ought from is
I was listening to “in search of reality”, a recent podcast of a discussion between Sam Harris and Sean Carrol. They were going back and forth about the is-ought problem (aka Hume’s law).
I’m probably missing something, or perhaps not quite understanding the argument, but from my POV there is a fundamental flaw in Sean’s position. He argues that ought is not derivable from is, and that it must needs be asserted as an axiom/assumption, rather than acknowledge that there are shoulds or should nots.
What puzzles me is that Sean asserts he is a naturalist, in the sense of believing that everything that exists does so without the need for an external motivation, i.e. no need for God. There is no supernatural. The universe is complete, in itself, and we can increase our understanding of it via science.
It seems a contradiction to me to assert that everything that exists, everything that we see and experience, derives from physical laws that are inherent in our universe, without needing to posit any external actor, and yet to also assert that ought, should, good, evil are not derivable from what is.
If you believe that everything that is, just is, and all things that we see and experience derive from what is in this universe, then the mere fact that we have a notion of ought, good, evil, better, worse means that these things do derive from what is. There is no external actor to introduce these things. There is no separate, distinct me or you that can posit or introduce “new” things to what is.
By extension, it seems that to argue that ought must be introduced as an axiom implies that we are somehow distinct from what is. This would be an argument in favor of souls, for instance, or the need for God to introduce morality to us.
If you argue that morality and ethics cannot be derived from what is, then you are arguing for an external something, and that conflicts with being a naturalist.
If you assume that everything that is derives from physical laws, and that there is no supernatural, then the mere existence of the words ought, should, shouldn’t demonstrates that they are derivable from what is.
