How do you derive an ought from an is?

No. No I didn't.

I don't see how an animal that simply has base instincts is in any way related to what I said.

>The moment you realize that in order to get "is", you need certain "oughts".
you mean like Hume did? the fact that we think there is causality, ought to be causaulity, and need it to do science does not mean there is causality.

When I was hungry I had food.

Now I am hungry again but I have no food.

Therefore I ought to have food.

>and need it to do science

But we don't. We don't need "causality" to do science, as quantum mechanics shows pretty well.

That's entirely based on your subjective desires though. There's no objective reason why you shouldn't starve yourself. The stars will continue burning and the planets revolving even if you're not around.

Objective ethics are nonsense.

That's not at all what Hume was talking about.

ITT: ignorant fools who have no clue what they're talking about dismiss philosophers

hahaha great fucking argument

no. just no. stop.

This is how your argument actually works

A. humans ought to find out correct information
B. the best way to find out correct information is with the scientific method
C. therefore, humans ought to practice the scientific method

Nobody would dispute that the scientific method is more effective, but it doesn't say anything in itself whether humans ought to be seeking truth. You secretly imply it, and use one is as a further statement.

Hume recognizes that, if you have a sort of axiomatic "ought", facts can help you derive further oughts, but there is always a starting point of moral thought that can't be derived from is.

TL;DR You are wrong.

>There's no objective reason why you shouldn't starve yourself
Then stop eating.

You can almost never derive an ought logically from an is... however imagine that by pressing a button, you make every conscious being suffer for eternity the most extreme pain imaginable, without any pleasure whatsoever. Since nobody would benefit from you pressing this button and everyone would suffer, it would be an objective fact that you ought not to press the button.

An irrelevant and extremely hypothetical example, but it's true.

What sort of retarded response is that? He doesn't want to. That doesn't make it objectively true that he should eat, it's his own ought.

That's not at all related to what Hume is talking about. Hume is fine with moral facts. He's not fine with ises becoming oughts.

Really what you're saying is, "we ought to reduce suffering", and that implied ought leads to the moral fact. Nothing about the arrangements of facts necessitates you push the button or not, you've injected an ought into the thought already.

Incidentally, this user is right, for all the wrong reasons. The only way to derive an Ought from an Is, is via an IF-THEN statement.

If you desire X, you ought to do Y.
If you desire A, you ought to do B.

The universe running on causality means that semi-reliable pathways to certain outcomes exist, the only problem is that the end-state people desire differs immensely.

Read Kant.

You can only get conditional oughts or hypothetical imperatives, not unconditional oughts or categorical imperatives (moral ones which Kant sought).

There is nothing which anyone OUGHT ultimately do and, in the end, they will do what they will do anyway in a deterministic universe in which one couldn't have done otherwise, so there is no room for an ought ontologically.

there are only DESCRIPTIVE facts not prescriptive ones.

There is only what is and will happen.

To act otherwise is to "strive" as an agent - but there's no real REQUIREMENT for anything.

Why would wanting to do something be a consistent reason to do anything? Why shouldn't he just starve himself, if there's no objective reason not to?

Because I have a subjective desire to live, a desire which is not part of the laws of physics and for which there's no objective reason why other humans or animals should respect or care at all. An animal's sense of self preservation concerns only the animal itself.

Subjective you moron. The universe doesn't care if you live or die and your fate is defined by the heavens.

I don't understand your definition of objective.

Are you saying God doesn't care whether you live or die? What do you mean?

All the proceeds in this world does so by the will of God. If something is a particular way, then by divine mandate it ought to be that way.

Objective means independent of the viewpoints and desires of a subject, an intrinsic property. Morality is based purely on the desires and beliefs of human beings, which are not laws of nature and you won't find them in any physics textbook. That is not objective.

This is wordplay. This is why linguistic majors dominate the philosophy field these days. Not because they claim retarded poetry like this makes them right, but because it's easy for them to recognize and explain that it is nothing but poetry.

So your definition of objective is "that which appears in physics textbooks?" And subjective is "that which doesn't appear in physics textbooks?"

The external world itself is kind of an odd example for this, as it simply IS, regardless of what physics textbooks have to say about it.

To clarify, I mean an odd example of objectivity by your definition

Stop being dense, you know what I meant. Morality is not a law of nature.

Can you explain to me why living is superior to starving to death without reference to the desires and urges of the animal in question, thus deriving an ought from an is? Can you explain why any moral position is objective without referencing the convictions of human beings at all? Can you explain why the very existence of life itself is a moral good as opposed to non-existence when the universe itself doesn't care either way?

Why do you keep asking if "the universe" cares or not?

You're not even arguing anymore. Just answer the fucking questions.
>Life exists therefore it should continue to exist
>A lifeform exists and wants to continue to exist therefore it should

These are attempts at deriving an ought from an is. Prove that you can do this in a non-subjective way.

Because he doesn't have the urge to. Not to mention, there is no single unit "you" with any single urge.

Read about sentimentalism.

Therefore we ought to use it

Hume sucks

>Really what you're saying is, "we ought to reduce suffering"

Not really. Rather what I'm saying is that suffering is in and of itself bad for the sufferer (caring about the suffering of others does not follow from that fact). Under my hypothetical situation, you can't argue that pressing the button would be beneficial for anyone and it would create an undesirable state for everyone. If oughts have nothing to with benefiting conscious beings, I don't think they even mean anything. If we change the situation so that even one conscious being would somehow benefit from the situation, we are back at subjectivity.

Yeah, but the point is that there are facts(i.e what "is") that must necessarily coincide with "ought".

Such as the fact that we have a survival instinct leads us to feel like we ought to survive.

The point I'm trying to make is that moral axioms are not separated from the physical object in which they are concerned, i.e humans.

>We should only do things we have objective reasons to do

I assume that "X ought do do Y" means "God wants X to do Y". In that case "ought" is just a special "is".

If that isn't what "ought" means, could someone explain what it does mean?

How? If an is is an is except for a single facet of it that is not how can you conclude there is an ought and not instead that the not is simply a part of what is?

With violence.

>in order to