Is to an Ought: A problem?

[untermensche]

Which shows you don't understand how it works. So let me show you:

If you want something then you ought to do something. But do what exactly? We don't know. So now let's assume you don't want to hurt. Interesting but still it doesn't tell you what you ought to do. So now there's an "is" to help you: if you put your hand over a flame you'll hurt. Ah now you know what to do, i.e. you ought not to put your hand over a flame.
EB

Yes, If you do NOT WANT to hurt you ought not put the hand in a flame.

Follows perfectly.

Now what ought a person who WANTS to hurt do?

They ought to put that hand right in that flame.

Again, the ought has nothing to do with putting the hand in the flame.

It is all about the WANT.

So again we are left with: One ought to do what one WANTS to do.

 

[Bomb#20]

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.)

I Binged actually. People said I was Googling too much, and that it might cause blindness, hairy palms, and a sunken chest. Alas, the sunken chest has come to pass, and my vision is starting to get blurry, so I started using Bing. The last thing I want is hair on my palms. Imagine having to shave your palms? Shaving my noggin is work enough.

Sorry, did I say Google? I meant google. By all means, google things using whatever company's google program best fulfills your personal googling requirements.

 

[Bomb#20]

If a person says he doesn't care about rape but knows it's morally wrong, he's presumably got brain damage, but is willing to take other people's word for it that it's wrong.

Here you make my point for me.

The person who doesn't care about rape must take the word of someone else (someone who does care) about the moral wrongness of rape.

Sincere moral commitments are always accompanied by relevant emotional commitments.

What we appear to disagree about is whether emotional commitment gives rise to sincere moral commitment or if it just happens to be the case that sincere moral commitment is always accompanied by emotional commitment but there is no causal connection between the two. It seems to me that the first explanation is the simplest.

Sure there's a causal connection; but I don't see how that implies anything one way or the other about ronburgundy's claim "Oughts are all about the whether you happen to want it or not." In the first place, even if someone could show you-want-it is a necessary condition for a moral claim, that would hardly mean it's a sufficient condition. And in the second place, it looks like you changed the subject from "ought" to "moral commitment". A sincere moral commitment is accompanied by a relevant emotional commitment because a sincere commitment is accompanied by a relevant emotional commitment. To be committed to anything you have to care about it emotionally, whether it's your moral judgment, your football team, your promise, your country's military, or your marriage. If you-want-it is a necessary condition for a moral commitment it's because of the "commitment" part, not because of the "moral" part.

It's entirely normal to want somebody to do something you know is immoral. It's why there's such a thing as entrapment. A cop deliberately tempts a suspected criminal to commit another crime, so she can arrest him or so she'll have leverage to make the criminal roll over on a more important criminal. She probably wouldn't tempt a criminal to commit a crime she has a moral commitment to stopping, like raping somebody -- her goal of taking down a crime lord probably wouldn't outweigh her sympathy for the henchman's potential rape victim. But if she can nail the henchman by tricking him into thinking he can get away with a robbery, she'll do it. She sincerely wants him to rob somebody, and it doesn't mean she doesn't sincerely believe he ought not to rob people.

 

[Kharakov]

...I ought to try and save them from drowning...

Most definitely.

You ought to do the things that give you pleasure and prevent you from having pain.

But that "ought" in the hands of another takes joy in watching their children drown.

Your "ought" gives the most evil license to do the most evil things.

Evolution autocorrect.

 

[WAB]

Most definitely.

You ought to do the things that give you pleasure and prevent you from having pain.

But that "ought" in the hands of another takes joy in watching their children drown.

Your "ought" gives the most evil license to do the most evil things.

Evolution autocorrect.

I don't get it, K.

Please dumb-down your explanation post so's I can unnderstan it.

 

[Kharakov]

Ehh. People who take pleasure in killing their offspring are sort of like the churches that encouraged masturbation as a means of connecting with God.

Only a handful of them around anymore.

 

[WAB]

no title. Do I need a title?

Ehh. People who take pleasure in killing their offspring are sort of like the churches that encouraged masturbation as a means of connecting with God.

Only a handful of them around anymore.

What churches were those? I never heard of that before. Amazing what one learns every day.

Edited in: Is one of them the Quietists? I read recently that that sect has disappeared due to the death of its last adherent.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quietism_(Christian_philosophy)

I think the Catholic church gives the nod, or the handwave (pun intended) to wanking, in their left-handed manner.

Protestants too, what with their "go ahead and do the sin, you can always repent later" mentality.

 

[The AntiChris]

Sure there's a causal connection; but I don't see how that implies anything one way or the other about ronburgundy's claim "Oughts are all about the whether you happen to want it or not."

I had the impression (possibly mistaken?) that the discussion had homed in on moral oughts.

In the first place, even if someone could show you-want-it is a necessary condition for a moral claim,

I think the evidence for this is overwhelming.

that would hardly mean it's a sufficient condition.

I'm sure it's not.

And in the second place, it looks like you changed the subject from "ought" to "moral commitment".

I didn't think I had. Your very first response to ronburgundy raised the issues of moral subjectivism vs moral realism.

A sincere moral commitment is accompanied by a relevant emotional commitment because a sincere commitment is accompanied by a relevant emotional commitment. To be committed to anything you have to care about it emotionally, whether it's your moral judgment, your football team, your promise, your country's military, or your marriage. If you-want-it is a necessary condition for a moral commitment it's because of the "commitment" part, not because of the "moral" part.

You're reading too much into the word "commitment". I could just have easily said "claim".

It's entirely normal to want somebody to do something you know is immoral.

Sure. I'm not sure why you felt it necessary to point this out.

All I'm attempting to do is show that your casual dismissal of ronburgundy's claim as a you-want-it-of-the-gaps argument is unfair by pointing out the undoubted correlation between moral ought claims and relevant emotional dispositions. I think the same equally applies to non-moral oughts.

 

[Bomb#20]

Sure there's a causal connection; but I don't see how that implies anything one way or the other about ronburgundy's claim "Oughts are all about the whether you happen to want it or not."

I had the impression (possibly mistaken?) that the discussion had homed in on moral oughts.

I had the same impression. What's your point? How would a causal connection imply moral oughts are all about the whether you happen to want it or not?

In the first place, even if someone could show you-want-it is a necessary condition for a moral claim,

I think the evidence for this is overwhelming.

What evidence? What I hear from subjectivists on this point tends to be philosophical argument, not empirical evidence. A little further on we have this exchange:

B20: "It's entirely normal to want somebody to do something you know is immoral."
AC: "Sure. I'm not sure why you felt it necessary to point this out."​

I think the evidence is overwhelmingly against the hypothesis that you-want-it is a necessary condition for a moral claim. I felt it is necessary to point out that it's entirely normal to want somebody to do something you know is immoral because for anyone to have that want is empirical evidence that you-want-it is not a necessary condition for a moral claim. I don't know of any observational evidence for your hypothesis at all comparable in strength to the observation that people do in point of fact have moral judgments they want other people not to follow -- let alone any evidence that could reasonably be considered overwhelming.

that would hardly mean it's a sufficient condition.

I'm sure it's not.

Well then, why are you still arguing? If you're sure it's a necessary condition but not a sufficient condition, that would mean that oughts are NOT all about whether you happen to want it or not. It would mean they're partly about whether you happen to want it or not and partly about something else. If RB were correct that oughts are all about whether you happen to want it or not, then you-want-it would be a sufficient condition for a moral claim.

And in the second place, it looks like you changed the subject from "ought" to "moral commitment".

I didn't think I had. Your very first response to ronburgundy raised the issues of moral subjectivism vs moral realism.

By "changed the subject", I was drawing attention to your introduction of the "commitment" part, not to the "moral" part. Sorry if that wasn't clear. People have all manner of sincere moral opinions that lack commitment. Do I think consumers ought to pay artists for their work? Sure. If I see somebody download a pirated movie am I going to rat him out to the Disney Corporation? Not a chance.

You're reading too much into the word "commitment". I could just have easily said "claim".

I don't think I am. You could just as easily have said "Sincere moral claims are always accompanied by relevant emotional commitments.", but it wouldn't have been true.

It's entirely normal to want somebody to do something you know is immoral.

Sure. I'm not sure why you felt it necessary to point this out.

So if a cop tricked a crook into thinking he could get away with a robbery, and afterwards she caught him red-handed with the loot, and she arrested him, and she made a deal with him to testify against his boss in return for dropping the robbery charge, and he testified, and she let him go, and now she says "He ought not to have robbed that liquor store", is that an insincere moral claim? Was she emotionally committed to stopping the robbery she helped cause? Did she change her mind about the morality of robbery between then and now?

"He ought not to have robbed that liquor store" is a counterexample to your hypothesis that "Sincere moral claims are always accompanied by relevant emotional commitments." At least it is if the emotional commitments you consider relevant are you-want-it commitments.

All I'm attempting to do is show that your casual dismissal of ronburgundy's claim as a you-want-it-of-the-gaps argument is unfair by pointing out the undoubted correlation between moral ought claims and relevant emotional dispositions.

And I think you're failing to show that. You said it yourself: "correlation isn't proof". It's evidence, yes, but only until counterexamples are exhibited.

I think the same equally applies to non-moral oughts.

Much more so, IMHO.

 

[WAB]

Going for the brass ring

I had the impression (possibly mistaken?) that the discussion had homed in on moral oughts. - AntiChris

That's what I tried to do, essentially, since I realized quickly that without going to the moral oughts, the whole discussion would be kind of pointless.

I should mention, in case I didn't get my "conversion" across:

I now understand the "is/ought" problem. I was sort of blind to it before by some rather simplistic thinking, and presumptuousness about what others knew about it.

I like to learn stuff, stay dynamic, and change my mind when I feel it's the right thing to do. But I'm not as easily-swayed as that sounds.

I am going to try to work on a simple way to get from an is to a moral ought, but it might take me a while.

**Also: IFF I come up with a workable is to a moral ought, I want this thread to go viral so's I can be nominated for a Nobel. I have my speech ready, when and if I get the award, and if I actually go there to accept it. I have a feeling I'll go all George C. Scott and refuse the honor (yeah I know that was an Oscar), because that's just me. And I know me really well. BUT - I'll still take the money, and the prestige. I'll need that in my rise to literary fame and, after that, my eventual rise to World Autarch and Grand Exalted Emperor of Earth & Moon (WAGE-EEM, or Wajeem). It's only a matter of time, folks.

 

[Angra Mainyu]

Just a question: Is the discussion about an alleged emotional commitment on the part of the the person making the "ought" claim, or on the part of the person the ought claim is ascribed to?

If it's the former, there is no necessary emotional commitment in the case of non-moral "ought" claims, either (the latter is more complicated).

A person may sincerely claim that - for example - that if Hitler wanted to be more successful in WW2, he ought not to have delayed the ground attack on Dunkirk, and ought to have refrained from attacking the USSR, while the person making that sincere claim may have no emotional commitment whatsoever to Hitler's success.

 

[The AntiChris]

I think the evidence is overwhelmingly against the hypothesis that you-want-it is a necessary condition for a moral claim.

I thought I'd provided evidence that this was unlikely. An example, that most of us would recognise, of a sincerely expressed moral claim which clearly had no correlating emotional commitment would help.

I felt it is necessary to point out that it's entirely normal to want somebody to do something you know is immoral because for anyone to have that want is empirical evidence that you-want-it is not a necessary condition for a moral claim.

I'm afraid I'm not following your logic.

It does not follow from the fact that X is a necessary component of sincere moral claims that X invariably gives rise to moral claims.

This seems quite obvious so I suspect I must be misunderstanding you. Perhaps you could provide a more precise explanation of your argument?

that would hardly mean it's a sufficient condition.

I'm sure it's not.

Well then, why are you still arguing? If you're sure it's a necessary condition but not a sufficient condition, that would mean that oughts are NOT all about whether you happen to want it or not. It would mean they're partly about whether you happen to want it or not and partly about something else. If RB were correct that oughts are all about whether you happen to want it or not, then you-want-it would be a sufficient condition for a moral claim.

I suppose if you take the narrow, literal, interpretation of "all about" as meaning 'want it' and absolutely nothing else then you win on a technicality. But this seems excessively uncharitable.

"All about" can also mean 'would not exist without' (i.e. necessary but not necessarily sufficient). I have no idea what RB intended but I don't see anything in his "all about" that can only be interpreted as 'sufficient'.

 

[Kharakov]

Ehh. People who take pleasure in killing their offspring are sort of like the churches that encouraged masturbation as a means of connecting with God.

Only a handful of them around anymore.

What churches were those? I never heard of that before. Amazing what one learns every day.

ok, maybe I was too vague. Ok, I was definitely too vague.

To your original question about the my interjection "Evolution autocorrect" to untermensche's response to your comment, what I meant was that if parents really like killing their children, they don't pass on their genes. Parents that enjoy preserving their children's lives? They do pass on their genes. It's sort of a natural whittling away at destructive genes.

Churches that encourage masturbation instead of breeding- it's a poor joke. They would have less followers over time as the churches that encouraged procreation and familial stability ended up building stable societies with more members.

 

[Bomb#20]

I think the evidence is overwhelmingly against the hypothesis that you-want-it is a necessary condition for a moral claim.

I thought I'd provided evidence that this was unlikely.

Yes: correlation, which is pretty feeble evidence. It's enough for a beautiful theory, and it's slayable by one ugly fact.

An example, that most of us would recognise, of a sincerely expressed moral claim which clearly had no correlating emotional commitment would help.

We're arguing about whether you-want-it is a necessary condition, not about whether emotional commitment is a necessary condition. There are all manner of emotional commitments besides wanting. Practically every claim people make has some sort of emotional commitment to it -- that's what provides motivation to say it in the first place. If I say "(Not (Not P)) implies P", that has a correlating emotional commitment. The so-called "intuitionists" who disagree with it are a bunch of loonies. But you wouldn't infer from this that "(Not (Not P)) implies P" is a claim about what I want, would you?

So would a sincerely expressed moral claim which clearly has no correlating emotional commitment of the "you-want-it" type help? Here's one:

Somewhere out there, there's a paroled felon -- we'll call him Andy -- who's used a gun in his past crimes. But Andy currently finds himself without one. He's planning more crimes so he wants to acquire a gun. He's been approached by an undercover police officer -- we'll call him Bill -- posing as a criminal who sells guns illegally. Bill offered to sell Andy a gun. I sincerely think it would be immoral for Andy to offer to buy the gun. And I sincerely do not want Andy not to offer to buy the gun.

So there you have it -- an ugly fact that disproves the theory that you-want-it is a necessary condition for a moral claim.

I felt it is necessary to point out that it's entirely normal to want somebody to do something you know is immoral because for anyone to have that want is empirical evidence that you-want-it is not a necessary condition for a moral claim.

I'm afraid I'm not following your logic.

It does not follow from the fact that X is a necessary component of sincere moral claims that X invariably gives rise to moral claims.

This seems quite obvious so I suspect I must be misunderstanding you. Perhaps you could provide a more precise explanation of your argument?

Yes, this is quite obvious; but I'm not seeing why you think it's a problem for what I said. When X doesn't invariably gives rise to moral claims, that's a problem for the hypothesis that X is a sufficient condition for a moral claim. But it doesn't have any implications in particular for whether X is a necessary condition for a moral claim. I'm showing X is not a necessary condition for a moral claim, by showing you can have both (Not X) and a moral claim. Whether you can have both (X) and (Not moral claim) is a separate question. So it kind of looks like you're mixing up (P implies Q) with (Q implies P). Am I missing something?

Well then, why are you still arguing? If you're sure it's a necessary condition but not a sufficient condition, that would mean that oughts are NOT all about whether you happen to want it or not. It would mean they're partly about whether you happen to want it or not and partly about something else. If RB were correct that oughts are all about whether you happen to want it or not, then you-want-it would be a sufficient condition for a moral claim.

I suppose if you take the narrow, literal, interpretation of "all about" as meaning 'want it' and absolutely nothing else then you win on a technicality. But this seems excessively uncharitable.
"All about" can also mean 'would not exist without' (i.e. necessary but not necessarily sufficient). I have no idea what RB intended but I don't see anything in his "all about" that can only be interpreted as 'sufficient'.

But "all about" isn't his only statement of his position. He was very explicit that my "narrow, literal, interpretation" was exactly what he meant. I am refuting his consistently expressed viewpoint, not some unfortunate use of an idiomatic expression. How else am I to interpret it when he wrote the following?

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.

"would not exist without" falls light-years short of "is really just a rewording of".

 

[The AntiChris]

I felt it is necessary to point out that it's entirely normal to want somebody to do something you know is immoral because for anyone to have that want is empirical evidence that you-want-it is not a necessary condition for a moral claim.

I'm afraid I'm not following your logic.

It does not follow from the fact that X is a necessary component of sincere moral claims that X invariably gives rise to moral claims.

Yes, this is quite obvious; but I'm not seeing why you think it's a problem for what I said.

First of all I must apologise.

I'm afraid I've been misreading what you've been saying. I've been misreading you as saying that it is normal for [others] to want somebody to do something that [we] consider to be immoral. I apologise for the confusion this has caused (I appreciate your attempt to make sense of what I was saying).

To be absolutely clear, I do not think it is entirely normal for one to to want somebody to do something that one considers to be immoral.

So would a sincerely expressed moral claim which clearly has no correlating emotional commitment of the "you-want-it" type help? Here's one:

Somewhere out there, there's a paroled felon -- we'll call him Andy -- who's used a gun in his past crimes. But Andy currently finds himself without one. He's planning more crimes so he wants to acquire a gun. He's been approached by an undercover police officer -- we'll call him Bill -- posing as a criminal who sells guns illegally. Bill offered to sell Andy a gun. I sincerely think it would be immoral for Andy to offer to buy the gun. And I sincerely do not want Andy not to offer to buy the gun.

Essentially what you're saying in the entrapment scenario is that:

1) I sincerely think Andy's purchase of the gun would be an immoral act.

and

2) I sincerely want Andy to purchase the gun.

I don't think 2 above is strictly true. I think it more accurate to say that you sincerely want Andy to expose himself as a criminal. You really don't care precisely how Andy incriminates himself so long as he is brought to book.

This can be demonstrated quite simply. In your scenario imagine Andy (who'd been living on his nerves for some while) recognises Bill as a police officer, assumes he's going to be arrested and immediately breaks down and confesses to his crimes.

If you sincerely wanted Andy to purchase the gun you'd be disappointed with the outcome. I'm pretty sure Andy's failure to purchase the gun would not disappoint you.
____________

I'm not going to attempt to defend ronburgundy's words. However, I still don't think your likening of his claim to a "god-of-the-gaps argument" ("you-want-it-of-the-gaps argument") is at all fair or reasonable.

 

[Speakpigeon]

I had the impression (possibly mistaken?) that the discussion had homed in on moral oughts. - AntiChris

That's what I tried to do, essentially, since I realized quickly that without going to the moral oughts, the whole discussion would be kind of pointless.

I should mention, in case I didn't get my "conversion" across:

I now understand the "is/ought" problem. I was sort of blind to it before by some rather simplistic thinking, and presumptuousness about what others knew about it.

I like to learn stuff, stay dynamic, and change my mind when I feel it's the right thing to do. But I'm not as easily-swayed as that sounds.

I am going to try to work on a simple way to get from an is to a moral ought, but it might take me a while.

**Also: IFF I come up with a workable is to a moral ought, I want this thread to go viral so's I can be nominated for a Nobel. I have my speech ready, when and if I get the award, and if I actually go there to accept it. I have a feeling I'll go all George C. Scott and refuse the honor (yeah I know that was an Oscar), because that's just me. And I know me really well. BUT - I'll still take the money, and the prestige. I'll need that in my rise to literary fame and, after that, my eventual rise to World Autarch and Grand Exalted Emperor of Earth & Moon (WAGE-EEM, or Wajeem). It's only a matter of time, folks.

I do have one way to go from an 'is' to an 'ought' but I have the impression that you want to find it on your own. I'm thinking this would be for you like a philosopher's stone for the idealist that you are deep down, i.e. you want to show that the spirit somehow does rise out of the material world.

That's also why you're not going to find it. Because there won't be any evidence that the spirit comes out of material stuff. My solution doesn't show that it does. Instead, it can be understood simply by saying that moral stuff comes from the material world and stays there.

Disappointed?
EB

 

[Bomb#20]

I apologise for the confusion this has caused (I appreciate your attempt to make sense of what I was saying).

No worries; I probably get confused and misread other posters more often than you do.

To be absolutely clear, I do not think it is entirely normal for one to to want somebody to do something that one considers to be immoral.

I should have specified that I meant "entirely normal" as measured across the population of people making moral judgments, not as measured across the population of moral judgments. I.e. when a million people make a billion moral judgments, and a couple million of those judgments are accompanied by a desire for the immoral act to be carried out, chances are 90-odd percent of those million people have one or two acts they consider immoral that they want to be carried out, even though 998,000,000 of those billion judgments are in line with what the judge wants.

My entrapment scenario isn't a hypothetical. At any given moment I expect it's being played out in real life, somewhere in the world, a dozen times over. Don't you want those crooks to fall into those traps, so they'll go back to jail where they belong?

Somewhere out there, there's a paroled felon -- we'll call him Andy -- who's used a gun in his past crimes. But Andy currently finds himself without one. He's planning more crimes so he wants to acquire a gun. He's been approached by an undercover police officer -- we'll call him Bill -- posing as a criminal who sells guns illegally. Bill offered to sell Andy a gun. I sincerely think it would be immoral for Andy to offer to buy the gun. And I sincerely do not want Andy not to offer to buy the gun.

Essentially what you're saying in the entrapment scenario is that:

1) I sincerely think Andy's purchase of the gun would be an immoral act.

and

2) I sincerely want Andy to purchase the gun.

In case it makes a difference, that's not precisely what I said. What I said was I sincerely do not want Andy not to offer to buy the gun. I could be neutral, and that still counts as not having the want that the "you want it is a necessary condition" hypothesis asserts that I must have. (And yes, I realize "I do not want X" is often used as an idiomatic way of saying "I want not X"; but that's not how I was using it. My awkward phrasing was literal and was dictated by what the specific point in dispute is.)

I don't think 2 above is strictly true. I think it more accurate to say that you sincerely want Andy to expose himself as a criminal. You really don't care precisely how Andy incriminates himself so long as he is brought to book.

This can be demonstrated quite simply. In your scenario imagine Andy (who'd been living on his nerves for some while) recognises Bill as a police officer, assumes he's going to be arrested and immediately breaks down and confesses to his crimes.

Sure, that would be lovely; but I don't think "I want X" is contradicted by "I'd like Y even better than X, and if I got Y I'd lose interest in having X." I quit my job last year because I wanted a new job. You could say it isn't strictly true that I wanted a new job; it's more accurate to say I wanted a pile of money without having to do my old job, but I didn't care precisely whether that happened by getting a better job or by winning Powerball. But nobody would take that viewpoint seriously unless he needed to to make a philosophical point. Of course I wanted a new job -- it was the only realistic way I was going to get out of my old job without a massive cut in my living standard. The psychology of wanting doesn't exist in a vacuum; it's embedded in one's knowledge of the world; and I know winning Powerball is vanishingly unlikely.

Now, maybe Andy confessing and going to jail without buying the gun isn't as farfetched as winning Powerball; but there are a dozen Andys (Andies?) out there, and all of them simultaneously confessing and going to jail is as farfetched as winning Powerball. Those guys falling into the traps and buying the guns is the only realistic way most of them are going back to jail before they hurt more people. Of course I want them to. Don't you?

I'm not going to attempt to defend ronburgundy's words. However, I still don't think your likening of his claim to a "god-of-the-gaps argument" ("you-want-it-of-the-gaps argument") is at all fair or reasonable.

I don't see why not. Here's what he wrote:

"And we keep providing irrefutable logic to support the claim. While moral realists have never been able to define any moral stance in a way that retains it core properties as a moral prescription without it also completely depending upon a purely subjective want that exists only as an emotional state. IOW, create a valid deductive arguments where the conclusion is a moral stance and none of the premise make any implicit assumptions about what anyone or thing prefers or wants."​

It's a straight-up reversal of burden of proof. I know you don't want to defend his words, but if it isn't fair to liken that to god-of-the-gaps, what is it you see in that paragraph that's any different from:

"There's irrefutable logic supporting God. Atheists have never been able to account for how a bunch of chemicals could spontaneously rearrange themselves into a cell -- a complex system of functional parts and goal-oriented metabolic pathways -- without being guided by an intelligent purpose. IOW, create a step-by-step procedure that starts with non-life and ends with life and none of the steps make any implicit assumptions about what anyone intends."​

Help me out here.

 

[WAB]

That's what I tried to do, essentially, since I realized quickly that without going to the moral oughts, the whole discussion would be kind of pointless.

I should mention, in case I didn't get my "conversion" across:

I now understand the "is/ought" problem. I was sort of blind to it before by some rather simplistic thinking, and presumptuousness about what others knew about it.

I like to learn stuff, stay dynamic, and change my mind when I feel it's the right thing to do. But I'm not as easily-swayed as that sounds.

I am going to try to work on a simple way to get from an is to a moral ought, but it might take me a while.

**Also: IFF I come up with a workable is to a moral ought, I want this thread to go viral so's I can be nominated for a Nobel. I have my speech ready, when and if I get the award, and if I actually go there to accept it. I have a feeling I'll go all George C. Scott and refuse the honor (yeah I know that was an Oscar), because that's just me. And I know me really well. BUT - I'll still take the money, and the prestige. I'll need that in my rise to literary fame and, after that, my eventual rise to World Autarch and Grand Exalted Emperor of Earth & Moon (WAGE-EEM, or Wajeem). It's only a matter of time, folks.

I do have one way to go from an 'is' to an 'ought' but I have the impression that you want to find it on your own. I'm thinking this would be for you like a philosopher's stone for the idealist that you are deep down, i.e. you want to show that the spirit somehow does rise out of the material world.

That's also why you're not going to find it. Because there won't be any evidence that the spirit comes out of material stuff. My solution doesn't show that it does. Instead, it can be understood simply by saying that moral stuff comes from the material world and stays there.

Disappointed?
EB

Never!

Hey, EB, I would love to hear your solution.

And you are absolutely right, I'm an idealist. I'm a poet, not a philosopher, and OH GOD certainly not a scientist.

My heroes (and of course I think the world needs heroes) are Jesus & Socrates, for never having written anything down, the mark of confidence; Homer, Virgil (Oh alright, Vergil for you academic-types) the author of Beowulf, scads of so-called dark ages scribblers, Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare (and/or Marlowe), Blake, the mighty KEATS, Browning, Tennyson, and etc, etc, up thru those crazy nutters Pound Zukofsky Joyce Rimbaud Verlaine Borges Poe Baudelaire Faulkner Dos Passos Gaddis & the old queen, Allen Ginsberg (angelic biker sodomites? Now who the hell else could have gotten away with that?)

And of course, the prince himself, Spinoza, to whom all other thinkers are 2ndary. IMO.

And by the way, there's another play on the way, which will be written partly by Wikipedia and the lot of you here in the consciousness threads...

I warn'd ya!

<< I really like that guy. Are those gloves he's got on?

 

[Speakpigeon]

I do have one way to go from an 'is' to an 'ought' but I have the impression that you want to find it on your own. I'm thinking this would be for you like a philosopher's stone for the idealist that you are deep down, i.e. you want to show that the spirit somehow does rise out of the material world.

That's also why you're not going to find it. Because there won't be any evidence that the spirit comes out of material stuff. My solution doesn't show that it does. Instead, it can be understood simply by saying that moral stuff comes from the material world and stays there.

Disappointed?
EB

Never!

Hey, EB, I would love to hear your solution.

Nah, you'd be disappointed.

But at least you know there's one solution even if it's one you wouldn't like.
EB

 

[The AntiChris]

No worries;

Thanks.

In case it makes a difference, that's not precisely what I said. What I said was I sincerely do not want Andy not to offer to buy the gun. I could be neutral, and that still counts as not having the want that the "you want it is a necessary condition" hypothesis asserts that I must have. (And yes, I realize "I do not want X" is often used as an idiomatic way of saying "I want not X"; but that's not how I was using it. My awkward phrasing was literal and was dictated by what the specific point in dispute is.)

That's ok. I don't think it matters.

Sure, that would be lovely; but I don't think "I want X" is contradicted by "I'd like Y even better than X, and if I got Y I'd lose interest in having X."

I think you're right (my argument doesn't work).

When I initially started to respond to your entrapment scenario I wasn't sure which of your claims to challenge ('Gun purchase is immoral' or 'want-it/neutral about the gun purchase').

As I'm not at all convinced by your attempted counterexample I'll have a go at my alternative criticism.

I'm not challenging your sincerely held belief that Andy's purchase of the gun is immoral, I'm challenging the notion that the purchase of the gun in this specific context qualifies as an immoral act as it is commonly understood.

Clearly it's an illegal act (a necessary component of the set-up) but is it immoral? Before I go further can you give me your justification for characterising the purchase of the gun in this specific, controlled, context immoral?

I know you don't want to defend his words, but if it isn't fair to liken that to god-of-the-gaps, what is it you see in that paragraph that's any different...

God is an imaginary entity.

Want-its/emotions are human mental states which are heavily correlated with moral claims and justifications. They seem worlds apart to me.