When I think of “ought”, an accordance to a moral code comes to mind.
You’re right that the term is also commonly used synonymously with individual values, even irrespective of moral codes:
If you want to survive, you ought to eat and drink.
If you want to get from A to B, you ought to move.
But even this usage is circular: if you value Y, you to ought to Z. Why ought you to value Y? Because if you value Y, it’s because you value X such that if you value X then you ought to Y. And so on potentially infinitely regressively.
An ought must be an assumed premise somewhere down the line in order for the conclusion to be an ought: circular reasoning.
You might say you value X because such a value “just is”. In this case, the “ought” is the “is”, immediately. I can’t help valuing eating, because sufficient hunger compels me to value seeking food whether I want it to or not. It is upon me, immediately: the “ought” premise is built in, but then there is the frontal cortex that can mediate these impulses. That enables me to just “do nothing”, to “not value the compulsion”. It is perfectly possible to do this and potentially even “ought” myself out of “is” altogether. It would be anthropomorphising to attribute value to entropy, but it appears that existence simply will increase “your” entropy whether you “ought” to elongate the time it takes from birth to death - or not. It didn’t have to, but it just does whether it ought to or not, and you didn’t have to value counter to it.
Basically, remove the “ought” from premises such as “human survival” or “human preference”, and you have nothing about “is” to make into an “ought”. Objectives would not exist in the first place, because there is no value to precede it.
I disagree. The regression misses the object of the original intention , not because it was consciously abandoned, but because it was forgotten . as based on the progressive nature of development.
The nurturing of the young at some point looses it’s automatic reflex character, and becomes some matter of choice, when, for instance, and at that point the 'is’and the ‘ought’ become traditionally transparent, seeking some value, in a moral alignment.
Guilt is the subconscious misalignment between initial unrealized motives, and later projected objective beliefs, and the adult parent learns by a different set of rules, why he should not abandon it’s young
Even animals learn that such may be necessary, and the will hold their ground in the defence of their young.
When talk about the role of …then, it is inaccurate to premise the idea if absolute unconscious motivation with zero choice.
Guilt is the unknown result of misaligned relationship in this regard, and religion happened when social consciousness had to institute such a tool that would enable existence to sustain the progressive need for constant re-affirmation for cultural development.
The question could have not been posed as such initially, and early religions reflected a basic disparity between intended relationships which led to foundemental objectives.
That most religions started from intuitive aspects of behavior is factual, and it needed higher developing objects of transition to enable it to sustain refined moral objectives.
That these objectives are relative and not iron clad ideal artifice, do not take away their significance, but reduce the misaligned importance that a basic elemental question of whether existence should go on.
But hard pressed, that premise dilutes retroactively unto the foundation of the most basic organic level , and looses it’s signifiers.
At the same time, to say, that such dilution of objective criteria simply ‘is’ may also be a misnomer, because at some point it transposed into choices: here, between abandoning it sustaining the reason why .
Even faced with the horrendous post modern challenges we face today, the fallacy resolves itself axiomatically, which is the reverse of the tautology pointed to.
True, absent values from which to form objectives there is no ought.
But fortunately the one self-evident truth, the well from which we draw everything else admits to values.
There exists qualitative experience… it’s the one thing we can be certain there IS.
Yeah, that’s the human experience.
You enter in, you’re valuing right from the start: ought “is” by default - we can be certain that this qualitative experience IS, I agree.
How do you derive this ought from what is?
In order for ought to be derivable from is, “is” must first exist - no issues there, seems pretty straightforwardly tautologous - and from then “ought” must subsequently be derivable.
The intention here is to justify how you enter in with ought right from the start by default.
The intention here is determine whether your ought is “justified” objectively.
Several problems: how do you remove “ought” from “is”, in order to assess it objectively, when it’s all you knew from the start? People all seem to have these very different and often irreconcilable ideas about what they, you, and everyone “ought” (to value), varying considerably geographically and historically. And if you have an objective to do this, aren’t you failing to remove “ought” from “is” from the start anyway? Even if you did succeed, how do you evaluate value without value?
Chiefly - the whole enterprise is flawed: it’s like trying to evaluate consciousness. You’re always going to be doing it circularly from consciousness being necessary from the start and throughout.
How do you evaluate value pre-value? It’s a contradiction: you can’t validly derive ought from is.
You’re confusing what “ought” indicates as separate from what an IS indicates.
“Oughts” are about HOW to navigate to goals, which may include adopting other values.
So for example, if you value your life, you OUGHT to also value clean water, IF the reality you are in makes clean water a necessary condition for your continued existence.
You can build a network of “oughts” from a single objective as constrained by reality.
Much the same way you can build a massive list of oughts from the singular objective of chess as constrained by the rules.
You can learn the value of different pieces, the value of individual moves, the value of strategy and forward planning, the value of understanding your opponent, being able to anticipate their moves etc.
It’s possible to not value any such thing and still be playing chess to win… but then you often fail.
These values all spring up as “oughts” DERIVED from the two simple IS statements that make up chess…
What IS the Circumstance
What IS the Objective
It should be clear at this point that while ought can be derived from IS, it’s not always simple or easy and we may fail to get it right…
The same is true of trying to build a coherent model of the reality we experience… physics is a mere model, we think reflects reality… we can be wrong.
Likewise we may have ideas about how to lead a life so as to have the quality of our experience be satisfactory… and we can be wrong.
There are objective facts to be had here… and they will inform what ought to be valued, given what IS valued.
1.) Consent violation occurs
2.) nobody wants their consent violated
3.) if one consent violation occurs that means consent violation can / will happen to any / everyone
4.) eradicate all consent violation in existence
I’m sure I skipped a few steps, but that’s not really the point. Syllogisms NEVER define soundness of the IS!!!
What does your [2] mean;
2.) nobody wants their consent violated
Re [a] You mean, if someone give consent [permission] to others for something to happen, then, his consent should not be violated?
What if, as in the last example’ Hitler gave consent to kill Jews?
It would not be immoral to violent such a consent.
Re[b] if someone consented to do something evil,
his consent should not be violated?
You are not using the term ‘consent’ appropriately in the above.
What is more appropriate as generally accepted is no human should violate the ‘basic human dignity’ of another, .e.g. take another as a chattel slave.
And what I already told you. In a consent violating reality such as ours, ‘law’ enforcement is reasonable.
But you’re not looking at the bigger picture here: the macro
Nobody ultimately wants to live in a reality where consent can possibly be violated. Not Hitler, not the allies… everyone hates that shit!
It’s a macro law of existence.
I’m the type of being that when any beings consent is violated, it violates my consent.
You should be thankful beings like me exist, because I can guarantee every being on earth will and would be sent to hell. You’re as bad a Hitler, you just don’t understand it yet. Consent violating realities spare nobody. You’re in a hell realm right now. Almost every possible decision you make here will send you to an even worse hell. In a zero sum reality, you must proactively regret ALL of your memories to be spared.
I certainly agree that objective facts inform, and that they can precede an “ought”.
My point is that they merely temper the translation of one “ought” to another. An “ought” that’s informed by an “is” comes after this “is”, but it doesn’t originate in this “is”. The “is” can certainly be significant in this process, but it’s just the decoration (the style/way) from one “ought” to another “ought” - it’s not where the latter “ought” came from. The “ought” came from a previous “ought”, and the “is” just tells you how. Not why.
A good “is” can describe how one “ought” to go about achieving an objective better than a bad “is”. That bad “is” can in turn describe how one “ought” to go about achieving that same objective better than a worse “is”. One “ought” to pick the best “is” that’s on offer, but only provided the best “is” was what is valued in the first place. Maybe you want a challenge, maybe you want to self-destruct, maybe you ought not to pick the best way for whatever reason - an “is” can build on the mechanics of how to get anywhere, but without an initial ought to direct it, it has nothing to build upon. “How” needs a “why” - an “is” needs an “ought”. You can’t derive an “is” without first having an “ought”.
I agree that people tend to not want their consent violated - because this is basically the same as saying everyone wants what they want. This is most apparent in babies who know nothing more than to express distress whenever they aren’t getting what they want, which just so happens to manipulate the parents into providing it. Gradually they learn to cope with not getting what they want sometimes and in certain ways - adapting to the environment and the parenting. They might eventually even learn the value of self-sacrifice, delaying gratification, and taking on difficult challenges instead of choosing an easier path. It’s easy enough to frame these more advanced behaviours in terms of them consenting to a certain degree of “not getting what they want” in order to attain a certain degree of “getting what they want” in another way. But even if you do this, you recognise a relativity to “consent” that isn’t as absolute as “nobody wants their consent violated” - it looks like more of a trade-off where there’s a definite overall aversion to consent violation, but not clearly and cleanly - not devoid of some degree of consent to have one’s consent violated. It’s not black and white, and shouldn’t be considered and phrased in a black and white way.
This is always going to be the case in a universe where there is entropy, competition, and where planning is effective. A universe without these things would perhaps eradicate consent violation and you’d exist like a kind of pleasure-amoeba constantly wishing for more and more pleasure, and getting your wish over and over without any hint of obstacle. A bizarre existence, certainly without higher purpose - but I guess you wouldn’t care if “getting what you want” was constant regardless of what you did.
Onto syllogisms - unfortunately any attack you can possibly mount against them will be self-contradictory.
“Syllogisms don’t work.”
“Why is that anything more than a claim interchangeable with its opposite or anything else?”
“Because…” - and you’ve already begun to construct a syllogism whether you realise it or not.
If you have a “statement” because of “reasons”, the statement is contingent upon said reasons such that “if reasons, then statement”.
Your premises are your reasons, your conclusion is your statement. Your reasoning can be reduced to a syllogism.
So, “syllogisms don’t work” relying on the syllogistic is a contradiction.
The only way around this would be to dodge all reasoning and logic, and simply “claim”.
Blindly following your intuition can certainly precede this, and you can simply deny reason citing said intuition. You’d be impossible to argue with, and any and all interaction with you would be irrational and without purpose - except for you to simply express your intuition.
If however you intended to be reasonable/rational instead, every argument you make could be reduced to syllogisms that would either be valid or invalid and maybe even sound (or unsound). Trying to complain about syllogisms is to try and deny the exercise of thoroughly and precisely breaking down your reasoning, presumably to let through any prejudice and fallacies that you merely intuit without explicit reason. I’m not going to let you or anyone else off that easily.
P1: A sequence that starts at “1” is possible
P2: It is possible to repeatedly add one to any sequence without stopping
C1: Repeatedly adding one to a sequence that starts at “1” doesn’t stop
Everything logical can be reduced to syllogism. Higher cognitive function is all you need to weed out anything illogical to your intuitions and the intuitions of others, and to succeed in reducing them to syllogisms that are either valid or not, and either sound or not. Intuitions that turn out to be illogical can thereby be thrown out in favour of those that are - or better yet, logically corrected. You can logically correct all your intuitions via syllogism, or you can irrationally simply claim intuition is just “higher”.
Back on topic, you really can choose either - there isn’t any objective reason to do one rather than the other. First you have to value (to “ought”). Only accepting this “ought” can “is” be applied to this reason to determine how best you “ought” to make this choice. “Ought 1” → via “is” → “Ought 2”.
You missed my whole point. I can write a syllogism that states that:
1.) “repeatedly adding one to a sequence a 1 that doesn’t stop”
2.) if you can’t count it, then you can’t be sure it doesn’t stop
I know silhouette, I know the way your mind works with your ego. I know this is anathema to you. Syllogisms don’t work. It’s all intuition. Me, being an objectivist, understands how frustrating that is to you.
You’re equivocating, the motive force in our existence is not a matter of “ought”… It just IS.
An ought cannot exist, where there are no options… and there is no option in what IS.
But what IS provides us goals and options and that’s where every “ought” comes from.
You seem to have distorted ‘what is’ to the extreme.
The ‘is’ in the Hume’s IS-OUGHT problem basically refers to reality and existence.
Reality in this case is all-there-is in existence.
In another sense, "is’ is just the copula in connecting the subject with the predicate within reality.
In the above case, there is no question of an “ought” preceding “is” which is reality itself.
‘Ought’ only arises when humans introduce various specific framework and system of knowledge [FSK] and impose or conditioned it upon “is” i.e. reality.
It is by default these FSKs has their specific ‘objectives’ which then generate ‘oughts’ to drive actions or inhibitions.
For example, the Scientific FSK imposes upon reality and generate Scientific Facts from what are originally ‘conjectures’ [Popper].
This is what Searle meant by Constitutional facts.
Thus a moral framework and system with its moral objectives imposing on reality, generate moral ought[s] as moral facts. [nb: moral facts has nothing to do with “fact” of Analytic Philosophy].
I ) Consent violation is a feature of the Universe so is both natural and inevitable - whether it be in the laws of physics or in the laws of man
2 ) The greatest consent violation is the first one - being born - so the logical solution is suicide but that is not actually a very popular choice
3 ) Consent violation is ubiquitous because everything is subject to some type of restriction and so it is either accept it or fight it all your life
4 ) Given the general unpopularity of suicide the next most practical option is for everyone to keep consent violation to an absolute minimum
5 ) Consent violation will eventually be eradicated but only when we become extinct - we cannot make it happen - we must leave it to Nature
You dont have to count every single integer to prove the number line is infinite - as you know very well - so your question is simply unnecessary
The positive integers are an infinite set as is the number line itself that is infinite in both directions - and is also something you know very well
That’s completely my point and not my point at all!
Syllogisms cannot infer like the higher level mind constantly does! The “ought“ in this Example is that we know we can’t prove it by counting all the numbers (the “is”) but we derive an “ought” by knowing they go on forever sequentially (inference).
There is no such thing as neutral consent which is an oxymoron - you cannot consent to being born - so its negative consent not neutral
No birth means no existence which will only come with death which is the end of all consent violation - so peace will come eventually
A billion years - when all life will cease once the ocean temperatures rise - is nothing at all compared to the eternity of non existence
That example is entirely irrelevant because ought and is pertain to moral philosophy rather than to mathematics
Morality is subjective not deductive like math is and objective morality is not truly objective - merely consensual