David Hume and the Is/Ought Problem

In which JB talks about one of his favorite philosophers and the famous is/ought problem.

Filmed in Edinburgh, Scotland.

[mikelarrivee]

You either choose somthing because you believe it is good, or you choose completley randomly. You have to think stating facts about the is/ought dichotomy is good to even say it, so you ought not believe that you ought not believe in oughts

[sirellyn]

I think this has been solved. How does deep learning determine "ought" from it's inputs?
We do it in much the same way.

The shorter form of it is, that is/ought is based on INDIVIDUAL models of reality they've made and the circumstances each individual found themselves in.

The reason people are having trouble figuring it out, is they tend to think in terms of an "ultimate" is/ought that works for everyone, everywhere, all the time. And it mostly doesn't tend to work that way.
One culture's is/oughts are different from another. For each of their circumstances they work just fine. But put them into each other's situations and one may generally work better than the other if you are measuring effectiveness overall. If you were to do this enough with a lot of cultures, you'd find a culture that *generally speaking* has the most generalized effective rule set.
But that does not make that ruleset "the best". In fact that ruleset will certainly be much more limiting than other personal tuned ones. Consider the GPT-3 algorithm vs specialized ones.

Also in group cases you are taking a lowest common denominator approach. Which isn't ideal at all.

Is/Ought only exists within the bounds of an individuals mental map of experiences. Even then it's not accurate. The more people to share is/oughts and the more is/oughts you collect, the far more inaccurate it becomes.

[nolanpalmer]

Excellent video. I'm loving your philosophical content, and I couldn't agree more. Science cannot and should not serve as the basis of a moral system, because that simply isn't its job. Science is a tool used to understand the physical world and predict it, and a darn good tool, too, but not a code of ethics.

[abledbody]

I don't think if you're dismissing the possibility of subjective morality and value this way that you really understand the underpinning logic behind it. Let me lay it out like this:
We know that we _have_ morals and values, and if we assume that they come from somewhere, we should be able to find something to point to and say "There's our reason." We can absolutely do this by pointing to selective pressures (Negatively affecting other people makes you more likely to be ejected from your extremely valuable supporting social structure.) and to cultural pressures. (We've been told to respect the dead.)
I think this perfectly reasonable explanation is far more substantiated than any alternative that would suggest morality and value are objective in some way.

[Sowiso]

Great video, thanks for introducing David Hume to us.

[Ballr]

The problem of induction isn't that the conclusions of inductive arguments aren't guaranteed to be true even if the premises are true and the logic is good, it's that all inductive arguments rely on the principle that nature is uniform, and there is no non-circular way of establishing that principle as true. Hume isn't pointing out the obvious fact that even good inductive arguments can have false conclusions, he's claiming that we never have any reason to believe the conclusions of inductive arguments at all.

[scrtandwhspr]

Hans-Herman Hoppe has claimed to solve the is/ought problem in his theory of argumentation ethics. Though I think his view ultimately fails because it lacks a metaphysical basis, it is an interesting read.

[dragonsagesummoner]

I have a hypothesis I’m hoping to develop in to a theory of Ought. You may be surprised that “ought’s” might actually have a physical property undergirding them.

[Mandibil]

Hume just points out an invalid argumentation structure. He does not say that you cannot get an ought from an is, but that it is not enough just to say: "is or is not" and then of a sudden start saying "ought or ought not...".
You have to do better than that, either by attempting filling out somehow the missing bits in the is-ought gap or attempting to use a completely different structure of argument - to get to arguments connected with an ought :-)

[davemcgarvie]

Wish I knew you were in the burg. I'm just down the road

[transcendentphilosophy]

Great explanation. I tend to think that the is/ought gap only applies to logical deduction and doesn't apply ontologically. Values (oughts) reduce to facts (is) about psychology. The facts of nature give us our oughts whether we like that or not. We may not be able to logically deduce why we have our values, but we still have them due to nature.

[PKMartin]

Do the people who say they don't believe in real goodness actually not believe in "good" at all, or is it just that they think our concepts of what "good" are are completely relative? I think we can agree that good exists on more than one axis, so what you prioritise (individual liberty, loyalty, fairness, sanctity, equality) is where goodness becomes relative.


That aside, even though goodness may not be measurable, as we can ask people what they believe contributes to it perhaps we can aim to at least look for whatever measurable thing we can which represents good, the same way 680nm light represents the intangible sensation of "redness".

[邓梓薇]

The scene is beautiful..I love the angle directing at the sky feels soothing...And the end is excellent.. are you a Christian?

[marklevinaguirre]

Can someone explain to me this “One cannot deduce ‘ought’ from ‘is’ ?

[tubelight]

How natural law differs from the is and ought theory of Positivists?

[IlusysSystems]

1) Scientific method is logical, however it's output is not. That's why we are constantly correcting our knowledge - because always find some logical inconsistency in it.
It's like building indestructible fortress - you better try your destroy it and improve it's weakness. Kinda beautiful and enjoyable process IMO.
Haven't watched that video yet tho.


2) I think, that Is/Ought Problem has complexity context. And if anything, we would calculate probability from is to ought.
We can not run simulations even at fundamental levels. Even if we use quantum computers, that can "experience" real quantum effects you can not simulate atom of iron, because that atom has it's specific influence on reality that can not be simulated. Otherwise, your simmulation would collapse into iron atom...


I would call this a science paradox: Even if we know everything we can, we can not know everything.
Now, can I get a statute? :D

[PhysicsPolice]

2:00 This argument is extremely naive. By this same logic, we can't measure the quality of a chess move, or the impact on health of a particular medical intervention. Yet, somehow, people can win at chess and medicine can save lives. When you limit your ontology, you miss out on a lot of stuff. Adding morality to one's ontology defined as that which increases wellbeing, all of a sudden we can make objective moral claims, so long as we have clearly defined wellbeing! Same with chess: you can make objective claims about how good a chess move is once you've agreed on the rules of chess. Same with medicine: you can make objective claims about health once you agree on a definition of health.

[zachmikkablair]

So this is going back to the nature or nurture discussion. Do we naturally have an accepted installation of morality from birth or r morals taught and learned thru experience??? Its hard to say. Atleast theoretically.

[lizicadumitru]

Would it be correct to say the truth, about anything, is good? Another way to say it, is the truth inherently good?

[ArnoldTohtFan]

Hume declares that a natural order does not necessarily lead to any moral conclusion. He illustrates this with examples from nature that seem to undermine our moral certainties. Is it wrong to kill your parents? Well, a tree might drop a seed that grows up to choke it and take its light. The tree kills its parent, but we wouldn't say that's wrong. So you say you're against incest? Well, if two animals commit incest, is it a sin? Hume's conclusion is that the acts themselves, parent-killing and incest, don't have any moral valence. Wherever morality is, it can't be out there in nature.

Hume's error is that he is mixing up two orders of nature: specific natures and local natures. He is transposing animals who do not have the specific natures of human beings into the situations that make up human local nature. But in a local nature, it matters who is playing what role. Moral significance doesn't just depend on what is done, it depends on what kind of creature is doing it. That's true even outside the moral realm. It's a big day when a baby learns to walk on two legs, but it's not a big day when a dog learns to walk on two legs. Dogs and humans live together, but they can't take on each other's roles.

I believe the correct way to get an is from an ought is to regard the hierarchy of nature as a whole. We don't expect much from entities so low on the great chain of being as plants. But I can't resist pointing out that Hume's assumption that plants kill their parents is false, for even plants recognize the roots of their kin and behave altruistically towards them. The seed that Hume describes would be defective, even if we wouldn't call it bad. As for incest, even such humble creatures as mites exhibit evolutionary strategies of inbreeding avoidance. The ways in which animals avoid incest are their own area of biological study. For example, young lions are driven out of the pride to find a different pride and challenge the dominant lion for control over the lionesses. The process of male dispersal ensures that they will not mate with their sisters, nor will the formerly dominant lion be dominant for long enough to mate with his daughters. Incest among lions would, therefore, be unnatural and defective, eliciting as much moral condemnation as would be appropriate for a lion. I stress these examples because they illustrate a general truth: Hume's amoral picture of nature where beasts rage and claw irrationally at one another while only man is moral is an Enlightenment fiction. There are many specific and local natures, but each is characterized by a hierarchy that contains moral order. The same hierarchy characterizes the sub-species of man. We recognize, for example, that no amount of punishment or education will make Africans or Asians behave as we do; we rightly expect less from them. That is also why it is folly to try to accommodate them in our local natures.