As for the is-ought problem, if we accept that “ought” is just a matter of calculations in our brain returning an output
But we shouldnt accept that, because we can miscalculate an “ought” or antyhing else. The is-ought problem is the problem of correctly inferring an ought from a tractable amount of “is’s”.
(and reject that it’s a matter of e.g. our brain receiving supernatural instruction from some non-physical soul), then the “ought” is describable in terms of the world-that-is, because every algorithm in our brain is describable in terms of the world-that-is.
It perhaps might be one day given sufficiently advanced brain scanning, but we don’t have that now, so we
still have an is-ought gap.
It’s not a matter of “cramming” an entire world-state into your brain—any approximation that your brain is making, including any self-identified deficiency in the ability to make a moral evaluation in any particular situation, are also encoded in your brain—your current brain, not some hypothetical superbrain.
The is-ought problem is epistemic. Being told that I have an epistemically inaccessible black box in my head that calculates oughts still doesn’t lead to a situation where oughts can be consciously undestood as correct entailments of is’s.
because we can miscalculate an “ought” or anything else.
One way to miscalculate an “ought” is the same way that we can miscalculate an “is”—e.g. lack of information, erroneous knowledge, false understanding of how to weigh data, etc.
And also, because people aren’t perfectly self-aware, we can mistake mere habits or strongly-held preferences to be the outputs of our moral algorithm—same way that e.g. a synaesthete might perceive the number 8 to be colored blue, even though there’s no “blue” light frequency striking the optical nerve. But that sort of thing doesn’t seem as a very deep philosophical problem to me.
We can correct miscalculations where we have an conscious epistemic grasp of how the calculation should work. If morality is a neural black box, we have no such grasp. Such a neural black box cannot be used to plug the is-ought gap, because it does not distinguish correct calculations from miscalculations.
But we shouldnt accept that, because we can miscalculate an “ought” or antyhing else. The is-ought problem is the problem of correctly inferring an ought from a tractable amount of “is’s”.
It perhaps might be one day given sufficiently advanced brain scanning, but we don’t have that now, so we still have an is-ought gap.
The is-ought problem is epistemic. Being told that I have an epistemically inaccessible black box in my head that calculates oughts still doesn’t lead to a situation where oughts can be consciously undestood as correct entailments of is’s.
One way to miscalculate an “ought” is the same way that we can miscalculate an “is”—e.g. lack of information, erroneous knowledge, false understanding of how to weigh data, etc.
And also, because people aren’t perfectly self-aware, we can mistake mere habits or strongly-held preferences to be the outputs of our moral algorithm—same way that e.g. a synaesthete might perceive the number 8 to be colored blue, even though there’s no “blue” light frequency striking the optical nerve. But that sort of thing doesn’t seem as a very deep philosophical problem to me.
We can correct miscalculations where we have an conscious epistemic grasp of how the calculation should work. If morality is a neural black box, we have no such grasp. Such a neural black box cannot be used to plug the is-ought gap, because it does not distinguish correct calculations from miscalculations.