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I would say it slightly differently: What values a given individual has, is purely a factual statement, as you said. If I tell you that chocolate ice cream is

I would say it slightly differently: What values a given individual has, is purely a factual statement, as you said. If I tell you that chocolate ice cream is my favorite dessert, that's a testable fact. But what's not testable is whether I ought to like chocolate ice cream. Suppose I told you I liked chocolate ice cream and you scanned my brain and it looks like I like chocolate ice cream, and you said, "Well, I see you like chocolate ice cream, but you really shouldn't because it tastes awful." That wouldn't make sense, right? This is the is/ought divide. [As always, smarter people hundreds of years ago, have come up with better arguments than mine.] In the same way, whether or not today's world is warmer than the 1970s is a testable fact. But whether we ought to join the Kyoto Protocol or the Paris Accords is not. That's what I mean about the issue being about value preferences.

alphazard 3y ago
The is/ought distinction is merely linguistic. It's true: you can't derive an ought statement from an is statement. Consider your statement "I ought to like chocolate ice cream". That is an ambiguous claim, which I can try to interpret in one of two possible ways: 1. "I value that I like chocolate ice cream". If you were a rational agent, this would be an infinite regression, of course you like that your utility function is your utility function, and that liking goes on forever. It's interesting that humans, which are not rational, can also have thoughts about not liking that they enjoy certain things. 2. "It is good that I like chocolate ice cream". Good for who/what? there needs to be something that values that you like chocolate ice cream. "My friend values that I like ice cream" is not ambiguous, and firmly in factual territory again. Your friend is the valuer/agent with preferences. People hate the ambiguity and want to say the valuer is the universe or God or something else. But it's just an under-specified statement about whether one agent likes another agents preferences. Your statement about "we ought to ___", cannot be well defined in all cases, because something could be good for one agent in the group, but bad for another. Any attempt to make a claim "good for the group" is no longer a statement about individual agents and their preferences. It's about something else, if it's coherent at all. Rarely does "good for the group" mean "good for all individuals in the group respectively", which is well defined.

alphazard 3y ago

The is/ought distinction is merely linguistic. It's true: you can't derive an ought statement from an is statement. Consider your statement "I ought to like chocolate ice cream". That is an ambiguous claim, which I can try to interpret in one of two possible ways: 1. "I value that I like chocolate ice cream". If you were a rational agent, this would be an infinite regression, of course you like that your utility function is your utility function, and that liking goes on forever. It's interesting that humans, which are not rational, can also have thoughts about not liking that they enjoy certain things. 2. "It is good that I like chocolate ice cream". Good for who/what? there needs to be something that values that you like chocolate ice cream. "My friend values that I like ice cream" is not ambiguous, and firmly in factual territory again. Your friend is the valuer/agent with preferences. People hate the ambiguity and want to say the valuer is the universe or God or something else. But it's just an under-specified statement about whether one agent likes another agents preferences. Your statement about "we ought to ___", cannot be well defined in all cases, because something could be good for one agent in the group, but bad for another. Any attempt to make a claim "good for the group" is no longer a statement about individual agents and their preferences. It's about something else, if it's coherent at all. Rarely does "good for the group" mean "good for all individuals in the group respectively", which is well defined.