ruby sparks said:
In terms of everyday language, you may be correct. Fair enough, but what does it have to do with morality?
That was in the context of ronburgundy's points about color, so it was not about morality. Still, in the case of morality, a similar issue can be raised. The key disagreement in philosophy (both professional and amateur) and in the context of these threads is not whether morality is subjective in the sense you mentioned, but whether there is an objective fact of the matter (or a fact of the matter, which means the same in everyday language) as to whether moral assessments are true.
ruby sparks said:
I often have very little idea what you are on about or what your point is. In what way do you hope to tackle the is/ought problem?
In the way that after considering the matter, it is not reasonable to object to moral assessments based on information about non-moral matters to say that an 'ought' doesn't follow from an 'is', or that moral assessments do not logically followed from information described using only nonmoral terms.
But let me go with an example.
Suppose that Bob accepts that there is very good evidence that any human with ordinary color vision would see
this ball as red, under ordinary lighting conditions, and on the basis of that, he reckons that the ball is probably red. Bob rejects the idea that he is committing any fallacy in making that assessment.
Bob also accepts that there is very good evidence that any human with an ordinary moral sense would find the kidnappings, rapes and murders committed by Ted Bundy (as described
here), very immoral. Now, when Alice uses that information as evidence that the actions in question were indeed very immoral, Bob objects and says that Alice is incurring the is/ought fallacy, because it does not follow from the premise that any human with an ordinary moral sense would find the kidnappings, rapes and murders committed by Ted Bundy (as described
here), very immoral, that the actions were indeed very immoral.
One of my aims is to get readers to realize that Bob is making a mistake, more precisely
if Alice is committing a fallacy for the stated reason, then so is Bob with his color assessment, and for the same reason (roughly; one might raise implicit premises as an objection, but that can be properly dealt with too). Note that saying that color is somehow different from morality or that there is an objective fact of the matter would miss the point. The question is about what follows from what, and whether these are cases of making fallacious assessments, or else cases in which one is not deriving the assessment by means of deductive logic but in some other way, and that is not itself a fallacy.
ruby sparks said:
I'm not even sure what you mean by fallacy, or whether it's an everyday language 'fallacy' (eg a mistake), or whether when you say fallacy, it's always that, and nothing to do with logic (except perhaps everyday 'logic').
A fallacy is a formal logical error. In this case, it would be to try to derive a conclusion from certain premises by means of deductive logic, but using an invalid argument. I focus on this meaning of 'fallacy' because that is how the is/ought issue is usually raised.
At any rate, the response to the objection that Alice is making some sort of error (not necessarily that one) would be along the lines that Bob has not provided any kind of reason to reckon that Alice is making a mistake with her moral assessment that Bob is not making with his color assessment.
ruby sparks said:
I get the impression that a lot of your arguments rely on everyday language, intuitions and common sense. I have to say I don't think this is a particularly good basis for analysis, regardless of what you say about the general reliability of such things. We discussed this before, and I am no more convinced than I was the last time.
Yes, this is unfortunate. I realize I will not convince you of that. But the objection to the is/ought objection does not rely on that, as you should be able to see in the OP and my replies above. Now, I will probably not convince you of that, either, but I am also aiming to persuade other readers. Unfortunately, this thread has not attracted much interest, so maybe I won't persuade anyone, but I'm trying, and in doing so, I'm not going to limit my arguments to those I think might persuade you (if any).