I don’t understand your explanation of how you go from the fact that:

“…living is the first 'thing' an organism does and is what makes it an organism” to

“Living is an obligation for life. Therefore one ought to live, as being a being implies this by default.”

Even if you explained how you made that leap, who ought to live? The smallpox virus? (Did we do evil when we exterminated it?) Some individual organism, the individual’s species? Just conscious species? All species?

Also, “Obligation” and “ought” imply doing something regardless of needs and preferences. Coherently using these words here would require you to describe the domain of when and why “one ought to live” would be in conflict with your needs and preferences.

It has always been both a fools errand and somewhat of a rhetorical facade this search for absolute truth. Truth is simply that which is most relevant and most functional to us - nothing more. This is sufficiently difficult to define but the effort does offer insights and practical wisdom.

The mistake - thinking it might be something fully definable forever unchanging - emerges from the ever present ambitious charlatan - who is always conjuring fears and simultaneously ready with the most certain god prescribed remedies. These are political and religious extremists offering us little pantomimes where they play god. Humans are very impressionable, they love a god that can offer them something solid unchangeable, certain.

But in practice we don't live with much that is all that certain or absolute. Our world is too complex and changeable for that. This absolute business was just meant to be a bit of entertainment for kids around campfire. No body was meant to really believes it.

The best we get is patterns that seem to work, that we follow and improve thru trial and error. Those things that help us are true, those that don't are false.

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

Can you tie this more robustly to is/ought for me? — Tom Storm

A paradigmatic scientific worldview implies a moral
value system, even when the participating scientists insist their empirical descriptions of reality are completely independent of their ethical stances. For instance, a naive, or direct, realism implies a non-relativist thinking concerning the moral.

Thanks.

... committing the naturalistic fallacy (which is close to the is/ought fallacy). — Tom Storm

I don't necessarily subscribe to the 'you cannot get an ought from an is' [ ... ] I believe that implicit within facts are values. From this paradigm, there is no gap between fact and value. We do not merely percieve a fact. Even in our most unlearned state, we filter that fact through biological and mental apparatus that we have inherited from millions of years of evolution, and that fact holds a relevance for us beyond it's mere 'is'ness - the two are inseparable. — Kaplan

"Relevance for us" (i.e. a natural species.) :100: :up:

(e.g. Epicurus, Epictetus ... Spinoza, Nietzsche ... J. Searle, P. Foot, M. Nussbaum, et al)

*

A post from an old thread on "Objective Morality" wherein I had sketched-out reflections on various facets of ethical naturalism ...

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/575905

(Apologies for the length.)

I don’t understand your explanation of how you go from the fact that:

“…living is the first 'thing' an organism does and is what makes it an organism” to

“Living is an obligation for life. Therefore one ought to live, as being a being implies this by default.” — Mark S

To tackle the first part of your post to begin with. I get to the conclusion of obligation by the fact that the processes to create life in the first place exists at all. The opposite of life and existence is death and nothingness. Life doens't have to happen. But the mere fact it does leads me to believe that to proactively force the opposite is a violation.

Life by definition wants to live. There is no life otherwise and no discussion of anything.
— Kaplan

Even if this is true, can you demonstrate how this assists us with morality as per my earlier question - — Tom Storm

At the most basic level this would assist us with every single moral question as it is the foundation. What I mean is, if the above statement is true, then good would be that which aids life and bad the opposite. As to the exact permutations and combinations this would look like in specific moral questions and practical/applied ethics, that is not my goal here.

I get to the conclusion of obligation by the fact that the processes to create life in the first place exists at all. The opposite of life and existence is death and nothingness. Life doens't have to happen. But the mere fact it does leads me to believe that to proactively force the opposite is a violation. — Kaplan

Living is what life does. Living is not an obligation of life because life has no moral obligation to live regardless of needs and preferences.

At the most basic level this would assist us with every single moral question as it is the foundation. What I mean is, if the above statement is true, then good would be that which aids life and bad the opposite. As to the exact permutations and combinations this would look like in specific moral questions and practical/applied ethics, that is not my goal here. — Kaplan

Living is not an obligation of life because life has no moral obligation to live regardless of needs and preferences. — Mark S

Agree.

What I mean is, if the above statement is true, then good would be that which aids life and bad the opposite. — Kaplan

I guess as a presupposition I have generally subscribed to something similar - but the devil is in the detail. I have ususally held (something close to Sam Harris), it is better to be alive than dead, better to be well than sick, better to be happy than sad. My sense of morality follows from this.

.

Life by definition wants to live. There is no life otherwise and no discussion of anything. — Kaplan

As others have maybe said in their own way perhaps, this can be framed without the language of emotion in terms of genes being filtered out if they don't keep their moist robots breeding. Life is a stubbornly persistent pattern -- typically persisting through a creation-death loop allowing for constant tiny adjustments. We'd expect just this kind of pattern to predominate in the long run.

FWIW, I think you are right to consider natural constraints on morality. It'd be weird to have large language-ready brains and not ethical systems centered on the cooperation of Us which is sometimes against Them. This (coincidentally?) mirrors the cooperation of the organs within our bodies. 'Inefficient' ethical systems would seemingly be filtered out in something like memetic evolution, while efficient ones would spread --- perhaps by conquest, but maybe just by trade, missionaries, etc.

t'd be weird to have large language-ready brains and not ethical systems centered on the cooperation of Us which is sometimes against Them. This (coincidentally?) mirrors the cooperation of the organs within our bodies. 'Inefficient' ethical systems would seemingly be filtered out in something like memetic evolution, while efficient ones would spread --- perhaps by conquest, but maybe just by trade, missionaries, etc. — plaque flag

That certainly commits one to a reductive evolutionary model, in which our most human capacities for bonding are at the mercy of arbitrary mechanisms. If evolution can code for cooperation , it can just as easily code for the opposite. Even if the former wins out as an advantageous adaptation, the idea that an ‘immoral’ ethic could emerge biologically, even briefly, reveals much about how ethical relations are being conceived. It may seem that this one-sided naturalist adaptationism is the only protection against a subjective idealist notion of will, but there are more effective ways of grounding ethics than these two choices.

I saw myself as offering a mere piece of the story. What options should we not expect to find ? What options can we rule out ? I can put on my devilworship hat and say some freaky things. Or I can put on my goodboy hat and say some nice things. But I was aiming at something drier, something minimal.

If evolution can code for cooperation , [ then ] it can just as easily code for the opposite. — Joshs

That does not follow. At least in the human context, that seems highly unlikely. We are born helpless and mute. Our killer app is language, which depends on trust and cooperation.

If evolution can code for cooperation , [ then ] it can just as easily code for the opposite.
— Joshs

That does not follow. At least in the human context, that seems highly unlikely. We are born helpless and mute. Our killer app is language, which depends on trust and cooperation — plaque flag

Does this mean that cooperation is not an evolutionary adaptation?

Does this mean that cooperation is not an evolutionary adaptation? — Joshs

Well I daresay biological evolution played a big role in it. We needed the brain, maybe the expressive face, etc. Something like memetic evolution also seems important --competition at the group level. I presume lots of things happened in an interdependent stew.

Not all objective morality is the same, and the term "objective" itself varies in meaning, but perhaps you're better off not trying to create an ought. The desire to live weaves its way into our moral thinking, it manifests as our proclivity for ascribing value to life. While that doesn't create an ought, it does do something to ground moral thinking. "Ought" isn't built into us quite so explicitly as you may like, but our biology is designed in a way that naturally leads us to certain conclusions. While we don't "have" to do anything, what we will do is being influenced by our biology, as will what we think we should. You could expand on the idea from there. — Judaka

I agree with this. A morality could be objective without successfully bridging the is/ought gap. This would just mean that in order for the moral system to have normative force, one would need to first accept the objective rule. In this case the rule has to do with the goodness of life. Indeed, this is a reasonable rule that most people would accept, and it is objective because we are capable of distinguishing life from death.