It's not ethically binding. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Is it binding in other ways?

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

And you would prove that, how exactly? Is that "truth" falsifiable? Verifiable?

Looks to me that what you mean to say is "we all Ought to accept that you can't get an ought from an is".

I say the term is sort of 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."

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

It looks like you've just found another way to say, "I know there can't exist moral facts".

Utilizing the CI, involves using reason: I'm not taking about "talking and reasoning about the CI".

I'd say that's exactly the issue.

These points about ethical are drawn from reasoning about what we know about ethics. The "is/ought"distinction is shown by that ethics, an "ought," does not mean the same as just being so, an "is."

If you can locate meaning of ethics in the first place, then you won't understand how the discintion is drawn. You won't be able to tell the difference between saying: "X was ethical " and "X is so." I'm sceptical you are really that unsure though.

Let's say someone kills another person going about their daily business in the street. This state "is so." It exists. Does this mean that the person ought to have been killed?

I'm not making specific claims about ethics or morality, or even how to figure them out, I'm just than suggesting that moral facts aren't quite as odd as I first imagined.

Look at it this way. How long did it take us to figure out some facts about our world? We made estimates of the diameter of the earth for thousands of years before we finally got it right. Seems to me that there might also be a learning curve IF moral facts, as well.

Indeed, but utilising the CI is not how someone knows what's ethical. That's granted by an underlying intuition. Take killing someone on the street. A person doesn't know this by the CI. The CI is just a formalised idea which takes what they know (killing this person is wrong) and attaches to an idea of duty. CI is for saying "Killing is wrong becasue of X," not the understanding the killing is wrong.

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 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.

I think you must have a different understanding of math than I do. I think you actually just know that 2+2=4. — anonymous66

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.

According to Kant one knows that killing is wrong, not by an intuition, but by means of a process of reasoning that determines if it accords with his maxim of universalizability, or produces a contradiction.

Now, if you want to say that it is only by intuition that we can know that logical principles are self-evident; then I would tend to agree with you, logical principles are precisely formulations of what seems incontrovertibly self-evident; but that is another matter altogether.

That's just not what I'm talking about. — TheWillowOfDarkness

What's the point of a discussion if you make objections to what I have written, but are not talking about the same thing?

You do this a lot Willow; as I and many others have repeatedly pointed out to you. Perhaps it's time to look at your ways of engaging and try to make sure that what you write stays relevant to the subject under discussion. The first step is careful and charitable reading.

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.

I'd say it took us no time at all. Any instance of knowledge is occurs in the moment it exists. No doubt we make estimates all the time, but these either fully capture what we want to know (e.g. Newtonian physics works for certain problems) or they amount to not knowing it at all. Knowing cannot be work.

Getting knowledge can be a lot of work, setting up the right experiments, finding the right environment to inspire new knowledge, studying what's gone before to reflect back against what you know, etc.,etc., but that occurs before we gain an instance of knowledge.

I suspect you don't really have a conflict with the is/ought discintion though, for you appeal to "moral facts" seems to be more about protecting an objective morality. In that sense, there is no conflict with the is/ought distinction. "Ought facts" are just a different sort of truth to "is so facts."

Because you are asserting what I'm not talking about defines what I am talking about.

My point was that Aristotle, Kant and you were misapply rationality in the context of describing how we understand ethics. You made a truth claim about how we understood ethics-- that it was through rationality, the "nature" of Aristotle, the CI of Kant, as if thinking those ideas is how we exist with moral knowledge. I'm pointing out this is not true. It's a fiction.

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

Are you claiming that all claims Are verifiable, or that all claims Must be verifiable? What do you know of Logical Positivism and why it failed?

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

You may have a point about how they were working on how to derive 1+1=2 logically. But, do you know why they wrote the Principia Mathematica in the first place? And do you know if their project was considered a success?

The human telos, and the purposes and intentions of human action deriving from it, have nothing to do with a "grand outside rule".

You just haven't read what I wrote, or at least haven't understood it, if you think I was claiming that moral actions must be the outcome of following rules. You were arguing that Kant's deontogical ethics and Aristotle's virtue ethics are virtually the same insofar as they both consist in following rational principles. I was pointing out that is not correct, and that Aristotle and Kant are very different on this; 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.

If you can't see that distinction, then perhaps that's the problem. So as far as I can see you are interpreting the situation exactly arse-backwards. If you are going to make an objection to what I have written here, then at least take some time and thought to ensure that the objection is actually relevant to what I have written.

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

I don't know how you got that from my posts. And it seems to me that the only way you could know it is true, is if you know there are no moral facts. What I'm attempting to show is that the existence of moral facts isn't inconceivable, given the strangeness of all facts. I think I already said, "I don't know if there are, or how to prove it one way or the other."

Calling it "human telos" doesn't make it any less an outside rule. Actions don't derive from purposes and intentions. They exist. A purpose or intention does not define any action-- I may think I should do something or think I will do something, but end up not doing it at all.

There is no "logical deriving." Actions and the ethical significance they express are themselves.

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.

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

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?

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.

They are; but I think in light of that we must be satisfied to trust our best intuitions in matters that are not susceptible of empirical or logical verification or falsification. I just hate the PC idea of following or bowing to the current trends in academic thought when it comes, in particular, to spiritual matters, it is such a stultifying idea.

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

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.

It's Aristotle's idea to intuitively follow nature is to understand virtue, not an argument that virtue is known intuitively. We're supposed to be relying on the rational ground of "nature" to understand what's virtuous.

Yes, 'nature' is an idea, but nature is not; here you are failing, among other things, to get the 'use/mention' distinction that is so dear to AP.

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.

Nature is an idea.

It a generalised concept that doesn't refer to any particular state of the world. There is no-one who is "nature," no state of the world, no action, no particular expression of ethical significance.

The problem with Aristotle is similar to the issue of equivocations seen science, where the concepts we used to describe the meaning of empirical states are confused with the states themselves.

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

Indeed, but the problem is it doesn't consider what outside "nature." The brutish psychopath is by definition only considered capable of kill people, whole the rational woman of virtue is by definition only considered capable of moral goodness.

Instances where either one acts otherwise are considered impossible becasue they go against the "nature" which supposedly defines how must act.

If nature is an idea in the sense that you describe here then states are ideas; the world is an idea, actions are ideas, everything is an idea. If that is what you want to claim then you are an idealist.

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

I got the impression they attempted it, because otherwise, math is only intuitive. Can you really falsify something that is intuitive?

@TheWillowOfDarkness It is a mistake to understand that for the sake of which as something like a Kantian imperative we are somehow bound to follow. I get it that you don't like this as a description of human nature, or that you simply don't accept the notion of a human nature at all. There's no need to keep saying it.

I agree, I think that in the final analysis, both math and logic must be intuitive. So, the whole project of reducing either to a set of fundamental axioms just pushes the problem back a step. How do we know the posited axioms, which cannot themselves be proven from within the system they are taken to support are true? We can know they are true only because they are self-evident to us. What does it mean to be self-evident? It means to be intuitively obvious.