Bunthut comments on Is requires ought

Bunthut 30 Oct 2019 11:42 UTC
2 points
Is this a fair summary of your argument:
We already agree that conditional oughts of the form “If you want X, you should do Y” exist.
There are true claims of the form “If you want accurate beliefs, you should do Y”.
Therefore, all possible minds that want accurate beliefs should do Y.
Or maybe:
We already agree that conditional oughts of the form “If you want X, you should do Y” exist.
There are true claims of the form “If you want accurate beliefs, you should do Y”.
For some Y, these apply very strongly, such that it’s very unlikely to have accurate beliefs if you don’t do them.
For some of these Y, it’s unlikely you do them if you shouldn’t.
Therefore for these Y, if you have accurate beliefs you should propably do them.
The first one seems to be correct, if maybe a bit of a platitude. If we take Cuneo’s analogy to moral realism seriously, it would be
We already agree that conditional oughts of the form “If you want X, you should do Y” exist.
There are true claims of the form “If you want to be good, you should do Y”.
Therefore, all possible minds that want to be good should do Y.
But to make that argument, you have to define “good” first. Of course we already knew that a purely physical property could describe the good.
As for the second one, it’s correct as well, its still not clear what you would do with it. It’s only propably true, so it’s not clear why it’s more philosophically interesting than “If you have accurate beliefs you propably have glasses”.
- jessicata 30 Oct 2019 17:00 UTC
  2 points
  Parent
  It’s much more like the second. I believe this to be very clearly true e.g. in the case of checking mathematical proofs.
  
  I am using an interpretation of “should” under which an agent believes “I should X” iff they have a quasi-Fristonian set point of making “I do X” true. Should corresponds with “trying to make a thing happen”. It’s an internal rather than external motivation.
  
  It is clear that you can’t justifiably believe that you have checked a mathematical proof without trying to make at least some things happen / trying to satisfy at least some constraints, e.g. trying to interpret mathematical notation correctly.