Embryonic development demonstrates that cellular machinery forms life if given the chance to. If cells do this, then the generic circuitry itself shows that to live is the default baseline to begin with, not a conscious choice - not a choice at all, it just is. But if this is simply hardwired genetic code doing its job, then by default the imperative is to live, because living is the first 'thing' an organism does and is what makes it an organism. Living is an obligation for life. Therefore one ought to live, as being a being implies this by default.
If one ought to live, then... — Kaplan
I'm trying to go down a level deeper and establish the basis of life itself as the ought by default - does that make it clearer? — Kaplan
because living is the first 'thing' an organism does and is what makes it an organism. Living is an obligation for life. Therefore one ought to live, as being a being implies this by default. — Kaplan
Just because something is the case in nature does not make that something right. The natural is not the same as the good. — Tom Storm
for me it's pretty straight forward to think of what good and should mean intuitively. How do people use the word? — flannel jesus
'what is good is whatever people say is good'? Since that would be undeniably how the word is used? — Isaac
I don't know of many people who use the word like that. — flannel jesus
Let's say you said that though, you said "what is good is what is natural". Are you defining good that way, or are you saying that good has a separate definition, but analytically it works out that everything good is natural and vice versa? — flannel jesus
Then how did you learn what the word meant, if not by listening to other people using it? — Isaac
The only reason I'd be wrong to point to a banana and say 'apple' is because my language community don't use the word that way, yes? — Isaac
↪Kaplan You can't get an ought from an is. Oh, I see Jesus got there before me. Just because you have determined that something is nature doing its job does not make it ipso facto right. One could argue that cancer is just nature efficiently doing what it does. Does that make cancer good — Tom Storm
Life by definition wants to live. — Kaplan
Now I am still working through refining my thoughts in the above paragraph, but I think the is/ought problem, or the naturalistic fallacy, are unassailable gaps perhaps from one paradigm, but not from another which is just as viable. — Kaplan
Life by definition wants to live. There is no life otherwise and no discussion of anything. — Kaplan
Also nothing you have argued seems to go to morality as such. What does this say about homosexuality; drug use; the role of women; capital punishment, poverty, etc? — Tom Storm
Well, is there not a paradigmatic value system that makes such vocabulary intelligible? Is not each fact flowing out of this system of thought framed with expectations and anticipations? Is not each assertative empirical statement a form of question put to experience, an expectation that subsequent events will validate rather than invalidate it? — Joshs
mean, if I made the counter claim "whatever is natural is right", how would you show me I'm wrong about that? Would you point to intuition, language use, the canon of ethics...? — Isaac
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