I think Toge knows it's a word. The question is if it has a referent in reality, i.e., is it like a rainbow or like a gnome? ("gnome" is a word with a definition, but no referent)

My own answer is yes, "oughts" have referents; they are facts about the values of humans.

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Ok, so when it comes to oughts, we can't formulate an argument which runs as follows:

If X, then Y. Where X is some given fact, and Y is an 'ought.'



Ok, so the hypothetical imperative sidesteps the issue of whether or not you can derive an 'ought' from an 'is.' That means, it won't take the form above. Well, what is the form of a hypothetical imperative?

If I have desired end X, then I should employ means Y (where Y is the best known means for achieving end X).

Oh look, this fits exactly the form of what you are denying is possible. Yet here, you seem to not only be conceding that hypothetical imperatives exist, but claim that they sidestep the issue! What would that issue be?



Ok, well this seems much less immediately sympathetic than your point about being unable to derive an 'ought' from an 'is,' which at least has a longstanding tradition of skeptical argument and denial you can appeal to. So now what you've left is just a bald assertion that you can't derive desired ends. Perhaps you'd like to substantiate that claim.

This certainly seems plainly false to me. Even in the hypothetical imperative case we are deriving desired ends! For instance:

I desire to get warm, so given the resources available to me I should go out and chop some wood etc...

Well, now my chopping wood is an end to me, and can be treated with the same rules, given that I want to chop wood I should go and get an axe, etc...

Perhaps what you meant was that you can't derive desired ends without reference to some pre-existing desired end. Maybe you are right about this, but suppose there are certain ends which it is inconsistent to pursue simply on account of their incompatibility with the imperative to fulfill desire in general. It seems we are beginning to have the scaffolding necessary to produce generalized 'oughts' which are applicable, at the least, for most people most of the time.

This reminds me of 4 kyu kibitzing games who say things like "omg such a weak 8d".

I wouldn't have said it that way, but I have some sympathy for KGO's position. Historically, when a particular group of philosophers figure out what they're talking about they form an actual science (e.g., astronomy, biology, math, physics, etc) and cease being philosophers. Over time, that tends to leave people who can't figure out what they're talking about in the field of philosophy. Or, another way to say the same thing is that philosophy is the study of things we don't actually understand well enough to study...

ETA: Historically, many/most philosophers probably were ahead of their time, probably significantly ahead-- but if we compare them to the knowledge we have today, they may fall short. But that's not a fair comparison.

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Even if you're thirsty or cold you can't say that you "ought" to drink or warm yourself because that would be assuming that you ought to satisfy your desires. Since you can't derive that you ought follow your desires from any "is", you can't say that you "ought" or "should" drink if you're thirsty or warm yourself if you're cold. All you can say is that if you want to satify X desire, you must do Y. That is a hypothetical imperative and not an "ought".

Oughts are categorical imperatives and that is what the is-ought problem points out.

When Toge asks if there is such a thing as "ought", then he's obviously not asking if there exists imperatives that are conditional. That would just be silly.

EDIT: Note that by "desired ends", I did not mean ends that the agent desires. Perhaps that caused some confusion. I lack an actual term for it, but I mean ends that "ought" to happen. Of course, here we see another ought, which is why you can't derive an ought from an is because you can only say what you ought to do if you know what ought to happen and what ought to happen is not an "is". Ergo, there are no oughts.



Except famous philosophers didn't become famous because of some competetive ranking system. They became famous because of the popularity of their ideas, and if there's one thing history has thaught us, it's that the popularity of ideas are rarely correlated with intellectual quality.

Okay, but we're not talking about airport bestsellers here. If you could churn out material of a higher intellectual quality than Plato, Kant, or Wittgenstein, then people would pay attention to you and you would be hot detritus. If you can't, you should take the rhetoric down a notch.

You should judge what I say on the basis of its merit.

Also: The intellectual quality of Kant's work was rather low.

Oh, trust me. I'm judging what you say.

But here's where you're confusing me. If Toge is asking about unconditional imperatives, then they clearly can't be derived from facts, otherwise they would be conditional on those facts.

Even a categorical imperative is not unconditional. The categorical imperative is contingent on the existence of beings which form maxims.

Note: I'm discussing this in Kantian terms because that's how you seem to be deploying the concepts of hypothetical/categorical imperative.



Ok, but I gave an example of an end that "ought" to happen. What's tricky here is that you are only taking as "ought" some kind of strict unconditional "ought." But of course such an "ought" couldn't derived from a fact, otherwise it would be conditional on that fact. In this sense, claiming that you can't derive an "ought" from an "is" is pretty trivial.



1. You can only say X if you know X.
2. X is not Y.
Therefore: There are no X's.

I don't even need to point out how problematic this argument is. But let's change the conclusion to something not so strong:

1. You can only say X if you know X.
2. X is not Y.
Therefore: You can't derive X from Y.

Even this doesn't follow! I could know X because of Y even if it isn't Y. We make this kind of inference every day! Granted, for these inferences we need a connecting premise, e.g.

1. There is a loud whistling noise outside my door.
2. If there is a loud whistling noise outside my door, that means the tea is ready.
Therefore: The tea is ready.

Now, loud whistling noises are not the readiness of tea! Not at all! Yet somehow we're getting from one thing to another thing when those things aren't identical.

So what it is incumbent on the proponent of 'oughts' is to provide a premise along the lines of the second premise in this argument. It is incumbent on the denier to show why this kind of connecting premise is impossible when it comes to 'is' and 'ought' (presumably by showing that all such premises require a further 'ought' to establish). So far, it's not clear you've done so.

On the other hand, in Kantian morality such a connecting premise is posited: namely, that 'oughts' are a result of the rational intentionality inherent in agency. If you will to perform an end, you are bounded rationally to employ some means to that end. Otherwise there is a strict volitional incoherence in your willing.

This is actually remarkably close that something I (as someone who was previously aiming for a Ph.D. and academic job in philosophy) have often said. Actually, I stole it from a professor of mine, if you want more authority .

Anyway, you can think of philosophy as studying problems that we don't yet have a settled method for answering. So in a sense, philosophy attracts people who can't figure out what they're talking about.

However, the sciences themselves create lots of questions that scientists don't really know how to answer, and those attract philosophers of science (I often cite philosophy of science, not because it's "philosophy enough", in Quine's phrase, but because it's so easy to see that it is doing important work). Biologists know how to answer many questions, but they don't know how to answer certain abstract questions about what the concept of a species is. Scientists know many things, but a biologist or physicist is probably not in a good position to answer the question of whether biology reduces to physics. Philosophers don't know for sure either, but they have something to offer.

But it's obvious that unless you think human knowledge has reached a plateau where we can make no further progress on the questions that we don't yet know how to answer, some time has to be spent banging our heads against those intractable and confusing questions.

There is one reason this picture is inaccurate: by the time of Newton and Leibniz, physics had clearly figured out how to answer its questions in the relevant sense. There was a lot that Newton didn't know yet, but he was on the right track. And yet his work, like Galileo's and Einstein's, contains a lot of what we would call philosophical arguments, and they don't seem to be window dressing, as if Newton just concatenated two independent books he was working on.

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That's exactly right, and that is what the is-ought problem points out. Categorical imperatives are by definition not derived from facts.




Then it is not a categorical imperative, which makes sense, since categorical imperatives do not exist.




Exactly right once again. It's not really even a claim. It is just pointing it out. Kant's categorical imperative is false because the "ought" does not follow from his conditions.



Correct. You cannot derive from anything, except from an "is", so that makes perfect sense. "Ought" (X) cannot be derived without knowing "ought" (X), which is not an "is" (Y) and therefore, does not exist. Commonly refered to the is-ought problem.



No, you cannot derive X from Y because you cannot derive X without knowing X. You ignored the first step. Of course, it's nonsensical because "ought" is a nonsensical concept in the first place.




The readiness of the tea is an "is". "Ought" is not an "is". The whistling noise implies that the tea is ready. Nothing implies what you "ought" to do because you don't know what the conditions are: You don't know why the "is" you're trying to derive from matters. And keep in mind, I'm not saying you just can't know them. I'm saying they don't exist because "ought" cannot be derived from "is" and therefore does not exist.



I have.



Just another hypothetical imperative where "must" has been exchanged for "ought". It's not a categorical imperative. There is no reason why the rational intentionality inherent in agency "ought" to matter. It does not imply that you "ought" to do something any more than any other "is". It is not a categorical imperative. It is not an "ought".

You can define "ought" however you will, I guess, but you've lost the argument about whether you can derive categorical imperatives from an "is" and it completely trivializes Kant's work (although it was terrible to begin with). I can define "ought" as the result of my mom's opinions and go around saying I ought to do whatever my mom says, but it does not make me a great philosopher. I can define "ought" as the result of god's word, but it would make me a humongous fucktard.

That was a paraphrase of something I read somewhere, so maybe we share sources. I think a lot of what is currently philosophy will be taken over by/turn into cognitive science or AI theory in the next 30 years or so.



I agree. But I have gotten the impression that modern philosophy is often more about publishing "interesting" things than finding the right answers and dissolving the wrong questions.



I don't seem to recall anyone making that argument. Additionally, your... abrasive... approach is somewhat out of character for these forums...

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The whole thread is about whether or not you can derive an "ought" from an "is". That is the is-ought problem.

Sorry about my abrasive approach. I'm not particularily trying to be, but then again, I've never been accused of coddling people.

The way it works is that unless you take great effort not to be abrasive, you'll be abrasive. (And if you're going to be abrasive, see Helel's posts for how to at least be funny at the same time.)

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That which can be destroyed by the truth should be.
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Not really. But if you tried to define ought as "the result of god's word" what do you make of the statement "I ought to obey the dictates of this god". That is surely a well formed question in ethics.

IMHO the worst problem with Kant (or the Neo-Kantians in general) is that deontology (rights and duties) has a great deal more to say in the negative than the positive. In other words, too much glossing over the difficulty of deriving positive duties. I do not blame Kant for this (not seeing the difficulties) as the math/logic of his day (and he was officially on the math faculty) had not yet run into the problems assoicated with "assignment". But I do blame current Neo-Kantians since they should be at least somewhat aware of the issues (now over 100 years old).

To put the problem simply --- If Y has a right to Z and Y lacks Z, on what basis are you assigning the duty to make Z available to any particular X. It's not as simple as you might at first think and being able to determine that SOME X among all the X's has this duty isn't enough to pin the duty on any X. You'd need another axiom that says "you can do that" (pick any X at random).

That is nonconstructive. Perhaps we shouldn't compare pros at all either.

Surely, the worst problem with Kantianism and its derivations is that its premise is false.