There is no mutually exclusive ‘is – ought’ distinction. The only mutually exclusive alternative to ‘is’ is ‘is not’. This means that ‘ought’ either needs to find a comfortable home in the realm of ‘is’, or needs to be tossed into the realm of ‘is not’.
A person comes to me and says, “Alonzo, you ought to do X.”
I answer, “Prove it.”
That person then says, “Well, as you know, an ‘ought’ statement cannot be derived from any set of ‘is’ statements . . . .”
“You can stop right there,” I say. “We’re done. You have just told me that your ‘ought’ statement is a work of fiction – an artifact of the realm of make-believe. If your claim that I ought to do X is false, then why are you telling me I ought to do X?”
It doesn’t seem very sensible to call a claim that someone “ought” to do something “false” if you’re denying that an “ought” claim could ever be meaningful in the first place.
Anyway, it’s a very annoying argument. It seems an awful lot like saying “You can’t prove there’s a such thing as value, therefore I refuse to take your money.”
I’d be tempted to respond by hitting him with a stick until he conceded that stopping getting hit by a stick was a sufficient motivation to do X.
It doesn’t seem very sensible to call a claim that someone “ought” to do something “false” if you’re denying that an “ought” claim could ever be meaningful in the first place.
I think you misinterpreted the quote; Alonzo Fyfe is criticizing ethical non-naturalism (the claim that moral facts are not reducible to facts about the world), not endorsing it.
You’re right that I misinterpreted it, but from reading the essay, it seems less like a substantive argument to me than dicking around with semantics. The whole point could have been made much more succinctly with a “taboo ‘ought.’”
Any argument that entails responding to “you ought to do X” with “prove it” is awfully unlikely to convince your interlocutor; it’s rude and will only set them on edge.
If you’re trying to win points for succinctness, including by reference the Sequences is probably not a good plan. That’s the sin of hidden complexity.
Assuming that your audience isn’t familiar with the sequences and proceeds to go read the article, yes, that’s not succinct. But the audience probably already has a cached idea of disagreements being semantic conflicts, so while he’s not literally in a position to get the same idea across in two words, it could probably be compressed down at least as far as
“When I say that I ‘ought’ to do something, I mean that it’s in accordance with my own innate desires and values as a human. My values and desires are real ‘is’ facts about the universe with a physical basis, and so ‘ought’ facts can be neatly derived from ‘is’ facts. This is as useful a definition of ‘ought’ as you’re likely to get, and a definition that divorces normative facts from positive ones, saying that you cannot derive an ‘ought’ from an ‘is’ doesn’t offer any practical advantage.”
My opponent answers, “Yes, but you still can’t get from an ‘is’ to an ‘ought’. You can’t get from, ‘people generally have many and strong reasons for action that exist to condemn those who do not do X’ to ‘I ought to do X’. How do you justify that one final step?”
I would tell my opponent, “I have no need for that ‘last final step’ that you’re talking about. If I can demonstrate that people generally have many and strong reasons for action that exist to condemn those who would not do X. That’s all I need to do. Why would I want to go further? Why would I want to carry my ‘ought’ statement into your realm of fiction and make-believe?”
It seems like Fyfe is saying “‘Everyone else is doing it’ is a reason for me to do the same.” Does that seem right?
Just looking at what you quote, it seems to me rather that he’s saying that once I can demonstrate that others have sufficient reason for doing X, I have consequently demonstrated that sufficient reasons for doing X exist, and that was all I needed to do as far as ethics was concerned.
In other words, that ethics is about determining reasons for action, full stop.
Which I agree with, though I find Fyfe’s presentation style here tendentious.
(Edit: I would also say that I do think going further is useful. Specifically, ”...further, those reasons apply to me just as well as those other people, and therefore I ought to do X” or ”...however, those reasons don’t apply to me, and therefore it is not the case that I ought to do X”)
-- Alonzo Fyfe
It doesn’t seem very sensible to call a claim that someone “ought” to do something “false” if you’re denying that an “ought” claim could ever be meaningful in the first place.
Anyway, it’s a very annoying argument. It seems an awful lot like saying “You can’t prove there’s a such thing as value, therefore I refuse to take your money.”
I’d be tempted to respond by hitting him with a stick until he conceded that stopping getting hit by a stick was a sufficient motivation to do X.
I think you misinterpreted the quote; Alonzo Fyfe is criticizing ethical non-naturalism (the claim that moral facts are not reducible to facts about the world), not endorsing it.
You’re right that I misinterpreted it, but from reading the essay, it seems less like a substantive argument to me than dicking around with semantics. The whole point could have been made much more succinctly with a “taboo ‘ought.’”
Any argument that entails responding to “you ought to do X” with “prove it” is awfully unlikely to convince your interlocutor; it’s rude and will only set them on edge.
“Taboo X” is a LessWrong-ism...
It is, but Less Wrong didn’t invent the idea of recognizing arguments as conflicts of semantics.
If you’re trying to win points for succinctness, including by reference the Sequences is probably not a good plan. That’s the sin of hidden complexity.
Assuming that your audience isn’t familiar with the sequences and proceeds to go read the article, yes, that’s not succinct. But the audience probably already has a cached idea of disagreements being semantic conflicts, so while he’s not literally in a position to get the same idea across in two words, it could probably be compressed down at least as far as
“When I say that I ‘ought’ to do something, I mean that it’s in accordance with my own innate desires and values as a human. My values and desires are real ‘is’ facts about the universe with a physical basis, and so ‘ought’ facts can be neatly derived from ‘is’ facts. This is as useful a definition of ‘ought’ as you’re likely to get, and a definition that divorces normative facts from positive ones, saying that you cannot derive an ‘ought’ from an ‘is’ doesn’t offer any practical advantage.”
Quote from later in the post.
It seems like Fyfe is saying “‘Everyone else is doing it’ is a reason for me to do the same.” Does that seem right?
Just looking at what you quote, it seems to me rather that he’s saying that once I can demonstrate that others have sufficient reason for doing X, I have consequently demonstrated that sufficient reasons for doing X exist, and that was all I needed to do as far as ethics was concerned.
In other words, that ethics is about determining reasons for action, full stop.
Which I agree with, though I find Fyfe’s presentation style here tendentious.
(Edit: I would also say that I do think going further is useful. Specifically, ”...further, those reasons apply to me just as well as those other people, and therefore I ought to do X” or ”...however, those reasons don’t apply to me, and therefore it is not the case that I ought to do X”)