https://www.reddit.com/r/askphilosophy/comments/1op3o1/what_are_the_usual_responses_to_the_isought/
created by Manzikert on 18/10/2013 at 04:51 UTC
9 upvotes, 4 top-level comments (showing 4)
So, I would identify myself as a utilitarian, mostly because it seems intuitively and obviously right, but nonetheless, I can't see how you could possibly logically justify it, or any other moral positions, because I don't see a way that we could possibly arrive at what we should do empirically. This is a source of discomfort for me, both because it makes it very, very difficult to actually make any ethical arguments to someone who doesn't already accept utilitarianism, and because it feels almost like I'm fooling myself just to arrive at the conclusion that I want. How do moral realists typically approach the issue?
Comment by adrianscholl at 18/10/2013 at 06:14 UTC*
5 upvotes, 1 direct replies
The dominant modern moral naturalist argument is that moral properties, such as "goodness" and "badness", supervene on natural properties. For any given natural property that a moral property supervenes on, the natural properties "fix" the moral properties such that they will always be that specific way if the natural property is in that arrangement. (Ex. assume badness supervenes on pain. Any time a person is in pain, the supervening property "badness" will occur.) A common moral naturalist position is that goodness supervenes on the flourishing or well-being of human beings.
The argument is that we go about discovering these moral properties through moral theories much in the same way as we have scientific theories about the world that we then empirically test. If a moral theory fits with our larger network of beliefs about the world, then that coherent network justifies our moral beliefs, which satisfies the conditions for knowledge.
Assuming this supervenience and coherentist theory of knowledge, the argument is that it presumably would allow us to shift from statements about natural facts to statements about goodness. One thing that is lacking in this account is the obligation or strong "ought," but the moral naturalist argues that this is the best possible account of morality. The name for this position is Cornell realism[1], and it is advocated by the philosophers David Brink, Nicholas Sturgeon, and Richard Boyd. I admit that I personally completely disagree with Cornell realism, so my short summary is significantly less convincing than it can be. For more information you might try reading this section on Cornell realism[2].
1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornell_realism
2: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/naturalism-moral/#CorRea
3: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_rationalism
Comment by TychoCelchuuu at 18/10/2013 at 04:56 UTC
3 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Like half of metaethics is a response to the is/ought problem - if you can explain what ethics is, presumably you've jumped the gap at some point (or shown there's no gap or whatever). Since you asked about moral realists specifically, naturalists (for instance) say that some moral facts are natural facts (they're 'is' facts). See more generally this section of the SEP article on metaethics[1].
1: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/metaethics/#IsOOpeQueArg
Comment by mrfurious at 18/10/2013 at 15:46 UTC
3 upvotes, 0 direct replies
You may want to take a step back and ask why the only logical justification would be an empirical justification. It sounds like you're ok with calculating what the right thing to do would be, given the truth of the assumption that the right thing to do would be to create the greatest net happiness with your actions. So you're worried about this latter assumption, and that's a good thing to worry about, because it is probably impossible to prove (or have any evidence for whatsoever) empirically.
But that last step is also a big problem, because you're heavily relying on the assumption that, "there can't be a good argument for a position unless it's an empirical argument". And the problem with that assumption is that you're not going to be able to find a good empirical argument for *it*.
Essentially, in order to defend the reasonableness of empirical arguments, at some point you're going to need to tap in to a source of reasons/justifications that are not empirical in and of themselves. Because empirical arguments are the model of good justifications for claims about the world, we know that we're going to need to tap into the larger pool of reasons at some point. So if we're going to do it to justify our most basic assumptions about empirical knowledge, why not also do it to justify our most basic assumptions about moral theories?
Most people who get to this point are worried that the question at the end of that last paragraph will lead to intellectual anarchy and opening the Pandora's box of *un*reasonable assumptions about ethics and knowledge. But it doesn't have to be. It's still a place where careful philosophy can (and must) be done. In fact, I'd argue that it's philosophy's proper task to figure out how our basic moral and scientific assumptions are justified. Doing good work on this task is the type of philosophy that naive utilitarians like Sam Harris, for instance, seem scared or unwilling to do.
I'm not caught up on basic justifications for utilitarian assumptions, but just as an example of what I'm talking about: Kant has a system of argumentation that would qualify here that he calls giving "transcendental arguments". Transcendental arguments argue that experience wouldn't be possible without certain basic assumptions about, say, causation and/or that no universal moral theory would be possible unless it gave us categorical imperatives.
You're at a great place of questioning, though. It's really where philosophy started to really matter to me. It gets really exciting after this!
Comment by gnomicarchitecture at 18/10/2013 at 16:22 UTC*
1 upvotes, 2 direct replies
Here's a classic response to the is-ought problem (or rather, the most popular argument for it, Hume's argument from the is-ought gap). It's not contemporary, but you may be swayed by it:
Suppose the is-ought problem exists. That means it's impossible to validly go from non-normative premises to a normative conclusion. Now consider the following argument:
1. Either tea-drinking is common in England or all New Zealanders ought to be shot.
2. Tea drinking is not common in England.
3. So all New Zealanders ought to be shot. (From 1 and 2).
Now suppose this argument is unsound on the grounds that premise 2 is false. Then consider the following argument:
1. Tea Drinking is common in England.
2. Therefore either tea drinking is common in England or all New Zealanders ought to be shot (from 1).
Both of these arguments are deductively valid, but is the disjunction in the first argument, that is, the statement that either tea drinking is common in england or all new zealanders ought to be shot, normative or non-normative? If it is normative then argument (2) is an argument which validly goes from non-normative premises to a normative conclusion. If it is not normative then argument (1) validly goes from non-normative premises to a normative conclusion. No matter what, it is quite possible to go from non-normative premises to a normative conclusion validly, ergo the is-ought problem does not exist.