The is/ought issue.

[Angra Mainyu]

One of the objections often raised in these forums is that one cannot derive a moral 'ought' from an 'is'. Technically that is false, because once the meaning of the words is considered, from 'It would be immoral for agent A to do X' it follows that 'Agent A ought not to do X'. But the objection remains about deriving moral conclusions from non-moral premises, i.e., deriving conclusions containing moral terms from those that do not, where 'moral terms' is defined ostensively: 'morally permissible', 'unethical', 'immoral', 'morally wrong', 'morally praiseworthy', etc., are moral terms, whereas 'cat', 'mouse', 'planet', 'car', 'table', etc., are not.

Is this true?
Well, sort of. We can derive anything (including moral conclusions) from a contradiction, even if the contradiction is stated without using any kind of moral term. But leaving that case aside (and perhaps other anomalous cases, like deriving a tautology involving moral terms, etc. ), it seems to me that in the sense of a deduction, one should not be able to do that. But what about probabilistic assessments? Now it might be said that we still need conditional probabilities described using moral terms or something like that. But if this is so, then it would still not be in a way that is vulnerable to the 'is-ought' objection, as usually put.

So, to make my case, consider first not moral assessments, but color assessments. For example, how do I assess that a ball is red? One way of doing so would be to look at the apple. It looks red to me. Under ordinary light conditions. And I know from experience that our color vision is pretty ordinary for a human. Then I am justified in assessing that the apple is red, barring counterevidence. I would say that I would be assigning a very very high probability to the hypothesis that the ball in question is red. We do this intuitively, and without using numbers.

Now suppose I do not see the ball. However, I observe that many humans who look at the ball tell me it's red. Assuming I can tell that they are being sincere (how I do that is not the issue), I also have justification to reckon that the ball is red, again with very, very high probability. Now suppose no humans look at the ball, but there is a robot with cameras for eyes and whose color vision is calibrated using the color vision of ordinary humans. The robot has been tested in thousands of experiments, and under ordinary conditions, it makes the color assessments humans ordinarily do. If I get conclusive information that the robot says the ball is red (again, ordinary light conditions), then I can use that to reckon that the ball is red.

More to the point: if I know (I have sufficient information) that a human with ordinary color vision would reckon that the ball is red, that is very good evidence that the ball is red. And if I reckon then that the ball is red, is there a fallacy involved?

Maybe intuitively I am making probabilistic assessment that P(A is red| ordinary human color vision detects it as red under normal light conditions) is extremely high. Or something like P(Q|ordinary human faculties say it's Q under normal circumstances) is also high, plus the assessment that color vision is an ordinary human faculty.

At any rate, maybe there is a logical error somewhere, but if there is, it is pervasive. It's pretty much everywhere except perhaps for immediate assessments like the example in which we directly look at the ball. But maybe the problem - if there is one - happens when I try to use language, and also when I factor in the information that my color vision is ordinary. Then again, maybe I'm making intuitive probabilistic assessments with the conditional probabilities already intuitively fixed, and there is no fallacy.

At any rate, if at some point in my probabilistic assessments, I made a logical error and as a result the assessment in question is not justified, then as they say here 'Estamos en el horno', literally 'We are in the oven', or in other words, we're screwed, because if even that sort of normal assessment fails and is not justified, very few things (if any) are.

Perhaps, there is a logical error, but it is justified to make it? Given that - again, I know it because it's intuitively obvious!!!, and I have no good reason to doubt my intuitions on the matter -, I am justified in assessing that the ball is red, i.e., very probably red (in all of the scenarios above), then it seems to me that if there is a logical error, then there are logical errors we are regularly justified to make and this is one of them...


Let us move to the moral case: Suppose that all people die due to a rogue biological weapon, except for Joe, who decides to pour gasoline on a cat and set her on fire, so that he has fun watching a fireball run. In fact, he does that every day, as there are plenty of cats around, and he can capture them with different traps and tactics. He is determined to do this, and has human intelligence and the tools left by the rest of humanity at his disposal, so the cats do not have a chance. Then Joe behaves unethically. How do I know? As in the color case, I use my own faculties, in this case my moral sense, instead of my color vision. So far, it seems similar.

But can I also use the faculties of others? I do not see why not. The information that the human ordinary moral sense reckons a behavior immoral seems to provide good evidence that it is immoral. Any potential fallacy here was also there in the color case.

My point is that from the perspective of logic, the moral case and the color case appear similar. But it's not only the moral and the color case. It's everywhere, as we rely on human faculties (we have no others) all the time. And in science too, of course. Suppose I read statements by many scientists (e.g., in textbooks) saying that water is composed of H2O. I reckon this is the case, on the basis of that evidence. But then I am of course relying on my own faculties (I can't not do that), and also using the information the reliability of science, etc.

Someone might say that science is more reliable in than human faculties (to which I would reply that that depends on the faculty, but that's a matter for another debate), but at any rate, a key point is that making an assessment that something is blue or morally wrong using as evidence that ordinary human faculties say it is relevantly similar from making an assessment that water is composed of H2O using as evidence that scientists say it is, and the relevant part is that one of them always involves the fallacy moral assessment and/or statements are usually charged with if and only if all of them do.

In particular, just as it does not logically follow from the fact that the ordinary human moral sense says a behavior is morally wrong that it actually is, it also does not logically follow from the fact that scientists say that water is composed of H2O that it actually is so (and the same for color).

 

[The AntiChris]

Can you make the same argument using other assessments such as gustatory and aesthetic judgements?

 

[Wiploc]

One of the objections often raised in these forums is that one cannot derive a moral 'ought' from an 'is'.

Right.

Technically that is false, because once the meaning of the words is considered, from 'It would be immoral for agent A to do X' it follows that 'Agent A ought not to do X'.

You've got the word "immoral" in there, so you are already dealing with oughts rather than is's.

At least that's how I define morality: Something like, "Morality is what one ought to do." So the move from X is immoral to one ought-not do X is not a deduction but a mere rephrasing.

But the objection remains about deriving moral conclusions from non-moral premises,

Yes.

More to the point: if I know (I have sufficient information) that a human with ordinary color vision would reckon that the ball is red, that is very good evidence that the ball is red. And if I reckon then that the ball is red, is there a fallacy involved?

An apt analogy even if I don't agree with your conclusion.

People argue that the ball isn't really red. Their point is that redness exists in the mind rather than in the ball. But the ball has some physical characteristic that is associated with redness-in-the-mind. And balls with that characteristic have historically been called "red." Now that we know the balls aren't "really" red, that usage remains a convenient shorthand.

If pressed, we can defend, "The ball is red," by claiming it is a figure of speech, metonymy.

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Rape is wrong because it has a strong tendency to decrease the world's happiness.

I see this with my own eyes, so to speak. I believe it with the same confidence that I believe yonder ball is red.

And I have to rely on my own eyes. You may be willing to agree on a scientific consensus about the color of the ball, but I am not willing to rely on a moral consensus about the morality of rape. Wasn't there a recent moral consensus that premarital sex was immoral? And that not being religious was immoral?

Relying on a consensus of moralists to judge that rape is wrong would be like relying on a consensus of astrologers to judge whether a Taurus is headstrong. Not useful.

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Rape is wrong because it decreases happiness. That's what's wrong with rape. Decreasing happiness is bad. One ought not decrease happiness.

That's my starting place. That's my definition of "immoral," of what one ought not do.

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The is claim is that rape has a strong tendency to decrease happiness.

The ought claim is something I bring with me: One ought not to decrease happiness.

Any moral realist will bring some such ought with her. If she's talking about morality at all, she's already talking about what one ought--for some reason--to do.

-

Therefore, we don't have to get from is to ought. Which is handy, because we can't.

We don't need to get from is to ought because to talk about morality is to already talk about what we ought to do. Moral realists don't start at is, so we don't have to worry about getting to ought.

Rest assured, there are plenty of moral questions left to dispute.

 

[Angra Mainyu]

Can you make the same argument using other assessments such as gustatory and aesthetic judgements?

As a comparison with morality?

Yes, I could, but it would be considerably less effective in a 'partners in innocence' type of argument, for several reasons, for example some differences in which our intuitions usually tell us, or the dependence on the speaker, etc. But I think one of the main difficulties is the 'So what?' objection: people might reply that yes, using evidence from our faculties (my own or that of humans in general) in order to support such assessments also involves a fallacy and because of that they are not warranted, and so on. Color and science are examples meant to make that sort of reply much less likely.

 

[Angra Mainyu]

You've got the word "immoral" in there, so you are already dealing with oughts rather than is's.

The point is that the statement does not contain an 'ought', but 'is immoral', which is an 'is'.

So the move from X is immoral to one ought-not do X is not a deduction but a mere rephrasing.

Exactly (or very close; there are subleties that might be raised, but generally yes), which is why an 'ought' and an 'is' may imply each other, which is why one can derive an 'ought' from an 'is', which is why I point out that the question is not ought/is but rather statements containing moral terms/statements not containing moral terms, regadless of whether those statements contain 'oughts' (and by the way, there are also nonmoral 'oughts').

People argue that the ball isn't really red. Their point is that redness exists in the mind rather than in the ball. But the ball has some physical characteristic that is associated with redness-in-the-mind. And balls with that characteristic have historically been called "red." Now that we know the balls aren't "really" red, that usage remains a convenient shorthand.

I disagree that the balls are not red. But leave that aside: would it involve a fallacy to argue that they are red in the manner I did?

Rape is wrong because it decreases happiness.

I disagree.

That's my starting place. That's my definition of "immoral," of what one ought not do.

Words have meanings that are given by usage in a linguistic community. The meaning of 'immoral' is not 'that which decreases happiness'.

But also, suppose others - like me - disagree with your definition. How would you go about figuring out that evidence or arguments to support it?

 

[ruby sparks]

I see two issues with this thread.

First, the comparison with colour (and indeed water) are problematical because there are, it seems, independent, objective facts about both. This may not be the case with morality and I would claim that it is not the case.

Second, there seems to be an underlying assumption that morality is logical, or amenable to it. Logic can be useful in almost every sphere of inquiry, but arguments about morality are not in the end about or resolved by logic. The variegated psychologies, emotions and values of capricious humans are involved for starters. As such, I wonder if Angra's theories are not just convoluted attempts to try to fit a very complicatedly-shaped peg into a neat round hole.

 

[ruby sparks]

Someone might say that science is more reliable in than human faculties (to which I would reply that that depends on the faculty, but that's a matter for another debate)....

It's not really a matter for another debate. Science is generally more reliable than human faculties and intuitions and that is exactly why the scientific method has been so incredibly productive. This is not quite so true of the soft sciences, obviously.

The nearest science to the study of morality is, I would say, psychology. Good luck trying to pin down or sort out human psychology with logic.

 

[Angra Mainyu]

First, the comparison with colour (and indeed water) are problematical because there are, it seems, independent, objective facts about both. This may not be the case with morality and I would claim that it is not the case.

Whatever you mean by 'independent', that the point of the comparison is to show that there is no fallacy or else the fallacy is also in color assessment, scientific assessments, and pretty much everywhere. Those who raise the is/ought objection in the moral case face the same objection in the color case, or others. You might say that in the case of color there are "independent, objective facts" (whatever the former means), but then for that matter, someone else could just deny that (Wiploc did above).

Regardless of who denies what (that is not relevant here), the point is that in re: fallacy, the situation is the same. One is making color assessments using the human visual system (one's own, or that of other humans) and the same for moral assessments and the human moral faculty. For example, one repeated objection is that even if the human moral sense says torturing cats for fun is immoral, that does not imply it is so. But the reply here is that if that is the case, even if the human visual system says that some object is red (or light with certain frequency properties), that does not imply that it is so.

In other words, no matter how you make the is/ought objection, one can mirror it for the color case, or the illness case, or the science case, and so on.

Second, there seems to be an underlying assumption that morality is logical, or amenable to it. Logic can be useful in almost every sphere of inquiry, but arguments about morality are not in the end about or resolved by logic. The variegated psychologies, emotions and values of capricious humans are involved for starters. As such, I wonder if Angra's theories are not just convoluted attempts to try to fit a very complicatedly-shaped peg into a neat round hole.

Well, of course I can properly use logic in my arguments against the is/ought objection! Illogical arguments would be, well, bad.

 

[ruby sparks]

Well, of course I can properly use logic in my arguments against the is/ought objection! Illogical arguments would be, well, bad.

Sure, but what I said was that you will not in the end sort out such things using it. You might find a fallacy here or a proof there, but that is about it.

 

[ruby sparks]

In other words, no matter how you make the is/ought objection, one can mirror it for the color case, or the illness case, or the science case, and so on.

But not other human value judgements such as aesthetics. I see. You are sticking to conveniently dodgy comparisons instead. Why not do aesthetic beauty?

Put it this way, surely human moral judgements are value judgements. It would therefore seem most appropriate to compare them with other human value judgements, rather than something else.

Who knows, perhaps there are what you would call independent, objective facts about beauty, in the terms that you mean and use. I would not be surprised. Perhaps if we discussed that, we might see better the limitations of it, chiefly that, as with gustatory taste, even if there are, it will not sort out the majority of cases where humans disagree, because there will be no right answers no matter what amount of information is provided and we will be in relativistic territory.

 

[Angra Mainyu]

In other words, no matter how you make the is/ought objection, one can mirror it for the color case, or the illness case, or the science case, and so on.

But not other human value judgements such as aesthetics. I see. You are sticking to conveniently dodgy comparisons instead. Why not do aesthetic beauty?

Put it this way, surely human moral judgements are value judgements. It would therefore seem most appropriate to compare them with other human value judgements, rather than something else.

Who knows, perhaps there are what you would call independent, objective facts about beauty? I would not be surprised. Perhaps if we discussed that, we might see better the limitations of it, chiefly that, as with gustatory taste, even if there are, it will not sort out the majority of cases where humans disagree.

I already explained why aesthetic beauty is a bad idea, and why my comparisons are not at all dodgy.

But suppose I reckon that a landscape is beautiful (very, very probably), using as a evidence that ordinary human faculties say that. Unlike the moral case, I do not know that ordinary human faculties would hold this independently of who makes the assessment, but let us say that I reckon they do (whether I am right about that empirical issue is not relevant to the logical issue). So, again, am I incurring some sort of fallacy? What is it? Is it because even if human ordinary faculties say the landscape is beautiful, it does not follow that it is? If you think that that is a fallacy, then I would contend the same happens to color assessments, scientific assessments, etc.

A difference here is of course that it is not clear to me that ordinary human judgments say that the landscape is beautiful and those who deny it are in error. For all I know, that might or might not be the case. But that is a difference in the evidence about an empirical fact regarding human ordinary assessments, not a difference in whether something follows from something.

So, there you have your beauty comparison. In case you want to raise an is/ought-like objection to aesthetic assessments.

 

[ruby sparks]

But suppose I reckon that a landscape is beautiful (very, very probably), using as a evidence that ordinary human faculties say that. Unlike the moral case, I do not know that ordinary human faculties would hold this independently of who makes the assessment, but let us say that I reckon they do (whether I am right about that empirical issue is not relevant to the logical issue). So, again, am I incurring some sort of fallacy? What is it? Is it because even if human ordinary faculties say the landscape is beautiful, it does not follow that it is? If you think that that is a fallacy, then I would contend the same happens to color assessments, scientific assessments, etc.

A difference here is of course that it is not clear to me that ordinary human judgments say that the landscape is beautiful and those who deny it are in error. For all I know, that might or might not be the case. But that is a difference in the evidence about an empirical fact regarding human ordinary assessments, not a difference in whether something follows from something.

So, there you have your beauty comparison. In case you want to raise an is/ought-like objection to aesthetic assessments.

First, I would not claim it is a fallacy, because fallacies are not necessarily the crucial point, ditto for colour, illness, water, gustatory taste, morality and so on. Because in the end you can't explain, justify or understand these things with just logic, even if it is sometimes helpful to apply it.

Second, you seem to be willing to accept something for morality that you do not accept for aesthetics. Why is that? I disagree that you know that ordinary human faculties hold anything independently of who makes the assessment, because for such things there is always an assessor (most of the time it's you). Now, you did this with gustatory taste, so don't shy away from it. You claimed, if I recall, that gustatory taste was a good comparison with morality. But gustatory taste has essentially the same issues as aesthetic beauty, chiefly that the judgements about it are largely relativistic (with perhaps a few exceptions, which are only species-wide or not even that, only apply to so-called normal properly-functioning humans). And that is where your moral theory is. And it is very limited. It is non-controversial to say that there are human norms. That, at best, is what your moral 'facts' are. Norms that are sufficiently widespread that we can call them standard human features. Here's another, Humans dislike pain. Whoopee. Oh except for most cases where everyone has a different threshold, even in terms of when stimulus X is even painful. In other words, even if you are right, you are not saying very much.

 

[Angra Mainyu]

Second, you seem to be willing to accept something for morality that you do not accept for aesthetics. Why is that?

Because the evidence is different. You see, to make aesthetic assessments, I use my own faculties and also evidence from the assessments of others. However, that evidence also indicates that people often do not behave as though they believe that aesthetic facts are independent of the person making the assessment. And also I do not have that intuitive impression myself. How common that is, I do not know, so I remain undecided in many cases in which the evidence is not clear-cut.

I disagree that you know that ordinary human faculties hold anything independently of who makes the assessment, because for such things there is always an assessor (most of the time it's you)

Again, we can say the same about color, or about science. There is always an assessor. But that is the wrong way to look at whether our faculties say that it's independent of who makes the assessment. The right way is to test what our faculties say in case people make different assessment that would be incompatible if the statements were independent (e.g., A says the landscape is beautiful, B says it is not). Is the reaction that one of them is in error, or that each of them is talking about their own tastes?

 

[Wiploc]

That's my starting place. That's my definition of "immoral," of what one ought not do.

Words have meanings that are given by usage in a linguistic community. The meaning of 'immoral' is not 'that which decreases happiness'.

True. For a definition, we'd be closer to say something like, "The immoral is that which ought not be done."

But then we come to questions like, "What sort of thing ought not to be done?" As a utilitarian, my answer is something like, "Things that decrease happiness."

Others will offer alternative answers. Some will say, for instance, that doubting and disobeying gods is what should be avoided.

But also, suppose others - like me - disagree with your definition. How would you go about figuring out that evidence or arguments to support it?

Question A: "What is morality about?" Answer A: "It is about what things one ought and ought not do."

Question B: "What ought one to do or not do?" My oversimplified utilitarian answer to question B: "One ought to do things expected to increase happiness. One ought not do things expected to decrease happiness."

I assume you're asking about question B. Suppose I meet a virtue theorist who claims that honesty is always in-and-of-itself good. How do we decide what's right?

We do two things: First, we try to work thru our moral reactions in various circumstances, seeing which theory matches up better, and which causes more cognitive dissonance.

Second, we look for end points, ultimate sources. I ask the virtue theorist what is good about honesty. What is it good for? Isn't honesty good because it tends to make people happy?

And the virtue theorist asks me things like, "What's so great about happiness?" and, "What if I don't approve of happiness?"

And then we see who feels stupider.

 

[Angra Mainyu]

I assume you're asking about question B. Suppose I meet a virtue theorist who claims that honesty is always in-and-of-itself good. How do we decide what's right?

Yes, that is my question.

We do two things: First, we try to work thru our moral reactions in various circumstances, seeing which theory matches up better, and which causes more cognitive dissonance.

Cognitive dissonance? You mean the theory does not match the intuitive assessment?
If so, yes, that sounds like the right way to test it. Use the usual instrument to find moral truth: our own moral sense.

And we see who feels stupider.

lol, well not exactly, but close enough



Blast from the past.

https://talkfreethought.org/showthr...-Contradiction&p=760368&viewfull=1#post760368

Imagine that Bob and Jack people are marooned in a deserted island. There is no hope for them to return to civilization, and they both know it (it happened in the year 500 and they are in the middle of nowhere, in a place no one goes to where they got by accident in a freak storm, or they are from our time but were taken by aliens to another planet and abandoned on that planet, or whatever). Jack is a serial killer.

Scenario 1: Jack takes Bob by surprise. He hits him in the head, and when Bob is trying to get up, Jack stabs him repeatedly, and cuts him in many places. He laughs as Bob dies in a pool of his own blood. Jack lives the rest of his days on the island, alone. But he likes being alone - he hates people - and he enjoys recalling how he murdered his victims, the last one of which was Bob.

Scenario 2: Like Scenario 1 until Bob is dying in a pool of blood. But Jack did not know that Bob also had a knife - he just hadn't had time to grab it before Jack fatally wounded him. So, Bob knows he is dying and has no hope of returning. But Jack is very close, so Bob makes an effort and manages to stab Jack once before he loses consciousness, never to recover. But now Jack is fatally wounded, and a few minutes later, he dies as well.

In Scenario 2, Bob reduces happiness by killing Jack, as he prevents all the future happiness of his murderer. But it is not the case that Bob has a moral obligation not to stab Jack.

 

[Wiploc]

In Scenario 2, Bob reduces happiness by killing Jack, as he prevents all the future happiness of his murderer. But it is not the case that Bob has a moral obligation not to stab Jack.

I suspect we've been here before.

I'm a rule utilitarian. You can contrive a situation in which the rule doesn't satisfy, but that doesn't make it a bad rule generally.

 

[Wiploc]

In Scenario 2, Bob reduces happiness by killing Jack, as he prevents all the future happiness of his murderer. But it is not the case that Bob has a moral obligation not to stab Jack.

I suspect we've been here before.

I'm a rule utilitarian. You can contrive a situation in which the rule doesn't satisfy, but that doesn't make it a bad rule generally.

Are you the justice guy? You think justice is a real thing, that can be identified, that is good of itself, that is the goal?

 

[Treedbear]

...
Second, we look for end points, ultimate sources. I ask the virtue theorist what is good about honesty. What is it good for? Isn't honesty good because it tends to make people happy?

Hasn't worked for me.

And the virtue theorist asks me things like, "What's so great about happiness?" and, "What if I don't approve of happiness?"

And then we see who feels stupider.

Happiness per se is vastly over-rated, IMHO.

 

[ronburgundy]

One of the objections often raised in these forums is that one cannot derive a moral 'ought' from an 'is'. Technically that is false, because once the meaning of the words is considered, from 'It would be immoral for agent A to do X' it follows that 'Agent A ought not to do X'.

Your premise of "It is immoral to do X" has no semantic meaning other than "I feel that people ought not to do X." Thus, you are not deriving an "ought" from an actual "is", but an ought from and ought. An "is" is a statement about the objective world that does not depend upon how any mind subjectively feels about it. It is something that would be true even in the absence of any minds to feel anything.

"Immoral" has no referent other than how the thing relates to way some mind feels about it. Contrast it with "X is further from the Earth than Mars.", which is an idea that is either accurate or not depending on whether it logically corresponds to some state of to some physically objective state of the world. And note that whether their are minds to verify such correspondence is logically distinct from whether subjective states of mind are themselves the thing to which the idea corresponds.

The only way your argument makes sense is if you use the word "is" to mean "ought", which is the same as using "implies" to mean "is". So, by the same abuse of meaning, I can say "X implies Y, therefore X is Y."

As for "seeing red", yes that is completely subjective experience, like morality. Thus, there is no objective truth to "that is red" without reference to such subjective experience. Just like you and many use sloppy language to say "That is immoral" to mean "Someone doesn't subjective think that ought to happen.", people often say "that is red" to mean "I subjectively expereince that as red." or "I experience that as similar in color to other things people label "red".

 

[Lion IRC]

One of the objections often raised in these forums is that one cannot derive a moral 'ought' from an 'is'. Technically that is false, because once the meaning of the words is considered, from 'It would be immoral for agent A to do X' it follows that 'Agent A ought not to do X'.

You've got the word "immoral" in there, so you are already dealing with oughts rather than is's.

At least that's how I define morality: Something like, "Morality is what one ought to do." So the move from X is immoral to one ought-not do X is not a deduction but a mere rephrasing.

The point is that the statement does not contain an 'ought', but 'is immoral', which is an 'is'.

To claim that X is immoral is the same as saying you ought not do X
The ought is structurally embedded and implicit in the claim that something is immoral.

It's not a case of what follows from a proposition that X is immoral. It's just circular reasoning and a tautology to say we ought no do things that ought not be done...because they are 'immoral'.