Massimo, I agree that Hume likely means the gap can between “ought” and “is” can be bridged. I need to examine this all again. Hume was the first philosopher who really impressed me in my undergraduate years in the early 80’s. I recall after studying the “Rationalist” and the “Empiricists” during the Renaissance that Hume was my favorite. Great essay. 👍
Thank you for your post. I'm surprised that you put Micheal Sherman on the same level as Harris as i have read few of Micheal books and even if the old onse had libertarian flavor the new one are quite based in facts without declaring _objective_ rules.
Bartek, I'm only comparing a specific book by Harris -- The Moral Landscape -- with a specific one by Shermer -- The Moral Arc. I claim no further similarity or dissimilarity between the two.
Deviant, I would say anything that makes one act in a way that knowingly causes harm to another for personal comfort and security. Such as spreading rumours about another because you assume to be threatened, selling drugs, harming children, or stealing from the elderly, maybe even revenge could be considered such as well when it is inspired by unwitting actions of another (ex.drunkenness).
As for Euthyphor’s father, as much as was written, he bound the man and confined him to his death unwittingly. So how much of the following is grasping at straws?
What is: Society that values slavery or dependence for purpose of maintaining a stable workforce. To keep order and everyones place it could be justifiable to kill a dependent who cause damage to property. So the father ought to set harsh punishment in order to maintain order and not cause further damage, set example.
In other way
A person ought to maintain sense of fairness and temperance for purpose of human flourishing - cooperation causing survivability, gaining advantage over nature....and at this point I have a hard time to think of what is - in other words the cause of fairness and temperance(in empirical evidence) to a man who lived at the time of slavery. So I think, that is why you might say its best left for the Athenian courts?
Right, so deviant people, say sociopaths or psychopaths, are not acting "in agreement with nature," i.e., they are not acting prosocially. So we treat them as people whose brain doesn't function well and try to help them while making sure they don't hurt others.
Euthyphro's father was acting contrary to nature just by having slaves, let alone by killing one, whether accidentally or not. That's because slavery itself is not "in agreement with nature," since human beings naturally wish to be free.
My comment about the law courts of Athens referred to the fact that, in a society, it is usually up to a judge or jury to determine whether someone has broken the law. But of course someone may still be doing something unethical even though it is legal.
Intend for acting in accordance to the 4 Stoic virtues right, as the most reasonable approach for taking ethical action without chasing your own tail or falling on one of the Euthyphro’s horns?
At times I am having a hard time determining the right intent, especially when going back and seeing what it should of been in cases I didn’t act prosocial, in anger or was inconsiderate. But I guess that is why this kind of thing needs to be studied.
We are all fallible. That's what's useful about doing things like philosophical journaling. We look back at our mistakes, learn from them, nd become less likely to make them again in the future.
Your essay has expanded my perspective on what it means to derive moral oughtness from what is. Thanks!
Three questions:
1) Could the logic that derives moral oughtness for Stoicism from what ‘is’ be applicable to deriving moral oughtness for “morality as cooperation” as described below?
2) Could ethical naturalism sensibly have an objective part from the science of morality in addition to a subjective part from moral philosophy such as Stoicism?
3) How much more is there to the logic that derives moral oughtness for Stoicism from what ‘is’ than just instrumental oughts (as I read “conditional imperatives”)?
The version of “morality as cooperation” I prefer includes the claim:
“Cultural moral norms are components of cooperation strategies.”
This hypothesis appears to explain all, or virtually all, past and present cultural moral norms no matter how diverse, contradictory, or strange to outsiders. It is arguably objectively true in the normal provisional scientific sense based primarily on explanatory power, simplicity, lack of contradiction with known facts, and so forth.
This hypothesis is also directly culturally useful for resolving many disputes about when and if specific moral norms will be advocated based on both 1) its explanatory power for all that diversity, contradictions and strangeness which otherwise are only mysteries and 2) its instrumental oughtness as a means for achieving shared goals by increasing cooperation.
Then as you say about ethical naturalism: “The basic idea is that ethics is about figuring out ways to live and thrive together with other human beings, and that it is rooted in natural feelings of prosociality that we are born with because we are social animals.”
And morality as cooperation answers the science of morality’s primary question “Why do our moral sense and cultural moral norms exist and how to they work?” So shouldn’t morality as cooperation be a central part of ethical naturalism?
i) Cooperation is certainly a part of morality, and possibly it is where our natural instincts are rooted. But modern societies require far more than just cooperation in terms of ethical behavior. And my sense is that so did our situation back in the savannah. Consider that some social primates show not just cooperation, but an instinctual sense of fairness, for instance.
ii) I don't see subjectivity anywhere, either in the science or the philosophy part. The science part deals with facts about the human condition. The philosophy part deals with logical reasoning about those facts. So it isn't a question of subjectivity.
iii) I don't think there is anything more than conditional imperatives, when it comes to ethics. But I'm not sure what you mean by "more" in this context.
Massimo, I have assumed our universe is such that it only supports instrumental oughts. Reading Foot’s Natural Goodness may help me distinguish how conditional imperatives (as moral oughts) are “more” than instrumental oughts (which are not moral oughts).
Also, I have thought of answers to “What is good?”, “How should I live?”, and “What are my obligations?” as matters of preference and therefore subjective. I’ll think more about the implications if one or more answers to these questions can be derived by logic from objective facts.
At a more appropriate time, I would love to explore with you how the existence of “natural feelings of prosociality that we are born with because we are social animals” can all be explained as components of cooperation strategies. These components include fairness, altruism, gratitude, loyalty, respect for authority, righteous indignation, shame, guilt, and virtually everything else people think of as moral behaviors regarding interactions with other people.
Mark, conditional imperative is another name for instrumental oughts, and moral conditional imperatives are a subset of those.
Answers to what is good and such questions vary from culture to culture, but only within limits imposed by universal characteristics of human nature (e.g., no society can flourish where murder and thievery are condoned, etc.). Those characteristics also serve as axioms to the conditional imperatives.
If you define cooperation that broadly, then we agree. But I don't see a strong reason for doing so. What broadly unifies all ethics is the need for social beings to survive and flourish, what the Greco-Romans called eudaimonia. Cooperation, fairness, altruism, gratitude, and so forth are means by which we flourish in social groups.
Massimo, thanks for your clarification that moral conditional imperatives are a subset of instrumental oughts.
Also, we agree that “What broadly unifies all ethics is the need for social beings to survive and flourish, what the Greco-Romans called eudaimonia. Cooperation, fairness, altruism, gratitude, and so forth are means by which we flourish in social groups.”, though I would include “fairness, altruism, gratitude, …” as cooperation strategies rather than separate kinds of things.
However, I am wondering if the logic and grounding in facts for moral conditional imperatives (MCI’s) could be simplified by recognizing that human morality has two distinct parts, a moral ‘means’ part and a moral ‘ends’ part. Perhaps recognizing that MCI’s are important only for the moral ‘ends’ part could be a step in strengthened those arguments.
The moral ‘ends’ part (eudimonia or whatever other goals and values a society shares) is what philosophers are seeking when asking “What is good?” and “How should I live?”.
In answering the question “Why do our moral sense and cultural moral norms exist?”, science can objectively tell us that moral ‘means’ (“Cooperation, fairness, altruism, gratitude, and so forth by which we flourish in social groups”) are components of cooperation strategies. An MCI argument is not needed to justify that.
I am happy to defend the cultural usefulness of my previous idea that moral ‘ends’ are subjective matters of preference and moral ‘means’ are, objectively, cooperation strategies for achieving shared goals.
But I am interested in the idea that specific moral ‘ends’ could have conclusively argued moral conditional imperatives and wonder if the idea of moral ‘ends’ being distinct from moral ‘means’ could strengthen those arguments.
Mark, again, cooperation in my mind has a more restricted meaning and counts as one of the strategies for co-habitation among social primates. But that's not really an important point of difference between our positions.
Yes, there are moral ends and moral means to obtain such ends. The end is eudaimonia, or a life worth living, in which we don't just survive but flourish, are able to pursue our projects, etc.
So yes, cooperation, fairness, and the other virtues / behavioral tendencies are means by which we achieve eudaimonia.
And yes, of course conditional imperatives concern the means, not the end. The end is what sets the boundaries for the imperatives, what I called the axioms, or assumptions.
The idea is that such boundaries are rooted in facts about human nature, which are universal.
Contra to your suggestion, therefore, I would say that science tells us about the moral end, and a combination of science and philosophy tell us about the moral means, i.e., the best ways to achieve that end. The end is a given, taken for granted on the basis of what kind of animal we are.
Masimo, your pointing out where we agree about moral means and moral ends helps my understanding of moral oughts.
I’ll reciprocate, but point out remaining differences.
We appear to agree that science and philosophy (or at least ethical naturalism as proposed by P. Foot and Modern Stoicism) both support moral means being cooperation strategies.
However, I distinguish between the kinds of support they provide. Science supports something like “Cultural moral norms are components of cooperation strategies” as scientific truth. Ethical naturalism can support something like “Prosocial cooperation is the heart of moral means”.
First, note that the scientific claim does not imply any explicit moral condemnation of moral norms such as “eating pigs is an abomination”, “women must be submissive to men”, and “homosexuality is evil”. For that condemnation we need philosophy’s advocacy of prosocial cooperation. I understand prosocial cooperation to be cooperation consistent with defined moral ends which would preclude exploitation.
Second, game theory shows us that the cooperation problems that morality as cooperation solves are as innate to our universe as the mathematics that define them. All species face the same cooperation problems and all highly cooperative species must have solved them.
So what culturally moral means ‘are’ as components of cooperation strategies is cross-species universal and independent of anything else except some simple mathematics. Only moral ends, and not moral ‘means’, could be described as “a given, taken for granted on the basis of what kind of animal we are”.
My views on morality are grounded by the cross-species universality of science’s findings about moral means and the relative lack of universality in science’s findings relevant to what moral ends ought to be. This perspective is what motivates me to closely associate what moral means ‘are’ and moral ends ‘ought’ to be as principally in the domains of, respectively, science and philosophy.
Ok clearly I keep losing track of the argument, as I think about what would be the proper order, facts then values or vice versa, to start bridging the two.
Would the order make a difference to weather deviant behaviour be considered ethical? Was Euthyphro’s father just to knowingly cause suffering?
I'm not sure what behavior counts as "deviant." As for Euthyphro's father, he did unwittingly kill a slave. Should have he be punished? That's up to the Athenian courts...
My intuitive thought inspired from your post is that weather the ‘what is’’, can only be glimpsed by that which is eternal and ever present, and the ‘ought’ approach is human mind guessing on how to spend their limited time of awareness - maximizing ease, comfort, and security over possible glimpses of what might be achievable and practical. Which makes me think, morality ought to be something that as a race strives towards the empirical answers for what is moral, but as values differ, should be from the starting point of ‘what ought’, with hope that subsequent curious mind can further prove of disprove ‘what is’.
So really my questions: Is it sound to inquire further on an idea that what is can be derived from the ought? As oppose to the what ought from what is as you have stated is not sound.
Such as the following thought: social morality should have an element of piety (as defined by the ancients, as I understand, is through the taking care of the past(parents) and future(kids). Again intuitively, seems to be the right way to transcend our human limitation of time.
Massimo, I agree that Hume likely means the gap can between “ought” and “is” can be bridged. I need to examine this all again. Hume was the first philosopher who really impressed me in my undergraduate years in the early 80’s. I recall after studying the “Rationalist” and the “Empiricists” during the Renaissance that Hume was my favorite. Great essay. 👍
Mike, Hume has always been one of my favorite, even when I happen to disagree with him.
Thank you for your post. I'm surprised that you put Micheal Sherman on the same level as Harris as i have read few of Micheal books and even if the old onse had libertarian flavor the new one are quite based in facts without declaring _objective_ rules.
Bartek, I'm only comparing a specific book by Harris -- The Moral Landscape -- with a specific one by Shermer -- The Moral Arc. I claim no further similarity or dissimilarity between the two.
Deviant, I would say anything that makes one act in a way that knowingly causes harm to another for personal comfort and security. Such as spreading rumours about another because you assume to be threatened, selling drugs, harming children, or stealing from the elderly, maybe even revenge could be considered such as well when it is inspired by unwitting actions of another (ex.drunkenness).
As for Euthyphor’s father, as much as was written, he bound the man and confined him to his death unwittingly. So how much of the following is grasping at straws?
What is: Society that values slavery or dependence for purpose of maintaining a stable workforce. To keep order and everyones place it could be justifiable to kill a dependent who cause damage to property. So the father ought to set harsh punishment in order to maintain order and not cause further damage, set example.
In other way
A person ought to maintain sense of fairness and temperance for purpose of human flourishing - cooperation causing survivability, gaining advantage over nature....and at this point I have a hard time to think of what is - in other words the cause of fairness and temperance(in empirical evidence) to a man who lived at the time of slavery. So I think, that is why you might say its best left for the Athenian courts?
Right, so deviant people, say sociopaths or psychopaths, are not acting "in agreement with nature," i.e., they are not acting prosocially. So we treat them as people whose brain doesn't function well and try to help them while making sure they don't hurt others.
Euthyphro's father was acting contrary to nature just by having slaves, let alone by killing one, whether accidentally or not. That's because slavery itself is not "in agreement with nature," since human beings naturally wish to be free.
My comment about the law courts of Athens referred to the fact that, in a society, it is usually up to a judge or jury to determine whether someone has broken the law. But of course someone may still be doing something unethical even though it is legal.
Intend for acting in accordance to the 4 Stoic virtues right, as the most reasonable approach for taking ethical action without chasing your own tail or falling on one of the Euthyphro’s horns?
At times I am having a hard time determining the right intent, especially when going back and seeing what it should of been in cases I didn’t act prosocial, in anger or was inconsiderate. But I guess that is why this kind of thing needs to be studied.
Thank you!
We are all fallible. That's what's useful about doing things like philosophical journaling. We look back at our mistakes, learn from them, nd become less likely to make them again in the future.
Massimo,
Your essay has expanded my perspective on what it means to derive moral oughtness from what is. Thanks!
Three questions:
1) Could the logic that derives moral oughtness for Stoicism from what ‘is’ be applicable to deriving moral oughtness for “morality as cooperation” as described below?
2) Could ethical naturalism sensibly have an objective part from the science of morality in addition to a subjective part from moral philosophy such as Stoicism?
3) How much more is there to the logic that derives moral oughtness for Stoicism from what ‘is’ than just instrumental oughts (as I read “conditional imperatives”)?
The version of “morality as cooperation” I prefer includes the claim:
“Cultural moral norms are components of cooperation strategies.”
This hypothesis appears to explain all, or virtually all, past and present cultural moral norms no matter how diverse, contradictory, or strange to outsiders. It is arguably objectively true in the normal provisional scientific sense based primarily on explanatory power, simplicity, lack of contradiction with known facts, and so forth.
This hypothesis is also directly culturally useful for resolving many disputes about when and if specific moral norms will be advocated based on both 1) its explanatory power for all that diversity, contradictions and strangeness which otherwise are only mysteries and 2) its instrumental oughtness as a means for achieving shared goals by increasing cooperation.
Then as you say about ethical naturalism: “The basic idea is that ethics is about figuring out ways to live and thrive together with other human beings, and that it is rooted in natural feelings of prosociality that we are born with because we are social animals.”
And morality as cooperation answers the science of morality’s primary question “Why do our moral sense and cultural moral norms exist and how to they work?” So shouldn’t morality as cooperation be a central part of ethical naturalism?
Mark,
briefly responding to your questions:
i) Cooperation is certainly a part of morality, and possibly it is where our natural instincts are rooted. But modern societies require far more than just cooperation in terms of ethical behavior. And my sense is that so did our situation back in the savannah. Consider that some social primates show not just cooperation, but an instinctual sense of fairness, for instance.
ii) I don't see subjectivity anywhere, either in the science or the philosophy part. The science part deals with facts about the human condition. The philosophy part deals with logical reasoning about those facts. So it isn't a question of subjectivity.
iii) I don't think there is anything more than conditional imperatives, when it comes to ethics. But I'm not sure what you mean by "more" in this context.
Massimo, I have assumed our universe is such that it only supports instrumental oughts. Reading Foot’s Natural Goodness may help me distinguish how conditional imperatives (as moral oughts) are “more” than instrumental oughts (which are not moral oughts).
Also, I have thought of answers to “What is good?”, “How should I live?”, and “What are my obligations?” as matters of preference and therefore subjective. I’ll think more about the implications if one or more answers to these questions can be derived by logic from objective facts.
At a more appropriate time, I would love to explore with you how the existence of “natural feelings of prosociality that we are born with because we are social animals” can all be explained as components of cooperation strategies. These components include fairness, altruism, gratitude, loyalty, respect for authority, righteous indignation, shame, guilt, and virtually everything else people think of as moral behaviors regarding interactions with other people.
Mark, conditional imperative is another name for instrumental oughts, and moral conditional imperatives are a subset of those.
Answers to what is good and such questions vary from culture to culture, but only within limits imposed by universal characteristics of human nature (e.g., no society can flourish where murder and thievery are condoned, etc.). Those characteristics also serve as axioms to the conditional imperatives.
If you define cooperation that broadly, then we agree. But I don't see a strong reason for doing so. What broadly unifies all ethics is the need for social beings to survive and flourish, what the Greco-Romans called eudaimonia. Cooperation, fairness, altruism, gratitude, and so forth are means by which we flourish in social groups.
Massimo, thanks for your clarification that moral conditional imperatives are a subset of instrumental oughts.
Also, we agree that “What broadly unifies all ethics is the need for social beings to survive and flourish, what the Greco-Romans called eudaimonia. Cooperation, fairness, altruism, gratitude, and so forth are means by which we flourish in social groups.”, though I would include “fairness, altruism, gratitude, …” as cooperation strategies rather than separate kinds of things.
However, I am wondering if the logic and grounding in facts for moral conditional imperatives (MCI’s) could be simplified by recognizing that human morality has two distinct parts, a moral ‘means’ part and a moral ‘ends’ part. Perhaps recognizing that MCI’s are important only for the moral ‘ends’ part could be a step in strengthened those arguments.
The moral ‘ends’ part (eudimonia or whatever other goals and values a society shares) is what philosophers are seeking when asking “What is good?” and “How should I live?”.
In answering the question “Why do our moral sense and cultural moral norms exist?”, science can objectively tell us that moral ‘means’ (“Cooperation, fairness, altruism, gratitude, and so forth by which we flourish in social groups”) are components of cooperation strategies. An MCI argument is not needed to justify that.
I am happy to defend the cultural usefulness of my previous idea that moral ‘ends’ are subjective matters of preference and moral ‘means’ are, objectively, cooperation strategies for achieving shared goals.
But I am interested in the idea that specific moral ‘ends’ could have conclusively argued moral conditional imperatives and wonder if the idea of moral ‘ends’ being distinct from moral ‘means’ could strengthen those arguments.
Mark, again, cooperation in my mind has a more restricted meaning and counts as one of the strategies for co-habitation among social primates. But that's not really an important point of difference between our positions.
Yes, there are moral ends and moral means to obtain such ends. The end is eudaimonia, or a life worth living, in which we don't just survive but flourish, are able to pursue our projects, etc.
So yes, cooperation, fairness, and the other virtues / behavioral tendencies are means by which we achieve eudaimonia.
And yes, of course conditional imperatives concern the means, not the end. The end is what sets the boundaries for the imperatives, what I called the axioms, or assumptions.
The idea is that such boundaries are rooted in facts about human nature, which are universal.
Contra to your suggestion, therefore, I would say that science tells us about the moral end, and a combination of science and philosophy tell us about the moral means, i.e., the best ways to achieve that end. The end is a given, taken for granted on the basis of what kind of animal we are.
Masimo, your pointing out where we agree about moral means and moral ends helps my understanding of moral oughts.
I’ll reciprocate, but point out remaining differences.
We appear to agree that science and philosophy (or at least ethical naturalism as proposed by P. Foot and Modern Stoicism) both support moral means being cooperation strategies.
However, I distinguish between the kinds of support they provide. Science supports something like “Cultural moral norms are components of cooperation strategies” as scientific truth. Ethical naturalism can support something like “Prosocial cooperation is the heart of moral means”.
First, note that the scientific claim does not imply any explicit moral condemnation of moral norms such as “eating pigs is an abomination”, “women must be submissive to men”, and “homosexuality is evil”. For that condemnation we need philosophy’s advocacy of prosocial cooperation. I understand prosocial cooperation to be cooperation consistent with defined moral ends which would preclude exploitation.
Second, game theory shows us that the cooperation problems that morality as cooperation solves are as innate to our universe as the mathematics that define them. All species face the same cooperation problems and all highly cooperative species must have solved them.
So what culturally moral means ‘are’ as components of cooperation strategies is cross-species universal and independent of anything else except some simple mathematics. Only moral ends, and not moral ‘means’, could be described as “a given, taken for granted on the basis of what kind of animal we are”.
My views on morality are grounded by the cross-species universality of science’s findings about moral means and the relative lack of universality in science’s findings relevant to what moral ends ought to be. This perspective is what motivates me to closely associate what moral means ‘are’ and moral ends ‘ought’ to be as principally in the domains of, respectively, science and philosophy.
Ok clearly I keep losing track of the argument, as I think about what would be the proper order, facts then values or vice versa, to start bridging the two.
Would the order make a difference to weather deviant behaviour be considered ethical? Was Euthyphro’s father just to knowingly cause suffering?
Thank you for the nugget!
I'm not sure what behavior counts as "deviant." As for Euthyphro's father, he did unwittingly kill a slave. Should have he be punished? That's up to the Athenian courts...
Hello Massimo,
My intuitive thought inspired from your post is that weather the ‘what is’’, can only be glimpsed by that which is eternal and ever present, and the ‘ought’ approach is human mind guessing on how to spend their limited time of awareness - maximizing ease, comfort, and security over possible glimpses of what might be achievable and practical. Which makes me think, morality ought to be something that as a race strives towards the empirical answers for what is moral, but as values differ, should be from the starting point of ‘what ought’, with hope that subsequent curious mind can further prove of disprove ‘what is’.
So really my questions: Is it sound to inquire further on an idea that what is can be derived from the ought? As oppose to the what ought from what is as you have stated is not sound.
Such as the following thought: social morality should have an element of piety (as defined by the ancients, as I understand, is through the taking care of the past(parents) and future(kids). Again intuitively, seems to be the right way to transcend our human limitation of time.
Maksym, in the essay I argue that it *is* possible to bridge the is > ought gap, by way of naturalistic ethics.
In terms of ought > is, yes our values should guide our actions!