This post isn’t arguing for any particular moral point of view over another, so you’ll get no debate from me :).
Just to elaborate on the point of the post, though:
From the logical-argumentation point of view, something like the unpacking that you describe is necessary, because a moral argument has to conclude with an “ought” statement, in which “ought” appears explicitly, so the “ought” has to get introduced somewhere along the way, either in the original axioms or as a subsequent definition.
From the dialectical-argumentation point of view, this unpacking of “ought” is unnecessary, at least within the moral argument itself.
Granted, the persuader will need to know what kinds of “is” facts actually persuade you. So the persuader will have to know that “ought” means whatever it means to you. But the persuader won’t use the word “ought” in the argument, except in some non-essential and eliminable way.
It’s not like the persuader should have to say, “Do X, because doing X will bring about world W, and you assign high moral weight or utility to W.”
Instead, the persuader will just say, “Doing X will bring about world W”. That’s purely an “is” statement. Your internal process of moral evaluation does the rest. But that process has to happen inside of you. It shouldn’t—indeed, it can’t—be carried out somehow within the statements of the argument itself.
This post isn’t arguing for any particular moral point of view over another, so you’ll get no debate from me :).
Just to elaborate on the point of the post, though:
From the logical-argumentation point of view, something like the unpacking that you describe is necessary, because a moral argument has to conclude with an “ought” statement, in which “ought” appears explicitly, so the “ought” has to get introduced somewhere along the way, either in the original axioms or as a subsequent definition.
From the dialectical-argumentation point of view, this unpacking of “ought” is unnecessary, at least within the moral argument itself.
Granted, the persuader will need to know what kinds of “is” facts actually persuade you. So the persuader will have to know that “ought” means whatever it means to you. But the persuader won’t use the word “ought” in the argument, except in some non-essential and eliminable way.
It’s not like the persuader should have to say, “Do X, because doing X will bring about world W, and you assign high moral weight or utility to W.”
Instead, the persuader will just say, “Doing X will bring about world W”. That’s purely an “is” statement. Your internal process of moral evaluation does the rest. But that process has to happen inside of you. It shouldn’t—indeed, it can’t—be carried out somehow within the statements of the argument itself.