The Value-Ought Gap

[@callumburcher]

Sent from the magic sceptic channel looks good man

[@hannsjurgenhodann6268]

Thank you for making this video. I found this discussion about the 'value-ought gab' very interesting.

[@JackyBunch]

I don't know if you're familiar with Henry Sidgwick, but the example you gave of deciding between egoistic and altruistic hedonism is precisely what he called "the profoundest problem of ethics". He basically concludes that you could plausibly say that you either ought to do whatever is best for everyone, or whatever is best for yourself; he concluded that there is a dualism in the practical reason.

[@KaneB]

Yes, that's a good example for illustrating the problem. I haven't read much of Sidgwick's work, though I have come across his "profoundest problem" point before. That would have been a more eloquent way of putting it!

[@jesselee34]

I presume Henry Sidgwick didn't know about computational game theory. The iterative prisoner's dilemma, sheds some light about how this seeming incompatibility can be rectified. Have you read "The Evolution of Cooperation" by Robert Axelrod?

[@etincardiaego]

​@@jesselee34 The duality cannot be avoided with the iterative prisioner's dilemma. Parfit talks about this in his "Reasons and persons". He says that egoism and consequentialism can agree sometimes (that it is the case with the iterative prisioner's dilemma), but they won't agree everytime (even in the iterative prisioner's dilemma).

[@jesselee34]

@@etincardiaego Thanks for the reading recommendation, I'll have to take a look.

[@howtoappearincompletely9739]

It seems I've been recognising this distinction all along, without giving it a name.

[@joshnicholson6194]

This point is very remniscent of the literature on Mackie's argument from queerness, specifically the debate between David Brink and Richard Garner pertaining to the "genuine queerness" of objective moral values. As usual I agree, great video!

[@lanceindependent]

At least one move available to the naturalist would be to just claim that an account of values is sufficient for moral realism, and that they don't need to offer an account of what we ought to do. They could, in other words, disagree with you about what would be required for an adequate account of moral realism.

[@KaneB]

Yeah, I think some moral naturalists will be inclined to just bite the bullet on this. It seems pretty common for naturalists to take naturalism as a providing a kind of reforming definition of moral concepts. I'm inclined to see this as just throwing out normativity, which I think is throwing out too much, but then I'm not sure how to draw a non-arbitrary line between giving a reforming definition and just changing the subject.

[@darkengine5931]

I might be misunderstanding but it seems much easier to bridge value-ought than is-ought. That's not to say it's easy in sufficiently complex scenarios, but inductive inference and empiricism can take over to determine which oughts derived from a value are far more effective than others in achieving the desired goals. With the example you raised about an artist valuing creating good art, a lot of the ambiguity there lies in how vaguely the value is defined. With such a nebulous definition, we might only be able to give vague suggestions like valuing artistic truth and practicing their art as often as possible while gradually developing a distinct style that separates their art from the rest. Yet suppose instead that they valued creating highly realistic art of human subjects. In that case, a highly effective ought derived from that value is that they ought to study anatomy, perspective, lighting, values, texture, edges, composition, and regularly practice life drawing. Meanwhile, if someone else suggested that they ought to practice drawing cartoons and focus on graphic design, that should be objectively far less effective advice (it's something we can subject to testing if in doubt, but practically all successful artists who draw realistic human subjects I've ever found would agree with the former suggestion as superior to the latter along with visual arts professors). In a similar sense (although focused a bit more on is-ought than value-ought), if a patient merely walked into a doctor's office and told the doctor that they wanted to be healthy and expected an immediate prescription, that's very difficult to do besides suggesting very generalized things like getting plenty of sleep, exercise, and eat a reasonable diet. Yet if the doctor can diagnose the patient and perform blood tests and discover more specific properties about the subject like the presence of a chronic health condition and certain nutritional deficiencies, it's much easier to derive more specific and effective oughts.

[@InventiveHarvest]

You are right that the tricky part is when pursuing our individual desires negatively affects other people. In such cases, compensation is owed to the negatively affected people. In the simple case, where no one is negatively affected by an action, the ought is clear. If the benefits of doing something outweigh the costs, it ought to be done. For example, if I get joy fron breathing air, I ought to breathe air. Otherwise there would be less joy in the universe for no reason. Not breathing the air would be irrational. Now back to the compensation part. I am not saying that we can know exactly how much our actions will negatively affect others. Also, we do not have a perfect compensation enforcement mechanism. So, while the ideal state exists potentially, we can never as a society precisely achieve it. That being said, as much as we can enforce negatively affected people being adequately compensated, people ought to be allowed to pursue their desires. There should be no victimless crimes.

[@KaneB]

Well, my point is that even if we naturalize values, it's not obvious that we can naturalize claims such as "you ought to give compensation to negatively affected people." The issue isn't about our ability to know whether our actions will negatively affect others, or our ability to construct enforcement mechanics, or anything like that. It's that even if we show that some natural property P is good, this leaves open the question of how to action with respect to P: do I honour P, promote P, maximize P for myself, maximize P for my community, maximize P for everybody, etc.?

[@InventiveHarvest]

@@KaneB you maximize P for yourself, subject to the constraint of compensation (and of course other costs). We can see that compensation leads to the efficient amount of P by the Coase Theorem. The ought of compensation is derived from the Coase Theorem.

[@UserName-nx6mc]

14:10 - I have the exact same problem with Sam Harris's type of naturalism that you do. I'm glad you pointed it out.

[@mandobrownie]

Maybe a small step the value-based moral naturalist can take toward meeting the challenge is to say that all types of value automatically generate or contain or whatever a reason for action (possibly even a moral reason for action). The question of ought as I think you're using it is "what ought we to do all (moral? normative?) things considered?" If every instance of value that the moral naturalist claims exists automatically give reasons, then the job is to go from reasons which give something like prima facie or pro tanto or probabilistic oughts to all (moral? normative?) things considered oughts. And that might be a more manageable task, or at least a task almost every metaethical or first-order moral theory faces (even many anti-realist positions I think). A problem with that proposal, at least that I see, is that it's hard to sort values into the different categories. Why is the value that the value-based moral naturalists claims is moral actually moral instead of, say, prudential or practical or personal or epistemic or something? But maybe you don't really care too much about the moral domain and the moral ought themselves, but rather the all normative things considered oughts and the whole normative domain.

[@guy-iw2qh]

Thank you for the video

[@mandobrownie]

Re: your comments about the other normative domains not delivering as strong of oughts as the moral domain. I think certain debates within epistemic normativity and practical normativity show that those domains can deliver just as strong of oughts as the moral domain. In epistemic normativity there're claims that one's evidence narrows which beliefs are epistemically permitted or epistemically rational quite a bit, and that epistemic agents are only permitted to believe among those beliefs. I'm blank on the names of these debates, but I've bet you've heard of them. Similar things go for the practical domain (maybe even the prudential domain?): there're a fair bit of theorists who claim that practical normativity requires that agents take the most or close to the most efficient means to their goals given their means side constraints. That can end up giving pretty weighty oughts. I think maybe you're just a good old Mackie-ite in that you're suspicious of there being genuine oughts at all -- which is s perfectly respectable position that normative theorists of all stripes take! There's a good article on skepticism about oughts (especially all things considered oughts) in the Oxford Handbook of Reasons and Normativity.

[@mandobrownie]

Or maybe you think that all or most moral realists think of moral oughts as trumps, and hence they're automatically the strongest oughts. I think a lot of moral, and more generally value, realists don't take moral oughts to be always trumps. I think the position is that they're sometimes, maybe even most of the time, trumps, but definitely not always

[@KaneB]

I'm not sure what the relevance of this is. I mean, yeah, those are very interesting debates. But my point was just to note that there are normative domains where value-claims and ought-claims seem to come apart, because this seems to be helpful in illustrating the value-ought gap. That there are also other normative domains that deliver strong "oughts" doesn't really impact this point one way or the other.

[@mandobrownie]

@@KaneB Definitely, for sure, you're totally right. I just wanted to respond to a a maybe one-off thing you said toward the 2/3rd mark of the video about moral oughts being especially strong. My other comment is a direct response to the main content of the video -- which I think is quite good!

[@StefanTravis]

There is the position that "A is good" or "You should do A" are just elliptical ways of saying "Do A". That is, that moral declaratives are disguised imperatives. Whatever else can be said about this position, it does deal with the value-ought distinction, by erasing it.

[@KaneB]

It looks like we're just giving up moral realism in that case though. On that analysis, moral statements wouldn't even be propositions, so we'd have a kind of noncognitivism.

[@StefanTravis]

@@KaneB I'm quite happy with that conclusion. The only noteworthy argument I've come across against it - it might even have been on your channel - is: We can make syllogisms with moral declaratives just as with any other declaratives. P1) A is good P2) Good things are red C) A is red My own counterargument is that we can also make syllogisms from meaningless terms. P1) A is Glabber P2) Glabber things are Globber C) A is Globber Grammatical validity is not sufficient for meaningfulness.

[@sisyphus645]

I had been a closeted anti-realist for a long time before I came out. I think many of those realists are realists simply because they cannot not be. It’s hard to live without values. Like Cole, I WANT values to be real. Antirealism can be a real turn off, especially when you’re jerking off to a beautiful person and your brain reminds you that beauty is not a real property. Antirealism strips the metaphysical element away from value; I find that hard to endure.

[@KaneB]

I'm an antirealist, but I'm not living without values or oughts. I'm living without an absurd metaphysical picture of what values and oughts are, that wouldn't make any practical difference to anything even if it were true. >> especially when you’re jerking off to a beautiful person and your brain reminds you that beauty is not a real property I've never had this experience. The fact that beauty is in the eye of the beholder doesn't make anybody less beautiful to me.

[@andyramirez6016]

Wow! Lmao, I’ve had this experience, good to know I’m not alone, as people tend to say. I’ve haunted by these questions in philosophy and am scared that the only two options are a radical skepticism or a religious dogmatic system, maybe based on some self-justifying experience. But that doesn’t seem right because most religions will say that the truth is available to everyone, not just those who have a self justifying religious experience. Idk, any help would be appreciated, I grew up baptist and am being influenced towards Orthodoxy, if anyone cares.

[@unknownknownsphilosophy7888]

You should do a video on agnotology, I think there is work by Janet Kourany, I think that is her name I'll have to check, basically the idea is that science generates more ignorance than it does knowledge, for everything known there is a exponentially growing number of new unanswered questions which get generated at a rate always exceeding the knowledge gained. If we take constructivism seriously (I do) then this raises an interesting question about whether we are pumping ignorance into the universe, generating it, rather than discovering unknowns that were actually "out there" before we came on the scene. Like if we create the game chess, then bad chess strategies are also something that gets generated into a world that may not have otherwise ever contained them. Interesting to ponder the meaning of unintentionally dumping ignorance into the world haha

[@WackyConundrum]

What do you mean by "ought"/"should"? And what do philosophers generally [think they] mean by that? There are many ways to understand the term. A command. An internalized aspiration. A rule for achieving a goal (hypothetical imperative). And probably many others. So?...

[@KaneB]

I agree, the term is used in various different ways. I'm not assuming any particular definition here. Nor do I think the burden is on my shoulders to provide a definition, partly because the point I'm making holds for various definitions of the term.

[@orelazarevic2796]

Why is the problem restricted to moral naturalists? I think that's the same sort of criticism that William Frankena has given regarding Moore's famous *non-naturalist* realism (in "Philosophy of G.E. Moore"). Moore held that "good" is unanalysable, but that "ought" (duty) is, exactly in terms of "good". Frankena observed that "ought" can't have the sort of objectivity that "good" supposedly has, and it's just irrelevant whether "good" is identical with some natural property or not.

[@KaneB]

I suppose it's a challenge for everybody, but non-naturalists can just postulate that facts about what we ought to do are non-natural. The non-natural moral properties provide desire-independent reasons for action, or whatever. I do think there are serious problems for non-naturalism, to be clear. But in my experience, non-naturalists recognize that our metaethics needs to capture the normativity/prescriptivity/authority of morality, whereas naturalists tend to be dismissive of this (I'm speaking in very general terms here, obviously). Perhaps postulating non-natural properties doesn't really solve the problem, but they recognize that there is a problem.

[@orelazarevic2796]

@@KaneB I understand, maybe I just have a strong intuition that adding specific non-natural duty-facts doesn't solve anything, so far as those are *based* on non-natural value-facts. The problem you highlighted is general: it's true that not keeping your promises is bad, which is in virtue of (or identical to) whatever facts; how does that constitute normativity, ie. a duty that I accord my will to that maxim (going a little Kantian here for fun)? The latter has to do with my motivations, not some indipendent facts. The only realist solution that I know here really is Kantian autonomous pure reason (not funny here).

[@FactitionalistNetwork]

6:25 If you go on to say that it is acceptable to inflict death to serve some life then there are obviously some missing premises in the original argument. The belief was never truly simply that "life is good, death is bad" as apparently some lives are being devalued and their deaths are being deemed "good" so this hypothetical interlocutor is incoherent.

[@FactitionalistNetwork]

8:54 in practice, it is almost impossible to maximize your own pleasure with total disregard for the pleasure of others. If we apply this model comprehensively instead of just an off-the-cuff quasi consideration of it's implications, it's easy to see how this model provides us with the compulsory factor: do unto others as you WILL have them do unto you. As it were

[@blakaligula3745]

cool video!

[@tartarus1478]

it looks like it would be helpful to define goodness here. So if we ever get to the point where pleasure is valuable maybe that doesn’t entail that it’s good but if we ever get to the point where pleasure is good then I do think we’ve achieved moral realism because what we mean by good is most likely going to be defined as something we ought do. I’m not a naturalist but this seems more like a critique of reductive naturalism than just naturalism.

[@KaneB]

I don't think this avoids the problem. The difficulty arises because the value underdetermines the ought -- given that some natural property X is good, there are many ways we could act with respect to X: honour X, promote X, maximize X for myself, maximize X for everybody, etc. The value in itself doesn't tell you what you ought to do. Saying that "good" is defined as "what we ought to do" isn't going to help here. Or at least, if we do accept that definition of good, then we're going to have a lot more trouble naturalizing goodness, because now we'll need to figure out how to naturalize the "ought". I guess this is what you suggest when you say that we might get to the claim that "pleasure is valuable" without "pleasure is good".

[@tartarus1478]

@@KaneB as I said, I’m not a naturalist and I don’t think goodness can be reduced to natural terms so I certainly see that this would be a criticism of reductive sense of naturalism, I would just be interested in hearing any definition of goodness that isn’t going to contain the normative duty. I could see us saying “x is valuable” and that not containing a normative duty to do x because potentially the term “valuable” is distinguishable from “goodness” . Like I might find stealing from my neighbor valuable but that wouldn’t make it good but if it were good but we don’t have any duty to do it then what do we mean when we say it’s good?

[@WackyConundrum]

Please make a video about criticisms of naturalistic fallacy. Some authors who made such criticisms are: William Frankena, 1939. A.N. Prior, 1952. John Searle, 1969. Julio Cabrera, 2007. There are some good criticisms of it. They may not be definitive, but the defenders of the naturalistic fallacy have to respond to them, it seems.

[@KaneB]

Pretty sure I have actually talked about this in my metaethics series.

[@Ansatz66]

The Is-Ought gap or the Value-Ought gap are really a matter of semantics. These gaps are perfectly valid concerns if we treat Is and Ought as unassigned symbols. We cannot validly infer P(x) from Q(x) in first order logic, but logical symbols don't always exist purely as symbols. The reason we use logic is because we want to assign symbols to particular meanings so that P and Q can stand in place of what we're really trying to reason about. If P and Q happen to be assigned to the same meaning, then the gap between them isn't real. Or if there is some underlying connection between the meaning of P and the meaning of Q so that it is possible to express the meaning of P using some elaborate logical formula involving Q, then again the door is open to the possibility of bridging the gap. So if we're serious about about whether the Value-Ought gap can be bridged, we've need to examine how these symbols are assigned. What exactly are Ought statements talking about? If we say that "You ought to do X" means "X is good" or "Doing X would make something good" then we've found that the gap was not real and the semantics of these symbols of oughts and values are actually closely tied together. 10:13 "Moral theories that tell us what we ought to do, they involve this kind of authoritative prescriptivity. Moral theories impose constraints on actions or they give us categorical reasons for actions. Even if I desire to own slaves, I ought not to do it. ... That's the case regardless of what my desires are. The moral fact imposes this desire-independent reason for action upon me. .. How can that be a natural property?" Nature is always imposing constraints upon our actions. It is a natural property that we cannot walk through walls, nor survive without air, nor fly under our own power. In the case of moral constraints, the concern is about the natural consequences of our actions. Imagine the world simplified into an array of upright dominoes arranged so that they will knock each other over if they fall. We can choose which dominoes will will knock over, but nature determines what happens to the other dominoes as a result of our choices. We choose what we do, but we don't get to choose what comes next; that is the authority that nature has over our actions. For example we might shoot someone with a strong desire for shooting this person to be a good thing, but it is nature that authoritatively determines that the person will die from being shot regardless of our desires.

[@KaneB]

If I don't care whether the person dies, or if my goal is literally that the person dies, in what way is the fact that they will die imposing a constraint on my action? The analogy to other types of constraints, e.g. constraints imposed by physical or biological laws, seems to me only to illustrate the problem. Of course we can talk about natural properties imposing constraints where they literally prevent certain actions from taking place. Moral constraints aren't like that. They don't prevent actions from taking place; they tell us what should not or ought not to take place. Where in nature is the "should" or the "ought"?

[@Ansatz66]

@@KaneB : "Moral constraints aren't like that. They don't prevent actions from taking place; they tell us what should not or ought not to take place." The fact that moral constraints don't actually prevent actions from taking place goes to show that there is very little for a moral naturalist to explain. Regardless of being naturalist or not, moral constraints only actually constrain people who care about morality, and therefore it's a voluntary constraint based on what we care about and how much we care about it. If a person cares nothing for natural properties, there's no reason for us to expect such a person to be affected by moral constraints. If we consider why anyone ever feels actually bound by moral constraints, surely we should look to natural properties. Nature is all around us every day and nature governs our lives. In practice, natural properties are all anyone really cares about, so if moral properties are something other than natural properties, then it's only due to a correlation with natural properties that leads anyone to feel bound by moral constraints. If shooting people didn't kill people, no one would care about shooting people being immoral. "Where in nature is the 'should' or the 'ought'?" That's a bit like asking where in nature is gravity. It's practically everywhere, but it's not like an object that we can touch. When we say that you ought to do X, we mean that doing X will produce the good kind of natural properties, like health and happiness. The "ought" in nature is found in the arrangement of natural materials and natural laws that cause X to lead to those natural properties. Just like nature leads a row of dominoes to fall in a particular way, nature has rules about what actions will lead to what outcomes, and that's how we distinguish what we ought do from what we ought not do. Among those who care about natural properties, this is quite a powerful constraint being imposed by nature. The ought of not shooting people is a combination of the momentum of a bullet and the natural effect the impact of the bullet would have upon the person's body, and the vast web of natural effects that spread through society from the person's death.

[@KaneB]

@@Ansatz66 >> The fact that moral constraints don't actually prevent actions from taking place goes to show that there is very little for a moral naturalist to explain Well, they don't have to explain how exactly moral properties prevent actions from taking place, in the way that we might request an explanation for why e.g. humans cannot survive without air. But that's not what is anybody is requesting an explanation of. The question is how, even supposing that values are natural properties, you're getting to any claim about what we ought to do, and more broadly, how you're capturing the normativity/prescriptivity of morality. Your position strikes me as simply dismissing this problem. Which is perhaps a plausible response -- I like conceptual engineering as an approach to philosophical problems, and so I'm happy to explore reforming definitions. I think the naturalist's reforming definition reforms it so much as to change the subject. It seems to completely miss the point of moral discourse. That's my impression at least.

[@Ansatz66]

@@KaneB "The question is how, even supposing that values are natural properties, you're getting to any claim about what we ought to do." Under naturalism, claims about what we ought to do are just claims about how our actions impact natural properties. This question only seems to make sense if we're using a non-naturalist interpretation for the word "ought", so it would be easier to answer if the question came with a specification of what exactly we mean by "ought". "I think the naturalist's reforming definition reforms it so much as to change the subject." I know what you mean. I was struct by the same impression when I first heard about Kant's Categorial Imperative. It's an interesting bit of logic that vaguely resembles morality in some ways, but why would anyone care what the Categorical Imperative tells us to do? It's a rule, but it's not a rule about actual morality, so it's a reforming definition that changes the subject. Real morality is all about natural properties like illness and health, life and death, poverty and prosperity, while Kant's Categorical Imperative is just a pointless rule. It seems that you feel the same way about naturalistic morality as I feel about the Categorical Imperative, but at least you probably consider naturalistic morality to be important. It may not seem to be what "morality" is really supposed to be talking about, but it's about natural properties that you can't help but care about. If you "ought" to do something according to naturalistic morality, then you're going to want to actually do it because you care about natural properties just like everyone. And if everyone abandoned the true meaning of "morality" and started using naturalistic moral semantics instead, it seems that nothing would noticeably change, since the impact of morality upon natural properties is the only reason anyone cares about morality.

[@RanchElder]

@Cosmic Lifeist Andrew Fisher's Metaethics: An Introduction is a quite good intro metaethics textbook.

[@theforcewithin369]

I think max stirner "solved" that dichotomy of the nature of morality with his individualist "egoism" lets say, morality is a concept or the reification of it in most people's minds anyway, Max Stirner's philosophy points out that the interest of the individual is ultimately inherently good and that's where the concept of morality stems from.... I'm not saying that his philosophy is perfect or my interpretation is correct or that i know everything obviously

[@KaneB]

I take Stirner to be an antirealist about morality and value in general. I don't think he would have accepted that anything is inherently good. But let's say I accept that the interest of the individual is inherently good. Well, why does that commit me to egoism? I could just as well conclude that I ought to act so as to promote the interest of everybody, because each individual's interest is inherently good for them. Again, I don't see how the claim about value entails a claim about what ought to be done.

[@theforcewithin369]

@@KaneB Cause nothing is "ought to be done" is the wrong question, the concern why people use the concept of morality is that people would act as let's say stupid, irresponsible, violent animals otherwise, but that's not in their best interest, and if somone is crazy, some may say evil.... enough to do so then there's nothing to argue either, he wouldn't care about what others think is moral to begin with, so i think that's an illusory "problem" or concept, is the wrong question let's say, as Anarchists and Daoists point out in a way, "is like beating a drum in search of a fugitive" is as meaningless as asking which direction water ought to flow "only those who do not need to be controlled-i.e., those already trying to live moral lives-feel any obligation to obey the controllers. Meanwhile, those who pose a real threat to peaceful society feel no moral obligation to obey any "authority" anyway. Larken Rose, The Most Dangerous Superstition

[@jackurmstonbeaumont6134]

Is saying that 'action x is right' equivalent to saying that the person who acts in x manner is behaving as he ought to do? If that is the case then could you not simply naturalise ought claims through a utilitarian definition of rightness, i.e. rightness is just the maximisation of value/pleasure. Or to make a slightly different point, to say an action is right is not equivalent to saying that you ought to act accordingly, but there is a conceptual link between the two statements.

[@martinbennett2228]

Are conditionals so troublesome. Let's say your car is being serviced and the garagist finds the brake pads have worn thin, then we would say he ought to replace them, it is simply what you expect given the garagist' role. Similarly seeing the doctor, you might have a bacterial infection so, so the doctor ought to prescribe antibiotics. These are 'oughts' derived from observable facts.

[@manonthestars]

Apologies if this is a simplistic question, what is anti-realist's view on reason. Is there a objective standard of rationality and irrationality, good reason or bad reason. is it merely personal preference to want to be reasonable or an obligation somehow to seek reasonableness or truth or is it pragmatism or reason is a part of language and it's more about being grammatically correct. What are the objective standards of correct reasonable thought if there is one. if anti-realism is true of reality how is it understood that it's not a universal in reality an independent of minds? Apologies if these questions are simplistic or not well formulated just trying to understand anti realism / nominalism. Thanks.

[@PavelStankov]

Where do anti-realists derive their OUGHTs from rather than from ISs?

[@micell826]

Would anti realists say morality exists, but in a different sense than how realists understand it? Or would anti realists say morality does not exist period?

[@KaneB]

It depends on the antirealist, and on what it means to say that "morality exists". Noncognitivists think that moral judgments are not beliefs, but expressions of emotional dispositions or attitudes of approval/disapproval -- so that "slavery is wrong" just means something like "boo to slavery!" Well, emotions and attitudes exist. So in that sense, morality exists. Constructivists and relativists think that moral judgments are beliefs, that some of these beliefs are true, but the truth is in some sense constructed by human values and practices. They might say that "slavery is wrong" is true because it is contrary to the values of our society. Again, human values and practices exist. Error theorists think that moral judgments are all false. But even on this view, morality might be viewed as a useful tool for regulating behaviour. Morality exists in the sense that most humans engage in moral discourse, and can use this to influence how other people act. But the moral properties described by moral judgments do not exist -- rightness and wrongness, goodness and badness, do not exist.

[@HeyHeyHarmonicaLuke]

You give the is/ought gap: "Descriptions of how things are don't entail prescriptions of how things ought to be." -- I've heard this phrased that if there's an ought in the conclusion, there better be an ought in the premises or you've got an invalid argument. It's just occurred to me that this is a general or universal method, that we apply to arguments of any content. If there's a rock in the conclusion, there better be a rock mentioned in the premises or you've got an invalid argument. Why isn't there an 'is/rock gap'? Where have I gone wrong? Why can't I now say: Descriptions of how things are don't entail descriptions of rocks.

[@HeyHeyHarmonicaLuke]

​@@i.101 If there's an ought in the conclusions but not the premises, an argument must be invalid. Generalizing that, I replace the 'ought' with X, and it should be able to apply to non-oughts. Indeed it does, if there's anything in the conclusion that isn't in the premises, an argument is invalid. So it works the same for rocks as for oughts. There's nothing special about oughts here, you can replace it with anything and the argument fails for the same reason. *"Key word there is a rock and their ought to be a rock mean two different things."* -- Likewise a rock and a goose are two different things, and if you only had geese in the premises but a rock in the conclusion, you're looking at an invalid argument. That's the core of the problem here, two different things in the premises vs. in the conclusion. The conclusion not being represented in the premises. It's really got nothing to do with subjectivity and objectivity, the is/ought gap is just one manifestation of a much broader way arguments can go wrong. It makes me wonder why it's so famous, not because it's an issue unique to oughts, probably just because it's a common mistake to make.

[@HeyHeyHarmonicaLuke]

@@i.101 [part2] oh oh, it's exactly like how the God of the Gaps fallacy is just one instantiation of the argument from ignorance fallacy. There's nothing special about the context being related to God, it's just given that name because it's a very common argument from ignorance fallacy to make :)

[@jraelien5798]

You seem to be studiously ignoring some very obvious facts. Human interaction naturally brings into existemce new dynamics. These dynamics create morals.

[@jesselee34]

Moral values are just heuristics about what actions tend to have the consequences that agents like. What agents like, is subjective, but the set of actions that tend to have the consequences that get them what they like are not. These are just environmental facts. From this point of view, what one "ought" do, just means, the set of actions that tend to get agents what they like. There's a lot that can be asked about how this model would produce morals that look anything like what we would recognize as moral values of course. But what cannot be said of it, is that there is some value/ought, or description vs prescription, or is/ought gap. There are just facts about what will or wont work. Until an interlocutor is willing to entertain this simplifying assumption, the conversation cannot progress.

[@KaneB]

Nobody denies that there are facts about the best way to achieve particular goals. If that's all moral naturalism amounts to, then it seems pretty trivial to me.

[@jesselee34]

@@KaneB I haven't found that the ways in which metaethics is classically organized into points of view like realism and ant-realism to be particularly helpful. The basic hypothesis that I'm drawing from, as best as I know, isn't found in literature on moral naturalism, but from game theory. I found a more eloquently stated excerpt in the article on game theory in the Stanford Encyclopedia which paraphrases Edna Ullmann-Margalit. "morality can be understood as a system of norms that enable agents to coordinate their actions in order to achieve mutually advantageous outcomes in situations where the pursuit of self-interest would normally prevent this..." For what it's worth, I think the basic simplifying assumption is quite trivial.