https://www.reddit.com/r/askphilosophy/comments/d33f57/problems_with_the_isought_fallacy/
created by DieFreien on 12/09/2019 at 05:41 UTC*
3 upvotes, 5 top-level comments (showing 5)
Can someone enlighten me as to the strongest reasons for rejecting-- or counters to contesting-- this fallacy when debating ethics and morality? I find every ethical system is subsumed into it.
Comment by narwhaladventure at 12/09/2019 at 06:23 UTC*
6 upvotes, 1 direct replies
The is/ought fallacy is the name of a problem that occurs when constructing arguments, namely, that you can't derive normative conclusions ("oughts") from exclusively non-normative premises. Or conversely, that you need at least some normative content in your premises in order to justify a normative conclusion. This is not very controversial. It's just a function of the way arguments work and how we define validity. Most ethical systems do not face this problem, because they include normative content in their basic assumptions or premises. Utilitarians, for example, think that maximizing utility is good. That's a normative claim. Once you have that, then you can argue that certain choices or actions do or do not maximize utility and are therefore good or bad. No problem with that. There are lots of other problems with utilitarianism, but this isn't one of them.
The people this problem really causes issues for are those who want to ground normative claims on exclusively empirical/scientific/naturalistic accounts of the world. How can empirical *descriptions* of the world justify *normative* conclusions? One answer: some moral naturalists argue that there are moral facts in the universe that are similar to or reducible to physical facts, and that they can be discovered through standard empirical/naturalistic methods. This doesn't violate the rule that you can't derive an ought from an is, it just says that there are oughts right alongside what is, and we can know those oughts using empirical/naturalistic methods.
Anyway, check out this article from the SEP on Moral Naturalism, especially section 1.2 "Why Be a Moral Naturalist": https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/naturalism-moral/[1] That article goes over a lot of key ideas in the debate between moral naturalists and non-naturalists, so hopefully something in there will be helpful for you.
1: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/naturalism-moral/
Another group that faces this problem are people who want to base ethics on evolutionary biology: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/morality-biology/[2] You might find section 3 interesting, on "Prescriptive and Corrective Evolutionary Ethics"
2: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/morality-biology/
Comment by TychoCelchuuu at 12/09/2019 at 06:27 UTC
5 upvotes, 0 direct replies
https://www.reddit.com/r/askphilosophy/comments/2tkq32/responses_to_humes_guillotine/
http://www.reddit.com/r/askphilosophy/comments/2sivxx/isought_problem/
http://www.reddit.com/r/askphilosophy/comments/1op3o1/what_are_the_usual_responses_to_the_isought/
https://www.reddit.com/r/askphilosophy/comments/4uc335/isought_problem_responses/
https://www.reddit.com/r/askphilosophy/comments/czbb3c/has_there_been_an_indepth_rebuttal_to_humes/
Comment by [deleted] at 12/09/2019 at 06:53 UTC
2 upvotes, 3 direct replies
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Comment by DrTenmaz at 12/09/2019 at 11:18 UTC
1 upvotes, 1 direct replies
I think one way we can *get around* the problem is to accept that it only applies to *deductive* moral arguments. Hume says in *A Treatise of Human Nature*:
For as this *ought*, or *ought not*, expresses some new relation or affirmation, 'tis necessary that it should be observed and explained; and at the same time that a reason should be given, for what seems altogether inconceivable, how this new relation can be a deduction from others, which are entirely different from it.
As u/narwhaladventure says, it's really just a matter of how arguments work and how we define validity. As a result, even though we cannot *derive* an ought from an is, there doesn't seem to be anything obviously problematic with trying to infer an an ought from an is inductively or abductively. This is exactly the sort of move that many Moral Naturalists have made.
Comment by [deleted] at 12/09/2019 at 06:15 UTC
-1 upvotes, 2 direct replies
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