Do you agree that we cannot define universally what is morally right or wrong in goal-derived morality if people’s goals are different?
Doesn’t this require first that you have submitted to being with a group that is prone to evil? You stick up for evil-doers.
There is one true good, then false good, which is evident in your case, and the basis to what you’re saying.
You’re lazing off about the subject of good, because you agree that part of life is evil- where the one true good is against that.
Because someone likes pain, doesn’t mean that pain is not a no-go.
It means they are a rare speciality who presents itself as a problem to moral-theory, solved with a ‘rare’ tag.
EDIT:
I believe we can have different positions(higher or lower) on a moral web, where someone’s innocent failure is evil from my position, but it doesn’t mean that that person’s performance ought not be judged.
I responded directly to something you said, and rather than respond to that, you said “that’s not what I’m talking about, let me define my terms”. So when you offer your definition, I am pointing out that it isn’t a response to me, and that I don’t need your definition, I need you to respond to what I say. Is that not clear enough? Please go back and read the exchange.
You can use terms however you want, however if you wish to speak English, then you need to adhere to it. The right to drive a car, or any other right, is a statement of morality. If you have a right, including driving a car, and someone interferes with you driving or whatever it is that you have a right to, then they are acting immorally. Rights are statements of moral guarantee. The exception would be a legal right, which is a statement of legal guarantee, mirroring a moral right. Surely you’re not talking about legal rights.
I don’t, which is why I bring it up.
Do you understand why ignoring unpleasant relationships or non-consensual interactions leaves most of the important moral situations unconsidered?
It seems like you’re saying “If you want a nice relationship, then you ought to behave nicely”… which is obviously true, but banal, and most certainly not deriving ought from is.
The most common moral problems people have revolve around relationships that aren’t nice ones. They involve questions about coercion and exploitation. Questions that aren’t addressed by defining relationships in a nice way. If you can’t address those things, then what do you imagine you’re doing?
To be frank, I don’t understand the is-ought gap. I get the description-prescription distinction but this isn’t enough grounds to doubt the validity of ethics. To me it feels like Hume’s observation has lost its relevance in modern ethics. He was an 18th century Scottish gentleman. This is the 21st century. That’s 300 years.
How did Hume himself function? … ethically I mean.
There’s as more recent account from the logician Gillian Russell that places it amongst other barriers to entailment.
- No ought from is
- No universal from only particulars
- No how things will be in the future from how things are now
- No necessities from only contingencies
- No fixed referent from an indexical.
The argument is quite formal, but she shows a commonality between these five barriers based on model theory. In each case a model of the first situation can be related to subsequent models in multiple ways, and so there is no single related model to count as that entailed by the situation.
I’ll not go in to detail here, but you might be interested in an old thread: Gillian Russell: Barriers to entailment
No, the is/ought barrier is not sufficient to reject the validity of ethics; but it does put some interesting limits on how ethical reasoning might proceed.
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Thanks a ton.
That’s an interesting list of issue with entailment.
I was also wondering how Hume lived, ethically that is. Didn’t he have a system of morality, which would mean he suffers from the same malady he declares other moral theorists are afflicted by?
I vaguely recall emotivism, the famous boo-hoorah theory, which perhaps glides into your other thread.
It just feels very odd!
There’s been a lot of water under the bridge since Hume. While he might have popularised the ought/is barrier, there are multiple and varying arguments for it in the literature. I’m taken with Russell’s account because it seems to set out the logic of the barriers pretty elegantly, if not all that clearly.
The point being that if we restrict ourselves to Hume’s account we will miss out on the main body of the discussion.
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Not to press the matter too much (reply not expected), but I find it odd that a man, even if in the 18th century, could live life without any oughts. The is-ought gap, having read the passage in Hume’s own words, seems to suggest a degree of surprise that seems out of place. Must be rhetoric!
Since you’ve asked your question three times I will offer a reply. 
You could see Hume as the grandfather of ethical non-cognitivism. He thought ‘oughts’ flowed from what he called “sentiment.” So he basically thought that you could raise a child well, instill the child with appropriate values and culture, and shape their “sentiment” towards a superior ethical sensibility, but that you could never give an argument for an ‘ought’. For Hume “reason” was something purely instrumental, and therefore it could not generate motives for action. The motives come not from “reason” but from “sentiment.”
It’s actually a good question, and it reveals how ignorant people are of Hume. Given the way people talk about “Hume’s is-ought gap,” you would think Hume was a moral monster or that he had no interest in ethics. Not the case.
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He didn’t go without “oughts”, but based them on sentiment, not on statements about how things are in the world.
So emotivism. Hume must’ve been quite a unique chap to have relied on his feelings to make moral judgments. Most don’t fare so well when the heart rules. It still doesn’t explain why the is-ought gap isn’t an issue with Hume himself.
P.S. I don’t think it’s ignorance that’s the trouble-maker. The is-ought gap is quite simple: one category of propositions doesn’t follow from another. More a popularity thing. Popular doesn’t imply importance/relevance.
Not emotivism, but something like an ancestor of emotivism. “Sentiment” is much more stable than emotion. In fact Hume thought that it was effectively unchangeable after maturation to adulthood.
I see. You a Hume expert? 
I’m not keen on argument by isms. Emotivism is a more recent notion. Rather Hume juxtaposed reason and sentiment and had normative concerns depending on the latter.
The most significant difference is that emotivism does not take moral utterances to be truth-apt. There’s no reason to suppose Hume thought such a thing.
No, I’ve just chased this topic down a bit after asking the same questions you are asking.
So Hume’s basically, surreptitiously, advocating for his own moral theory. Sly Scotsman.
Hardly surreptitious. He wrote about it quite extensively.
So for Hume morality is emotions. Does he jump too, like the others, from emotions to oughts?
It’s a bit more complex than that. I’d suggest looking at some of the tertiary sources. See the Internet Encyclopaedia entry if you want something quick. There’s a huge secondary literature, and much conversation as to what exactly he thought.
Hume thought that you could get to ‘ought’ from ‘is’, but only an ‘is’ that is related to sentiment.* You can either reason from the impressions or emotions (but not cognitions) generated by sentiment, or from a sentimental effect generated by reasoning on the sources of such impressions. See:
Morals and criticism are not so properly objects of the understanding as of taste and sentiment. Beauty, whether moral or natural, is felt, more properly than perceived. Or if we reason concerning it, and endeavour to fix its standard, we regard a new fact, to wit, the general taste of mankind, or some such fact, which may be the object of reasoning and enquiry.
(Hume, Enquiry, 12)
* So the famous ‘is’ that is always spoken about with respect to Hume has to do with his doctrine of “reason.” For Hume a purely rational ‘is’ does not generate ‘oughts’. ‘Oughts’ instead come from from the ‘is’ we experience in relation to sentiment, such as a strong desire.