Hume's Law (Is-Ought Problem) Debunked

The eighteenth century Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711-1776) in his "Treatise of Human Nature" raised the Is-Ought Problem, otherwise known now as Hume's Law or Hume's Guillotine, where he points out that you cannot coherently move from descriptive statements to prescriptive ones.

However, in this short video I will demonstrate how we can in fact coherently move from descriptive ("is") statements to prescriptive ones (or "oughts") given a proper context and with the help of another great philosopher, Immanuel Kant (1724-1804).

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#ethics #morality #philosophy

[a.d.clarke]

Thanks for listening. Coming soon: "Why Socrates was Wrong (in Crito)!"

[joss]

A universal desire to be consistent does not mean we ought to be consistent. You are sneaking in a hidden ought. That ought is "we ought to abide by our universal desire to be consistent"
Great work breaking down the problem though. Plenty of people on YouTube just go straight to their solution without explaining the problem itself.

[Vgallo]

No I think your getting it backwards, hume doesn’t say you can’t get an is from an ought, the problem is being able to get an ought from an is, so you havent arrived at your ought from an is, as someone else has stated your using the Is statement about human consistency and deriving an ought, there’s still that gap.

[DrTodd]

All these arguments with promises or obligations is just a sneaky way of trying to get a moral premise in to the premises. Either those words have inbuilt moral implications in which case they can't be used as a premise or they don't. If they don't then you lack a statement of the form that one ought to follow through on their promises.

[johncassles]

It just seems to me that this 'is' argument of Kant with regards to context just puts fancier clothing on it, but does not really promote it to the special ought category. It just kicks the 'is" can further down the road. Descartes could come up with an evil god whose purposes were purely evil, and still have generally moral justifications for what his actions were. He could say that "I am god most perfect and there is no one as good as me (which, by the way many psychopaths do), and it doesn't really matter if I kill off my creation, they will not be the wiser for it, given that their lives are finite anyway". But this, pincipally, should strike an off note in most people's consciences, which would lead me to believe that there is something beyond consensus that dictates right or wrong. Ought is a very specific term which for those of a transcendental point of view would regard as beyond our natural trappings. In fact it has been said by many of the past, that it is our (humanity's) unique ability to sacrifice even our own lives for the sake of our brothers and sisters. And that is what separates us from the "wild" (purely instinctual).

Obviously that consensus is being derived from our collective experiences and how we evaluate them, but I just don't see how the natural paradigm of merely and collectively following our "base instinctual" drives are enough to justify an ought. Because in the final analysis it just begs the question: Why am I afraid of death, if indeed dying is "natural". I could pose many more questions like that, for which mere 'isness' has no answer for, however many people believe it.

[tovialbores-falk]

I dont see how its inconsistent to efnolege the fact that most people condem murder but still comit murder. When most people condemed gay marriage was it inconsistent to gay marry?

[dharmadefender]

No you can't. If you showed pistachio ice cream is objectively better than Minestrone you can NEVER show that one ought to eat Pistachio ice cream. It doesn't logically follow.