Is to an Ought: A problem?

[WAB]

I'm sure this has been done over and over again. Okay, I'm not sure. I haven't searched for is/ought threads, but from my years of experience here, I am pretty sure most users here (TFT) regard the is/ought problem as a real problem.

I don't. But I'm willing to have my thoughts changed.

Here's my ultra-simple reason I don't think it's terribly hard to get from an is to an ought:

If I put my hand over a flame, it hurts like the dickens. This is a fact. It's a subjective experience, but everyone (at least everyone I know of) has the same experience. I know of no-one who can hold their hand over a flame and not feel excruciating pain, as well as suffer damage to said hand. That's the IS.

Therefore, I Ought not put my hand over a flame. Lots of baggage attendant upon the word "ought" (Especially when you use the capital O). Now, who would argue against the proposition that one "ought not" (reverting to the small o) put their hand over an open flame, particularly since it hurts like the dickens and causes major tissue damage? Who, I'm thinking, would be people who might be inclined to argue for the sake of argument.

That's well and good. We all like to exercise our brains with thought experiments, and I am perfectly willing to have my thoughts on this changed.

If this is a non-starter, or judged as one by a moderator, I will not make a peep if this thread is deleted.

 

[Bronzeage]

Any conscious action should be matched with and intended or expected result. Whether you ought or ought not do something depends on the results.

Humans like the word "rational" and easily apply it to the actions of others. We see a person do something which inevitably leads to pain or suffering and think they are not acting rationally. Despite the diversity of humans, we share a tremendous amount of common feelings, and physical pain is the greatest of all our commonalities. This is why people all over the world wear clothes which match their climate.

 

[blastula]

The is only gets you hypothetical imperatives not categorical imperatives. You have to make some assumptions to get categorical oughts.

 

[untermensche]

It all depends on your opinions.

If you consider punishment as having "redemptive power", harming yourself can be seen as an ought.

People do all kinds of harm to themselves in the name of religion all the time.

Some even have themselves nailed to a cross.

 

[WAB]

Yes, so I've heard. Crazy devotion, that.

Will respond in more detail in the evening, or sooner. Have to go to work.

 

[iolo]

It all depends on your opinions.

If you consider punishment as having "redemptive power", harming yourself can be seen as an ought.

People do all kinds of harm to themselves in the name of religion all the time.

Some even have themselves nailed to a cross.

Perhaps there are those whose religion is not to worship the Self? You think they OUGHT?

 

[untermensche]

It all depends on your opinions.

If you consider punishment as having "redemptive power", harming yourself can be seen as an ought.

People do all kinds of harm to themselves in the name of religion all the time.

Some even have themselves nailed to a cross.

Perhaps there are those whose religion is not to worship the Self? You think they OUGHT?

Ought one harm the body as some punishment to the self?

Seems totally insane.

 

[ronburgundy]

It all depends on your opinions.

If you consider punishment as having "redemptive power", harming yourself can be seen as an ought.

People do all kinds of harm to themselves in the name of religion all the time.

Some even have themselves nailed to a cross.

^^THIS^^

Beyond religion, there is BDSM. There are also countless people doing countless things primarily to cause themselves to experience "negative" emotions like fear from putting their body and life at risk. Many others think they are insane and find no positive residual from such fear, so they think one "ought not" to do those things. Oughts are all about the whether you happen to want it or not.

The fact that subjective feelings and preference exist or have some survival function are types of "is". But the reality of a preference doesn't have any implication for whether that preference "ought" to be satisfied. In fact, all people regularly have directly conflicting preferences where satisfying one impedes satisfying the other.

Many actions that objectively improve quantity of life, reduce its quality and vice versa. People want to optimize quantity and quality, but cannot do both. What they "ought" to do is equivalent to asking whether quantity or quality of one's life is more important. There is no answer to that question with any more objective validity than the answer to "Was the band AC/DC was more rockingly awesome with Scott or Johnson as the singer?" The answer is nothing but pure emotion. There is no logic to it. All oughts rest on other oughts that trace back to nothing but an emotional desire or reaction that simply exists and the moment that emotion happened to change for any random or arbitrary reason, all the oughts the trace to it change for that person.

Also, universality also has nothing to do with objectivity or getting to an "is". Every human who has ever lived has been wrong (to varying degrees) about virtually everything that is. Not a single mind needs to know what is for it to be what is. And, every single mind agree on what "is" doesn't make that idea the same as what actually is. In contrast, without a sentient conscious mind with emotions and desires, the concept of what ought or should be is nonsensical, because oughts are entirely an emotional state that such an organism happens to be in at a moment in time.

 

[Speakpigeon]

I'm sure this has been done over and over again. Okay, I'm not sure. I haven't searched for is/ought threads, but from my years of experience here, I am pretty sure most users here (TFT) regard the is/ought problem as a real problem.

I don't. But I'm willing to have my thoughts changed.

Here's my ultra-simple reason I don't think it's terribly hard to get from an is to an ought:

If I put my hand over a flame, it hurts like the dickens. This is a fact. It's a subjective experience, but everyone (at least everyone I know of) has the same experience. I know of no-one who can hold their hand over a flame and not feel excruciating pain, as well as suffer damage to said hand. That's the IS.

Therefore, I Ought not put my hand over a flame. Lots of baggage attendant upon the word "ought" (Especially when you use the capital O). Now, who would argue against the proposition that one "ought not" (reverting to the small o) put their hand over an open flame, particularly since it hurts like the dickens and causes major tissue damage? Who, I'm thinking, would be people who might be inclined to argue for the sake of argument.

That's well and good. We all like to exercise our brains with thought experiments, and I am perfectly willing to have my thoughts on this changed.

If this is a non-starter, or judged as one by a moderator, I will not make a peep if this thread is deleted.

I assume that your argument is: If you put your hand over a flame it hurts real bad THEREFORE you ought not to put your hand over a flame.

If that's true then you inference is not valid. To have a valid inference you have to add a little extra, for example: If you put your hand over a flame it hurts real bad THEREFORE if you don't WANT to hurt real bad then you ought not to put your hand over a flame.

So, yes it works, it's not complicated, but this shows that you need to add not just a little extra but something like the word "want". This is just to make it very nearly formal because even if not included explicitly it is in fact included implicitly. And this is important since it shows that the OUGHT requires something like WANT in the premises, as in: If you WANT something then, sure, you OUGHT to do something (else) to get it.
EB

 

[untermensche]

...if you don't WANT to hurt real bad then you ought not to put your hand over a flame...

And if you want to hurt real bad you ought to.

So the ought has nothing to do with the activity.

It is all about the desire.

So we are left with the great moral maxim.

You ought to do what you desire to do.

 

[Bomb#20]

I know of no-one who can hold their hand over a flame and not feel excruciating pain, as well as suffer damage to said hand. That's the IS.

Therefore, I Ought not put my hand over a flame. Lots of baggage attendant upon the word "ought" (Especially when you use the capital O). Now, who would argue against the proposition that one "ought not" (reverting to the small o) put their hand over an open flame, particularly since it hurts like the dickens and causes major tissue damage? Who, I'm thinking, would be people who might be inclined to argue for the sake of argument.

I'll bet C_Mucius_Scaevola might be inclined to argue for the sake of argument.

(If you don't know why, Google his user name.)

 

[ronburgundy]

I'm sure this has been done over and over again. Okay, I'm not sure. I haven't searched for is/ought threads, but from my years of experience here, I am pretty sure most users here (TFT) regard the is/ought problem as a real problem.

I don't. But I'm willing to have my thoughts changed.

Here's my ultra-simple reason I don't think it's terribly hard to get from an is to an ought:

If I put my hand over a flame, it hurts like the dickens. This is a fact. It's a subjective experience, but everyone (at least everyone I know of) has the same experience. I know of no-one who can hold their hand over a flame and not feel excruciating pain, as well as suffer damage to said hand. That's the IS.

Therefore, I Ought not put my hand over a flame. Lots of baggage attendant upon the word "ought" (Especially when you use the capital O). Now, who would argue against the proposition that one "ought not" (reverting to the small o) put their hand over an open flame, particularly since it hurts like the dickens and causes major tissue damage? Who, I'm thinking, would be people who might be inclined to argue for the sake of argument.

That's well and good. We all like to exercise our brains with thought experiments, and I am perfectly willing to have my thoughts on this changed.

If this is a non-starter, or judged as one by a moderator, I will not make a peep if this thread is deleted.

I assume that your argument is: If you put your hand over a flame it hurts real bad THEREFORE you ought not to put your hand over a flame.

If that's true then you inference is not valid. To have a valid inference you have to add a little extra, for example: If you put your hand over a flame it hurts real bad THEREFORE if you don't WANT to hurt real bad then you ought not to put your hand over a flame.

So, yes it works, it's not complicated, but this shows that you need to add not just a little extra but something like the word "want". This is just to make it very nearly formal because even if not included explicitly it is in fact included implicitly. And this is important since it shows that the OUGHT requires something like WANT in the premises, as in: If you WANT something then, sure, you OUGHT to do something (else) to get it.
EB

Agreed. All oughts are based on wants. Wants are ultimately tied to transitory emotional states that happen to exist but are not derived logically. Not only are "wants" neccessary for any ought, but they are fully sufficient with no need for any "is". An ought is really just a rewording of a want. "want to " and "ought to" are interchangeable, and no "want" has any more rational validity than any other.
"I don't want to not touch the flame." has the same status as "I don't want to hurt real bad.", and its the same as just saying "I ought not to touch the flame."
Therefore, the conclusion by itself without any support has the same intellectual status as the valid logical argument you present, because the central premise of that argument can never be more reasonable or true than the conclusion on its own.

IOW, although a internally valid deductive arguments can be created for ought claims, such reasoning is useless for evaluating how plausible and "ought" conclusion is (the central purpose of logic and reasoning), because one or more premises will always be another ought claim with no more objective status than the conclusion itself.

Logic and reasoning only serve a function in evaluating "is" claims. In relation to "oughts", logic is useful for evaluating the question "What is it that you want?" Since a particular action can impact multiple wants at once (often in opposite directions), it is useful to ask "How is one want causally impacted or logically entailed by other wants?"

When two people make opposing moral claims, it is never possible to determine who is more likely to be correct. The concept doesn't apply. It is only possible to determine whose moral claims is more logically coherent with other moral claims they make, or that are shared by both parties, or are the most common in the population. Part of that evaluation entails examining the "is" assertions that each person uses to connect their moral claim with these other moral claims.

 

[WAB]

Lots to chew on here.

Perhaps I got off on the wrong foot, or hand, as it were.

Maybe if I try something else:

• If I need to defecate, that's a biological fact, an is.
• Therefore, I ought to defecate.

***

I am wracking my brain trying to imagine some scenario wherein a person needing to defecate would not want to defecate. I am coming up empty.

I do appreciate that many people seem to enjoy pain and suffering. I'm a bit of a masochist myself, so my OP is flawed.

Can anyone come up with a situation wherein a person needing to defecate would not want to defecate? I imagine someone will be clever enough to foil me again.

 

[Bronzeage]

Lots to chew on here.

Perhaps I got off on the wrong foot, or hand, as it were.

Maybe if I try something else:

• If I need to defecate, that's a biological fact, an is.
• Therefore, I ought to defecate.

***

I am wracking my brain trying to imagine some scenario wherein a person needing to defecate would not want to defecate. I am coming up empty.

I do appreciate that many people seem to enjoy pain and suffering. I'm a bit of a masochist myself, so my OP is flawed.

Can anyone come up with a situation wherein a person needing to defecate would not want to defecate? I imagine someone will be clever enough to foil me again.

There have been many times when I needed to defecate, but desperately did not want to. At the time, it would have been a very bad experience. That was an easy one.

 

[bilby]

I am wracking my brain trying to imagine some scenario wherein a person needing to defecate would not want to defecate. I am coming up empty.

That's the usual idea; If one comes up full after defecation, one is doing it wrong.

 

[WAB]

Lots to chew on here.

Perhaps I got off on the wrong foot, or hand, as it were.

Maybe if I try something else:

• If I need to defecate, that's a biological fact, an is.
• Therefore, I ought to defecate.

***

I am wracking my brain trying to imagine some scenario wherein a person needing to defecate would not want to defecate. I am coming up empty.

I do appreciate that many people seem to enjoy pain and suffering. I'm a bit of a masochist myself, so my OP is flawed.

Can anyone come up with a situation wherein a person needing to defecate would not want to defecate? I imagine someone will be clever enough to foil me again.

There have been many times when I needed to defecate, but desperately did not want to. At the time, it would have been a very bad experience. That was an easy one.

How did I not see that coming?

Nonetheless, you still "ought" to defecate at some point. If not immediately. That is is going to remain a rather urgent ought until you can get to a safe potty, no?

***

I think blastula's response is the one I need to pay attention to:

The is only gets you hypothetical imperatives not categorical imperatives. You have to make some assumptions to get categorical oughts.

I think Hume and Kant were far more concerned about those categorical oughts. Right now I just want to get from an is to an ought without worrying about ethics.

If I can do that.

"Was the band AC/DC was more rockingly awesome with Scott or Johnson as the singer?" - ronburgundy.

Johnson, hands down. Back in Black was E P I C. Even Highway to Hell, which had some great songs, was nothing compared to that LP.

• Back in Black is a totally awesome album, therefore
• anyone who likes epic hard rock ought to buy it

 

[Bomb#20]

Oughts are all about the whether you happen to want it or not.

Moral subjectivists keep making claims like that one. But it's hard to take them seriously, because when push comes to shove and they're making moral judgments, instead of merely philosophizing about them, subjectivists tend to compartmentalize their philosophy away from their morals and say stuff like this:

What is counterproductive and dangerous is deny objective reality, and the reality is that any sincere support for Trump could only be done either via extremely defective judgment processes entailing serious self-delusion, or via extremely immoral motives.

It seems they're moral subjectivists some of the time and moral realists some of the time. Well, what does it matter, nobody's perfectly consistent, right? The reason it matters is that moral subjectivists appear to morph into moral realists precisely when they're making the moral judgments they feel most strongly about.

 

[Bomb#20]

Agreed. All oughts are based on wants. Wants are ultimately tied to transitory emotional states that happen to exist but are not derived logically. Not only are "wants" neccessary for any ought, but they are fully sufficient with no need for any "is". An ought is really just a rewording of a want. "want to " and "ought to" are interchangeable, and no "want" has any more rational validity than any other.
"I don't want to not touch the flame." has the same status as "I don't want to hurt real bad.", and its the same as just saying "I ought not to touch the flame."

That's a philosophical argument; but "An ought is really just a rewording of a want." is not a philosophical claim. It's a linguistic claim. Linguistics is science, not philosophy. Linguistic claims are testable. Let's test that one. Which specific want is an ought really just a rewording of? You are asserting the existence of a "want to" claim that's interchangeable with "Person P ought to not do act X." in the semantics of English. Can you exhibit it?

 

[iolo]

Perhaps there are those whose religion is not to worship the Self? You think they OUGHT?

Ought one harm the body as some punishment to the self?

Seems totally insane.

I'd say that, as a rule, eating shit and licking the bosses' arses doesn't do you much good, and often ends you in destructive wars for their profits, whereas opposing the buggers might get you usefully hurt.

 

[untermensche]

The game of oughts falls apart in the face of human masochism.