Some excerpts from my paper, 4: Max Black May 12, 2010
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Max Black thinks that he has found a few counterexamples to the is-ought distinction that are structurally different from Searle’s. He thinks that those who have objected to Searle and others because their arguments apparently contain “suppressed evaluative premises” have erred in their understanding of good argumentation. Some valid arguments are not valid syllogisms yet do not have suppressed premises:
1. A citizen is a person.
2. A married citizen is a married person.
Black thinks that those who think arguments must be explicitly syllogistic mistakenly believe “an unfortunate and popular metaphor of the conclusion being ‘contained’ in the premises” (Black 101). Conclusions, in fact, need not be contained in the premises. The metaphor is a misguided attempt to express that a conclusion must truly follow from the premises “without the addition of supplementary assumptions.” There are thus valid is-ought arguments that we have thrown out because they lack syllogistic clarity. For instance,
1. Vivisection causes gratuitous suffering to animals.
2. Nothing that causes gratuitous suffering ought to be done.
3. Therefore, vivisection ought not be done.
Using this argument, we can derive an even more elementary is-ought:
1. Vivisection causes gratuitous suffering to animals.
2. Therefore, if nothing that causes gratuitous suffering ought to be done, vivisection ought not to be done.
Speaking generally, Black thinks that the revival of belief in the is-ought distinction of his day has occurred because of the over-reliance on logical formalism characteristic of the positivists. This prevents them from seeing the validity of the first argument, and forces Searle to make bunches of sub-premises to an argument that modern readers might see as dragging along needlessly slowly. Similarly, their belief that all useful statements make verifiable truth claims has led them to reject the possibility of meaningfulness for the vast array of deontic logics. The positivist must, for instance, reject the validity of the following argument or series of instructions:
1. Answer questions on every page.
2. Initial page on which questions are answered.
3. Therefore, initial every page.
In Black’s words, “the conjunction of the first two orders logically implies the third, in the sense that it would be impossible to obey the first two orders and not behave as if one were obeying the third, unstated, order” (Black 102). Orders, though they contain “oughts,” “exhibit logical relations . . . which are the same as, or at least closely analogous to, the familiar relations of implication, equivalence, compatability, and the like.”
Some excerpts from my paper 3: Moore (in which I use the word ‘metametametadesires’) May 12, 2010
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One plausible way of getting to valid is ought inferences is identifying what we “ought” do with some quality. For instance, we could assert that it is tautological that we ought do what is good, and that we can identify the good with certain things in nature: a prototypical not-good thing would be an instance of needless suffering; a prototypical good thing would be (say) an instance of complex, deserved pleasure. The famed ethicist G. E. Moore thinks that these efforts of identification fail, because they use an erroneous form of argument he terms the naturalistic fallacy. The good simply cannot be identified with any property, because it remains an open question whether that is good. Thus, for instance, we might say that the good is that which “we desire to desire,” that is, it is not necessarily something we desire, for sometimes we desire things inappropriately (Supposing Jones really is obliged to give Smith five dollars, he still might not want to do so). Instead, it is something which, on reflection, we view approvingly and want our desires to reflect that approval—we have desires about our desires. However, as Moore points out, the question remains open. We can ask “Is it good to desire to desire this?” (Lewy 12). It’s unclear how we’re supposed to deal with such metaevaluation, but one possible way is to simply repeat the reduction to desires we’re already undertaking, thus, “Do we desire to desire to desire to desire this?” becomes the question (if I’m reading it right, it is a question of metametaevaluation, or metametametadesires!). This, of course, clearly leads to an infinite regression, which is generally not the sort of thing we want underpinning our ethics!
Some excerpts from my paper, 2: Searle May 12, 2010
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According to John R. Searle, Hume and his following are incorrect. He thinks he has found a counterexample—a valid argument that uses only analytically true bridge principles. As he points out, a lone counterexample is not adequate to refute a complete and complicated philosophical thesis, but a counterexample with theory supporting it which can generate vast numbers of other counterexamples may be. At the very least, such a counterexample-complex would force us to narrow the scope of the original idea.
Searle’s counterexample is the following argument:
1.Jones uttered the words ‘I hereby promise to pay you, Smith, five dollars.’
2.Jones promised to pay Smith five dollars.
3.Jones placed him self under an obligation to pay Smith five dollars.
4.Jones is under an obligation to pay Smith five dollars.
5.Jones ought to pay Smith five dollars.
Searle thinks that “the relation between any statement and its successor, while not in every case one of ‘entailment,’ is none the less not just a contingent relation,” and that the minimal bridge principles needed to make the move from one to the next clearly necessary “do not need to involve any evaluative statements, moral principles, or anything of the sort” (Searle 121).
Some excerpts from my paper, 1: Hume May 12, 2010
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“The is-ought problem was famously “discovered” by Hume. In A Treatise of Human Nature, while conducting an examination of the various systems of morality proposed by his predecessors, he notes that their exposition always seems to proceed in a similar way. First, they establish basic factual propositions, “regarding the being of a God, or . . . human affairs” (Hume III. i. 1). They then allege that these factual truths have implications for our duty, e.g. “If a good and wise God exists, we ought to obey his commands,” or “Given that humans have a state of experience known as pain which they find extremely unpleasant, we should, all other things being equal, try to ensure they do not have this experience as a result of our actions.” Hume points out that a change has been made in the language they are using, one that is almost “imperceptible, but . . . of the last consequence.” They began with sentences using “is,” that is, descriptive sentences. They then suddenly leapt into sentences describing how things “ought” to be, or how we “ought” to act—evaluative sentences. In Hume’s opinion, this move requires explanation that none of the authors have managed to provide, that is, how evaluative sentences can be “deduced” from descriptive sentences. Consider this example:
1.Humans experience pain when shocked with electricity.
2.We ought not shock humans with electricity.
One might say that this is fairly intuitive. However, it requires several premises that are not currently present in order to work. Some of these are purely ethical—for example, a supporter of the death penalty might say that there are some humans (namely, murderers) who ought be shocked with electricity—but the main problem is structural. We need what modern authors have termed a bridge principle in order to go from 1 to 2—a principle that connects “is” to “ought.” In this case, it appears to be something like “If something causes pain to humans, we ought not do it;” the death penalty supporters’ version might be “If something causes undeserved pain to humans, we ought not do it.” Without a principle like one of these, we cannot make moves from is to ought. The problem, then, is that it is unclear how we are to justify holding our bridge principle. For empiricists like Hume, the justification must come from experience (it must be “observ’d and explain’d” [III. i. 1.]), but how on earth can we have an experience of something that ought be, given that it what ought be is not necessarily the case? In Hume’s empiricism, all things are either experientally-based matters of fact or analytic relations of ideas; bridge principles seem to be attempts to make experientially-based relations of ideas—exactly the sort of thing Hume thinks leads to errors of metaphysics.”
Update to my research March 7, 2010
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My project has been cooking for several months now since I’ve last been on here. Long story short, Professor Davies and I have decided to change its direction somewhat. My original topic was simply too broad and far-reaching to cover with adequate depth in a reasonable amount of space and time. It’s now more focused: whether the is-ought inference problem extends to “practical” oughts–those that lack moral content, like “Given that Jones wants ice cream, and the only way for Jones to get ice cream is to go buy a carton at the grocery store, Jones ought go to the grocery store and buy a carton.” There are analogies and disanalogies between practical oughts and moral oughts, and I’m thinking there may be a few of the same structural problems in such inferences.
Saving science, in a roundabout way October 30, 2009
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Hey everyone–sorry I haven’t updated in a while. I’ve been busy with classes and with presenting my research in various settings here on campus. I wanted to talk about a new idea I have for settling science’s role in relation to morality.
Long story short, I suspect is-ought inferences (except tautologies and presupposed oughts) are impossible, so one can’t simultaneously produce works of scientific rigor and make standalone moral claims. Science thus can’t explain morality away, because it can’t speak its language.
This is not, however, good news for the moralists. Sure, moral facts might exist in addition to normal descriptive facts, but if there is no argument-supporting connection between one sphere of facts and the other, morality seems to be world-irrelevant. This is far more devastating for moral realism than any scientific explanation of a moral feeling could ever be. Given a disjoint between moral facts and the world as it is, we have strong reason to doubt that moral realism holds at all–what do these facts consist in, if they aren’t related to something that is?
Once we’ve realized this, the scientist’s task regarding morality is suddenly clear. There aren’t moral facts, yet we have strong moral feelings. It is the scientist’s task to figure out why we have those feelings, and this, unlike dealing in morality proper, is something perfectly suited to sober scientific inquiry.
A structure for rational morality: Part 2, Going Down July 9, 2009
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At the end of my last post, I talked about how we can see patterns of generalizability in moral claims. The first few steps of generalization have a fairly obvious logical structure, provided we don’t treat certain persons as morally exceptional–”Smith ought not steal the bike from Jones” is just an instance of the more general “Everybody ought refrain from stealing anything from anybody.” It seems like we can take further steps of generalization– (more…)
A structure for rational morality: Part 1, Going Up June 23, 2009
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I’d like to talk a bit about a pattern I see in morality, more specifically, a structure. Let’s take a highly specific moral claim as our example: “Smith ought not steal the bike from Jones.” Assuming we’re against stealing, this seems to be a true moral claim. However, it would seem odd to say that “Smith ought not steal the bike from Jones” constitutes a moral rule, for then the set of moral rules would be needlessly vast–”Smith ought not steal the car from Jones,” “Smith ought not steal the bike from Williams,” “Williams ought not steal the wallet from Jackson,” etc. All of these claims have something in common–stealing.
The Logic of a Leno Joke June 11, 2009
Posted by johnallengay in humor, logic, misc.Tags: logic, miscellaneous
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I’m planning on getting another research-related entry out within the next day or two, but I thought I’d periodically post something of more general philosophic interest to keep things entertaining. As you’ve probably heard, two weeks ago Jay Leno gave up his job hosting The Tonight Show to Conan O’Brian. I used to watch his program almost every night, so I made sure to catch the finale, and I noticed one of the jokes during his final monologue got its comedic value from its logical form.
“Here’s something nice . . . Ninety percent of men surveyed said they would marry the same woman . . . (more…)
The Basics: The Is/Ought Distinction (plus a bit about cultural relativism) June 1, 2009
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The major problem for science to overcome, if it’s to explain morality away, is what’s known as the is/ought distinction. It was first pointed out by the great British empiricist David Hume, and it goes like this: