOTE

QUOTE>
"prescriptivism. A theory about the meaning of moral terms such as ‘good’, ‘right’, and ‘ought’. Its principal advocate has been R. M. Hare. The theory draws a contrast between descriptive meaning, whereby language is used for stating facts, and the ‘prescriptive’ meaning which is characteristic of moral language. Moral terms are used primarily for guiding action, for telling people what to do. As such they are similar to imperatives, which also have prescriptive meaning. Moral discourse is not, as the emotive theory of ethics had seemed to suggest, a manipulative process of playing on people’s feelings. It is a rational activity, addressed to others as rational agents. It is, however, logically distinct from the activity of descriptive discourse, and hence no statements of fact can entail any conclusion about what one ‘ought’ to do."

("Prescriptivism." In The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, edited by Ted Honderich, 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. pp. 752-3)

"Prescriptivism sees moral judgments as a type of prescription, or imperative. Moral judgments, like the simple imperative 'Close the door', don’t state facts and aren't true or false. Instead, they express our will, or our desires.

Ought judgments are universalizable prescriptions. 'You ought to do this' is equivalent to 'Do this and let everyone do the same in similar cases.' So moral beliefs express our desire that a kind of act be done in the present case and in all similar cases—including ones where we imagine ourselves in someone else's place.

Prescriptivism shows how can we be both free and rational in forming our moral beliefs. Moral beliefs can be free because they express our desires and aren’t provable from facts. They can be rational because the logic of 'ought' leads to a method of moral reasoning that engages our rational powers to their limits.
Moral beliefs are subject to two basic logical rules:

U. To be logically consistent, we must make similar evaluations about similar cases.
P. To be logically consistent, we must keep our moral beliefs in harmony with how we live and want others to live.

Rule U holds because moral judgnents are universalizable: it’s part of their meaning that they apply to similar cases. Rule P holds because moral judgments are prescriptions (imperatives), and thus express our will, or our desires, about how we and others are to live.

Prescriptivism’s GR [Golden Rule] consistency condition, which follows from these two logical rules, claims that this combination is inconsistent:

* I believe that I ought to do something to another.
* I don’t desire that this be done to me in the same situation.

This consistency condition is a more precise version of the traditional golden rule ('Treat others as you want to be treated'). We violate it if we think we ought to do something to another but don’t desire that this be done to us in the same situation.
To think rationally about ethics, we need to be informed, imaginative, and consistent; the most important part of consistency is to follow the golden rule. This approach can show that Nazi moral beliefs are irrational—since Nazis wouldn’t be consistent in their moral beliefs if they knew the facts of the case and exercised their imagination."

(Gensler, Harry J. Ethics: A Contemporary Introduction. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 2011. pp. 63-4)
<QUOTE

Oooh thanks for these links! I’m out and about right now and just killing time before a friend’s party. I’ll definitely be reading and watching this week.

I do not have classical training in philosophy and especially in ethics, everything I know comes from small tidbits. So my ethical ideas were concocted by myself. It’s always interesting to see an expert go through something you, yourself arrived to independently.

[Consul]

By the way, I'm a moral noncognitivist too; and I basically endorse Richard Hare's prescriptivism:

QUOTE>
"'Ought'-judgements are prescriptive, and in this respect like imperations…"
(pp. 11-2)

"…'Ought'-statements entail imperatives…"
(p. 136)

(Hare, R. M. Sorting Out Ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.)
<QUOTE

The simple reason why there can be no reduction of ought/should to is is that prescriptions are irreducible to and irreplaceable by (pure) descriptions, and imperative sentences are irreducible to and irreplaceable by (purely) indicative sentences.

"In making moral judgements we are purporting to commend or condemn actions or people because they have some properties which make them right or wrong, good or bad[.]"

(Hare, R. M. Moral Thinking: Its Levels, Method, and Point. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981. p. 51)

The non-prescriptive, descriptive aspect of making moral judgements concerns the giving of reasons why x ought (not) to be done or should (not) be done. The reasons given describe those non-moral "properties which make [actions] right or wrong, good or bad." For example, if some action A has the property of resulting in the killing of innocent people, then a reason for telling people not to do A is that it will result in the killing of innocent people.

[Leontiskos]

By the way, I'm a moral noncognitivist too; and I basically endorse Richard Hare's prescriptivism:

It seems to me that Astro Cat is at odds with Hare, but beyond that I am wondering how, or in what sense, Hare can even be considered a noncognitivist.

...But with 'ought' it is different... There has to be a reason in the facts of the situation why they ought to attack on the right rather than on the left."
(pp. 11-2)

(Hare, R. M. Sorting Out Ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.)


"[P]rescriptivists hold that moral statements are expressions of volition (in a broad sense in which it covers Kant's rational will and Aristotles boulesis or rational desire)."
(p. 21)

"[P]rescriptivists hold that in making a moral statement we are expressing our rational will; and if someone else wills something different, the disagreement has to be resolved by reason."
(pp. 21-2)

(Hare, R. M. "Prescriptivism." In Objective Prescriptivism and Other Essays, 19-27. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.)

I would simply not class Aristotle's notion of boulesis as a noncognitivist approach, but this gets into the way that ancient understandings are opaque to modern categories. In any case, a key problem with attributing noncognitivism to Hare is the universal nature of his Prescriptivist project. Many of your own quotes touch on this aspect of his project, but for the sake of concision consider this quote:

• "Moral imperatives are universal in a number of ways. They are to apply not just to the agent about whom they are made (if they are made with respect to a particular agent) but also to any agent who is similarly situated. And they apply to any action or object which is relevantly similar to the actions or objects about which the judgment is made. They apply to all relevantly similar cases at any time and any place. Thus, very roughly, when one calls an action right one is not only prescribing the action in question, but also any relevantly similar action wherever and whenever it occurs. And the prescription is addressed not only to the agent whose action is up for assessment but also to every other person, including the speaker and listeners. In this way, Hare believes, calling an action wrong commits the speaker to judging wrong any relevantly similar action done at any time and any place by any person."
  
  -SEP, Moral Cognitivism vs. Non-Cognitivism | 2.2 Prescriptivism and Universal Prescriptivism

Now if we take moral cognitivism to be captured by the following, then it is not clear that Hare is a noncognitivist:

• "But rather than thinking that this makes moral statements false, non-cognitivists claim that moral statements are not in the business of predicating properties or making statements which could be true or false in any substantial sense. Roughly put, non-cognitivists think that moral statements have no substantial truth conditions."
  
  -SEP, Moral Cognitivism vs. Non-Cognitivism

Astro Cat's approach to noncognitivism is related to propositionality and truth susceptibility, so I think this particular characterization of noncognitivism is apt. I am guessing that there is considerable subtle debate about what separates a truth condition from a substantial truth condition, but the general point is that Hare's universalizing approach is, prima facie, tied up with truth conditions. He believes that certain agents are required to act in certain ways, and that any agents similarly situated are equally required to act in such a way. Thus at the very least true and false moral propositions would seem to be strictly entailed by Hare's moral judgments. For example, when Hare argues for a moral imperative such as, "Do not utilize atom bombs when you are in a situation relevantly similar to President Harry Truman's situation," it would seem that he at the same time commits himself to an affirmation of the truth of the proposition, "Harry Truman should not have dropped the atom bomb." Any arguments that Hare provides for the former prescriptive statement will also be arguments in favor of the latter descriptive statement.

The non-prescriptive, descriptive aspect of making moral judgements concerns the giving of reasons why x ought (not) to be done or should (not) be done. The reasons given describe those non-moral "properties which make [actions] right or wrong, good or bad." For example, if some action A has the property of resulting in the killing of innocent people, then a reason for telling people not to do A is that it will result in the killing of innocent people.

A similar problem here crops up in a different form, for it is very strange to say that the "properties which make [actions] right or wrong, good or bad," are "non-moral." If a property makes an action right or wrong, good or bad, then it would seem to be precisely a moral property. The action-property of, "[will result] in the killing of innocent people," is a moral property, and it is precisely this moral property which justifies the prescription regarding A.

[Astro Cat]

Girlfriend’s asleep and I’m just sobering up before bed, so this will be a short post. But what Leontiskos said seems correct (that Hare might be at odds with my view).

I do not attempt to rescue in any way prescriptive truths because I think such a concept is nonsense, it wouldn’t be “true” that in Truman’s situation he shouldn’t drop the bomb unless couched in a hypothetical (the notion is that all imperatives are hypothetical, so whether he “should” drop the bomb from his perspective is only true if he values certain things; and the “should” would only be personal, not universal). Whereas others with different values might believe a different “should” about it.

I think that the reason society is nominally nice isn’t because of any sort of moral truth but rather because there are popular values like altruism and empathy. And I must be careful to note that I don’t think popularity makes a value “more true” or “more good” than an unpopular value: e.g., for those of us that value things like altruism and empathy, it is lucky (to speak colloquially) that these are popular values; but those that don’t value them aren’t somehow going against a “truth.”

Now I think we can concoct just-so stories for why they are popular. My personal take is that they’re evolutionarily advantageous, and they’re advantageous for other popular values like “I value not suffering” (which gets empathetically abstracted to “I value my family and friends not suffering” which gets empathetically abstracted to “I value the stranger not suffering”).

But none of these values have an “ought” about them: I say this in a weakly skeptical way (so I should say, “as far as I can tell”). There is nothing about the universe that makes it so we “ought” to have them (with no hypothetical, if it were just an imperative). I don’t even know what that would mean, hence noncognitivism.

I think my position is something like, “all imperatives are hypothetical and based on personal values until shown otherwise.”

[Leontiskos]

Girlfriend’s asleep and I’m just sobering up before bed, so this will be a short post. But what @Leontiskos said seems correct (that Hare might be at odds with my view).

I do not attempt to rescue in any way prescriptive truths because I think such a concept is nonsense, it wouldn’t be “true” that in Truman’s situation he shouldn’t drop the bomb unless couched in a hypothetical (the notion is that all imperatives are hypothetical, so whether he “should” drop the bomb from his perspective is only true if he values certain things; and the “should” would only be personal, not universal). Whereas others with different values might believe a different “should” about it.

Right, and it is worth noting that the is-ought distinction and the categorical-hypothetical distinction are two different things. Just because someone accepts a strong is-ought distinction does not mean they necessarily follow Philippa Foot into purely hypothetical morality. Hare is someone who clearly does not follow Foot into that space (and I also disagree with Foot). But Astro Cat seems to be in the same general camp as Foot. Anscombe is another formidable female philosopher who takes that general line.

At the same time, opposing a purely hypothetical morality does not commit one to accepting psychologically unmotivated acts, as Cat seems to believe. I spoke to this in my replies above.

[Astro Cat]

Girlfriend’s asleep and I’m just sobering up before bed, so this will be a short post. But what @Leontiskos said seems correct (that Hare might be at odds with my view).

I do not attempt to rescue in any way prescriptive truths because I think such a concept is nonsense, it wouldn’t be “true” that in Truman’s situation he shouldn’t drop the bomb unless couched in a hypothetical (the notion is that all imperatives are hypothetical, so whether he “should” drop the bomb from his perspective is only true if he values certain things; and the “should” would only be personal, not universal). Whereas others with different values might believe a different “should” about it.

Right, and it is worth noting that the is-ought distinction and the categorical-hypothetical distinction are two different things. Just because someone accepts a strong is-ought distinction does not mean they necessarily follow Philippa Foot into purely hypothetical morality. Hare is someone who clearly does not follow Foot into that space (and I also disagree with Foot). But Astro Cat seems to be in the same general camp as Foot. Anscombe is another formidable female philosopher who takes that general line.

At the same time, opposing a purely hypothetical morality does not commit one to accepting psychologically unmotivated acts, as Cat seems to believe. I spoke to this in my replies above.

I’ll still full respond to everyone

[Leontiskos]

I’ll still full respond to everyone

No hurry.

[Consul]

It seems to me that @Astro Cat is at odds with Hare, but beyond that I am wondering how, or in what sense, Hare can even be considered a noncognitivist.

In my understanding, moral non-cognitivism consists in the following assumptions, all of which seem to be affirmed by Hare:

1. Moral predicates ("good"/"bad", "right"/"wrong") don't represent any (real) moral properties, because there are no such properties and hence no moral facts/truths either.
2. Therefore, moral judgements lack truth-conditions and truth-values.
3. Moral judgements are expressions of emotion, volition, or desire rather than of belief.

Anyway, there may be no such thing as the one official definition of moral non-cognitivism, but who doesn't count Hare among the non-cognitivists?

"We can find two main theories within noncognitivism: emotivism and prescriptivism."

Non-Cognitivism in Ethics: https://iep.utm.edu/non-cogn/

QUOTE>
"Philosophers have offered many different definitions for the term ‘noncognitivism’ over the last seven decades or more. Some have defined it as the view that moral sentences cannot be true or false. Some have defined it as the view that there is no such thing as a moral belief. Some have defined it as a special version of expressivism…. So when you read other books and articles about this topic, you will see that the word is used differently by different people. But one thing that people generally agree on, is who counts as a noncognitivist. It is agreed by most philosophers that the theories of A.J. Ayer, Charles Stevenson, R.M. Hare, Simon Blackburn, and Allan Gibbard all count as part of the ‘noncognitivist tradition’."
(pp. 12-3)

"It is important to recognize that there are many different ways of carving up the territory of metaethics. Even the word ‘noncognitivism’ is not uncontested and is sometimes defined by philosophers in such a way that Stevenson’s or Hare’s views don’t even count. I’ve chosen to carve up the territory in such a way as to include all three of Ayer, Stevenson, and Hare, as well as more recent theorists like Simon Blackburn and Allan Gibbard…. I’ve done this first of all because despite the differences between their views, these theorists belong to a shared historical tradition which in the English-speaking world began with Ogden and Richards (1923), proceeded through Ayer and Stevenson to Hare, from Hare to Blackburn, and from Stevenson and Blackburn to Gibbard. It is worth understanding this shared tradition and why it has developed in the way that it has, so that is one good reason to consider these views together.
But another good reason to consider them together is that even the very minimal idea that moral words need to have a different kind of meaning from ordinary non-moral words is enough to lead to a shared set of challenges – challenges that are shared by all noncognitivist theories."
(pp. 34-5)

(Schroeder, Mark. Noncognitivism in Ethics. New York: Routledge, 2010.)
<QUOTE

I would simply not class Aristotle's notion of boulesis as a noncognitivist approach, but this gets into the way that ancient understandings are opaque to modern categories.

I'm anything but an expert in Aristotle's ethics, but as far as I know his Greek term "boulesis" means "rational wish/will/choice/desire". Hare's ethics is both non-cognitivistic and rationalistic, insofar as it rejects the view that moral thinking, reasoning, and judging is based on and determined by nothing but irrational emotions or impulses.

QUOTE>
"When I started doing moral philosophy immediately after the Second World War, the emotivists were at the height of fashion, and the main controversy was between them and their opponents (…). The chief thing that seemed to divide the parties was that the emotivists denied that moral thinking could be a rational activity, whereas their opponents insisted that it could be. For this reason, emotivism was frowned on by all the good and great. Indeed, that was what made it so popular among the young. When I entered this scene, I was an opponent of emotivism, because I did want to show, if I could, that moral thinking could be rational. But I soon became convinced of the fallaciousness of the usual attacks on emotivism, which were all from a descriptivist standpoint. It became clear to me that what was needed was a non-descriptivist ethical theory which was at the same time rationalist. For I was quite certain that the emotivists were right in their non-descriptivism, but equally certain that they were wrong in thinking that there could not be rational argument about even the most fundamental moral questions."

(Hare, R. M. Sorting Out Ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. p. 114)
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In any case, a key problem with attributing noncognitivism to Hare is the universal nature of his Prescriptivist project. Many of your own quotes touch on this aspect of his project, but for the sake of concision consider this quote:

• "Moral imperatives are universal in a number of ways. They are to apply not just to the agent about whom they are made (if they are made with respect to a particular agent) but also to any agent who is similarly situated. And they apply to any action or object which is relevantly similar to the actions or objects about which the judgment is made. They apply to all relevantly similar cases at any time and any place. Thus, very roughly, when one calls an action right one is not only prescribing the action in question, but also any relevantly similar action wherever and whenever it occurs. And the prescription is addressed not only to the agent whose action is up for assessment but also to every other person, including the speaker and listeners. In this way, Hare believes, calling an action wrong commits the speaker to judging wrong any relevantly similar action done at any time and any place by any person."
  
  -SEP, Moral Cognitivism vs. Non-Cognitivism | 2.2 Prescriptivism and Universal Prescriptivism

Now if we take moral cognitivism to be captured by the following, then it is not clear that Hare is a noncognitivist:

• "But rather than thinking that this makes moral statements false, non-cognitivists claim that moral statements are not in the business of predicating properties or making statements which could be true or false in any substantial sense. Roughly put, non-cognitivists think that moral statements have no substantial truth conditions."
  
  -SEP, Moral Cognitivism vs. Non-Cognitivism

I fail to see how Hare's principle of universalizability makes his ethics a case of moral cognitivism. According to this principle, moral prescriptions (imperations) of the form "Do this in this situation!" can be universalized: "Do this in this situation, and do the same in all relevantly similar situations!" – A universalized prescription (imperation) lacks truth-conditions and truth-values just like a non-universalized one.

By the way, what's the difference between a "substantial" truth-condition and a "non-substantial" one?

Astro Cat's approach to noncognitivism is related to propositionality and truth susceptibility, so I think this particular characterization of noncognitivism is apt. I am guessing that there is considerable subtle debate about what separates a truth condition from a substantial truth condition, but the general point is that Hare's universalizing approach is, prima facie, tied up with truth conditions. He believes that certain agents are required to act in certain ways, and that any agents similarly situated are equally required to act in such a way. Thus at the very least true and false moral propositions would seem to be strictly entailed by Hare's moral judgments. For example, when Hare argues for a moral imperative such as, "Do not utilize atom bombs when you are in a situation relevantly similar to President Harry Truman's situation," it would seem that he at the same time commits himself to an affirmation of the truth of the proposition, "Harry Truman should not have dropped the atom bomb." Any arguments that Hare provides for the former prescriptive statement will also be arguments in favor of the latter descriptive statement.

From the non-cognitivist point of view, moral judgements such as "Harry Truman should not have dropped the atom bomb" aren't true or false. Of course, what is implied by this moral judgement is the non-moral fact/truth that Truman did drop the atom bomb; but the moral judgement as such is neither true nor false, being equivalent to "That Truman dropped (ordered the dropping of) the atom bomb was morally bad/wrong". To call this action morally bad/wrong is to condemn it.

If Truman acted wrongly in his particular situation, then it would be equally wrong for anybody else to act likewise in relevantly similar situations (ceteris paribus—with all other relevant circumstances or factors remaining unaltered). This is Hare's principle of universalizability.

Non-moral truths or facts, i.e. propositions/statements (declarative sentences) with truth-conditions and truth-values, do play an important role in Hare's non-cognitivist ethics, which denies the existence of moral truths or facts.

QUOTE>
"[Moral and other normative judgements] have to be made because of the facts. This does not mean that the moral judgement follows logically from the facts. The facts do not force us logically to make one moral judgement rather than another; but, if we make one about one situation, we cannot, while admitting that the facts are the same in another situation, in the same breath make a conflicting one about the second situation."
(p. 11)

"Any moral problem one cares to take is bound to be divisible into the following elements. There are first of all questions of fact. To take the example I have just been discussing: the question, whether the psychologists are right who say that it is possible to identify genetic elements in the causes of crime, is a question of fact, which can be investigated empirically. In most practical moral problems it will be found that the huge majority of the questions which have to be settled before we can solve them are factual ones. This has tempted some philosophers to think that the only questions that have to be answered before we can solve them are of this sort—that once all the facts are known, no further problem will remain: the answer to the moral question will be obvious. This is, however, not so, as we shall see in due course. But certainly the factual questions are the ones that cause 99 per cent of the trouble. We can see this if we study any two people arguing about a moral question. We shall nearly always find them disputing each other's facts. To revert for a moment to the problem of the draftee who has to decide whether to go into the army: most of his problem is to find out what is actually happening in, for example, Vietnam, and what the actual consequences of various courses of action, whether on his or his governments part, are likely in fact to be.

Nevertheless, it is fairly obvious that one might find out all the facts that anybody wanted to adduce, and still be in doubt what one ought to do. We can see this more clearly if we suppose that there are two draftees and they are arguing with one another about the question. It is obvious that they could agree, for example, that if they went into the armed forces and obeyed their orders, they would find themselves killing a lot of civilians in the course of attacks on military objectives. One of them might think it morally indefensible to kill civilians in the course of fighting (especially if the civilians had nothing to do with the fighting, but were innocent bystanders). The other might think that this, although in itself an evil, had to be done if necessary in order to secure some greater good. One can agree about a fact, but disagree about its bearing on a moral issue."
(pp. 35-6)

(Hare, R. M. Sorting Out Ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.)
<QUOTE

The non-prescriptive, descriptive aspect of making moral judgements concerns the giving of reasons why x ought (not) to be done or should (not) be done. The reasons given describe those non-moral "properties which make [actions] right or wrong, good or bad." For example, if some action A has the property of resulting in the killing of innocent people, then a reason for telling people not to do A is that it will result in the killing of innocent people.

A similar problem here crops up in a different form, for it is very strange to say that the "properties which make [actions] right or wrong, good or bad," are "non-moral." If a property makes an action right or wrong, good or bad, then it would seem to be precisely a moral property. The action-property of, "[will result] in the killing of innocent people," is a moral property, and it is precisely this moral property which justifies the prescription regarding A.

No, there is nothing moral about an action's resulting in the killing of innocent people, because it's a purely descriptive, non-moral statement that the action in question will have that effect. There is no moral statement unless one says that performing actions with that effect is bad/wrong—because innocent people would die (whose death is unwanted/undesirable).

If you ask me "Why is it bad/wrong to do x?", my answer will consist in non-moral descriptions rather than moral prescriptions. For example, it is bad/wrong to drink&drive because you thereby endanger your life and the lives of others. There is nothing moral about the statement that you endanger your life and the lives of others by driving drunk; but it is this very fact which makes your driving drunk morally bad/wrong.

QUOTE>
"That moral properties supervene on non-moral properties means simply that acts, etc., have the moral properties because they have the non-moral properties ('It is wrong because it was an act of inflicting pain for fun'), although the moral property is not the same property as the non-moral property, nor even entailed by it. Someone who said that it was an act of inflicting pain for fun but not wrong would not be contradicting himself."
(pp. 21-2)

"[T]he objectivistic naturalist's project is the right one, though he executes it badly. But not all that badly. There is another very important truth he has got hold of. He has grasped that moral statements are made about actions for reasons, namely that the actions have certain non-moral properties. An act was wrong, for example, because it was an act of hurting somebody for fun. This property of moral statements, their supervenience on non-moral statements, is crucial to an understanding of them. But the objectivistic naturalist has misunderstood the nature of the 'because'. He mistakes supervenience for entailment, and thus makes into analytically true statements what are really substantial moral principles. That it is wrong to hurt people for fun is not an analytic statement. But still the act is wrong because it was that sort of act."
(pp. 126-7)

(Hare, R. M. Sorting Out Ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.)
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[Consul]

I think my position is something like, “all imperatives are hypothetical and based on personal values until shown otherwise.”

I doubt moral non-cognitivists can do entirely without categorical imperatives. For instance, when I say that torture is bad/wrong, I'm thereby telling everybody categorically not to torture anybody rather than not to do so if they want to be good persons. For what if somebody doesn't want to be a good person and enjoys torturing people? Wouldn't it be absurd to argue that I'm not morally justified in condemning a torturer unless s/he her/himself is interested in acting morally and being a good person?

Of course, categorical imperatives aren't absolute or "transcendent" in the sense of being independent of human psychology (emotions, thoughts, beliefs, desires, volitions, interests, preferences, values). My point is merely that categorical imperatives are required in ethics because otherwise—i.e. if only hypothetical imperatives were used—it wouldn't be possible to morally judge evil-willed or weak-willed persons, who either want to act immorally, or want to act morally but are too "lazy" to do so.

[Astro Cat]

I think my position is something like, “all imperatives are hypothetical and based on personal values until shown otherwise.”

I doubt moral non-cognitivists can do entirely without categorical imperatives. For instance, when I say that torture is bad/wrong, I'm thereby telling everybody categorically not to torture anybody rather than not to do so if they want to be good persons. For what if somebody doesn't want to be a good person and enjoys torturing people? Wouldn't it be absurd to argue that I'm not morally justified in condemning a torturer unless s/he her/himself is interested in acting morally and being a good person?

Of course, categorical imperatives aren't absolute or "transcendent" in the sense of being independent of human psychology (emotions, thoughts, beliefs, desires, volitions, interests, preferences, values). My point is merely that categorical imperatives are required in ethics because otherwise—i.e. if only hypothetical imperatives were used—it wouldn't be possible to morally judge evil-willed or weak-willed persons, who either want to act immorally, or want to act morally but are too "lazy" to do so.

My short answer (expanded this week) is that yeah, I don’t think we can do that categorically.

I think all imperatives are hypothetical, and it’s just that we enforce our values on others because we value enforcing them: e.g., I value putting a murderer in handcuffs and behind bars.

Someone else might not. But luckily (I’m speaking colloquially by “luckily”) it so happens that most people share that value too.

On my view it is always two wolves and a sheep voting on dinner. Whichever values are held in aggregate by society will be enforced on others: and this can go “badly” (from my value persoective), but that’s just the way the world is. It will always be up to people that value things like altruism and empathy to outnumber and overpower those that don’t.

They don’t have a “right” to — another nonsense concept, as I’ll expound on: they’re just able to. And so they do.