Is-ought problem

[jack]

OK, I haven't found the useful explanations that erika_freak hinted at, but I've found a discussion and official name for the discussion I reinvented: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is-ought_problem, apparently famously raised by Hume.

I didn't find that page very clear, but it's probably a better place to start than my witterings. Apparently Hume thought it was normally a fallacy to go from saying something *is* to what something *ought* to be[1], which he found many people making.

"ought" statements, I think correspind to my 'belief-' statements, which I *think* are characterised by any statements that:

make a moral judgement
or say something ought to be
or people would make differently given the same information and reasoning powers
or you cannot make a decision without
or that if you had a book describing the universe at this moment in time you'd probably leave out

I still think these statements have something fundamentally in common, though apparently I'm incapable of describing what. Go and google Hume :)

That said, I will attempt to follow with a post tomorrow leading on from atreic's explanations making a start on what I *do* think ought to be.

[1] Possible exception: if you believe a universal morality has an objective existance. Though I still see no way of finding out what this universal morality *is* :)

Comments

[angelofthenorth.livejournal.com]

Not just Hume. I can't remember the guys that wrote about it, but there's some good papers.

http://www.phil.cam.ac.uk/u_grads/reading_lists/reading_lists_b.html

They seem to have taken the bit about ought/is off part IB. I think it's Quine that wrote about it...