The is-ought gap is vacuous (paper by C. Pigden).

The is-ought problem has been discussed by Cosmicskeptic, Jordan Peterson, RationalityRules, and Destiny but is it really a powerful conundrum?
We take a look at a paper by Charles Pigden entitled "Logic and the autonomy of ethics". In the article, Pigden argues that the is-ought gap is simply due to the fact that logic is conservative, and that makes Hume's guillotine essentially toothless for what concerns arguments against moral realism (naturalism).

I was just kidding in the video, the paper is not available online for free so no link!

References:

Logic and the Autonomy of Ethics, Charles Pigden, Australasian Journal of Philosophy 67 (2):127 – 151 (1989).

A Companion to Ethics, edited by Peter Singer, Blackwells companions to philosophy, chapter 37, page 421, (1993).

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[JM-usfr]

I do agree that some popular intellectuals hold it up as this impenetrable fortress, but I like to think of the is-ought problem as simply stating: it’s more complicated than we first thought. I think it also directs our attention to the fundamental definition of morality, rather than assuming everyone is just on the same page.

[glitchyfruit]

I mean, I don’t see how this effects the is ought gap because the whole point is that morality is the category of good things and you can’t prove something to be of a category without a definition of the catagory.

You can not prove the pet to be a hedgehog without defining hedgehog.

[matthewray]

The is - ought problem is pointing out that what is, does not bridge a way to imply what ought to be. It's like me saying because it IS the case that Cheetahs run an average of 40 mph, therefor Cheetahs Ought to Run 40 miles and hour.

The conclusion just doesn't follow. It's reasoning is incomplete.

This is where the "If clause" fills in the gap. 

If a cheetah wants to be in the average, the cheetah ought to run an average of 40 mph.

Now we have a complete line of reasoning. 

The ought is objective but the if clause (the goal) is subjective.

[Xob_Driesestig]

Thank you for this video, I hadn't heard of this argument before. Here's my question:
Granting the claim: "Hedgehogs are composite creatures whose workings can be explained in terms of their parts", what are the "parts" of "ought"? It seems like "ought" is a tautological construct and not something that is made out of cells and atoms like hedgehogs.

[leonmills]

The paper you cited is actually a defense of the "is-ought" gap. Charles Pigden gave the hedgehog analogy to distinguish logical autonomy from semantic autonomy, not because he actually believes in semantic autonomy. BTW, logical autonomy means that it is not able to be derived from facts and/or logic. That's what Pigden roughly means by "logically autonomous, " which means he is actually defending the "is-ought" gap. LOL! Similarly, semantic autonomy is not able to be derived from meaning. Anyhow, the paper is actually saying that the "is-ought" gap is logically autonomous, which is hilarious because Pigden still thinks that, even though morality is logically autonomous it's still important, this means he is literally arguing against moral realism. Lmao!

[johncracker]

Asserting that it is problematic is an ought position.. it’s really just the paradox of relativism

[oOneszaOo]

good video. i wasn't familiar with the hedgehog argument before, but i gotta say i love it. makes me wonder why it's not talked about more often in the context of the is-ought gap.

[jeremyhansen]

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding the argument, but it seems to miss the point. Hedgehog facts are distinct from facts not related to hedgehogs basically by definition. This is not to say that both categories can't belong to a larger whole, namely descriptive facts. The is ought distinction is no different. The is ought gap claims that norrative and descriptive facts are distinct, the this argument seems to take that for granted. That is not to say that the two categories cannot belong to a greater whole. As a matter of fact it states the opposite by labeling both as facts. Say yeah narrative and descriptive facts are distinct in that either cannot be reduced to the other, and it is also true that both belong to the greater whole of facts. So what's the point?

[grumpylibrarian]

Determining that the is-ought gap isn't special doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.

Also, once I got done laughing over the "professional philosophers" moniker, I felt compelled to reply (you DID make a statement so I SHOULD reply? Hmmm...) that most "philosophers" are theologians and/or apologists. William Lane Craig, Alvin Plantinga, Norman Geisler, and many others hold PhDs in philosophy, but have (had) careers in christian apologetics. Their belief in objective morality is presuppositional, not a conclusion.

[ayyubshaffy]

you might also like John Searle's "How to Derive 'Ought' From 'Is'" paper

[CreideikiRox]

Great argument as always. Thanks for being you Mon0.

[Zagg]

So, you accept that an “ought” statement can’t be validly derived from statements not containing an “ought”. Well, that’s what those of us who claim that an “ought” statement can’t be validly derived from statements not containing an “ought”. You may claim that it’s vacuous. That depends on what you mean by “vacuous”. But it is true.

[hss]

Saying that the 'is-ought' problem is a 'problem' is like saying Goedel's theorem[s] is/are a 'problem'. No, they're insights into the nature of deontic modal propositions and rich formal systems respectively. And both can be rigorously proved (Kit Fine proved that an 'ought' cannot be derived from an 'is' using his truthmaker semantics semi-recently).

[hian]

The only vacuous thing here, is the argument presented — largely due to what appears a lack of interest in presenting a clear idea of what an is-ought fallacy even is(and why it's fallacious in the first place), followed by a false equivalence in the case of the hedgehog example.


For one:
The ought-is fallacy is not best described in a manner such as, "how you cannot logically arrive at conclusions concerning X with X-free premises."

The issue with ought-is statements lie in an observation of how conclusions to arguments cannot be fundamentally different in nature from their premises — that there simply is no relationship between statements that describe what "is the case", and those that describe what "ought be the case"(most likely because the latter is just conceptually incoherent, full stop).

In a sense, it's just a specialized red-herring fallacy by a different name.


Secondly, there's no equivalence to be found in the comparative argument made about hedgehogs because, as would be apparent had you actually compared it side by side to a moral argument, their structures and agenda are completely different.

Ex.
"Sonic has spikes, hedgehogs have spikes, ergo he is a hedgehog"
(Forgive the reductionist definition of hedgehogs =P)

"Killing is wrong, wrongs are things you ought not do, ergo killing is a thing you ought not do"

The fundamental distinction here, is the following:

A hedgehog is merely a label whose definition corresponds to a set of properties which Sonic either possesses or not, and which determine whether Sonic, the entity, is synonymous with the entities labeled hedgehogs.

On the moral end however, we're not merely assessing whether two entities on each side of an equal sign are synonymous granting a set of definitions(and that's not even going into the fact that granting moral definitions is altogether different from granting definitions that are descriptive of some external phenomenon we all seemingly and trivially recognize). We're trying to argue that, granted a set of facts about reality currently, we should expect some other facts of reality to be different(or make them so, if they aren't).

On one hand, we have a game of assessing and comparing facts about two or more entities, which are all either true or false in the moment.

On the other, we have some labyrinthine exercise in applying a word that by all accounts should be reserved for grammatical structures that involve conditionals(ifs) after a set of discrete facts that have no necessary causal relationship to the conclusion of the argument for which they comprised a part.

The idea that the is-ought fallacy over-reaches, and would apply to almost any argument, requires such a fundamental lack of appreciation for language it makes me dread for the future of philosophy.


Also, ad addendum:
That there are many moral naturalists in the field of philosophy is also a red herring and an appeal to consensus fallacy. It's a bit sad that something so basic in its fault managed to find itself into a video-script on a philosophical topic.

You could just as well argue, that if anything, this just goes to show that the field of moral philosophy is full of naive people working backwards from a foregone conclusion rather than properly examining the fundamentals of moral thinking under a thorough critical lense.

Here's a nut for you to ponder — most biblical scholars are religious. Does that mean that the bible stories are true? Or does just reflect how a field like that is very likely to attract religious people with a strong desire to further furnish their faith?

[RSEFX]

There ought to be more perceived is-ness v. non-substantial ought-ness here...ie, there is neither an ink's nor a paper's worth (for what it's worth) here, as there ought to be.
So you are right.
Thanks for the video.

[lukemwp]

To quote Bill Clinton - "it depends on what the definition of 'is' is"

[scytale]

The problem is that moral arguments are subjective unless they refer to an objective source of logic, which doesn't exist in our natural universe, according to scientists.

[mo_exel]

Thats an interesting argument, but I don't find this convincing at all. Our conclusions have to be derived from our premises because truth doesn't exist in a vacuum. If we have the premises "Bobs pet has spikes" and "Bobs pet is a mammal" (etc...), then we cannot derive the claim "Bobs pet is a hedgehog" without first assuming that "everything that has [those qualities] is a hedgehog", which is an implicit assumption that people have based on their experiences, even if they don't include it in their premises. We cannot experience moral truth, because they aren't (metaphysically speaking) real, so those concepts aren't comparable at all.

[anthonynork]

It's unclear to me whether this will have or is supposed to have any bearing on the gap but rather show that this kind of gap exists in most other realms as well. But we don't make such a huge deal of it most of the time. Just have seen the video, possibly in the paper the goal of this analysis is mentioned. I don't see how this could solve the underlying problem that, somehow, we must define things which in ways that are robust.

[jbeebe]

Excellent. Too many simple-minded treatments of the is/ought fallacy/gap that misconstrue it. The amount of fallacious reasoning in videos attempting to explain fallacies is truly amazing.