The Value-Ought Gap

[lanceindependent]

At least one move available to the naturalist would be to just claim that an account of values is sufficient for moral realism, and that they don't need to offer an account of what we ought to do. They could, in other words, disagree with you about what would be required for an adequate account of moral realism.

[JackyBunch]

I don't know if you're familiar with Henry Sidgwick, but the example you gave of deciding between egoistic and altruistic hedonism is precisely what he called "the profoundest problem of ethics". He basically concludes that you could plausibly say that you either ought to do whatever is best for everyone, or whatever is best for yourself; he concluded that there is a dualism in the practical reason.

[howtoappearincompletely]

It seems I've been recognising this distinction all along, without giving it a name.

[callumburcher]

Sent from the magic sceptic channel looks good man

[darkengine]

I might be misunderstanding but it seems much easier to bridge value-ought than is-ought. That's not to say it's easy in sufficiently complex scenarios, but inductive inference and empiricism can take over to determine which oughts derived from a value are far more effective than others in achieving the desired goals.

With the example you raised about an artist valuing creating good art, a lot of the ambiguity there lies in how vaguely the value is defined. With such a nebulous definition, we might only be able to give vague suggestions like valuing artistic truth and practicing their art as often as possible while gradually developing a distinct style that separates their art from the rest.

Yet suppose instead that they valued creating highly realistic art of human subjects. In that case, a highly effective ought derived from that value is that they ought to study anatomy, perspective, lighting, values, texture, edges, composition, and regularly practice life drawing. Meanwhile, if someone else suggested that they ought to practice drawing cartoons and focus on graphic design, that should be objectively far less effective advice (it's something we can subject to testing if in doubt, but practically all successful artists who draw realistic human subjects I've ever found would agree with the former suggestion as superior to the latter along with visual arts professors).

In a similar sense (although focused a bit more on is-ought than value-ought), if a patient merely walked into a doctor's office and told the doctor that they wanted to be healthy and expected an immediate prescription, that's very difficult to do besides suggesting very generalized things like getting plenty of sleep, exercise, and eat a reasonable diet. Yet if the doctor can diagnose the patient and perform blood tests and discover more specific properties about the subject like the presence of a chronic health condition and certain nutritional deficiencies, it's much easier to derive more specific and effective oughts.

[hannsjurgenhodann]

Thank you for making this video. I found this discussion about the 'value-ought gab' very interesting.

[mandobrownie]

Maybe a small step the value-based moral naturalist can take toward meeting the challenge is to say that all types of value automatically generate or contain or whatever a reason for action (possibly even a moral reason for action). The question of ought as I think you're using it is "what ought we to do all (moral? normative?) things considered?" If every instance of value that the moral naturalist claims exists automatically give reasons, then the job is to go from reasons which give something like prima facie or pro tanto or probabilistic oughts to all (moral? normative?) things considered oughts. And that might be a more manageable task, or at least a task almost every metaethical or first-order moral theory faces (even many anti-realist positions I think). A problem with that proposal, at least that I see, is that it's hard to sort values into the different categories. Why is the value that the value-based moral naturalists claims is moral actually moral instead of, say, prudential or practical or personal or epistemic or something? But maybe you don't really care too much about the moral domain and the moral ought themselves, but rather the all normative things considered oughts and the whole normative domain.

[mandobrownie]

Re: your comments about the other normative domains not delivering as strong of oughts as the moral domain. I think certain debates within epistemic normativity and practical normativity show that those domains can deliver just as strong of oughts as the moral domain. In epistemic normativity there're claims that one's evidence narrows which beliefs are epistemically permitted or epistemically rational quite a bit, and that epistemic agents are only permitted to believe among those beliefs. I'm blank on the names of these debates, but I've bet you've heard of them. Similar things go for the practical domain (maybe even the prudential domain?): there're a fair bit of theorists who claim that practical normativity requires that agents take the most or close to the most efficient means to their goals given their means side constraints. That can end up giving pretty weighty oughts. I think maybe you're just a good old Mackie-ite in that you're suspicious of there being genuine oughts at all -- which is s perfectly respectable position that normative theorists of all stripes take! There's a good article on skepticism about oughts (especially all things considered oughts) in the Oxford Handbook of Reasons and Normativity.

[InventiveHarvest]

You are right that the tricky part is when pursuing our individual desires negatively affects other people. In such cases, compensation is owed to the negatively affected people.

In the simple case, where no one is negatively affected by an action, the ought is clear. If the benefits of doing something outweigh the costs, it ought to be done. For example, if I get joy fron breathing air, I ought to breathe air. Otherwise there would be less joy in the universe for no reason. Not breathing the air would be irrational.

Now back to the compensation part. I am not saying that we can know exactly how much our actions will negatively affect others. Also, we do not have a perfect compensation enforcement mechanism. So, while the ideal state exists potentially, we can never as a society precisely achieve it.

That being said, as much as we can enforce negatively affected people being adequately compensated, people ought to be allowed to pursue their desires. There should be no victimless crimes.

[UserName-nxmc]

14:10 - I have the exact same problem with Sam Harris's type of naturalism that you do. I'm glad you pointed it out.

[StefanTravis]

There is the position that "A is good" or "You should do A" are just elliptical ways of saying "Do A". That is, that moral declaratives are disguised imperatives.

Whatever else can be said about this position, it does deal with the value-ought distinction, by erasing it.

[sisyphus]

I had been a closeted anti-realist for a long time before I came out. I think many of those realists are realists simply because they cannot not be. It’s hard to live without values. Like Cole, I WANT values to be real.

Antirealism can be a real turn off, especially when you’re jerking off to a beautiful person and your brain reminds you that beauty is not a real property. Antirealism strips the metaphysical element away from value; I find that hard to endure.

[joshnicholson]

This point is very remniscent of the literature on Mackie's argument from queerness, specifically the debate between David Brink and Richard Garner pertaining to the "genuine queerness" of objective moral values. As usual I agree, great video!

[unknownknownsphilosophy]

You should do a video on agnotology, I think there is work by Janet Kourany, I think that is her name I'll have to check, basically the idea is that science generates more ignorance than it does knowledge, for everything known there is a exponentially growing number of new unanswered questions which get generated at a rate always exceeding the knowledge gained. If we take constructivism seriously (I do) then this raises an interesting question about whether we are pumping ignorance into the universe, generating it, rather than discovering unknowns that were actually "out there" before we came on the scene. Like if we create the game chess, then bad chess strategies are also something that gets generated into a world that may not have otherwise ever contained them. Interesting to ponder the meaning of unintentionally dumping ignorance into the world haha

[orelazarevic]

Why is the problem restricted to moral naturalists? I think that's the same sort of criticism that William Frankena has given regarding Moore's famous *non-naturalist* realism (in "Philosophy of G.E. Moore"). Moore held that "good" is unanalysable, but that "ought" (duty) is, exactly in terms of "good". Frankena observed that "ought" can't have the sort of objectivity that "good" supposedly has, and it's just irrelevant whether "good" is identical with some natural property or not.

[martinbennett]

Are conditionals so troublesome. Let's say your car is being serviced and the garagist finds the brake pads have worn thin, then we would say he ought to replace them, it is simply what you expect given the garagist' role. Similarly seeing the doctor, you might have a bacterial infection so, so the doctor ought to prescribe antibiotics. These are 'oughts' derived from observable facts.

[WackyConundrum]

Please make a video about criticisms of naturalistic fallacy. Some authors who made such criticisms are:
William Frankena, 1939.
A.N. Prior, 1952.
John Searle, 1969.
Julio Cabrera, 2007.

There are some good criticisms of it. They may not be definitive, but the defenders of the naturalistic fallacy have to respond to them, it seems.

[WackyConundrum]

What do you mean by "ought"/"should"? And what do philosophers generally [think they] mean by that?
There are many ways to understand the term. A command. An internalized aspiration. A rule for achieving a goal (hypothetical imperative). And probably many others. So?...

[theforcewithin]

I think max stirner "solved" that dichotomy of the nature of morality with his individualist "egoism" lets say, morality is a concept or the reification of it in most people's minds anyway, Max Stirner's philosophy points out that the interest of the individual is ultimately inherently good and that's where the concept of morality stems from.... I'm not saying that his philosophy is perfect or my interpretation is correct or that i know everything obviously

[tartarus]

it looks like it would be helpful to define goodness here. So if we ever get to the point where pleasure is valuable maybe that doesn’t entail that it’s good but if we ever get to the point where pleasure is good then I do think we’ve achieved moral realism because what we mean by good is most likely going to be defined as something we ought do.

I’m not a naturalist but this seems more like a critique of reductive naturalism than just naturalism.