"Ought" Derivable from "Is"

Here is a novel argument to the IS-OUGHT Problem.

The following is the foundation of the argument;

Philosophical Anti-Realism [PAR] is the opposite to Philosophical Realism.
Philosophical Anti-Realism claims that objects [things] exist in reality interdependent with our [human] conception schemes.
Thus reality is interdependent and conditioned upon human conditions.

My PAR is not skepticism nor solipsism but rather it is Kantian Transcendental Idealism or Empirical Realism.

The Syllogism;

P1 ‘IS’ [empirical] is conditioned by humans [PAR]
P2 Humans condition OUGHT_ness
C1 Therefore, OUGHT is derived from IS

The above is applicable similarly to the FACT-VALUE Dichotomy.

P1 A ‘FACT’ [empirical] is conditioned by humans [PAR]
P2 Humans condition VALUE
C1 Therefore, VALUE is derived from FACT

Agree?
If not, what is your counter to the above?

I think about arguments in terms of moral absolutes.

How many fuckheads on earth believe their values are derived from facts?

You are just making an assumption by following mob thinking.
Where is your argument to the above?

Generally, how do you you value your assets if not from fact.
How do you even ‘value’ yourself if not from facts of your own experiences.

As argued above, moral facts are justified from empirical facts.
Moral values are derived from moral facts.

Suggest you provide sound arguments instead of hastily jumping to conclusion.

My point was simple (and I am a moral objectivist btw), you wanted a criticism of your thesis. Here it is:

Every evil person on earth has derived their morality on the facts they had available to them at the time.

Mass delusion of what facts were. Nazis believed the Jews were responsible for interbreeding and shrinking Scandinavians who used to be 29 feet tall! That was fact to them, they acted accordingly, kill all the Jews! An ought from an is!

Your problem is that you’re not really defining fact here or even the ought from a fact.

  1. Generally, Hume argued one cannot derived an ‘ought’ from ‘is’ regardless of whatever the content of ought relates to. The ought can be good or evil.
    My OP addresses point 1.

  2. Hume’s ‘No Ought from Is’ [NOFI] is against the background of Morality [Ethics].
    My OP did not address this point.
    However if anyone were to dispute there can be no moral ought from Is, then the OP will prove it is possible to derive moral ought from Is.

My position is that of an empirical moral realist i.e. moral-objectivist but not of the theological nor Platonic kind.

Evil person acting their morality is an oxymoron.
Morality by default is ‘good’ never ‘evil’.

What is so problematic with the definition of ‘what is fact’?
see:
lexico.com/en/definition/fact

see also:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fact

It is only problematic when one veered into the definition of fact from that of the Analytic Philosophers from the logico-linguistic perspective.

You’re basically just saying that humans condition everything, therefor: an equality.

Problem with that is, humans condition mutually exclusive ‘facts’ everyday… which makes the ought meaningless.

So I reduce this to something simple and eminently true for all beings in existence:

Nobody likes their consent violated. (True by definition - and the experiential)

It implies an ought (an inferential proof)

The ought is that the goal then is to eradicate all possible consent violation.

Let me explain briefly an inferential proof …

The counting numbers go on forever (even though it’s impossible to count them all (thus the word ‘inferrential’). It’s not a proof we can objectify, but we all know it’s true.

It’s irrelevant… the is-ought problem is a non-problem.
You get an ought by adding two “is” statements.
What IS the circumstance.
What IS the objective.
In the answer to those two questions you get your “ought”

Like say in a game where the rules and the objective are provided for you.
A computer can iteratively derive a list of “oughts” from those “is” statements.

Looking for an “external” source for the objective is what gets you in trouble.
Much like the computer, external forces might have shaped us…
But in developing the “oughts” our objectives are internally motivated and the path constrained by the reality we occupy.

Strongly agreed

P1: Nobody likes their consent violated. (True by definition - and the experiential)

I am not sure whether the above premise is universally true to all humans not it is possible empirically.

IF, it is true, then, I accept your point but only IF.

You could have stated something like,
All humans breathe else they die,
Therefore all humans ought to breathe, else they die - biological definition and empirically possible and testable [?].

Agree, it is a very good point.
It is very interesting, do you have any references to the above?

John Searle argued on a similar point re ‘brute facts’ versus ‘constitutional facts’.
Constitutional facts are those that are constituted within a constitution (objectives) as in games, contracts, plans, laws, etc.
Parties involved in those constitutional situations are obligated within those constitutions.

Personally I don’t think it is a problem but is a ‘hot’ issue to many others especially when deliberated within the topic of morality and ethics.

Prismatic says"

"John Searle argued on a similar point re ‘brute facts’ versus ‘constitutional facts’.
Constitutional facts are those that are constituted within a constitution (objectives) as in games, contracts, plans, laws, etc.
Parties involved in those constitutional situations are obligated within those constitutions.

Personally I don’t think it is a problem but is a ‘hot’ issue to many others especially when deliberated within the topic of morality and ethics."

This suggestion may dampen it’s forceful intent, but contingent upon the truthfulness, commitment and singular understanding of the relevance and effectiveness of the constitutive factors. Such augmentation may reduce the effectively of the games played.

Oh, it’s definitely true. The easiest hell realm I can think of is losing your empowerments and being sent to a planet where there is only sun and sand, and you don’t need to eat or drink to survive there.

I’ve met lots of demons in my life. Nobody wants to go there for more than a year. When you threaten them with this extremely simple and easy hell forever, they back the fuck off!

Beings get cocky about hell because of empowerments, if you’re ‘omnipresent’. It doesn’t matter where the fuck your are, you’ll enjoy yourself.

Take away the empowerment. Not fun at all. Just you, you and you.

Every being in existence has a breaking point for consent violation. There are no exceptions.

Generally true, but I believe there are exceptions from the outliers.

Generally no one would tolerate pain but there are masochists [and others] who link pain [the greater the pain the better] with pleasure.
There are people who are born with damaged pain nerves thus unable to feel pain.

On the other hand, there is no exception for not be able to breathe [intake of oxygen] for any human being.

You get a conditional ‘ought’ but not a moral ought. The is-ought problem is not addressing ‘mere’ practical matters, subjunctively.

So guy B has objective X in situation A
and
Gal C has objective Y in situation A
(same situation)
they have a very good chance of having different oughts, which is often a problem and not just at frat parties.

And then even if their goals are the same, they can still have an ought problem. Like their goal is to have a great time or to express themselves or meet someone to have sex with, even.

That’s the is ought problem.

Not what does person F ‘ought’ to do if he or she wants X and is in situation Y.

In sense there’s an equivocation in your post (as a response to his) between two meanings of ought: the good thing to do and the thing that has to do with expectations. The latter being practical the former having to do with morals.

Hi Prismatic,

Nice thread.

However, Kantian Transcendental Idealism posits two different types of objects: things in themselves (mind-independent, transcendental reality) and things in space, i.e. appearances, representations (human interdependent, empirical reality).

To clarify your argument, I would reformulate it as such:

P1 Appearance [the empirically real] is conditioned by humans [PAR]
P2 Humans condition OUGHT_ness
C1 Therefore, OUGHT is derived from Appearance

With or without the clarification, I can’t say that I follow the logic.

What’s empirically real is conditioned by humans.
What ought to be is conditioned by humans.
Thus, the empirically real and what ought to be are derived from a common source (or parent), human conception, but one (child) does not necessarily derive from the other (child). Some additional premise would be required for this conclusion to make sense to me. I added parent/child characterization because thinking about the terms in a branching tree structure helps illustrate the issue I’m having.

A simple counter-possibility could be that while both the ‘empirically real’ and ‘what ought to be’ derive from human conception, they do not derive from human conception in exactly the same way, and the process for determining ought requires, let’s say, some additional rational scheme to be applied for its generation.

Prismatic,

Well sure, masochists enjoy pain. How do you hell a masochist? No pain. (Which causes them deep psychological pain), a kind they don’t want.

Everybody has a hell.

Again, the way to approach an ought from is, is inference, you can’t REALLY ‘prove’ it in the same way you can’t prove that sequential counting numbers go on forever… (because it’s impossible to count them all). 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11. etc… but we can easily infer that this sequence is sequential and well ordered (from lowest to highest) and infinite. There’s something more powerful about the mind here that perhaps a simple syllogism can’t address… its inferrential, intuitive.

But asking the question “why ought one pursue objective X in the first place?” at the very least sends one into an infinite regression of IS (descriptive) statements, each of which begs the question: why should such a description should be considered prescriptive? “Because objective X accomplishes objective Y… (and why ought we obtain Y?) …because objective Y accomplishes objective Z… (and why ought we obtain Z?)” etc. So you get a limited scope, practical recommendation for what to do, but this conception is limited in a broader, meta-ethical sense. You have to assume an objective, or take one as given, without question. Part of being a moral human being is to reflect on whether you’re targeting the right goals in the first place, and what makes them the right goals in an ultimate sense. In this, the is-ought problem still seems very relevant.

And in this sense, human beings are perhaps the most admirably troublesome creatures. :stuck_out_tongue:

Empirical facts are objectively demonstrated and as such can be universally agreed upon
But the same cannot be said of moral facts because morality is fundamentally subjective
[ moral nihilism or amoralism even denies the very existence of morality or moral facts ]

And no objective methodology exists to determine the value of one moral philosophy over all others
The only thing that gives a particular philosophy validity is consistency within itself but nothing else

All moral philosophies are therefore equally as valid as each other as long as they are internally consistent [ including moral nihilism ]

I apologize Prismatic if it appears I’ve derailed your thread

It’s actually not an equivocation, it’s a formula for how to derive an ought from two “is” statements… it does not matter what kind of “ought”.
IF morality has an objective, then oughts can be derived from that objective as constrained by reality.
And there most certainly is an objective to morality…

The point remains that it is possible to derive “ought” from IS… the fact that we may be too dimwitted a species of primate to always get it right is neither here nor there.
The infinite regress is also false, as there will be, in any finite being, a bedrock of motive force… to which there is no “deeper” layer.
The fact that you might forever pose the question of what lies beneath, does not itself imply that the question should forever remain intelligible.

It seems a tautological statement to say your very existence as a conscious goal seeking agent, at the very least means that you have goals…
But more fundamentally, if there exists such a thing as qualitative experience, it will betray a preference for the good over the bad… a motive force, that IS.
So there you have your why, inescapably baked right into your very existence… but there still remains the greater challenge of HOW.
And if that puzzle is not the very subject of ethics, then I am woefully misinformed.

I really want people to understand my point:

viewtopic.php?p=2771397#p2771397

All proofs are inferential. Syllogisms don’t work.

Proofs are intuitive. Because they’re intuitive, anyone can disagree with a proof.

You cannot actually count an infinite sequence to prove they are ‘all’ there. Proof is of a much higher mind. Proofs are always intuitive and inferrential.

Kant fucked that part up.

When I state that nobody wants their consent violated, anyone can disagree until it actually happens to them.

That’s the fact part. The moral part is to eradicate all consent violation.

It’s inferred from the fact. The is becoming the ought.