Interesting ideas and arguments, thanks! Does LW have a tagging system? It would be cool to see all the posts tagged “philosophy” and see how much of it is new philosophy vs. reinventing something in the literature. Ideally we’d have a mix of both kinds.
I don’t agree with your thesis, btw. I haven’t thought that carefully about it yet, but hot take: I feel like we should distinguish between the technical content of a claim and the conversational implications it almost always carries; perhaps is-claims almost always carry normative implications but nevertheless their technical content is strictly non-normative.
Also, if you are right, then I think the conclusion shouldn’t be that the distinction is useless but rather that there are two importantly different kinds of ought-claims, because from past experience the is-ought distinction has proved useful and I don’t think what you’ve said here shows that I was making a mistake when I used it in the past.
Interesting ideas and arguments, thanks! Does LW have a tagging system? It would be cool to see all the posts tagged “philosophy” and see how much of it is new philosophy vs. reinventing something in the literature. Ideally we’d have a mix of both kinds.
I don’t agree with your thesis, btw. I haven’t thought that carefully about it yet, but hot take: I feel like we should distinguish between the technical content of a claim and the conversational implications it almost always carries; perhaps is-claims almost always carry normative implications but nevertheless their technical content is strictly non-normative.
Also, if you are right, then I think the conclusion shouldn’t be that the distinction is useless but rather that there are two importantly different kinds of ought-claims, because from past experience the is-ought distinction has proved useful and I don’t think what you’ve said here shows that I was making a mistake when I used it in the past.
I agree and don’t think I implied otherwise? I said “is requires ought” not “is is ought”.
Ah, oops, yeah I should have read more closely!