The is/ought divide cannot be overcome, but that is no loss to ethics, because the “is” side is just as subject to the problem of infinite regress / agrippa’s trilemma as the “ought” side is, so even if we could ground “oughts” in “ises” (nevermind that that would destroy their ought-ness anyway, which is why we can’t) we’d then face the same challenge grounding those “ises”.

Which is not to say that both reality and morality are completely subjective and that no opinions on either can be rationally judged as more or less correct than any other. It’s only to say that on neither topic can we demand absolute proof from the ground up before saying that holding an opinion on that topic is warranted.

Instead, on both sides of the divide, we must resign ourselves to perpetual uncertainty, but there is still hope in that that uncertainty can also be perpetually diminished, by constantly weeding out competing answers that are in one way or another problematic. Logical inconsistency is one obvious type of problematicness, for example.

If we are to take “reality” and “truth” to mean something related to the world as it seems that it is to our senses, all of our senses not just any one person’s, then (verifiable) disagreement with (anyone’s) empirical experience is another reason to disfavor some “is” claims versus others. That leaves us with a framework of critical empirical realism in which to work out the details of what is real.

And if we are to take “morality” and “goodness” to mean something related to the world as it seems that it ought to be to our appetites, all of our appetites not just any one person’s, then (verifiable) disagreement with (anyone’s) hedonic experience is another reason to disfavor some “ought” claims versus others. That leaves us with a framework of liberal hedonic altruism in which to work out the details of what is moral.

The alternatives in either case are to either abandon all hope of ever being warranted in holding an opinion of either type, consigning ourselves to have no clue whatsoever about either what is real or what is moral; or else to do as you say, and take some things to just be axiomatically real, or axiomatically moral, as principles of faith beyond all question... and in doing so abandon all hope of ever improving our opinions, if those unquestionable axioms we pick turn out to be suboptimal choices in some way or another.

Anyways, what I am trying to ask is this. What is the purpose of ethics, then? Are we to propose our various ethical theories, which are in some senses arbitrary? I am not sure this is a question so much as it is a wish to discuss with people who can sympathize with my concern and perhaps point me to some literature that would be relevant. — Philguy

Welcome to the Forum. I self-identity as one of the forum idealists, so will answer accordingly. The very short version is that ethics must ultimately be grounded in a cosmic philosophy, otherwise they will have, shall we say, very shallow roots.

What, you may ask, is a ‘cosmic philosophy’? I think any of the major philosophical and religious traditions would answer to that description. They are animated by the belief that the world is a stage on which the forces of good and evil, or ignorance and enlightenment, play out. In the Christian world view it is anchored to the incarnation and the hope of the Second Coming. The Buddhist worldview is cyclical rather than linear, with the world depicted as but one phase or station in the everlasting caravan of saṃsāra. That has many similarities, but also important differences, with the Hindu view.

Of course these descriptions sound grandiose and rather dramatic, but underlying them is the sense that history has some purpose. In the Christian view, that is, again, linear - the ‘myth of progress’ was arguably rooted in a secular vision of the Eschaton, with the tantalising prospect of interstellar travel the sublimated conquest of Heaven. But however these myths are interpreted, they provide a sense of relatedness to the cosmic order, through for example the idea of man as ‘imago dei’. Whereas the ‘desacralised’ vision of modernity sees life, including human life, as a kind of accident of nature, as a consequence of the anti-religious philosophies of the European Enlightenment. The theme of being adrift in the indifferent vastness of space is very common in 20th century art and literature.

So I think some form of modernised spirituality has to be part of the ethical framework, to provide some sense of summum bonum, an ultimate good, without which everything too easily fragments into either competing self-interests, or some form of utilitarianism or pragmatism.

I think many people misinterpret what Hume was trying to say with the is/ought gap that he laid out. Hume was merely pointing out that you can’t argue for an ought claim with only premises that contain is claims. Suppose, that I wanted to argue that you ought not rape people. Here is a common informal kind of argument that people use that is logically invalid:

P1: Rape causes suffering
C: Therefore, you ought not to rape people

The argument above doesn’t follow the rules of formal logic. This is because the single premise in the argument doesn’t entail the conclusion. Rather, the argument would have to go like this:

P1: If rape causes suffering then you ought not rape.
P2: Rape causes suffering.
C: Therefore, you ought not rape.

This argument is a valid argument because the truthfulness of premises would necessarily entail that the
conclusion is true. The point that Hume was trying to make is that you can’t argue for an “ought” claim without having a premise with the word “ought” in it. P1 of the argument is needed to make this argument against rape valid. It also happens to be the more controversial premise of the argument and these sorts of premises are the center of most ethical discussions. Contrary to popular beliefs, the is/ought gap doesn’t imply that morality is arbitrary or that moral realism is false. It’s just pointing out a mistake that many people make when they make informal arguments for some ought claim. Really, the logical principle behind the is/ought gap applies to every kind of specific claim. For example, I can’t even argue for a simple claim like the claim that snow is white without having at least one premise that has the conclusion of the argument nested inside of it. Here’s an invalid argument for that claim:

P1: snow appears white.
C: Therefore, snow is white

Here’s a valid argument for this claim that is also more plausible:

P1: If snow appears to be white, then it most likely is white.
P2: Snow appears to be white.
C: Therefore, snow most likely is white.

Notice how “snow most likely is white” is the conclusion of the argument and it is also nested inside P1 after the word “then” and notice how that’s necessarily to make the premises entail the conclusion. That’s the only kind of thing that Hume really expressed with his is/ought gap(except he just limited this principle specifically to ought claims for some reason). It’s not really as sexy of a gap as most people make it out to be. I honestly don’t understand why philosophers who understand the true limitations of Hume’s gap are so interested in this gap. I think it’s just a trend of philosophers fanboying over everything that Hume says. Some people have argued that this modest observation about logic is important to study for some reason but it just seems like something we always understood since the days of Aristotle and the origins of the basic rules of formal logic.

Well you've got yourself into an interesting knot. I would suggest the third chapter (skip the first two if you are familiar with skepticism) of Stanley Cavell's Claim of Reason, but it is pretty Gordian itself. I'll just try to touch on what he sees when we say "you ought".

He starts with "the things we say" (a trademark of the Ordinary Language Philosophy method he uses) about moral arguments: if premises are accepted, we must accept our goal: a conclusion on "what" ought to be done. To say this is "normative" is to answer: what that one thing "ought" to be, with the threat of incompetence or irrationality in a picture of what counts, what is rational. To say "you ought" is to imply I am arguing against an alternative, I take a position for which I offer proof relevant to you.

Yet, as you know, people do not have to agree. After Cavell investigates what is said with "I promise", "enough", "commitment", "belief", etc., he digs out that a claim to knowledge is different than your moral claim to rightness, as we question the position you take, what you are taking responsibility for, with the threat to our relationship; arguing "you ought to ____" with moral reasons for what will benefit me. Then to know what you are doing (the various types of rationality of our individual practices) is to know why you are doing it, where you will stand, what you will be answerable for--to know yourself.

The point that Hume was trying to make is that you can’t argue for an “ought” claim without having a premise with the word “ought” in it. — TheHedoMinimalist

But I think Hume’s point was far more general than you’re making it out to be. Taken in the context of Hume’s overall philosophy, it amounts to a sceptical position vis a vis moral realism of any kind, I think. I don’t recall that Hume devoted much or any attention to the basis for arriving at ‘ought’ decisions - as distinct from Kant, of course, who devoted considerable attention to just this question.

Kant's hypothetical imperative — Philguy

...is a fine guide for moral order in the course of scientific truth and sustainability, as an objective, universal value.

Morality is fundamentally a sense - not a set of axioms; it's like humour or aesthetics. There are identifiable regularities and broad agreement about what is funny or beautiful, but there's no recipe for what is funny or beautiful, and no absolute definition.

It's the same with morality. It's a sense fostered in the human animal by evolution. It was an advantage to the individual within the tribe, and to the tribe composed of moral individuals who would share food and defend each other etc. Morality only became explicit later, with civilisation.

Thus, the hypothetical imperative is perfectly fine. We act morally for reward. I use my natural abilities to know what is scientifically true, and on the basis of what's true, act morally with regard to sustainability, and thereby serve my own interests by securing the future, and so on, in an ongoing manner.

Where the 'is' is scientific truth - and the 'ought' is the moral sense, sustainability is the bridge between the two; and the self interest is served as a consequence of a general betterment of the human condition.

*

But I think Hume’s point was far more general than you’re making it out to be. Taken in the context of Hume’s overall philosophy, it amounts to a sceptical position vis a vis moral realism of any kind, I think. I don’t recall that Hume devoted much or any attention to the basis for arriving at ‘ought’ decisions - as distinct from Kant, of course, who devoted considerable attention to just this question. — Wayfarer

Well, Hume was probably sort of a moral anti-realist but I don’t think the is/ought gap had anything to do with that. He was mostly skeptical of our ability to reason about emotionally sensitive topic where he thought that our passions would likely take the driver’s seat. For example, Hume probably thought that we can reason pretty well about an emotionally sterile philosophy questions like the question regarding whether a hot dog is a type of sandwich. Very few people care who is right about this topic and so we don’t have to worry to much about emotional bias dominating people’s opinion on this topic. On the other hand, questions related to morality, politics, and the philosophy of religion are questions that Hume thinks are answered by our emotional inclinations rather than with our reasoning. So, he would likely think that almost no one bases their opinion on a topic like abortion on reason but they just believe what they want to believe.

Though, I don’t think even this argument implies that moral realism is false as it is possible that almost all people are incapable of reasoning about morality beyond defending a viewpoint they initially accepted because it emotionally touched them and yet this wouldn’t necessarily logically entail that there aren’t correct answers to moral questions. To use an analogy, 99% of the time people’s views on whether or not there is an afterlife are the views that they also happen to wish to be true but it seems quite obvious that there either is an afterlife or there isn’t an afterlife. It seems like you can’t really be a relativist about questions concerning the existence of the afterlife. It may be argued that just as we don’t know if there is an afterlife and we predicate our opinion on the topic from our emotional inclinations, we may also not be able to deduce in an unbiased manner the correct moral opinions to hold but we can reasonably believe that some moral opinions must be correct.

It’s also possible that Hume did think that the is/ought gap implied moral anti-realism but he might simply misunderstand the implications of his own arguments. Though, it’s also worth noting that meta-ethical questions weren’t really a thing in Hume’s day and so it might be kinda strange to assume he even thought about meta-ethics. He probably just had a more down to Earth approach to ethics unlike a philosopher like Kant who thought it was better to lay forward some grandiose foundation to morality.

My take on the is/ought issue is that there are two facets to it:

1. The is/ought problem: Killing is an undeniable fact - predators kill their prey, sometimes in gruesome ways. "Therefore" we ought to kill.

2. The is/ought solution: Killing is an undeniable fact. "Therefore" we ought not kill.

Hume was concerned with moral arguments that have as a premise a known fact about our world and drawing from it, as a conclusion, a normative moral injunction. The normative injunction must, if the reasoning is to make sense, be an affirmation of the known fact i.e. if the known fact in question is x, the normative injunction has to be do x. This is the is/ought problem.


The is/ought solution, however, is an entirely different story. Morality has its roots in a general dissatisfaction with how the world is. Isn't that the very reason why there's an ought, all oughts being nothing more than expressions of our discontentment with the is, the status quo.

Are we doomed—in some perilous loop—to be confined to some perverse version of Kant's hypothetical imperative? Can we not overcome Hume's is/ought divide? I will undoubtedly make another post concerning the is/ought divide some other time, as it aggregates me to no end. I have my doubts about it. — Philguy

The fault lies solely on the ought side in my view. 'Ought's with 'in order to's are much easier to map to 'is's. If one's aim is to stir tea effectively, it is logical to use a tool designed for stirring tea effectively: a teaspoon, not a sponge.

I believe that the abstract quality of moral claims derives from the fact that each of us has moral machinery that operates outside of our consciousness but that spits outputs into that consciousness. We are driven to, for instance, pull a child out of the river, but that drive is in a vacuum: we are not likewise provided with the reasons for doing so, the 'in order to' that would make the action amenable to logic. The reasons we have those drives is down to our evolutionary history: the implicit 'in order to' is that it maximises likelihood of survival, but that's a statistical reason across evolutionary timescales, not a justification of individual actions.

Ethics in this context is an attempt to rationalise and formalise these (sometimes competing) drives (inner oughts iyl) in the absence of apparent justifications. The tautological and ambiguous justification for all moral actions is to be moral: to be a good human being.

A good human being to us is one that does good things, but to, say, the ancient Greeks would be one who is good at being a human, in the same way that a good hammer is one that is good at being a hammer, a good teaspoon is one that is good at being a teaspoon, etc. Goodness in this meaning is a measure of how well the object fulfills its function. Humans don't have an overall function like a hammer, but they do have design, not a teleological design, but an optimisation of biological function to maximise the likelihood of our species persisting.

An antisocial human being is a malfunctioning human being. They are designed to be social, to help others, to be considerate, to cooperate, and to oppose antisocial behaviour such as domination. Someone who is inconsiderate, would whip out their phone if they saw a drowning child to film it, who takes more than they give, who tolerates or champions antisocial behaviour in others, is not a good human being: that is, they do not meet the criteria (quality control iyl) of a well-functioning human.

If you see a child drowning in the river, you ought to try and save them... in order to be a good person.

There is, of course, no 'ought' for being a good person. For most of our history, that ought would have been survivalistic: I ought to share my food, otherwise I will be chased from the group and will likely perish in solitude. That's extremely contingent. Now one is more or less free to be as antisocial as the law permits, so long as one does not care about being judged a bad person: bad at being a human, in the way that a wobbly hammer is judged a bad hammer.

That ethics is essentially like Euclidian geometry. — Philguy

Imo you've said more here with your metaphor than maybe you recognize. Geometry itself is more than just a topic; it's also a concept of a general method. We have the expression, "to reason more geometrico." And more than that, as to topic itself remind yourself there is non-Euclidean geometry.

As to Kantian ethics, that's method and guide, never praxis. Just as geometry is never about real triangles. And just for the heck of it, do you understand just what Aristotle's ethics is about? "Virtue" by itself is more than a little deceptive.

What is the purpose of ethics, then? — Philguy

If you look at the way theories of ethics are usually used, it's to judge, condemn, and punish people.

So one purpose of a theory of ethics is that it is used to justfify activities that are intended to bring about social order (a theory of ethics is implied in the content of the laws and in the way the legal system works).

Related to this, but on the level of the individual, they are used to inform psychological and physical boundaries between oneself and other (e.g. a person has a principle of not associating with people who drink alcohol, because they believe such an association is bad and ought not be done).

I agree with on Humes' meaning with the is/ought divide. I would not say that Hume was merely pointing out some logical error or syllogistic fault. But to your credit Hedo you acknowledged this possibility in your later post. In any case, the three of us should agree that contemporary philosophical understanding interprets Humes is/ought divide in this more general sense that Wayfarer speaks of. So it's what we must contend with.

I like the angle you are approaching this from. The conclusion is not novel, but the way you reach it is. Most with your predilections don't acknowledge the uncertainty aspect, or if they do, they handwave it as a foolish thing to be concerned with.

Now, this Agrippa trilemma that you bring up fascinates me, and I'm glad you brought it up. IMO, this is the core problem of ethics. My opinion on this is that the first sort of justification is a "moral" one. I say this because before empiricism or any "ism," for that matter, gets off the ground; you must take some evaluative stance. I could elaborate further if anyone wants me to.

As I understand it, this is the path most moral realists take. They say something like, before you can even make the first step to philosophy, you must tacitly value—in a "moral" sense—the inclination to the truth. I think there's a case to be made that before you can even be skeptical, this inclination to truth must be present. But, not too sure of that, and I am willing to be convinced otherwise.

Any thoughts on this?

In any case, the three of us should agree that contemporary philosophical understanding interprets Humes is/ought divide in this more general sense that Wayfarer speaks of. So it's what we must contend with. — Philguy

Well, it seems like Wayfarer didn’t actually explain how the is/ought divide implies that moral realism is implausible. It’s possible that Hume falsely believed that the is/ought gap implies this but he never explicitly stated that it does to my knowledge. In addition, my whole point is that the is/ought divide doesn’t seem to do anything to threaten moral realism. It seems like believing that you can’t defend an ought claim without making another ought claim is still perfectly compatible with moral realism. Moral realists could just argue that ought claims can be just as objective and factual as is claims are. There doesn’t seem to be any obvious reason to think that they aren’t. It’s also worth noting that just as you can’t defend an ought claim without making another ought claim, it also seems true that you can’t defend a scientific claim without making another scientific claim and you can’t defend a mathematical claim without making another mathematical claims. But, this just wouldn’t imply that science and math are subjective or not real in any way. This is because you don’t need to derive those other claims from other kinds of claims. We just treat those claims as credible and some philosophers have a tendency to dismiss ought claims for reasons that are unrelated to the is/ought distinction itself. It’s not clear to me what the is/ought distinction actually adds to the conversation here.

...My whole point is that the is/ought divide doesn’t seem to do anything to threaten moral realism.

The is/ought divide threatens the central thesis that Moral Realism attempts to put forward and defend. Moral Realism takes the view that moral values are not simply held by an observing moral agent whom assesses an act in terms of right and wrong, but rather that moral values represent an intrinsic characteristic of an act itself. That an act is either right or wrong in-itself; or, alternatively, that an act possess certain moral properties that a moral agent can intuitively recognize as right or wrong. Either view represents a moral reality that can be objectively considered whether or not the agent is consciously aware of it.

Moral Realism assumes that moral values exist as the constituents of an ontological reality and not as the constituents of a moral agents phenomenological reality.
The central thesis of Moral Realism is committed to four propositions:

1. Moral statements express propositions.

2. Some of these propositions are true.

3. True propositions are made true by objective, mind-independent features of the world.

(A brief digression). Moral Realism diverges into two separate moral doctrines (Naturalism and Non-naturalism) with one (Naturalism) committed to a fourth proposition and the other (Non-naturalism) committed to the negation of the same proposition. I have therefore included both the thesis and antithesis that represent the divergence between these moral doctrines.

4. (Naturalism): These moral features of the world are reducible to some set of non-moral features.

4. (Non-naturalism): These moral features of the world are not reducible to any set of non-moral features.

The first problem that Moral Realism faces is how it can justify the third proposition. Namely, how can moral statements be made true by objective, mind-independent features of the world? Keep in mind that such a problem is raised by attempting to cross the is-ought divide. Moral Realism attempts to cross the divide by claiming that both descriptive and prescriptive statements are true/false propositions and that some are made true by objective, mind-independent features of the world.

According to Moral Realism, it is either the case that objects and events in the world have an intrinsic moral value in themselves (they are either good or bad); or, alternatively, that they possess some moral property of which moral agents innately recognize as being either good or bad. Either way, Moral Realism has committed itself to an ontological central thesis that.

The Non-naturalist is committed to the ontological claim that moral statements correspond with reality insofar as reality contains innate moral properties (such as, an innate human purpose). The Naturalist, on the other hand, is committed to the ontological claim that moral statements can be reduced to a naturally equivalent fact (such as, sensory pleasure (a natural fact) is good (a moral statement).

To flesh out this objection, lets consider the following argument as it attempts to cross the is-ought divide under the interpretation of Moral Realism.

P1. Humans die if you decapitate them (This is a descriptive statement).

P2. John is human. (Another descriptive statement).

C. Therefore, you ought not decapitate John. (This is a prescriptive statement).

It is the case that humans die upon decapitation and it likewise is the case that John is a human. These are both empirically verifiable facts that can be objectively considered. However, nothing about these observations tells us if we ought, or ought not kill humans by virtue of decapitation. This means that the argument is not valid because the premises do not entail the conclusion.

Here, Moral Realists and myself would agree that an additional premise is required in order to make this argument valid. A premise such as "Killing humans is immoral" would suffice, however, here a Moral Realist would be satisfied with her view that such a premise represents an objective fact of the world (an "is" statement), whereas I would remain skeptical and request an argument be provided so that I may see where such an inference is made.

Two arguments would be provided. First, the argument of Semantic Moral Realism that is concerned with our moral utterances and the truth value of the content therein. Semantic Moral Realism states that though moral terms play a role in how we form evaluative concepts which aim to refer to certain properties as objectively prescriptive facts, not all speakers are using moral terms in association with the same properties.

Some speakers may, for instance, use moral terms in some unusual, idiosyncratic way. In short, our evaluative language and concepts could be non-cognitive, anti-realist, and yet the truth of our moral judgements can still represent objective or mind-independent features of the world. Such an argument could be formalized into something similar to the following.

P1. Moral terms such as "right" or "wrong" play a semantic role that an agent uses to refer to the moral properties of "rightness" or "wrongness"

P2. Moral properties of "rightness" or "wrongness" represent the state or condition of being either right or wrong in conduct or judgment.

P3. An agent refers to these moral properties with such terms based on the moral convictions they have formed.

P4. An agents moral convictions are formed through a subjective evaluation of these moral properties.

P5. Subjective evaluations are subject to interpretation and perspective.

P6. Interpretation and perspectives are fallible.

Therefore,
C. Terms such as "right" and "wrong" can be mistakenly applied to a conduct or judgment by an agent.

A Moral Naturalist would think of moral terms as being analytically equivalent to terms referring to natural properties. For example, Hedonism refers to the natural property of pleasure as being analytically equivalent to the moral term "good" whenever they claim that "pleasure is good". A Moral Non-naturalist would take the opposite stand in thinking of moral terms as being irreducible to terms referring to natural properties and would instead suggest that moral terms, if true, purport to report a fact that lie outside of naturalism.

Non-naturalists claim that terms such as "good" or "bad" are indefinable and therefore cannot be substituted with terms such as pleasure or suffering. Both Naturalistic and Non-naturalistic versions of Moral Realism avoid the problem of moral disagreement with the Semantic Moral Realist argument.

Though the argument for Semantic Moral Realism seems to avoid a threat raised by Anti-realist objections, it does nothing to defend the third proposition in question (that true propositions are made true by objective, mind-independent features of the world), that is, besides offering up an excuse of semantic incompetence for the lack thereof. This is where the second argument comes in which is known as the argument for Metaphysical Moral Realism.

The argument for Metaphysical Moral Realism takes two separate construals for its defense. The first construal suggests that there must be some connection between an agents moral convictions and the agents motivations towards a specific action. The argument states that any such moral proposition must necessarily have corresponding motivations built into them. From this premise, it is inferred, that, if an agent were both fully able to rationalize and also possess the knowledge of all the relevant moral facts, then the agents motivations would be guided by objective moral facts towards actions that are objectively "good" or that are, in fact, the "right" thing to do. Such an argument could be formalized in the following manner.

P1. An agents moral convictions are intrinsically motivating.

P2. An agents moral convictions may or may not be fully rational or based on all the facts.

P3. There are objective facts to be known about morality.

P4. An agent may achieve conformity between their beliefs and their reasons to believe such beliefs, as well as between their actions and their reasons for which they act.

Therefore,
C. An agent would be motivated to do what is objectively moral, if and only if the agent was fully rational and knew all of the facts.

This argument, which takes on a more naturalistic construal of Moral Realism, serves only to suggest that the existence of objective moral facts are merely logically possible. It remains a tentative explanation at best for a reason to believe that such objective, mind-independent moral facts do indeed exist.

The second construal of argument for Metaphysical Moral Realism suggests that moral facts are the same as mathematical facts. They are both abstract entities that cannot be fully explained through empirical observations (as natural facts can be) and this places them in a separate ontological category from naturalistic entities.

As a result, what makes some moral statements true propositions that are made true by objective, mind-independent features of the world lie in the relations between it and the features of the world that make it true. Such features need not be natural nor provide us concrete conceptions of the world, but rather need be supported by an a priori appeal to the ontology of concepts they are involved with.

Consider the two analogs of Mathematics and Logic. Both need not rely on empirical correspondence to be confirmed as true because they are systematically supported within their own conceptual reality. The following is an example of how such an argument could be formalized.

P1. Moral sentences sometimes represent a statement that is true.

P2. A sentence is true only if there is a truth making relation that holds between its contents being something that exists in the world and the proposition that such contents exists.

(A metaphysical bridging relation between what is true and what exists).

P3. True moral sentences are true only because they are held together by a truth-making relation between their existence and the things which makes them true.

Therefore,
C. The things which make some moral sentences true must exist.

This argument, in the end, also fails to substantiate the ontological premise needed to ground Moral Realism. It is a failed attempt to bridge the is-ought divide, on my view, and an attempt that must be successful in order for Moral Realism to justify its central ontological thesis.

How would Moral Realism achieve this goal?

Well, it would have to substantiate the claim that moral values exist as objective, mind-independent features of the world.

How would it do that?

Well, we could conjecture that human lives have an innate moral property of being Good; or, we could otherwise conjecture that there exists moral properties possessed by things in-themselves — that such things as happiness, pleasure, or honesty are in-themselves morally Good and thus analytically equivalent at a fundamental level — then, if our conjecture is accepted, the problem would be resolved and the gap would be bridged. This is essentially the Moral Realist approach and I do not find such conjecture to be convincing.

My objection to the Moral Realist approach would be that the whole theory seems to be begging the question. If we ask "how are human lives 'Good'", then, most often, the answer given is "because humans possess an innate property of Goodness" — or, "because they possess happiness and pleasures and such things possess natural properties that can be reduced to moral properties — such as Goodness." And just how is that not a premise assuming the conclusion? How do Moral Realists find this to be an acceptable justification?

Perhaps therein lies the problem — in the Moral Realist's justification. Let's touch on this a bit, as it makes for a nice segue into my second objection to your comment.

In epistemology, justification is a concept which describes a belief that is held by virtue of having good reasons and evidence to hold it. Morality is a system of evaluative beliefs used to generate principles that guide our conduct. Justifying moral beliefs is an important part of developing a moral system, because without good reasons for believing moral claims, morality becomes inconsistent. Without a consistent moral system, any behavior becomes justifiable.

With that in mind, it becomes clear why Moral Realism must overcome the is-ought divide in order to develop and maintain a consistent take on morality. Moral Realism, in order to be a consistent view, must derive a prescriptive conclusion from descriptive premises. They must state  which claims are actually true and explain what it is about the world that makes those claims true.

The problem is that in order to derive a prescriptive conclusion, it is necessary to construct an argument containing at least one prescriptive premise. In other words, a moral belief can only be justified by another moral belief because prescriptive conclusions cannot be derived from non-prescriptive premises without either begging the question or running into an infinite regression.

Every prescriptive premise placed within the inference structure of a moral argument is attempting to justify another prescriptive claim. Every prescriptive claim, however, must then be subsequently justified itself by providing an additional argument containing an additional prescriptive premise. This would go on ad infinitum and thus such conclusions remain as unjustifiable beliefs.

Any belief that appeals to an unjustified belief for justification can never be justified. If there is no good reason to believe a claim we generally don't believe it. A claim that is begging the question, or a claim that must fall back on an infinite sequence of requisite arguments, is a belief appealing to an unjustified belief.

So, how does this trouble Moral Realism? It does because Moral Realism is making the claim that there exists an ontological grounding for our moral judgements and that requires crossing the is-ought divide. Crossing the is-ought divide requires each moral claim to be justified.

One problem is that the only way a moral claim can be justified is if it is itself justified by another moral claim — this becomes a problem. This problem is known as the infinite regress, wherein a moral claim must be justified by a chain of normative inferences that goes on infinitely. Another problem is known as circular reasoning which includes the concluding moral claim itself to be a built in presupposition within the premises.

So, if we say...

It seems like believing that you can’t defend an ought claim without making another ought claim is still perfectly compatible with moral realism.

Then we are conceding that Moral Realism is defeated either by virtue of circular reasoning or by falling into an infinite regression.

No one is ever justified in believing any moral claim that uses an argument which includes the same moral claim in its conclusion as the moral claim in its premises. If a moral claim is represented as one of the premises of the argument that is trying to prove the same moral claim as its conclusion, the argument is circular. The premise cannot support the conclusion, since the conclusion is merely restating one of its premises which cannot adequately provide the sufficient justification for a belief.

No one is ever justified in believing any moral claim supported by an infinite chain of inferences. Even though the justification for a moral claim could, in theory, go on infinitely, we nevertheless would never know whether or not such a claim was justified. If the entire chain of justification is not present for us to form a belief, then we can never know if we can be justified in believing it. If a single unjustified claim was present within the entire chain but beyond the reach of our limited scope of knowledge, it would undermine the justification of the entire chain itself.

Moral realists could just argue that ought claims can be just as objective and factual as is claims are. There doesn’t seem to be any obvious reason to think that they aren’t.

The reason that "ought" claims cannot be just as objective and factual as "is" claims are is because "ought" claims are prescriptive or normative statements, whereas "is" claims are descriptive or positive statements. There appears to be a lacking appreciation for the fact-value distinction. All "ought" claims represent statements of value, whereas all "is" claims represent statements of fact.

To begin, a "claim" is a type of statement that offers an assertion about an issue that can either be true or false.

Descriptive claims attempt to state the facts and give an account of how the world is through non-evaluative observations. The statement "What happens after we die is unknown" for instance, is a descriptive claim. Whether a descriptive claim is true or false is an empirical question. Empirical questions can only be answered through observations we make as we experience the real world.

Prescriptive claims, on the other hand, express an evaluation and give an account of how the world should be. A statement such as "We should be afraid to die," is a prescriptive claim. Whether a prescriptive claim is true or false is an ethical question. Ethical questions can only be answered by an entity with moral agency (an entity capable of generating personal values, a sense of purpose and who attributes meanings to things).

Some descriptive statements bear the truth for normative or prescriptive statements by describing a set of circumstances from which a value judgment can then be considered. To demonstrate this point, the claim, "Abortion is the deliberate termination of a pregnancy that involves killing the undeveloped embryo or fetus," is a descriptive statement wherein the truth of the circumstance described thereby raises a normative issue — whether or not killing a developing human fetus is desirable. Moreover, it likewise raises a prescriptive issue, namely whether or not abortions should be done. As a result of such a dichotomy, descriptive claims are seen in contrast with prescriptive claims.

Objectivity describes a feature of the world that is independent from the specificities of a mind, whereas subjectivity describes a feature of the world that is conditional on the specificities of a mind. Therefore, for a claim to be objective, it must be empirically falsifiable and describe mind-independent features of the world.

There are claims that make objective statements, such as "The sky is cloudy," that reflect reality and, in contrast, there are claims that make subjective statements, such as "I like a cloudy sky," that reflect a perspective through which a subject views reality.

For a moral claim to be a factual statement, it must contain facts — externally verifiable, demonstrable realities — based on empirical evidence. Furthermore, for a moral claim to be an objective statement, it must have some properties accessible through external reality and not just be privately accessible through an internal, mind-dependent reality.

Why even presuppose an objective moral ontology in the first place? I mean, given the subjective nature of human psychology, it seems that our cognitive and evaluative capacities do not require a philosophically objective foundation.

Moral Realism attempts to cross the divide by claiming that both descriptive and prescriptive statements are true/false propositions and that some are made true by objective, mind-independent features of the world. — Cartesian trigger-puppets

Well, the first thing that I want to point out is that there actually seem to be some ought statements that cannot be called prescriptive statements. According the first definition of the word “prescriptive” that I could find on the Internet, the word “prescriptive” means “Relating to or making rules, laws, or directions.” I can think of plenty of ought statements that have nothing to do with making rules, laws, or directions. For example, the statement “you ought to brush your teeth” doesn’t seem to have anything to do with making rules, laws, or directions. Also, I think it’s worth asking why couldn’t ought statements be considered descriptive statements. For example, I tend to think that the word “ought” is just a short hand way of expressing complex evaluative propositions. For example, I think the phrase “you ought to brush your teeth” is synonymous with phrases like “brushing your teeth is the best available decision option at this time for you to take” or “having a habit of brushing your teeth is better than not having a habit of brushing your teeth“. A phrase like “brushing your teeth is the best available decision option at this time for you to take” seems to be a descriptive statement and it also happens to be an is statement. If you don’t agree with me that the phrase “brushing your teeth is the best available decision option at this time for you to take” is a descriptive statement because you’re one of those philosophers who doesn’t think that evaluative statements are descriptive statements then it’s worth noting that this disagreement seems to have nothing to do with an alleged is/ought gap.

I think that the phrase “brushing your teeth is the best available decision option at this time for you to take” sometimes means the exact same thing as the phrase “you ought to brush your teeth” kinda how the phrase “John knocked me up” is synonymous with the phrase “I’m pregnant with John’s baby”. There is a psychological explanation that could be given for why the phrase “you ought to brush your teeth” is synonymous with various phrases expressing complex evaluative propositions. Phrases like “brushing your teeth is the best available decision option at this time for you to take” and “having a habit of brushing your teeth is better than not having a habit of brushing your teeth“ are extremely long and wordy. It would be a pain in the ass to always have to say them to express the basic kind of evaluative ideas that we are trying to express. So, the creators of the English language created the word “ought” that could pretty much be substituted most of the time for these long winded evaluative propositions.

It’s also worth noting that other languages like my native language of Russian do not have a word that cleanly translates to the English word “ought”. Instead, “ought” is translated to several words in Russian where one word also translates as the word “need” and the other word also translates to the word “must”. So, the phrase “you ought to brush your teeth” literally translates in Russian as “you need to brush your teeth”. So, it would be very hard to explain what the is/ought gap is to a Russian speaker since they don’t really have the same conventions regarding helping verbs as English speakers have. I have actually read about the is/ought gap in Russian and it was confusing as hell.

Lastly, I want to mention that I am not a moral realist myself so I don’t necessarily disagree with the latter part of your post that doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the is/ought divide. I was just suggesting that the is/ought gap doesn’t say anything profound about meta-ethics and it mostly just makes an observation about formal logic and how some people are too quick to draw moral conclusions from basic empirical claims without including that “if x then you ought to y” premise that they really should add in any normative arguments that they might be trying to make. Btw, I learned about this more modest interpretation of the is/ought gap from a moral anti-realist philosopher named Kane B. He makes philosophy YouTube videos and he has a pretty popular series on meta-ethics. I suspect that you might have already heard of him though.

If we are to take “reality” and “truth” to mean something related to the world as it seems that it is to our senses, all of our senses not just any one person’s, then (verifiable) disagreement with (anyone’s) empirical experience is another reason to disfavor some “is” claims versus others. That leaves us with a framework of critical empirical realism in which to work out the details of what is real.

And if we are to take “morality” and “goodness” to mean something related to the world as it seems that it ought to be to our appetites, all of our appetites not just any one person’s, then (verifiable) disagreement with (anyone’s) hedonic experience is another reason to disfavor some “ought” claims versus others. That leaves us with a framework of liberal hedonic altruism in which to work out the details of what is moral. — Pfhorrest

This is extremely interesting and I've been wanting to dig into this properly for ages. I still don't have time unfortunately. I buy the first paragraph but not the second, although I'm not completely sure.

The difference is, I think, that with morality and goodness, the individual appetite reasserts itself even after the abstraction for everyone's appetites has occurred. It has the last word. As a recipe for determining public policy though, I think your account it's fine. But as an analysis of what goodness actually is, it's wrong. I want what's good for everyone, sure. As long as I get a bit more without anyone else knowing. That would be even better. The good just is what is willed, for that agent. And there's nothing in that to say we have to abstract for everyone, although we might want to (or not - depending on what we will).

EDIT: with truth, the abstraction is what we want. The view from nowhere. With goodness, the abstraction is ultimately irrelevant, what is good remains what I want, even after considering others.

Are we to propose our various ethical theories, which are in some senses arbitrary? — Philguy

I think arbitrariness is the defining feature of the good. What is good just is what we will.

Rephrasing Ought in a Sentence - Ought-less Language
Rewriting of ought: An action is defined by a rule. This rule is in relation to a certain condition. This rule is followed so and so. This rule isn't necessarily fulfilled by the agent who is following this rule.
I think "ought" says this: you have a duty to do, but you can refuse to carry it through. "Ought" doesn't imply necessity and it does include human weakness implicitly. That is, you are likely to do it (as you should), but at times we all break our rules. No?
Dictionary.com:
1. (used to express duty or moral obligation): Every citizen ought to help.
2. (used to express justice, moral rightness, or the like): He ought to be punished. You ought to be ashamed.
3. (used to express propriety, appropriateness, etc.): You ought to be home early. We ought to bring her some flowers.
4. (used to express probability or natural consequence): That ought to be our train now.
The intention is to simply making the reduction of the convention (possibly) of "ought" by "is" statements, is what I want with this.
"Rewriting of ought: An action is defined by a rule. This rule is in relation to a certain condition. This rule is followed so and so. This rule isn't necessarily fulfilled by the agent who is following this rule."

Yahadreas' example: "You ought to brush your teeth"
becomes...
There is a rule that says brush your teeth. This rule is the condition of brushing one's teeth. I follow this rule by brushing my teeth. However, I don't always brush my teeth.

jsidelko's example: "If you have a temperature tomorrow, you ought to visit the doctor."
There is a rule that says that if you have a temperature tomorrow, you visit the doctor. This rule is the condition of having a temperature. I follow this rule by visiting the doctor. However, I don't always visit my doctor when I have a temperature.

Metadigital writes: "There ought to be less oughts in the world, ought there?"
Reiteration: An action is defined by a rule. This rule is in relation to a certain condition. This rule is followed so and so. This rule isn't necessarily fulfilled by the agent who is following this rule.
And so: (1)"An action is defined by a rule. This rule is in relation to a certain condition. This rule is followed so and so. This rule isn't necessarily fulfilled by the agent who is following this rule." and (2)such that there are less "actions that are defined by a rule. This rule is in relation to a certain condition. This rule is followed so and so. This rule isn't necessarily fulfilled by the agent who is following this rule." and (3)is this "an action is defined by a rule. This rule is in relation to a certain condition. This rule is followed so and so. This rule isn't necessarily fulfilled by the agent who is following this rule."?
So this is even more ought-less now, I guess!

No one is ever justified in believing any moral claim that uses an argument which includes the same moral claim in its conclusion as the moral claim in its premises. — Cartesian trigger-puppets

Moral claims are not ought claims though. You can make a moral claim without using the word “ought” or even implying an ought claim. For example, you can make an argument for a moral claim that goes something like this:

P1: Everything that violates a categorical imperative is morally wrong.

P2: Murder violates a categorical imperative.

C: Therefore, murder is wrong.

More radically, one can even suggest that one sometimes ought to do things that are morally wrong. For example, someone might say that they believe that stealing is morally wrong in an objective sense but they might also think that they ought to steal in order to become wealthy. Being wealthy might be seen as more important to them than being moral in an objective sense. There is an entire philosophical literature devoted to the question of why should we be moral which kinda implies that moral realism doesn’t necessarily presuppose any ought claims.

If the entire chain of justification is not present for us to form a belief, then we can never know if we can be justified in believing it. — Cartesian trigger-puppets

We can never know anything to sure. Even something as uncontroversial as the claim that Earth is round requires you to make certain assumptions in order for you to reasonably accept the theory. I don’t see why moral realists couldn’t claim that we are justified in making educated guesses about which kind of moral claims are most likely to be objectively true. To use an analogy, I can’t ever be justified in thinking that a particular company will go up in value on the stock market. Anything could happen at the end of the day. But, that doesn’t mean that I’m not justified in choosing to invest in companies that I think are the most likely to go in value on the basis on the research that I’ve done on the companies and some speculation.

Descriptive claims attempt to state the facts and give an account of how the world is through non-evaluative observations. — Cartesian trigger-puppets

Why do you think that only descriptive claims can be factual and not evaluative claims? Many philosophers like myself think that evaluative claims are factual claims. It’s also worth noting that there are plenty of scientific claims that seem to contain a value claim. For example, take the claim that Pluto is the 9th planet in the solar system. The word “planet” is used to designate celestial objects that are special and more worthy of study and exploration. So, there seem to be value claims that are nested within many descriptive claims. Given this, I think the fact/value distinction is kinda muddy.

Objectivity describes a feature of the world that is independent from the specificities of a mind, whereas subjectivity describes a feature of the world that is conditional on the specificities of a mind. Therefore, for a claim to be objective, it must be empirically falsifiable and describe mind-independent features of the world. — Cartesian trigger-puppets

Wait, couldn’t there be mind independent truths that are not empirically falsifiable? For example, isn’t the claim that 2+2=4 true in a mind independent manner and yet it isn’t empirically falsifiable?

Why even presuppose an objective moral ontology in the first place? I mean, given the subjective nature of human psychology, it seems that our cognitive and evaluative capacities do not require a philosophically objective foundation. — Cartesian trigger-puppets

I agree with you on moral anti-realism but I think it’s kinda important for ought claims to be objective or otherwise I’m not sure how we can say that we have reason to do anything as I’m not sure if we can talk about subjective reasons or what subjective reasons are even supposed to be.

Instead, on both sides of the divide, we must resign ourselves to perpetual uncertainty, but there is still hope in that that uncertainty can also be perpetually diminished, by constantly weeding out competing answers that are in one way or another problematic. — Pfhorrest

While I disagree with your analogy, I do agree that meaningful disagreement and agreement on moral matters is possible, and that some kind of intersubjective consensus is often, perhaps always, possible. It's just a different kind of consensus than the consensus regarding the truth about the world.

We start with some basic axioms, and then to differing degrees of success, end up with intricate systems that we then apply to practical situations. But the axioms themselves are not susceptible to proof, it seems. — Philguy

This isn't ethics or morality, it's all of philosophy. That being said, you're right. All the meat is in the underlying assumptions. That's why many people say there can be no religion without God. God sets the axioms in an absolute way so we don't have to argue about them. Of course, we still do.

I believe the axioms are written inside us - by God or Darwin. Someone has created us as social animals. We like to hang around each other. It is part of human nature to like other humans. That sets the stage. Of course, this is complicated by other aspects of our humanity which are less positive.

It looks like the great Hume goofed up since there's no is/ought gap at all. Consider the arguments below.

Argument 1.
Premise (is): Murder occurs quite often
Conclusion (ought): We ought not murder

Argument 2.
Not a Premise, just a statement of fact (is): Murder occurs quie often
Premise: Murder makes us sad
Conclusion: We ought not murder

Hume thought that is/ought arguments are like argument 1 where the reason for an ought is an is. That's incorrect, is/ought arguments are actually argument 2 in form and the is statement is simply there as a description of how the world, well, is. The actual premise, like "Murder makes us sad", is, in the above example, a declaration of our objection to the is, to wit, "murder occurs quite often".

In short, an ought/ought not is never obtained/inferred/deduced from an is but from our feelings/impressions towards/of an is. I'm surprised Hume failed to notice this.

:up:

The is/ought divide cannot be overcome, but that is no loss to ethics, because the “is” side is just as subject to the problem of infinite regress / agrippa’s trilemma as the “ought” side is, so even if we could ground “oughts” in “ises” (nevermind that that would destroy their ought-ness anyway, which is why we can’t) we’d then face the same challenge grounding those “ises”. — Pfhorrest

The is/ought divide is artificial so there is nothing there that needs to be overcome. In practice what is is always already value laden. Of course we can abstract away from the value-ladenness of things, but that is merely an artifice.

What-is is not subject to infinite regress either; it is simply what appears to us in its concreteness.

Oughts find their justification in intentions and efficacy or in principles. 'If I want to achieve X then the best way would be to do Y'. 'I ought to do X because not to do X would be to devalue people'. So oughts are not subject to infinite regress either, but find their termini in purposes or in deontological principles (two apparently separate things which ultimately should amount to the same thing).

Deontological principles are axiomatic and based on healthy human compassion and conscience, and also, as Kant points out, on rejection of the self-defeating nature of unethical (antisocial) behavior; the ways in which it disrupts social relations and creates conflicts which undermine the very idea of society.

None of this changes the fact that there cannot be any clear-cut answers to many minor moral dilemmas, and sometimes even major ones may be subject to irreconcilable conflicts of interest.

In short, an ought/ought not is never obtained/inferred/deduced from an is but from our feelings/impressions towards/of an is. I'm surprised Hume failed to notice this. — TheMadFool

Aren’t our feelings/emotional states also “is’s?” Aren’t they facts about the world like any other?

What-is is not subject to infinite regress either; it is simply what appears to us in its concreteness. — Janus

oughts are not subject to infinite regress either, but find their termini in purposes — Janus

I didn't say that both were doomed by infinite regress, just that they were "just as subject to": a regress argument against one would work just as well against the other, and a defense of such argument would defend both. You've just named the respective forms of that defense: we don't have to justify everything out to infinity first, we can work from what we just happen to think is true/good and justify other things relative to those. Just so long as we remain open to revising those things were just so happen to think are true/good, if reason to think otherwise comes along, and don't take our prima facie assumptions to be some kind of indubitable axioms.

I didn't say that both were doomed by infinite regress, just that they were "just as subject to": a regress argument against one would work just as well against the other, and a defense of such argument would defend both. — Pfhorrest

OK, I wasn't saying that you had suggested they were "doomed", so there must be some misunderstanding here.

It seems obvious that if everything had to be justified "out to infinity" in order to be justified at all, then nothing at all could ever be justified. There is a difference between justification in empirical matters and ethical matters, though. In the case of simple empirical claims the truth can be determined by looking. In the case of scientific theories, they are justified if they are consistent with observations and their predictions obtain.

In the case of ethical claims it is not so simple. There is nothing that is subject to direct observation and testing of predictions. Now I personally think it is true that almost everyone agrees that things like murder, rape, child abuse and even theft are wrong, and if almost everyone, cross-culturally, agrees about something then there is a great degree of normative force there. But others will argue flat out that not almost everyone does agree about such things or at least that we would have to do an empirical study to determine if they do or not (a difficult or even impossible task).

It also seems obvious that such acts are anti-social, and this is the deontological point; that it is a contradiction to claim that society is desirable, while not agreeing that acts which tend to destabilize or undermine it are wrong.

But people will still disagree, asking for "hard evidence", and unfortunately nothing definitive can be found. Personally I disagree with asking for hard evidence, because this would be to treat ethics like a science; which it cannot be. It is more akin to aesthetics, more art than science.

Aren’t our feelings/emotional states also “is’s?” Aren’t they facts about the world like any other? — Pinprick

Is/ought problem

Hume's is is a bit nuanced in my humble opinion. It doesn't include our impressions/feelings of/about the facts of nature and only refers to the facts of nature minus our impressions/feelings with respect to them. The is/ought problem arises out of the absence of an inferential link betwixt descriptive statements (is) and normative claims (ought) but our feelings/impressions about/of deeds/actions provide the missing link, bridges this gap.

In the case of ethical claims it is not so simple. There is nothing that is subject to direct observation and testing of predictions. — Janus

We COULD do for ethics something completely parallel to what we do for physical sciences: see what repeatably feels good rather than bad, take that as our repeatable “observations”, and then strategize plans that might satisfy all those feelings, just like we theorize explanations that might satisfy all observations, and then test them against the same kinds of things we based them on, repeat as necessary.

Of course not everybody AGREES that that would tell us everything or even anything there is to know about morality. But also not everybody agrees that science is the only, or even a, reliable way to learn about reality. Lots of people disagree with scientific results about evolution, cosmology, the brain, race, gender, sex, health care, climatology, even the shape of the planet. Does that somehow count against science?

Perhaps not coincidentally, those who reject both of the above methodologies seem to correlate with each other... and with religiosity.