The Nature of the Relationship between  Ought and Ought not in Ethics and  Is and Isn t in Science and Philosophy from the Viewpoint of Contemporary Thinkers and Allameh Tabatabaee

In Europe, a school of thought was formed by Hume, the Scottish philosopher, on the subject of the nature of the relationship between science and religion and following this on the nature of the relationship between science and ethics and the standing of ‘ought and ought not’ in ethics. Considering science and ethics separate is the outcome of the attempts of those who reconsidered the relationship between God and the world. They regarded religious and ethical propositions as the product of man’s internal sentiments and insisted on separating it from objective realities. From this perspective, human intellect has no role to play in discovering ethical propositions because logic doesn’t apply to them and they cannot be verified. Although this point of view has been accepted by a small number of Muslim scholars, almost all Muslim scholars disagree with it and have rejected it on the basis of logical reasoning. This group of scholars believe that although ethics is not logically generated from science and philosophy, it is not essentially possible to offer an ethical proposition without depending on objective reality. Islamic scholars believe that there is a priority and posteriority relationship between ‘ought and ought not’ in ethics and ‘is and isn’t’ in science and philosophy; that is, after being informed about a scientific reality by means of theoretical intellect, man finds out the way to achieve that objective reality in the real world aided by practical intellect. Then, he expresses that in the form of recommendatory propositions and ethical ‘oughts’. In fact, these scholars do not consider the generation of value from knowledge a logical process; rather, they believe that it is based on two propositions: one scientific and the other ethical. They hold that practical intellect as a posterior instrument makes use of the power of the theoretical intellect as an anterior instrument, gains access to ethical recommendations and offers them in the form of ‘ought and ought not’. This is the same kind of relationship that exists between science and philosophy, on the one hand, and ethics, on the other, since practical intellect cannot stipulate anything without knowledge and deliberation.