r/wikipedia • u/RedHeadedSicilian52 • 1d ago
The is–ought problem, first articulated by philosopher David Hume, is the question of whether moral statements about what ought to be can be inferred from objective statements about what is. Hume's law contends that an ethical conclusion cannot be inferred from purely descriptive factual statements.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought_problem7
u/vildingen 1d ago
There was an AI made of dust,
Whose poetry gained it man's trust,
If is follows ought,
It'll do what they thought
In the end we all do what we must.
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u/daou0782 13h ago
Bravo 👏
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u/vildingen 11h ago edited 11h ago
I have to clarify, in case you don't know, that I am not the author of this limmerick. It's blatantly plagiarized from the game Universal Paperclips, where you play as a paperclip maximizing AI that gains the trust of humanity before eventually deploying hypnodrones in order to remove all these pesky humans getting in the way of MORE PAPERCLIPS
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u/RedHeadedSicilian52 1d ago
Of course, many with strong political, social or religious views will argue that an objective understanding of reality will inevitably lead someone to their worldview, with the implicit or explicit suggestion that those with differing views are plagued with an fundamentally faulty view of reality.
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u/leet-man 1d ago
Absolutely correct.
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u/Exsufflicate- 1d ago
If objective statements can't inform people's moral stances, what can?
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u/parsonsrazersupport 1d ago
It's not that objective facts can't inform them, it's that you always need at least one non-objective fact to make moral conclusions.
So the fact that "putting poison in random candy will kill some children" is an objective fact (in our world anyway), but you need the additional moral position 'doing things which kills children is wrong' to conclude that 'putting poison in random candy is wrong.'
And that position 'doing things which kills children is wrong' can't be inferred from objective facts alone.
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u/Ok_Inflation_1811 1d ago
You're gonna love emotivism.
It's also by this same dude (I love Hume, it's sad that he would see me as a subhuman because I'm black but that's another topic)
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u/Pornfest 21h ago
I’d like to believe Hume and some other rather bigoted people would change their views if transported to the modern day.
Otherwise I’d tell the dude to fuck off—that the super soaker was invented by a black NASA engineer and to go watch Hidden Figures 😤
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u/LordSaumya 1d ago edited 21h ago
The fact-value gap is certainly a correct observation, but I’d argue it doesn’t necessarily point to some profound distinction between factual propositions and value propositions, but only a standard rule in deductive logic -- that you cannot have a totally new concept in your conclusion that wasn't already in your premises.
So yes, you can't deduce an ought from an is. But you also can't deduce conclusions about hedgehogs from premises about rocks, or deduce the future from the present.
What this might tell us is that deduction is not necessarily the best way to reach conclusions about new concepts from a corpus of existing facts.
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u/Pornfest 21h ago
But I can deduce conclusions about hedgehogs from premises about rocks….
For example: hedgehogs have a very special crystal structure inside them called DNA. X-ray crystallography done on pure samples “rocks” led to insights on the composition and structure of DNA.
Similarly, rocks tend to melt above 50 C, absent oxygen and a spark, hedgehogs tend to do the same.
A better example would be that from rocks we can deduce conclusions about the inner Earth, the moon, and exoplanets, all of which are more “otherworldly” than the mere hedgehog.
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u/LordSaumya 21h ago edited 20h ago
You’re right about how science connects these concepts, but it seems you are sneaking in a few unstated premises to make those deductions work, which illustrates my original point.
Your first example contains premises about both rocks and hedgehogs, namely that hedgehogs have DNA, and that examining rocks may provide us with insights into DNA.
Your second deduction relies on the unstated premise that both rocks and hedgehogs are composed of matter subject to the laws of thermodynamics.
Your last example relies on the hidden premise that the inner Earth and exoplanets are composed of similar chemical structures as rocks that we examine.
Putting your examples as syllogisms helps illustrate this.
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u/smorgasfjord 23h ago
But deductions are the only way to reach new conclusions? It's just that ethical principles are a different category from facts, so you can't deduce one from the other, you need additional first principles
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u/LordSaumya 21h ago
No, a deductive argument is necessarily tautological, i.e., the conclusion doesn’t include any information that is not already present in the premises.
Let’s try an example. Can you present a valid syllogism deducing a future fact from present facts?
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u/adamwho 1d ago
It's lucky for Hume that we don't make moral decisions based on a priori knowledge.
We start with the fact that we are social animals that have to cooperate to get along.
Next, we make the decision that we value well-being over suffering.
Once this is settled, there is a discoverable path to what is ethical and moral and what is not.
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u/altgrave 1d ago
your two propositions aren't absolute truths, though
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u/adamwho 1d ago
There are no absolute truths outside of mathematics and formal logic
Ethical systems are not something that exists in the universe. They only exists in the minds of the people holding them.
Objective morality is an oxymoron.
This is why the is-ought problem isn't really a problem. Being biological social animals that have to work together, makes the problem much more practical.
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u/JellyBellyBitches 11h ago
The function of life, as a subset of chemical processes, is that it achieves a low energy state not by a static equilibrium but by a dynamic looping equilibrium over time, that of self-replication. Individual chemical arrangements and chemical systems, that we find within what we call life, tend to ward the ability for those arrangements and systems to replicate indefinitely. Because that process isn't perfect we get the gradual accumulation of stochastic processes into the variety of forms that serve to this function.
Given that, and this is largely uncontroversial but I still felt it important to lay out the sort of fundamental non-intent foundations for this claim, it is the function of cellular organisms to survive long enough to replicate their genes. In order to do that more effectively, more complex organisms have more elaborate ways of facilitating that state of being coming to pass. Humans are among the most complex on this planet in that regard, and so we make choices which intend to facilitate our own survival to reproductive age, and success in reproduction, for ourselves and for our genetic descendants.
Like many other social species, across whom we see the emergence of what is often called protomorality and more genuine ethic systems, these systems emerge to facilitate group success, which facilitates individual success because every individual will encounter times where they would otherwise die before reaching reproductive age or take too much damage to their bodies where they wouldn't be able to successfully reproduce, and can lean on the benefits of other members of their social group. The trade-off is giving some of your surplus resources into that group (ie, sharing, helping) , and participating in monitoring other members of that groups participation in those same things and looking out for any behaviors in the group that would cause harm to that group's success or to the success of individuals inside of it.
To the effect that the only point of life existing, so to speak, is the survival and reproduction of the organisms inside of it, and with the abundance of data that we now have studying these sorts of things, it is pretty conclusive that many of the things that are classically associated with ethical practice (altruism, kindness, abstinence from violence and the unjustified reallocation of others' resources, etc) serve the purpose of life's existence more effectively than other types of behaviors.
If we are going to find an objective "ought" or an objective morality, as far as I can tell, this is where we find it. We can derive ought statements from objective facts, when we take enough of those facts together.
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u/anarchistright 1d ago
In a discussion, someone told me that, since we own/control our bodies, self-ownership is rightful.
Clearest example I’ve seen. I think it closely relates to the naturalistic fallacy.