Ronald Merrill suggested a couple of decades ago that "normative ought" and "instrumental ought" are likely two sides of the same issue which he called the "uni

Ronald Merrill suggested a couple of decades ago that "normative ought" and "instrumental ought" are likely two sides of the same issue which he called the "unification of oughts" (rather like Maxwell's unification of electricity and magnetism, Merrill was an engineer). That "normative ought" in morality is an instrumental ought with an understood object (for example to improve your or someone else's life); and I would suggest the proper study of morality may be to understand, make explicit, and rank/prioritize those implicit objects.