Although I am not familiar with Moore's work and very much value and respect that of Hume, I think that especially in the past 20 years we can agree on the failures of democracy. Which, if I remember correctly, Hume posited as the highest form of civilization (Fukuyama - The End of History and the Last Man). I think one should keep a healthy dose of cynicism and idealism in balance when looking at the "facts" of democracy in practice. Perhaps we should ask: "can we do better?". Where to I will answer a resounding "YES!". We might never attain an ideal IS, but that should not stop us from trying to bring IS and OUGHT closer together (hopefully on an exponential curve). If the work of Plato (Socrates), Aristotles, Kant and many other more modern philosophers, whom I admit ignorance of (at the top of my head Richard Rorty) can be INTEGRATED with a willing, capable and above all ethical government, I would argue against Hume.

Hilda this is interesting, and I agree with your statement about bringing IS and Ought closer together. However, the claim I have in mind is (unfortunately, and less interestingly) much more narrow than this. It speaks to the issue of how we can discern the difference between vice and virtue. Here is the passage:

In every system of morality, which I have hitherto met with, I have always remark'd, that the author proceeds for some time in the ordinary ways of reasoning, and establishes the being of a God, or makes observations concerning human affairs; when all of a sudden I am surpriz'd to find, that instead of the usual copulations of propositions, is, and is not, I meet with no proposition that is not connected with an ought, or an ought not. This change is imperceptible; but is however, of the last consequence. For as this ought, or ought not, that expresses some new relation or affirmation, 'tis necessary that it shou'd be observ'd and explain'd; and at the same time that a reason should be given; for what seems altogether inconceivable, how this new relation can be a deduction from others, which are entirely different from it. (Treatise, 3.1.1.27)

Taken alone and not qualified by the rest of what he says in the Treatise, it is claiming that people draw moral conclusions from states of fact, which are in reality ethically inert. He is saying that we make an illicit move from ontology to axiology, from what is to what ought to be, from mere facts to illegitimately derived values.

Now the truth is that if one reads him all the way through, he is not stating that one cannot move from facts to values, he is actually merely saying that there is a third ingredient which must enter the equation in order to make that move. His third ingredient is sentiment. Reason alone is, for Hume, insufficient motive or catalyst for the will to act. He famously claims that reason is slave to passion.

Modern philosophers have made a sort of orthodoxy of the Is-Ought passage whereby they forbid the derivation of values from facts. Many Hume scholars have pointed out the illegitimacy of this sweeping claim being made on the basis of Hume's writings. They point to his whole argument and remind us that sentiment or passion can, in Humean terms, help one to make the move from fact to value. Be that as it may, a large number of modern moral philosphers have opposed naturalistic reasoning in ethics altogether because such reasoning supposedly violates "Hume's Law".

No, I don't think that is the case. Actually it was not the case in the 20th century either. The question is of philosophical character, and many 20th century philosopher supplied more or less solid arguments in support of derivation of the normative from the factual. The group includes Donald Davidson, John Searle, and Hilary Putnam among many others.

Hello Pehar,

Like yourself, I appreciate what those individuals whom you have mentioned have written. There are more names that can me added to their ranks as well, such as Ross, MacIntyre, Rawls, Anscombe, and Foote. However, in England and in Scandinavia at least, the Analytic philosophers were predominant and this was, and seemingly still is, an orthodoxy of theirs. Here is how the late J.L. Mackie, a brilliant and very clear spoken Australian Analytic philosopher put it, speaking of Hume and this point in the Treatise, he says:

But on the whole…his doctrine means that moral distinctions do not report any objective features at all: moral goodness or rightness is not any quality or any relation to be found in or among objective situations or actions, and no purely intellectual or cognitive procedure can issue in moral judgment. (Mackie, 1980, Hume's moral theory, Routledge, London, p. 2)

That this is, in fact, an orthdoxy both in England and, in Scandinavia on the Continent, is fairly well established. See Vernon Bourke's History of Ethics (Bourke, V. 2008, History of ethics, vol. 2, Axios Press: Distributed by National Book Network, Mount Jackson, VA.) See esp. p. 209.

I find that for many in the USA this is also the backdrop against which they work. Some are outspoken in their opposition to this form of thought, and their names include many of the best-known philosophers of the day, but they still do not appear to be the majority in terms of numbers.

What I am wondering is if there is a shift in the popular view of this matter. Specifically, are postmodern philosophers, by and large, more open to naturalistic ethical argumentation?

It might be my own incapacity to come to terms with moral relativism, but I will still argue for at least a basic code of ethics that can rooted facts/, in an almost empirical way. This may seem a simple example, but I think the following question could serve to guide many moral questions: "To whom does it do harm?". One would of course then be confronted with defining "harm" etc. We can then split it off into direct and indirect, or physical and emotional. But I think that this is perhaps a way to arrive at a moral imperative that does not depend on an existence of any deity.

Bill- there were never any popular views of this matter, in my opinion. 'Is-ought' is a constructed issue, and it is not even clear if Hume meant what we nowadays put to him. You could have also quoted Mackie's Ethics. Inventing wrong and right'... no difference. Davidson's 'Objectivity of values' was written partly in response to Mackie's 'invention of morality'-thesis. Hilda: yes, that is a stand I would argue for. But, for all basic elements you need, I think Joel Feinberg would suffice. As to postmodern philosophers, I think Fred D'Agostino is more open to naturalistic ethical argumentation, but he is an exception.

Hello Hilda & Pehar,

Thank you both for your input on this question. It is, in William James' terminology. still very much of a "live issue".

Hilda: I tend to agree with your line of thought very strongly. I think that line of thought is almost self-evident (it is at least self-apparent). What was such a surprise to me when doing my doctoral work in the U.K. was that it was considered so very dubious in terms of legitimate philosophical reasoning. Amongst legal philosophers, H.L.A. Hart has especially stated something quite similar to what you have said in his The Concept of Law.

Pehar: I am sorry, but I don't follow what you mean when you say there were never any popular views of this matter. We may be working in different disciplines perhaps. I am not certain. This understanding is (or at least has been) bedrock to Analytic Philosophy in England and elsewhere. Unless something has changed greatly since last year, many philosophers in the UK and the USA still identify themselves as Analytic philosophers. I am not promoting Mackie's thought by any means. I am simply asking if the strong perception (see Bourke's History of Ethics that I cited above) regarding it being illicit to derive an "ought" from an "is" is perhaps losing some of its dominance?There really isn't a question as to whether or not it was dominant in English and Scandinavian philosophy. That is a given.

Bill: should we count votes in philosophy? Hilda: stick to J. Feinberg (Hart is a legal positivist, very eager to retain the distinction between law and morality, hence not really good as a starter for an objectivist perspective on 'harm').

Hello Pehar,

I am afraid I do not understand you. For some reason we are not communicating here. I can assure you that in the world of philosophy what I have stated has definitely been the case.

As for making mention of Hart in response to Hilda, the work I cite of Hart's is one where he is speaking about the need for law and morality to be united by what he calls "the minimum content of the Natural Law." He is by no means divorcing the two. He is explaining that without this minimum content, positive law is merely arbitrary. Here is but one short excerpt from The Concept of Law to that effect:

Indeed, the continued reassertion of some form of Natural Law doctrine is due in part to the fact that its appeal is independent of both divine and human authority, and to the fact that despite a terminology, and much metaphysics, which few could now accept, it contains certain elementary truths of importance for the understanding of both morality and law. (Hart, 1997, p. 187-188)

You can see that this accords with what Hilda said, and that he thinks these "elementary truths of importance for the understanding of both MORALITY and LAW." I am not sure what your objection is to what I am saying. What discipline are you speaking from? We seem to have a failure to communicate of some sort.

Bill, You should have a look at the work of Hans Jonas, especially "The Principle of Responsibility", which is a quite convincing attempt to locate the ought in the is, or in other words to ground ethics in ontology. He is not so well known in the English speaking world, but he is an important philosopher nonetheless. Basically he agrees with Hume that you cannot derive (!) an ought from an is, but notes that this is not really necessary. Hume's dictum is based on a false understanding of being, which is wrongly conceived as being void of any values. Jonas tries to show why this is wrong.

Michael I have ordered the book on your recommendation. I had a bit of difficulty finding it at first because in the English it is entitled The Imperative of Responsibility. I look forward to reading him. I read of him on one site that, "He formulated a new and distinctive supreme principle of morality: "Act so that the effects of your action are compatible with the permanence of genuine human life".

This seems, at first glance, to be very much in keeping with the direction I went with my doctoral dissertation. I have an axiom at the heart of my thesis which is very similar. I began the thesis with this claim:

Perceiving human life as valuable and working for its well-being seems the most basic of ethical motivations. What is proposed here toward that end is an axiom that all but a very few should find acceptable. It is as follows: “Human life is a great good; because human life is a great good, all humans should work for the well-being of themselves and others.” Obviously, this axiom needs practical clarification; however, it is the beginning point of the ethics herein proposed. Those who embrace it have, when informed by the understandings of science and other disciplines regarding what is necessary for the thriving of human life, a minimal basis upon which to reason ethically across cultures and faiths.

I am eager to read Jonas. His work on Gnosticism looks quite good as well. Thank you.

Hi Bill,

I completely agree with your argument but I'm going to play devil's advocate here (also to further my own understanding). To accept your syllogism all the premisses need to be true - but how do we prove that human life "is a great good". How do we know it?

Is it after all "the moral law within me?"

And I can't see it exactly now, but I think you need another premiss

1. Human life is a great good

2. Things that are great good need to be looked after

_____________________

Therefore human life needs to be looked after

I think this leaves us with "great good"... ?

Reading what I have written above makes me rethink my first statement regarding the possibility of arriving at a completely naturalistic morality...

That's a great question Hilda. Were I undertaking syllogistic reasoning I would need to do exactly as you say. I am doing something else. I am making a claim to have identified an axiomatic truth. That which is per se nota (self-evident) by definition cannot be proven. One does not set out to prove the axiomatic (Aristotle, Physics, Book II, Ch. 1. 193a, 1-8). First principles must either be accepted or rejected. This is not to say that such beliefs are without warrant or arbitrary. They are held to be so clear and apparent that the purpose of proofs or demonstrations is satisfied merely by stating them. As Aristotle put it: “scientific knowledge through demonstration is impossible unless a man knows the primary (Gk. πρώτας - “before anything else”) immediate premisses (Gk. ἀρχὰς - “elementary principles”).” (Posterior Analytics, Bk. 2, Chapter 17, 99b 20-21) It is a bold claim and it is one which the reader can either reject or accept, but I personally believe that trying to refute this is like trying to refute the law of non-contradiction. Apart from adherents of extreme forms of Ecocentrism and Nihilism, I think most people will ultimately find this line of thought compelling.

In his work Six Great Ideas, the late Mortimer Adler said, "We simply cannot think that we ought to desire that which is really bad for us or that we ought not to desire that which is really good for us. Without knowing in advance which things are in fact really good or bad for us, we do know at once that “ought to desire” is inseparable in its meaning from the meaning of “really good,” just as we know at once that the parts of a physical whole are always less than the whole. It is impossible to think the opposite just as it is impossible for us to think that we ought to desire that which is really bad for us (Adler, 1981, p. 81)

I like your initial offering of a syllogism. WIth your permission I may try to do something in that direction.

Hi Bill,

You can use my syllogism with pleasure. The way you phrased it gives us a way of bringing IS and SHOULD closer together.

It makes sense to then accept the premiss "Human life is a great good" as intrinsic and self evident. As you say - one can only go so far back before entering the realm of nihilism. I would think that in a completely nihilistic world view morality and ethics would be considered absurd.

Here's my rephrasing (to make sure I understand you correctly) about going beyond a merely individual morality: "When I accept that I ought to desire that which is good for me, but also realise that I what is good for me is also good for others - I will also desire (and act) in such a way that benefit the good of others."

Hello Hilda,

Thank you for the permission to use your syllogism. I like the way you have phrased that - it accords well with my understanding.

Hi Hilda and Bill, interesting conversation here. trying to understand the rephrasing of Hilda here." ........... but also realise that I what is good for me is also good for others - I will also desire (and act) in such a way that benefit the good of others." I am wondering if the phrase "good for me is good for others" has eliminated the relative element in the good of the society.

Morality and law have always had a relation, since law must be legitimate not only by virtue of democracy but also by a sort of moral back-up. The problem with morality is that it's not universal and it is dialectical. It changes with the time. Due to globalisation the morality tends to become more homogeneous, but there are still differences between different type of cultures. What I can predict is that morality will have a more complicated evolution in the future, where national cultures are decreasingly important. We adhere to transnational cultures voluntarily. Our life experiences play a bigger role in the moral choices that we make. Morality is going to be more difficult to define. One moral commando should be universal indeed, 'no harm' brought to other people or in libertarian terms 'no violence'. But as long as we admit derogation from this rule, we will still produce injustice to someone somewhere. The abuse of derogations to make appeal to violence is our biggest problem. I call this state, the dictatorship of the good intentions.

This division good-evil people appears to be insufficient even empty of meaning to me. We know that the difference between a hero and a villein depends mostly not on the person, but on the circumstances. If the revolution is successful the agitator is a hero, otherwise s/he will be imprisoned as a traitor or terrorist or some other crime doer. Of course that I emphasize the contradictions because a pocket thief still remains a pocket thief, right? Not really. If we could re-wind the film we could maybe identify some life experience in the life of the person that was determinant, some breach of faith some unlucky moment that can explain the present or at least give some ground for mitigating circumstances. But the LAW does not allow this type of moral re-winding, but just sets focus on the moment and on the interests of the majority (an utilitarian perspective). In Sweden we call it for legal realism or pragmatism, since the judge can not correct all the injustices of the past anyway...but this limitation is a source of injustice in a sense... you see therefore morality is not so useful as it seems to be at first sight.

As we make use of morality, our morality is one of the present circumstances, a type of opaque and incomplete morality. But can such a morality still raise valid ethical claims?

Now after giving my legally philosophical account of morality, I will return to Hume and Kant. Can we deduce values from facts by means of reason alone? Apparently no, as I've shown above. Our moral claims or value assessments are not universally valid and rely on limited knowledge. In Kantian terms we give judgements based on apriori knowledge and often fall victims for logical inconsistency (based on the apriori construed and incomplete knowledge on which we base our judgement). In fact I am after (currently writing a paper on this) bringing more dialectical thought into legal reasoning in order to correct the eventual errors of the apriori claims... visiting the other part of the barricade so to speak is a necessary exercise (re-winding the film is a condition, because if we go there with a sum of 'home-made' prejudices our 'visit' will be useless). My proposal is to replace the first commando: open your mind to other perspectives than your own little 'shell'. Only if we operate in a state of mind-openness we reason in a morally acceptable manner, that can give a solid ground for derogations from 'no violence' commando.

I have big difficulties to see any tendency in the political order to reason (back and forward on a totally open-minded manner). Politics is about power and violence is a very effective tool to maintain your power. What is valid at the stage individual2individual must be true also at a political level, but in reality it is not...here it's the core of our problem, because law depends on the politics and if politics is corrupted then the morality of law is subsequently contaminated. Values are abstract notions.

Zizek is one of my heroes because he can explain complicated concepts in a very simple manner. He makes appeal to mythology very often. There is a myth that vampires have no mirror image, their reality is not reflected by mirrors. Then there are other mythological creatures who exist only in the mirror, they are prisoners of the mirror, you can see them in your mirror, but looking over your shoulder there is no one in the reality outside the mirror. Zizek claims that we live in such a reality today, kept prisoner of the mirror, of fabricated fears and ideals, that we actually can not understand the reality as it is outside the mirror, but only its reflections... therefore for me the interesting phenomena must happen on the surface of the mirror, where the light meets the mirror, because at least light and mirror must be real in order to enable the reflection of the real. But neither light nor the mirror itself can be 'seen' from within the mirror. How would you know that you are nothing more than a projection of an adjacent reality? Can you deduce this conclusion from the available information? Well by starting to question the actual 'seen-able', the actual 'know-able', the actual 'touch-able'...is it what it seems to be? Questioning the reality of the facts as they appear to be is the place to start. The only manner in which philosophy can make a big difference today is to allow us to escape the overwhelming empiricism and penetrate the mirror with the power of the thought alone.

Since what we appoint as facts, is no more than a apriori determination, the fact does not exist apart from the thought and the thought is not free from experience. This is why many of the modern philosophers such as Lacan are philosophers of the negation, not of the affirmation. Our affirmations are corrupted by the circumstances in which they appear to be true. We evolve by questioning.

My answer is that maybe, just maybe, we could deduce value from the facts by denying them and let the reason alone judge if there is any place for another 'truth', for another 'real'. Many of our affirmations (including mine here of course) are de facto re-affirmations, repetitions, waivers of the right to contest the known as it seems to be. It is more easy to re-affirm the known, unless a crisis interferes and the known is questioned on that ground. We operate in the realm 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it'. This is OK, but even if it is broke, we still tend to claim that it is nothing to fix. It takes courage to acknowledge the disruption of the knowledge, that does not bring about new facts, but a new determination of the same old facts, a revision that can turn losers into winners and vice-versa.

Hello Immanuela,

This is very interesting and you make me want to read Zizek. I very much appreciate the spirit in which you write of seeking to understand the factors that led to someone doing that which we regard as evil. That is a helpful undertaking, especially as regards being able to understand what motivated an act. However, unless I am going to relativize actions which hurt innocent people, there comes a point at which all of my understanding of the mitigating circumstances in the life of the perpetrator cannot lessen the havoc wreaked by his/her actions. For instance (I am speaking by way of a fictional narrative here), although I may have been abused as a child by a violent father, and although I may have fallen in with an extremist group of revolutionary thinkers, and although I may have never felt acceptance from others until I joined this revolutionary band, I am still chosing to do evil if I commit some act of terror on the general populace out of my loyalty to the group. All of the psychoanalysis and attempts to understand my actions which society may undertake will never change the fact that I have done that which is morally reprehensible and which must not be allowed to go unpunished. There comes a place where the critique of regimes of power, made by a Foucault or some other such thinker, breaks down and does not apply to life in the real world. We may wish to live and let live, and we may be able at the personal level to forgive horrible things done to us, but at a societal level we cannot do this or we will create anarchy. Our citizenry wil quickly lose faith in law and government. Do you agree with this assessment?

Emanuela,

I apologize for misspelling your first name in my previous post. This is in response to your first posting above :

I agree with most of what you have said here about law and morality, but I do want to say that although there are always those odd, seemingly aberrant points of moral understanding held by indigenous peoples which some cultural anthropologists bring to our attention, for the most part there is a core morality that most peoples share. In fact, when we begin to examine why different people groups have unique and puzzling moral practices, we discover that it is not so much that they have a different morality from most, as that they have different understandings from us as regards what is factual and of the nature of reality. Franz Boas himself pointed this out. There seems to be a central core of morality which human societies have, for the most part, always and everywhere held in common. Even in religions, whereas they differ about their creeds or beliefs, and they certainly differ spectacularly about their cults or their religious practices, they are surprisingly similar as regards their codes or their moral standards. As regards the “no harm” principle - you are certainly right. That seems to be the most basic first premise of many moral codes both secular and religious. I believe that moral understandings are bounded by the nature and needs of human beings. It is very hard to seriously justify any moral code which militates against human wellbeing.

Which is not to say that people do not try to justify moral practices which are detestable. From Apartheid, to rape and mutilation we do find people trying to argue in defense of long-standing moral practices which we would identify as being evil. Relativizing so-called moral codes that sanction the abuse of human beings(e.g. "Those practices are just a part of their culture.") fails to account for the possibility of bullying, coercion, fear, manipulation, control exercised over others, and other such expressions of the human race’s tendency towards cruelty. It is possible that much of what is referred to as “moral codes” may, in fact, be codified expressions of the abuses of oppressive regimes. That sort of thing does not constitute an alternative morality. I mention this because some cultural anthropologists seem blind to this, although Boas cautioned against the potential misinterpretation of such things due to one's having a commitment to a notion of cultural relativism.

I believe that state and government by force is only a stage in the history of humanity. Once many people will understand that pain is not a solitary act of despair, exactly as insight or creative thought are in fact collective acts (even if somebody will be the first to give shape so to speak to a new thing and be recognised as a creator of something new), once we will understand that what brings us together is much more powerful than what ever can make us to cause pain to each other, then we can start to see that we share a lot of commonalities and we must be clever enough to share them in a peaceful manner. My personal well being will be much bigger if I am surrounded by well being people than if I am notoriously fortunate but forced to live surrounded by depressive, miserable, confused people. Empathy is a quality that must be acknowledged more.

If we can evolve from the condition exposed by Hobbes of Homo homini lupus est, at that stage the government by force will not be a necessary solution. Rejecting violence is the strongest act of protest today...therefore I am against the revolutions because they start from a position of force and they often end by abusing this position.

HOWEVER Homo homini lupus est is not a fact, but only an apriori determination, (let's call it a pre-thought) a hypothesis that must not be accepted as easily as true. About POWER, nobody leaves it just because it is advisable to do so, people who give up on POWER do it because it's the only reasonable position that they can adopt.

Bill, I agree with the logic that you brought out in the first paragraph of the latest post. The syllogism in your previous post bothered me. It leaves much arbitrariness around. For example, recently in an Indian village, we heard a story of a rapist ordered by the village to marry the victim. It was a good decision for him as he escaped punishment, it was a good decision for the community elders based upon their perceptions of morality as preventing the girl from social stigmatisation. But such decision is not good for the girl, she is being subjected to further use of for e and pressure, neither is it good for the society that has a rapist living a scot free life amongst them without any remorse. It's a reality that this rapist continued with his criminal behaviour again.

Now if I use the syllogism here, how do I explain to the rapist and the community elders that what was good for them is not working as the general good of the others in the society.

Well, there was a time when cannibalism was not so bad either, many tribes in different parts of the world have practised it. Slavery another morally condemnable human habit is of even more recent date. What we forget to consider is much more relevant that we actually ponder about constantly (we don't cease to mention the abominable character of these practices). HOWEVER, what it's striking is the fact that cannibalism and slavery were acceptable and even morally justifiable within the societies where they have been practised... A simple logical extrapolation would lead to the conclusion that many of our acts today will be considered abominable, morally detestable by the future generations.

PS: Raping your own wife was not a crime in Europe until 1950-60. Women did not have civil rights, were treated as property of the man (father and later husband) until not so long ago.

Hello Emanuela,

I take no issue with anything you have written here. The fact is though, that we both see the move away from some of these things as a sign of moral progress. One cannot espouse a notion of progress and also relativism at the same time. If we are making progress we are doing so towards a better and healthier and more just state of affairs. Relativism does not allow for such notions and says, "Well that wife raping, or that canniblism is just "their morality"., in their culture that is what is right and permissable. The fact that we don't think this way argues that there is some ultimate standard by which we are judging all of this. I would say of both the pygmy or South Sea islander who does or used to practice cannibalism, as well as of the European man who dominated his wife, that they are doing one of two things: they are either (per your comments about Hobbes) being a wolf to their fellow man, or they are operating under a faulty notion of reality (i.e. "Women are inferior to men" or "People who are not of my tribe do not have the inherent value or worth that we have.")

Do you agree that the notion of moral progress does not harmonize with the notion of moral or cultural relativism?

I attach A World Chronology of the Recognition of Women's Rights to Vote and to Stand for Election. It's amazing to imagine only that in Switzerland one of the strongest democracy in the world did allow women to vote before 1971, while Hungary, Poland, Georgia the Baltic countries, Russian Federation have granted them this right already in 1918, Romania and Ecuador in 1929, France and Jamaica in 1944, China 1949, India in 1950... most people would have placed Switzerland on an imaginary chronological enumeration much before Georgia, China, India or Ecuador...I am constantly amazed by the SHORT memory of the human race. Due to it we forget how easy is to destroy the balance and how difficult is to reconstruct it.

http://www.ipu.org/wmn-e/suffrage.htm

Hello Sai,

The syllogism was, by Hilda's own statement, incomplete. I was just saying that I might work with it in order to develop it and/or adapt it. My approach is not based upon a syllogism, but rather upon an axiom. My axiom is: “Human life is a great good; because human life is a great good, all humans should work for the well-being of themselves and others.” This leaves plenty of room for condemning the actions of your rapist and it would not suggest that his marrying the victim is a good solution to the evil of his actions. Such rape has been a standard practice amongst some Sicilian men for centuries. This would be an example of what Emanuela has spoken of when she quote the Latin phrase above which means that "man is a wolf to man". It is sad that the outcome of the action is as you describe, He won - he got what he wanted, and she lost on all counts. How tragic.

Facts cannot contain values. Values only exist for a living organism whose vision on the world is not a neutral view but a view driven by a purpose, a pragmatic view, a view in the context of interaction with the world. In the limited context of visual perception, Gibson qualified image invariants as affordances. Biosemiotics generalizes the concept of meaning to all biological organisms. For humans, our environment/world is mostly a social world which is a historical and a personal construction involving evolving moral constructions.

Hello Louis,

Again, you speak of interesting concepts that I would like to explore further. The idea is not that facts "contain" values, but rather that one not move from the factual to the moral. That is, that one not make a moral deduction simply based on facts. In reality Hume never forbid the move from fact to value. What he said was that facts are inert and that people illicitly move from facts to values, assuming that the one necessarily motivates with regard to the other. What he actually said is that there is an ingredient missing in such claims. He said that one must bring sentiment or passion into the equation if we are going to make the move from a fact to a value based upon that fact. This is nothing new. Aristotle had already commented on the inert nature of facts. He said, "Reason alone moves nothing." I think that an odd sort of orthodoxy arose in the 20th Century by taking what Hume said in the Treatise out of context.

Of what do you speak when you say "Gibson qualified image invariants as affordances"? I am not certain what field you are speaking of in that quote, nor do I follow how it ties into the discussion about deriving values from facts. Would you develop that a bit more? Thank you.

Bill,

"The fact that we don't think this way argues that there is some ultimate standard by which we are judging all of this."

I disagree because a moral judgement is done within/relative to a world view. If a person living in a society with a totally different world view acts in a morally accepted way in that society and this appear to be horrific to you then it just proof the disagreement between these two world views. Your view is the privilege view for you and for those who share it. My view is the best for me. The idea of progress is a useful idea within a given tradition and it is always related to a certain perspective. Progress in absolute terms, under an absolute perspective, does not exist. I have no clue about what an absolute perspective might mean. Progress usually means better with respect to that and that factors in this specific context. I am not a relativist in the sense of putting all the viewpoints as being equal. The viewpoint that look horrific from my perspective are horrific. We have to acknowledge our standpoint, justify it the best we can, and stop pretending that there is a outer space privilege viewpoint from which we can compare different viewpoint into an absolute progress ranking. Ranking is always a specific measurement.

In the present moment we accept killing animals sometimes by making use of terribly violent methods and producing meat on a industrial scale. It's normal in the sense that most people approve the moral justifications offered in order to justify these acts.

Nobody knows the future, but in one possible version of the future we may give up on this type of industrial slaughtering. This does not mean that this is the only possible future scenario. It does not mean progress sensu stricto.

My opinion is that what ever we may deem morally acceptable becomes integral part of the social standard of morality. It appears as a factor of progress, yes, but it does so from a biased perspective. I am shocked for instance how many actors smoked in older movies, this is because I see them with my biased perspective of a non-smoker living in world where smoking is not so much present any-more.

What I underline here is the subjectivity and the 'biased' character of morality. It's an insider perspective, it makes sense and it looks as a factor of progress as long as you participate in the same type of social relations. The outsider perspective will always be either more liberal or more conservative, but it will not lead to unconditional acceptance of a certain norm established among insiders.

Rights and wrongs are social constructions (we decide what is right by referring to consequences and based on that we create expectations.)

Bill,

HUME:

A statement of the form "In order for agent A to achieve goal B, A reasonably ought to do C" exhibits no category error and may be factually verified or refuted. "Ought"s exist, then, in light of the existence of goals.

Psychologist James J. Gibson introduced the term “affordance” in his 1977 article "The Theory of Affordances"[1] and explored it more fully in his book The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception[2] in 1979. He defined affordances as all "action possibilities" latent in the environment, objectively measurable and independent of the individual's ability to recognize them, but always in relation to the actor and therefore dependent on their capabilities. For instance, a set of steps which rises four feet high does not afford the act of climbing if the actor is a crawling infant.

Louis,

Based on your answer of two days ago I would have to say that you give indication that you are a believer in Cultural Relativism. If I am right about that, I believe that you will find that view to work only at the theoretical level. You stated:

"Your view is the privilege view for you and for those who share it. My view is the best for me. The idea of progress is a useful idea within a given tradition and it is always related to a certain perspective. Progress in absolute terms, under an absolute perspective, does not exist."

If you think this through a bit more you will find that, if you are consistent with what you have stated - I mean really consistent, you (1) have no way to account for moral progress, you (2) actually have no basis on which to condemn certain cultural practices when trying to teach children about ethics, you (3) cannot really claim to be able to judge a society's moral health or development, you (4) cannot advocate for change in a society (since good is whatever that societhy says it is), and you (5) find yourself in an odd and unrealistic place of moral stagnation as regards human culture. Cultural relativism only works in academia, it does not work in the real world. Serious advocates of cultural relativism find themselves in the odd place that Bertrand Russell found himself when he had to confess:

'I cannot see how to refute arguments for the subjectivity of moral values, but I find myself incapable of believing that all that is wrong with wanton cruelty is that I don't like it.'

Russell expresses his own dissatisfaction with his cultural relativism here:

http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=3487040

I don't think one needs to be religious to realize what a bad move this thought process is as regards ethics. Here is the atheist Kai Nielsen in his book Ethics Without God:

"It is more reasonable to believe such elemental things (as wife-beating and child abuse) to be evil than to believe any sceptical theory that tells us we cannot know or reasonably believe any of these things to be evil…I firmly believe that this is bedrock and right and that anyone who does not believe it cannot have probed deeply enough into the grounds of his moral beliefs. "

The quote you cite above in your second listing from Hume's Treatise is where my question here (about the ban on deriving oughts from ises) comes from. However, Hume does not place fact and value in "water tight" compartments as some think. In fact, he calls sentiment an actuating passion. Hume’s claim was that reason alone cannot move the knower from facts to motivating values, because the human will needs something more than mere facts to move it. He believes sentiment builds the bridge from ‘isness’ to ‘oughtness. Here is where he ultimately goes in this regard:

Nor does this reasoning only prove, that morality consists not in any relations, that are the objects of science; but if examin’d, will prove with equal certainty, that it consists not in any matter of fact, which can be discover’d by the understanding. This is the second part of our argument; and if it can be made evident, we may conclude, that morality is not an object of reason. But can there be any difficulty in proving, that vice and virtue are not matters of fact, whose existence we can infer by reason? Take any action allow’d to be vicious: Wilful murder, for instance. Examine it in all lights, and see if you can find that matter of fact, or real existence, which you call vice. In which-ever way you take it, you find only certain passions, motives, volitions and thoughts. There is no other matter of fact in the case. The vice entirely escapes you, as long as you consider the object. You never can find it, till you turn your reflection into your own breast, and find a sentiment of disapprobation, which arises in you, towards this action. (Treatise, 3.1.1.26)

I do not go as far as Hume does and claim that “reason is slave to the passions.” (Treatise, 2.3.3.4) , inasmuch as I would agree with Robert Solomon that our passions are in fact, in some very real sense, judgements.

I hope that helps to explain where I am coming from regarding these matters.

Bill,

I do not see myself as a sceptic, nor as a moral relativism, nor as a post-modern, nor an atheist, nor an materialist. On alsmost all these questions I would situate myself along the position of Michael Polanyi. LIke him, I acknowledge my position and do not pretend to speak from an objective position. LIke him, I beleive in science but I do not beleive in the project of objectifying the whole of reality. This lead to what Polanyi described to a moral inversion, the nihilism, to skeptism and to relativism. There is a way to acknowledge a point of view without falling in the trap of the equivalence of all point of views and from there to commit to none. We have to commit, to intelligently and passionatly commit ourself to a point of view and to develop it. LIke Polanyi, I do not beleive that our contact with reality is logic, not rational intellect, but is perceptual, instinctual, intiuitive, imaginative, creative.

"The Stability Of Beliefs", by Michael Polanyi

This essay originally appeared in British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 3:11 (November, 1952): 217-232.

http://www.missouriwestern.edu/orgs/polanyi/mp-stability.htm

Hello Louis,

We are closer in our thought processes than either of us might have imagined. I used Polanyi quite a bit in my dissertation. I am a big proponent of tacit knowing. I have a small Polanyi library of my own. Very interesting to hear this. You might enjoy checkng out Roy Bhaskar if Polanyi is of interest to you.

Cheers,

Bill

Bill,

I did a Ph.D. in visual perception/imagination in the 1990's and did not know Polanyi at the time but my position on how visual perception proceeds and how imagination in human proceeds from the sense-acting system is pure Polanyest. In my thesis, I even distinguish between explicit versus implicit memory. I only later learned about Polanyi and Leibniz ideas on the same topic. Before coming to Polanyi, I had discovered a link between my theory of vision and Goethe's conception of science, the metamorphosis of plants. You will notice that Polanyi conception of science are very much Goethean.

I will look up Bhaskar.

Louis I have been gone from here for a while because I was teaching an intensive course and had the care of my elderly parents suddenly deposited on my "doorstep". I am back on here now. I would be very interested in reading your thesis. Is it available somewhere as a manuscript or a book?

Hi Bill,

My Ph.D. thesis does not contain all my Ph.D. research. The part of imagination and the philosophical part had not been included.

You can find an horrible digitized version here:

http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk1/tape8/PQDD_0023/NQ51844.pdf

Regards,

Many pragmatist thinkers would say the distinction between facts and values is far from being absolute. One example is Richard Rorty, whose considerations about this topic relay heavily on the philosophy of John Dewey.

Let P be an is-statement and let Q be an ought-statement. Now consider P v Q:

For another (ostensible) example of how to derive an ought from an is see:

• https://www.collier.sts.vt.edu/5424/pdfs/searle_1964.pdf

Or else see Chapter 8 of Searle’s book, Speech Acts:

• Chapter Abstract: https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/speech-acts/deriving-ought-from-is/FA9A09474489EA3E3829F3A82E474582
• Downloadable djvu file: http://en.bookfi.net/s/?q=Speech+acts+an+essay+in+the+philosophy+of+language&e=1&t=0