The truth "You can't get an ought form an is" is unaffected by this thought. It's still true even is everyone belie you can get an ought form an is. — TheWillowOfDarkness
I say the question is irrelevant. When dealing with an "is" there is nothing to be bound, no person who is meant to act in any particular way. Something just "is."
As to the proof, that's in the logical discintion between "being true" and "being ethical." If existence made ethics, then simply being so (an "is") would define ethical behaviour. This is not true. Many states are unethical. To be "ethical" is a different meaning than being something that "is." — TheWillowOfDarkness
And I don't think the statement "you can't get an ought from an is" stands up to scrutiny. An obvious question is "why not?" — anonymous66
I think you must have a different understanding of math than I do. I think you actually just know that 2+2=4. — anonymous66
That's just not what I'm talking about. — TheWillowOfDarkness
I think the point of that formulation is simply that we can verify and thus objectify 'is's'. If I say, pointing: "Look there is a dog", you can easily verify that there is in fact a dog there. Of I say, "You ought not treat your friends that way"; there is nothing verifiably obvious that can be pointed at in an analogous way. That is the basic way of thinking about the two cases; that it is a fact that there is a dog there (or not) whereas it is not a fact in anything like the the same kind of straightforward way that can be directly indicated, that you ought not treat your friends that way. There are many shades in between, though, and I already gave a couple examples. — John
I can place two oranges on the table, and then immediately see that there are two oranges. Then I can place two more oranges next to them, and directly see that there are now four oranges. I can repeat this experiment as many times as I like and the result, it seems obvious will always be the same; for the simple reason that objects do not appear out of nowhere; and even if they did that would not contradict the formula, if I really did put two oranges there both times. This is a matter of direct observation and has nothing to do with the project of the Principia Mathematica; which was to try to show that 1+1=2 can be derived purely logically. — John
There are claims about ethics in your argument. You are suggesting Hume's "is/ought" distinction isn't known to be a truth about ethics. — TheWillowOfDarkness
Yeah. Facts and knowledge are weird, aren't they? We think we can verify/falsify the things we think we know. But, just try to prove it. And how to verify claims about verification?No, I am not making that claim at all. Perhaps some things I could claim would be verifiable to me, in the sense that they are intuitively obvious, but would be impossible for anyone else to verify.
When it comes to what we experience, whether it is publicly verifiable or not, nothing is provable, in the sense of being deductively certain. What one person experiences is never empirically verifiable by others unless the experience is of something in the public realm. The exact nature of what I experience can not be known by you, for example, or perhaps even exhaustively known by myself. — John
This is where the issue lies. "Nature" is an idea. In arguing that we intuitively follow nature, Aristotle has introduced a rational principle which supposedly grants us moral knowledge. We will know virtue when we follow our "nature." It functioning in the same way as the CI in Kant. We will know good when we follow the CI.Aristotle's ethics consists in intuitively following nature, and meta-ethically speaking his idea is to intuitively follow nature, not to rationally follow principles derived from ideas about our intuitive nature. — John
If you follow your own nature and you are a brutish psychopath; then you might kill people. If you follow your own nature and you are a highly cultivated, educated, compassionate and rational women of virtue, then you will likely commit acts that are morally good. No rules need to be followed in either case — John
I haven't read the work; but from various references to it I have come across I have formed the impression that it was an attempt to determine a set of logical principles form which all mathematical truths could be derived. — John
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