The "is-ought problem"?

[hug]

Philosophers, moral philosophers, and even immoral ones, please lend me your ears:

 

I think it was philosopher David Hume who wrote awhile back about the very large gap between "is" and "ought", and many philosophers feel that this gap is insurmountable, i.e., that it is impossible to derive oughts from what "is".

 

In late March, there was a great article in The New York Times titled "Scientist Finds the Beginnings of Morality in Primate Behavior" (by NYTimes science reporter Nicholas Wade, March 20, 2007). In the article, Mr. Wade writes:

 

"Philosophers have another reason biologists cannot, in their view, reach to the heart of morality, and that is that biological analyses cannot cross the gap between 'is' and 'ought,' between the description of some behavior and the issue of why it is right or wrong."

 

In his article, Mr. Wade continues with this point, quoting a moral philosopher from NYU to give an example of many philosophers' view of the is-ought issue.

 

I have done some thinking and writing on this subject, all in the context of a science-based view of morality, and would like to enter into an exploration of the subject here, on this site, with a philosopher (or philosophers) who has/have some expertise or substantial familiarity with the "is-ought problem", or "fact-value distinction", and with relatively recent thinking on the subject, and/or regarding David Hume himself. I'd like to learn from a dialogue, get pointed in productive directions, gain commentary and critique of my own thoughts, and generally help figure out why, when, and how one can derive oughts from is. Of course, if it is truly impossible to derive any oughts from what is, then, as many philosophers seem to suggest, science can't really have much to say about morality from a strictly scientific standpoint. But, I question whether that is the case.

 

Any interest?

[coberst]

John Rawls authored the book “A Theory of Justice”. In that book he suggested, what appears to me to be, a method for getting an ‘ought’ out of an ‘is’.

 

He suggested that if we were all to imagine our self to be under a ‘veil of ignorance’ when trying to decide what justice was we would conclude that justice is fairness. Wearing the veil of ignorance meant that we would disregard our social and class status long enough to seriously examine the nature of justice; in so doing we would reach a consensus that justice is fairness.

 

He assumed that if we could stand disconnected from the present that we could find that assumption about which we could all agree. It seems that this is an example of getting an ought from an is.

 

Is this what you have in mind?

[hug]

coberst, thanks for the response and the very interesting and helpful info. That said, if I understand you correctly, then you (and Rawls) seem to be saying or suggesting that one can determine an "ought" in many cases by applying the veil of ignorance thinking and the resulting idea that fairness is justice or vice versa. That said, this assumes that fairness and justice are "good", i.e., that they themselves are "oughts" from which other oughts can be derived. My question (and Hume's point) go even deeper: Hume might ask, How do we know that fairness and justice are themselves good "oughts"? What in science (which is, at least as many would say, the study of what is) can tell us that fairness/justice are "oughts"? How? Why?

 

Looking forward to your thoughts. And, if you know a philosopher around here (in the more narrow academic sense of the title, that is), please refer her/him this way so she/he can participate with the both of us and, hopefully, others. Thanks again. "hug"

[coberst]

I have this view of the human condition that might be in line with this problem of is versus ought. I see a major gap between what we can intellectually do in matters of technology versus what we can do morally. In other words, we are great in creating new scientific stuff but not very good about creating a rationale for morality.

 

My view of the human condition is that we have a great technical ability and a lousy moral ability.

 

I think that cognitive science and psychology are two sciences that can help us become better morally because they can help us comprehend human nature It seems to me that science can help us understand human nature and knowing human nature can be a foundation for better understanding what being moral means to us.

[hug]

coberst, I agree with you, and great observations. I would add two points for now. The first is a quote . . .

 

"The world has achieved brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants."

-- Omar Bradley, American WW II general

 

Many other wise thinkers have made similar comments, including Einstein, Gandhi, MLK Jr., and the Dalai Lama, among others.

 

Secondly, there are three different parts of the issue you describe: One is scientific understanding itself, within each scientific discipline. The second involves the cross-discipline insights that result from a sharing among the disciplines, a sharing which can improve the overall understanding of morality. The third is putting that understanding into accessible form and sharing the understanding in ways that help people ... well ... to understand.

 

Regarding the first (i.e., scientific understanding within the disciplines), that is far ahead of the rest, and moving forward relatively fast. Relatively speaking, that part of the equation gets an "A" or, if you want to be conservative about grades, perhaps an "A-" or at least a "B". The cross-discipline sharing is a bit behind. And, alas, the sharing of what is already known about "morality", with the public, is way behind, getting a "D" at best and perhaps even an "F". For example, if you compare what scientists already understand about cooperation, and "forgiveness", and related matters, with the amount of that understanding which has entered the public mind, the comparison is both sad and consequential.

 

Ask yourself this question: Do we (presumably an intelligent modern scientifically-leading democratic society) elect our President based on his/her level of understanding, -- scientifically informed that is --, of such things as human nature, human psychology, the science of cooperation, "morality" (from a scientific standpoint), global environmental dynamics, etc. etc.?

 

As just one example, over two decades ago (1984), Robert Axelrod wrote a great, short, easy-to-read, paradigm-shifting book on the science of cooperation, titled The Evolution of Cooperation, yet relatively few professionals in public fields having to do with cooperation (for example, counselors of parents after a divorce) have read it, or even heard of it, in my experience. Many people trying to support or prompt cooperation have a less-than-informed understanding of cooperation and the dynamics that create it or undermine it. Why? The book was written 23 years ago. Part of the answer, of course, is that it's easier not to read the book. You can still charge $150 an hour, or more, and have plenty of clients these days without having a complete and sound understanding of cooperation, even in the profession that tries to catalyze cooperation. To your point, if an engineer tried to build a bridge without an informed and effective understanding of how to build bridges, alas, we would be falling into bays and rivers.

 

That's it for now. I hope some of this is interesting. Must wash the clothes now. Cheers. "hug"

[coberst]

Justice as fairness seems to me to be a good way to get into a discussion about morality. The moral society is the just society. What do I know about justice? A little, but it all seems so tied into jury trials and laws. What do I know about fairness? Ever kid learns the ins-and-out of fairness at a very early age.

 

What is the relationship between fairness and cooperation? I suspect that every child soon learns the value of cooperation as a means to get fair treatment. What is our concept of cooperation?

 

I bet that every jurist is trying to ‘be fair’ when s/he sits in that jury box where justice is finally determined in our society.

 

He got more cookies than I did! He hit me first! He is bigger than me! Kids talk about and live with the concept of fairness every day.

 

As an adult what are my fairness prototypes? My fairness prototypes are quite likely tied into my early years when I had to get my fair share while being surrounded by bigger siblings or bigger neighbor kids. I know fairness as well as I know any moral concept.

 

What is the connection between 'just getting along together' or 'reasoning together' and being treated fairly by others?

 

It seems that here is a place for starting a discussion about morality.

[TZK]

Fairness and justice are derived from animal instincts.

 

An animal doesn't mess with bigger animals.

 

People don't mess with each other because they are too smart to ever be safe from.

 

All human action much be consious of other people's needs or wants so as to avoid suffering (of the person acting) caused by those actions.

 

And in the future all actions must be geared towards reducing obscurity in thought and deception so as to lessen the suffering caused by differing ideas on complex issues.

[Victor_Wrath]

Part of the problem with understanding mortality is that far too many people need to believe that it is a static force that pre-existed consciousness. Refusal to examine this concept from a completely outside perspective has obscured what I find to be a rather simple concept.

 

Mortality, I believe, rises not from divinity, but from human communities. All that is good, and right and moral can easily be described as any quality of any person, place, thing or idea that is supportive of the systems, cultures and accepted values of the human who perceive it. Contrarily, Bad, Evil and wrong things are all those qualities which disturb the harmony of the community and erode its cohesion.

 

The problem with coming to any unified understanding of morality is that each community has different values, and is held together by different believes and needs, and so what is good and bad varies from one community to the next. So the concept of morality is not static, but ever changing.

 

It is unfortunate, however, that very few communities can accept that what works for them as a system of right and wrong will not necessarily work for other communities who have different needs and wants. Instead, we all cling tenaciously to the idea that there must somehow be a superior and universal morality. And of course that we are the ones who possess that superior universal morality.

 

I say, however, that universal morality is just one more false concept which has arisen from idea that there is such a thing as perfection.

[billg]

I concur victor_wrath. There is a suggestion of course that at least parts of human morality are not a consequence of the specific of our community but rather part of an innate and therefore universal human morality. Rules that occur in all societies and across time, such as rape and murder being morally wrong. However I do not support the idea that these are innate; rather I would suggest they are neccessary for any human community and therefore any human society that has existed for any length of time has displayed these moral rules.

 

However your position of moral relativism does not exclude the possibility that we might acquire a universal morality; our communities may now be global and presumably will become increasingly united with the advancement of information technology and the increasing codependence of communities. I think that establishing a moral code that, if perhaps not universal in the purest sense, is closer to being universal, is one of the inevitable comsequences of globalisation. Natural resources will eventually run out and member of communities that obey a global moral standard will avoid the inefficiencies of conflicts and therefore have a survival advantage over members of communities that do not.

 

I'm a bit off track I know. So I'll address the original post about the "is ought" "problem" - I'd just like to say that I think you'd be hard pressed to find many science-minded people who think you can't get an ought out of an is. It seems a bit backwards to continue to claim morality is the domain of philisophy given how much modern science has taught us. Whether the basis of morality be biological or a (more likely I think) supervenient on social interactions, the dualistic claim that what "ought" to be is some how qualitatively different from what "is" is naive. What ought to be is what people think ought to be.

[TZK]

 

The problem with coming to any unified understanding of morality is that each community has different values, and is held together by different believes and needs, and so what is good and bad varies from one community to the next. So the concept of morality is not static, but ever changing.

 

It is unfortunate, however, that very few communities can accept that what works for them as a system of right and wrong will not necessarily work for other communities who have different needs and wants. Instead, we all cling tenaciously to the idea that there must somehow be a superior and universal morality. And of course that we are the ones who possess that superior universal morality.

 

I say, however, that universal morality is just one more false concept which has arisen from idea that there is such a thing as perfection.

 

Each community has different values because each has a different level of understanding of how the golden rule applies to any given situation. But it can be seen quickly that every law or rule claims to be tied to the golden rule which is the true source of "morality" in exactly the fashion that I outlined before. The common rules billg mentions are simply the obvious connections. It is just a question of whether a given rule is right or not in its claim of connection.

 

For instance, on the Autobahn there are no speed limits. In America there are. American road authorities claim that speed increases risk. But autobahn statistics refute this, perhaps suggesting that it is in fact disorganized driving that does it. Others may argue that any increase in risk is insignificant with respect to the loss of travel efficiency and enjoyment to be derived from faster driving. These people claim that yelling at a person for driving too fast when he causes harm to another is ignorant, and that it is a random chain of events that caused the accident which we cannot afford to prepare for.

 

As you can see determining HOW the golden rule applies quickly becomes complicated. Is - ought... bah! The question really is if all people polarized between people who wanted to be able to drive fast and people who wanted to reduce road risk which group would be bigger... With the assumption that the bigger group would eventually win across all time. The bigger group is the bigger force and its might therefore makes it right for we must accept it to prevent futile harm to society. Of course this assumes that smaller groups cannot win by luck and free flow of information so that a person who benefits more from faster travel cannot be duped into believing that he wants less risk.

 

Using this model allows us to categorize the rules of some groups as simply wrong, or at least suggests that there is an objective right and wrong though it may be difficult to discover at times. As far as each community have different beliefs and needs, it simply boils down to some of those beliefs and needs being ignorant.

 

Plus, the model I have outlined clearly shows how the same mechanism that exists in animals can transform into a concept of morality in inventive beings. Whereas your explanation requires some magical faculty to have sprouted from nowhere in order to allow us to know when something is wrong or not.

[chill]

Part of the problem with understanding mortality is that far too many people need to believe that it is a static force that pre-existed consciousness. Refusal to examine this concept from a completely outside perspective has obscured what I find to be a rather simple concept.

 

Mortality, I believe, rises not from divinity, but from human communities. All that is good, and right and moral can easily be described as any quality of any person, place, thing or idea that is supportive of the systems, cultures and accepted values of the human who perceive it. Contrarily, Bad, Evil and wrong things are all those qualities which disturb the harmony of the community and erode its cohesion.

 

The problem with coming to any unified understanding of morality is that each community has different values, and is held together by different believes and needs, and so what is good and bad varies from one community to the next. So the concept of morality is not static, but ever changing.

 

It is unfortunate, however, that very few communities can accept that what works for them as a system of right and wrong will not necessarily work for other communities who have different needs and wants. Instead, we all cling tenaciously to the idea that there must somehow be a superior and universal morality. And of course that we are the ones who possess that superior universal morality.

 

I say, however, that universal morality is just one more false concept which has arisen from idea that there is such a thing as perfection.

 

Ooh this is a really interesting topic and I've actually been looking for a thread like this for a long time. Victor_Wrath I agree with you whole-heartedly up to the beginning of your 3rd paragraph. You say that the concept of morality is ever-changing; I believe you mean that the application of the same rational for morality yields different results for different groups. Am I correct? I believe the concept of morality is universal enough; you've explained it really clearly in the paragraph before that. It's just that its application yields different results for different societal groups.

 

As a side note, I've kinda noticed that there seems to be a "balance" or tipping point between individual and societal incentives. Does anyone know what I'm talking about?

 

In the discussion of the is-ought problem I came to the conclusion a long time ago that the answer is simple: There's no such thing as "ought". By applying an existentialist viewpoint you prevent yourself from being in anyone else's shoes but yourself. This way you sidestep the whole problem of how other people "ought" to act given certain conditions. In relation to yourself, the problem of "ought" only arises when you imagine yourself in certain scenarios and how you "ought" to act. The problem can be sidestepped by simply doing; hence moving straight to the "is" without moving through "ought". Of course, this point of view is much more difficult to apply in practice than in theory. I still believe that this is the only way a "universal morality" can be achieved, in the sense that everybody would have the same moral standards; although it would make for quite a depressing world, or perhaps none at all.