Is it possible to derive an "ought" statement from an "is" statement?

I love the armchair philosopher trope. Plato thought that it had to be a throne instead.

Take question

"is X good?" X can be an action, an ideology, etc. & we mean morally good.

Is the question meaningful? Ie, is it open

Now take "is good good?"

Is it meaningful? No, because good is by definition good. It is a closed question.

So how can goodness ever be an intrinsic property of any X value? Can a question be both open and closed?

Is the idea of "ought" even coherent in the first place?

Yes. What something is, determines what it ought to do.

you ought to not be lazy with your critiques of well studied concepts of philosophy yet here we are

I don't think Harris tries to derive and ought from an is, and his argument doesn't necessitate that we do so. Conscious creatures are valuers. It is just a fact that we value wellbeing and find suffering to have negative value. Starting with these value "ought" claims, we can then start asking how do we get what we value? We can even ask what ought we to value (instrumentally) to get what we value. This is deriving an ought from an ought, which is perfectly acceptable logically.

The problem that I think Harris tries to address in his writing is that people seem to misunderstand the is/ought distinction. They seem to think that it is the end of moral philosophy, and necessarily leads to noncognitivism. Since we it is a fact that we value certain things (i.e. we start with oughts), this is not true.

Why do we ought to care for things positively valued rather than negative? Thats how positively and negatively are defined? Cause thats circular reasoning

This is true. However, is not all existence based on underlying existence and potential?
I'd say that we need not recognize or value truth or good if it is a scam.
Where is it all founded on? What has the potential to spawn authentic experiences and stars; race of beings that shapes planets and dances with time? Pretends to not do anything, or takes responsibility.

Isn’t this just the whole moral relativism he is against?

Reasoning has nothing to do with it. You can know by direct experience that states of wellbeing are valuable and states of suffering have negative value. If you break your legs, or experience some other form of pain, nobody is think to themselves "oh that doesn't matter because there's no reason I ought to value freedom from suffering". We just do value freedom from suffering, and can't help but do otherwise. No amount of wordplay from G.E. Moore can change that.

I don't see how it would be. If there are right and wrong ways to be happy and free from suffering, they should apply to all conscious creatures across the board.

This is an interesting problem in itself but not directly relevant to the is/ought problem

In this post you talk about how we learn that yes good things and valuable things are where we ought to be. We know what we ought to do. But can we base that on reasoning purely from "is" statements? No of course not. This does not mean that we dont know what we ought to, it just means there is another source of knowledge

MacIntyre wrecked this fat fuck

What about Hume's law?!!!

Ah, the man of straw. Noice.
I can do that too: The perceivable universe by itself exists much beyond the Earth. Therefore, the universe is much bigger than any conceivable human experience. So it is highly unlikely than on the dawn of human civilization, in some backwater planet in some random corner of a galaxy would hold the knowledge of the existence of an absolute "truthiness" (God did it). So since it "is" unlikely it "ought" to not be true. Of course, this is fallacious just because it might be unlikely doesn't mean it might not be true. But it goes both ways; saying that I "am" so I "ought" to be held in some way to a higher power (God) is also a fallacious statement. Just because your individual conscience exist doesn't necessarily mean there it does so on the will of some higher being. The existence or nonexistence of God is something that is impossible to prove, cause we can't derive it from the existence of something else. The only one that can prove God is God himself.

Not really. People have completely overblown what Hume was on about when he gave us the is, ought problem. MacIntyre critiques the overblown view people have taken of Hume's idea, and even then only in regards to a single instance of it, not all instances.

did plato predict the iphone?

>The perceivable universe by itself exists much beyond the Earth. Therefore, the universe is much bigger than any conceivable human experience
How do you know? Do rocks dream bigger? If fire burns us here, does it not do so near sun?

>conceivable human experience
How do you measure its limits? They are your limits, arent they?

>saying that I "am" so I "ought" to be held in some way to a higher power (God) is also a fallacious statement.
Really? What if I am God.

> "i am" implies god

How

Yes.

We are projections of the source. Whatever that may be, it led to everything. Including me and my experiences.
Now, compare 'me and my experiences' with everything else. But everything else is my experiences... Including but not limited to physics and neuroscience.

Knowledge of physics and neuroscience *

But how am i not my own experience?

How is God not 'the act of existence?'

I meant it in a literal sense. As in literally going everywhere in the universe and seeing all that there is to be seen. It was mainly to exemplify how tiny humanity is in respect to the "all," and that therefore being able to make definitive statements about it from just knowing a fraction seems unlikely.

I suppose God could say it, but then again it seems rather unlikely that God would spend anytime arguing in Veeky Forums of all places. Of course, it doesn't mean it can't happen but I would be really skeptical.

>I meant it in a literal sense. As in literally going everywhere in the universe and seeing all that there is to be seen
How can you say you love her if you can't even eat her poop?
How can a minecraft player be more than the endless world around his character?

>I suppose God could say it, but then again it seems rather unlikely that God would spend anytime arguing in Veeky Forums of all places. Of course, it doesn't mean it can't happen but I would be really skeptical.
When God made wine He made Good wine and Bad wine. He drank both.
Why? Wine is for drinking, and when you are drunk, drinking good wine is a waste. Or in other words, bad wine gets glorified in the scenario.

If the source for everything gives rise to inequality, would it not be related to all levels of the existence spectrum?

I'm not a trained philosopher and I'm not sure why the following statement

>X is good
>therefore
>we ought to promote X in the world

is not an example of an ought derived from an is.

I understand that "good" is something that can be debated, but that's simply invalidating the is statement, not demonstrating that given an existing is, an ought cannot be derived from it.

That's a tautology because good is defined as "something there ought to be more of".

why did you try to apply Moore's open question argument here?

>If the source for everything gives rise to inequality, would it not be related to all levels of the existence spectrum?

If God is literally related to everything his existence is a vacuous point. If with God is the bad and God is the good, then there might as well just be bad and good. His existence becomes meaningless.

How do you know that anything exists outside of the observable universe?

Can existence be separated from experience?

It is just a really a bad example I made up honestly. Anyway, if there is anything beyond the observable universe we would notice by its effects on it. Gravity pulls and such, idunno. I'm pretty sure it has been quantified somewhere.

>Can existence be separated from experience?

That is a question that deserves its own thread.
Personally, I don't think so. Existence of anything but the self is a judgement that can only made on the base of our perceivable reality. Anything we can't perceive we can make some kind of educated guess at its existence, but nothing definite.

Smh desu senpai

>If with God is the bad and God is the good
That's not what I said. God produces the full spectrum of an idea. However, He is wholly good.
God works like that. Why? I don't really know, but it gives a sense of totality. Achieving something becomes worthwhile now that there is some contrast. God is, however, not passive or dead. If God did not actively interact with His creation, we could drop God off the table.
This is not so, however. I don't have much beyond personal experience (what is beyond that, anyway?) to tell you how it is, or seems to be. God is working on all men. When your reason tells you to do x, and your animal instinct tells you to do x, God would be the one to point out what should be done.
Ie. Moral dilemma where you put yourself at risk in order to do the right thing, despite fear and risk.
I think that the sincerity and authenticity of reality and ourselves could only be irrational and irrelevant if we abandoned God.

These analytical word games are a wank around and achieve nothing

>wanking achives nothing

Hmm. I suppose in the end you are seeing something I don't. God working on all men is something I don't see. I don't see this invisible hand of direction, actively acting upon the world whilst being independent from it.

>I think that the sincerity and authenticity of reality and ourselves could only be irrational and irrelevant if we abandoned God.

I don't think irrational or irrelevant existence is necessarily a bad thing to be honest. But eh, that doesn't prevent me from entertaining the thought of my existence.

>this thread