Hume's "No Ought From Is" is Limited!

[Veritas Aequitas]

Yes there is a continuum of oughts in terms of different criticalness & urgency in different timings and different conditions.

There are a wide range of oughts, e.g. ought not to fart in the elevator is a matter of courtesy and not being offensive is not a moral ought like shoving icepicks into peoples' eyeballs in a violent manner or killing people by whatever means.

Ultimately whatever is to be identified as moral oughts proper, they must be verifiable and justifiable empirically thus as objective moral facts. In addition these objective moral facts are not to be enforced on anyone.

So you are solving nothing whatsoever.

Not only are you sub-categorising oughts into moral and non-moral.
You are also sub-categorising moral oughts into critical and urgent.
You are also saying oughts are subject to context and conditions.

So what happens when you have competing oughts from different sub-categories in different contexts and different conditions at the exact same time?

Do you let lapse your duty to an urgent ought; or a critical ought?
Do you let lapse your moral duty to your family; or your moral duty to your species?
Do you let lapse your moral duty to your wife; or to your parents?

Choices, choices, choices, choices... How do you optimise your limited time?

There is no issue in this case.
In the future, one will have the opportunity to have the competence to be able to optimize to the best of one's well being.

Note the central theme of our discussion is whether there are objective moral facts or not.
Hume claimed there are none but that is only because due to his time [1700s] he did not have access to the latest advance knowledge we have.

Note this scenario,
'The ought-not-ness to kill another human' is an objective moral fact as conditioned to the moral FSK.

Note this scenario,
Suppose one is caught is a no escape situation where one is given a the choice either to stop another from breathing or else one will be stopped from breathing.
Rationally and to optimize one's well being, one will have to stop the other from breathing to save one's life despite the moral fact 'The ought-not-ness to kill another human' which is only an ideal and guide.
But despite the non-compliance to that guide, one need to be mindful of one's non-compliance to the need for optimization of one's well being.
What is critical is one must strive to find solutions to prevent similar scenario from happening again. How can we do that? It is complex but possible in the future.

To topic, there are a wide range of oughts. The type of oughts that Hume rejected are not objective moral oughts. Hume was ignorant of the existence of real objective moral oughts that are inherent within all humans.

[Skepdick]

Yes there is a continuum of oughts in terms of different criticalness & urgency in different timings and different conditions.

There are a wide range of oughts, e.g. ought not to fart in the elevator is a matter of courtesy and not being offensive is not a moral ought like shoving icepicks into peoples' eyeballs in a violent manner or killing people by whatever means.

Ultimately whatever is to be identified as moral oughts proper, they must be verifiable and justifiable empirically thus as objective moral facts. In addition these objective moral facts are not to be enforced on anyone.

So you are solving nothing whatsoever.

Not only are you sub-categorising oughts into moral and non-moral.
You are also sub-categorising moral oughts into critical and urgent.
You are also saying oughts are subject to context and conditions.

So what happens when you have competing oughts from different sub-categories in different contexts and different conditions at the exact same time?

Do you let lapse your duty to an urgent ought; or a critical ought?
Do you let lapse your moral duty to your family; or your moral duty to your species?
Do you let lapse your moral duty to your wife; or to your parents?

Choices, choices, choices, choices... How do you optimise your limited time?

There is no issue in this case.
In the future, one will have the opportunity to have the competence to be able to optimize to the best of one's well being.

That's precisely your problem. Being stuck in the present, you have absolutely no idea where the global maximum is.

And you most definitely have no idea whether choosing a local maximum prevents you from obtaining a global maximum in future.
Some promising turns lead to a dead-end in the labyrinth!

Your optimisation strategy is basically what greedy algorithms do.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greedy_algorithm

Note the central theme of our discussion is whether there are objective moral facts or not.
Hume claimed there are none but that is only because due to his time [1700s] he did not have access to the latest advance knowledge we have.

You have missed the point entirely. Nobody really cares if there are; or aren't facts.

People care about the properties of facts! Facts carry the promise to resolve disputes. Is the Earth round or flat? Let the fact of the matter decide!
But just because the Earth is round in 3 dimensions it doesn't mean we live in a 3-dimensional universe!

Facts are merely sufficient descriptions. You can describe the universe as 3, 4 or 12365162346123 dimensional - it doesn't really matter which one is true if your description works.

Note this scenario,
'The ought-not-ness to kill another human' is an objective moral fact as conditioned to the moral FSK.

So what? A law unenfoced is a law which can be trivially ignored.

To topic, there are a wide range of oughts. The type of oughts that Hume rejected are not objective moral oughts. Hume was ignorant of the existence of real objective moral oughts that are inherent within all humans.

None of which matters if you have free will! You can ignore your own programming.

Any override routine implies a double standard at play.

[Veritas Aequitas]

There is no issue in this case.
In the future, one will have the opportunity to have the competence to be able to optimize to the best of one's well being.

That's precisely your problem. Being stuck in the present, you have absolutely no idea where the global maximum is.

'Stuck in the present'??
Note I have been referring to the future all the time.

Your optimisation strategy is basically what greedy algorithms do.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greedy_algorithm

If given choice to live or die, your greedy algorithm is useless.
There is only one rational choice for an individual, i.e. to optimize one's well being, i.e. to live.

In other cases where there is a condition of greedy algorithm then there is a need to avoid it as much as possible and that is possible in the future.

[Skepdick]

'Stuck in the present'??
Note I have been referring to the future all the time.

You are referring to the future but you are stuck in the present.

And since you can't make Utopia manifest tomorrow you have to figure out how to get to the future you desire.

If given choice to live or die, your greedy algorithm is useless.
There is only one rational choice for an individual, i.e. to optimize one's well being, i.e. to live.

And given the fact any one of a million things could bring about your death - which possible cause of death do you attempt to mitigate?

Do you focus on mitigating your risk of lung cancer; or your risk of bladder cancer; or your risk of testicular cancer; or your risk of stomach cancer?

In other cases where there is a condition of greedy algorithm then there is a need to avoid it as much as possible and that is possible in the future.

How do you propose we avoid our inability to see the future?

[Sculptor]

Only the future could be some way if it ought to be that way.

Says who?

Objectivist: Says me! The future ought to be the way I say it is!

Reality has different ideas.

[Skepdick]

Only the future could be some way if it ought to be that way.

Says who?

Objectivist: Says me! The future ought to be the way I say it is!

Reality has different ideas.

Reality didn't seem to mind any of our moral progress in the last few hundred years.

Nor did it seem to mind me boiling water when I decided I ought to have a cup of tea.

Maybe reality gets in the way of your oughts because you are incompetent in bringing about change?

[Sculptor]

Only the future could be some way if it ought to be that way.

Says who?

Objectivist: Says me! The future ought to be the way I say it is!

Reality has different ideas.

Reality didn't seem to mind any of our moral progress in the last few hundred years.

Subjective

Nor did it seem to mind me boiling water when I decided I ought to have a cup of tea.


Maybe reality gets in the way of your oughts because you are incompetent in bringing about change?

Maybe you are just stupid?

[Skepdick]

Says who?

Objectivist: Says me! The future ought to be the way I say it is!

Reality has different ideas.

Reality didn't seem to mind any of our moral progress in the last few hundred years.

Subjective

It's as objective as gravity, but your epistemology is too broken to understand it.

Maybe you are just stupid?

A stupid person would think that.

[Sculptor]

Reality didn't seem to mind any of our moral progress in the last few hundred years.

Subjective

It's as objective as gravity, but your epistemology is too broken to understand it.

Falling on your arse is not the same as morality

[Skepdick]

Falling on your arse is not the same as morality

It might be if falling on your arse made the bullet miss your head.

Then again - maybe your brain isn't a vital organ.

[Veritas Aequitas]

'Stuck in the present'??
Note I have been referring to the future all the time.

You are referring to the future but you are stuck in the present.

That is totally irrelevant.
You just want to counter for the mere sake of countering any point regardless it make good sense or not.
Are you implying because we are stuck in the present that we should [ought] not be bothered nor discuss about the possibility of good for the future?
Surely you are aware humans has always been for the future and future generations besides current issues.
Note the current concern with climate change and even the fear of Earth being struck by a rogue meteorite, going to Mars, etc.

And since you can't make Utopia manifest tomorrow you have to figure out how to get to the future you desire.

That has been my intention all the time.
As I had insisted we need to shift from the old dogmatic 'moral' paradigm of Hume's blanket 'No ought from Is' to the new paradigm of a moral model [facilitated by AI] based on verifiable and justifiable moral facts, i.e. objective moral facts.
Therefrom we need to build new moral models that can facilitate moral progress expeditiously towards the future with results for the future generations.

If given choice to live or die, your greedy algorithm is useless.
There is only one rational choice for an individual, i.e. to optimize one's well being, i.e. to live.

And given the fact any one of a million things could bring about your death - which possible cause of death do you attempt to mitigate?

Do you focus on mitigating your risk of lung cancer; or your risk of bladder cancer; or your risk of testicular cancer; or your risk of stomach cancer?

Again this is totally off topic.
I presented a scenario, i.e. a thought experiment where one is caught in facing a dilemma of
either stopping the breathing of another human and will be freed
or the terrorists will stop one's breathing forever.
In this specific scenario, the rational decision is to ensure 'one ought to breathe' is fulfilled to optimize one's well being.

In other cases where there is a condition of greedy algorithm then there is a need to avoid it as much as possible and that is possible in the future.

How do you propose we avoid our inability to see the future?
[/quote]
Again it is irrelevant to avoid seeing the future.

What I stated is humans in the future [even now] should strive to avoid themselves ending up with a greedy algorithm [sub-optimizing] but rather progress to balance and optimize with the whole picture holistically.
Since you are in Computer Science, surely you would have an inkling AI can facilitate in complex computations that will assist humans to optimize more globally than locally.
You heard of DeepMind's AlphGo and AlphaFold and its potentials for the future?

[Iwannaplato]

As I had insisted we need to shift from the old dogmatic 'moral' paradigm of Hume's blanket 'No ought from Is' to the new paradigm of a moral model [facilitated by AI] based on verifiable and justifiable moral facts, i.e. objective moral facts.

Since you are in Computer Science, surely you would have an inkling AI can facilitate in complex computations that will assist humans to optimize more globally than locally.
You heard of DeepMind's AlphGo and AlphaFold and its potentials for the future?

Some people really need to read some dystopias and then spend some time mulling.

[Agent Smith]

"Wassup Brandon?"

"Nothing much, homework."

"Good, good. wassup Susan?"

"Me? Practising my lines."

"Great! Good luck. Wassup Chen?

"I'm watching Antman on Netflix. Wanna join me?"

"Ah! Marvel fan, eh? No, no thank you. Wassup Raj?"

"Breakfast."

"Of course, of course. How stupid of me. I'm not blind. Hehe."