The is/out dichotomy and naturalistic fallacy continued

 

The logic of the naturalistic fallacy is consistent unto itself
but at the price of becoming irrelevant in the world of human experience

 

If there are statistics showing a million automobile accidents where alcohol was determined to be the cause, one cannot logically infer from those facts that it is morally wrong to drink and drive. In other words you cannot move from fact to moral value when the facts have non-moral characteristics. In Moore's view good, goodness, moral, and morality cannot be defined, thus, there is no way a person can justify the transition from fact to value. However, in real world experience, when a person moves from fact to value there is an implied reasoning that accompanies the logical transition which is excluded from consideration in the naturalistic fallacy. For instance, a person might say to a friend , "you ought not to take drugs," knowing that taking drugs runs counter to his ambition to get into medical school. In this respect the friend is holding the other man to answer to a system of established values. The claim that he ought not take drugs is not an absolute, but rather an advisory recommendation. What the friend is expressing is a silent valuative clause that accompanies any moral ought that in effect says the student ought not take drugs BECAUSE it is a given that he wants to get into medical school much more than he wants to fail at his studies. In this respect the moral command can be accepted or denied on the premed student's own terms. To say to the person that he ought not do something is a reminder from societal experience that being a surgeon is a better state of affairs than being a drug addict. If the friend were commanding some moral absolute to the premed student, the naturalistic fallacy might hold some relevance here. Claiming one ought or ought not do something carries with it its own rationale in the silent valuative clause. One need not know the definition of goodness, good or morality to act on the request or reject it. Morality concerns "evaluating" choices. Some choices are better than others. The silent valuative clause is expressing a dynamic, not static, situation where value is assigned to the various choices, and then the best one is selected.

Another example might be a loved one who insists on drinking a fifth of alcohol every day. He has developed a liver disease and is facing imminent death if he does not stop the alcohol consumption. To Moore, the facts about a person's alcohol related medical condition do not support a moral premise saying he ought to stop drinking. In Moore's idealized world of morality—distant from the experience of pain, suffering, and death—this separation between fact and value can look very logical. All one needs to do is to obscure the full context of reasons why people say ought or ought not, to make the more formal logic, the naturalistic fallacy, appear logical. This small exclusion from analysis, gives the naturalistic fallacy its elusive and highly polemical nature. In addition, the naturalistic fallacy suffers from a logical weakness that is created when oversimplifying a complex state of affairs often found in moral issues. Morality is connected to the human condition more so than it is connected to a viscerally detached idea of the mind. The purpose of this book is to show that morality did not emerge in human consciousness as an idea of the mind, but rather that moral and ethical systems evolved from the human drive to survive. The unpleasantness and pain that comes from tragic circumstances is an example of human survival at work, reminding imprudent people that some choices are better than others.

Contrary to what G,.E. Moore would believe, words and facts can take on moral characteristics with time and societal experience. When a person says "you ought not drink and drive," that moral belief has evolved in a society where millions of people have been killed or injured by the consumption of alcohol and the operation of an automobile. These facts are so common and predicable that over generations of affirmation and reaffirmation anything connected to the word alcohol has taken on moral connotations. Facts about alcohol consumption, for all practical purposes, become embedded with moral characteristics. In Moore's imagined moral world personal actions do not have visceral consequences. Pain, suffering, and death are not factors influencing the creation of moral laws. In the world of dynamic moral involvement, actions have potential consequences. Dangers are real, and the effects of bad decisions can last a lifetime. When a person says to another person you ought not drink and drive there is an implied reasoning that automatically goes along with that expressed moral ought. A concerned person says "you ought not drink and drive" BECAUSE you value your car, your job, your life and possibly the lives of others that you might harm in an intoxicated state. You value your freedom, and would find arrest unpleasant. Moral statements carry implied reasons for doing or not doing something. In non-secular morality a Christian will say "you ought not kill another person." The Christian is not merely making a statement out of the blue. He or she is saying, you should not do so because the ten Commandments say it is wrong." In either secular or non-secular morality there are implied reasons why one should, or should not, do something. Any time a moral command is made it can be questioned, accepted or rejected,according to one's frame of reference or personal predilection.

Being moral might be thought of as dynamic condition, a condition engendered by well-chosen actions, so that while some choices have been very good, others may not have been. Being moral is a dynamic state of affairs in contrast with the static and constrained moral view of Hume and Moore. While the ideas of these philosophers may be a bit stilted they do exemplify a type of "romance philosophy" where there seems to be embellishing, savoring, and romancing of ideas for no reason other than to go on about a philosophical topic. It may sound harsh to say that moral philosophy has lost its sensibility. However, in some small, but not insignificant sense, moral theory has become elegant nonsense. Moral theory that relies heavily on words that have "intensional meanings" allows the conceptual romance to go on without end or without censure of those who thus are unreasoning. As generation after generation of philosophers and intellectuals have bought into this nonsense moral philosophy has lost some of its relevance to the everyday world. Heated claims that evolutionary ethics is discredited by the naturalistic fallacy reflects a clash of immense proportions between and emerging evolutionary theory and old school philosophy, ultimately forcing a major paradigm shift in ethics.

Evolutionary biology holds the power to expand the understanding of the moral world in ways that make sense, not nonsense. Edward O. Wilson said of contemporary ethics "Scientists and humanists should consider together the possibility, that the time has come for ethics to be removed temporarily from the hands of the philosophers and biologicized. "Unreasoned loyalties to the naturalistic fallacy and the is/ought dichotomy have slowed the understanding and acceptance of evolutionary ethics setting the conditions for a paradigm shift as new generations of philosophers weigh the merits of old ideas against much newer and more relevant ones.

We often say "ought not" because we know from history and experience "what is."

One more example should be added to the above in order to show how the words "is" and "ought" actually operate in moral language. Parents commonly tell their children that they ought not talk to strangers. They tell them this because there is evidence that "what is in the world" may endanger the health and safety of their children." What "is" in the world is the phenomenon of child abduction that has its roots in passion, crime, and psychological factors. If a parent values, or even treasures the health and safety of his or her child, knowledge of what "is in the world" threatening to their child's safety, is valuable information. A certain state of affairs exists in the world (child abduction) defining "what is." Another state of affair exists and that "is" that children are easily lured away from safety in the false belief that everyone in the world can be trusted. The child cannot know in a few short years the dangers that lurk in society. Parents generally value their children's health and safety highly. BECAUSE the child is valuable and BECAUSE the child is without question vulnerable to abduction, parents command what the child "ought" to do when confronted by a stranger. In spite of the fact the is/ought dichotomy and the naturalistic fallacy claim it cannot be done, the idea of "ought," in this example, is derived from what "is."

As David Hume and G,.E. Moore use the word "ought," the focus is on the placement of the word among other words in a sentence rather than on an evolutionary process that brings the word to life in the moment of its expression. It is reasonable to say the word "ought" first came into existence in human culture, and later was transformed in to an idea of the mind. Once ought became an idea of the mind it was combined with other words and ideas of what words mean. From there a logic was devised describing how the words such as ought can be used. Then, reasoning backwards into the cultural usage of the word ought, philosophers declared that an ought cannot be derived from an is. Without the actual context of ought contributing to the theory of is and ought, philosophers reached an erroneous conclusion. In the final analysis, it does not matter whether ideas are of the mind or of experience. What is important is whether or not they connect in a relevant way to human experience such as culture, science, technology, learning and the like. Good theory tends to integrate well with other theories over a broad spectrum of human knowledge. Simply because the naturalistic fallacy is consistent unto itself, but irrelevant to the rest of the world, does not make it a credible theory that shows how fact does or does not move to moral valuation. When aeronautical engineers design an aircraft, it is only an idea of the mind in its initial stages. Once the aircraft is built, it is tested for air worthiness long before passengers are carried—and for good reason. While an aeronautical idea may look good on paper, it may not work in practice beyond the world of ideas. When engineers look closely at designs that have failed, they usually find that something has been overlooked, ill-considered, or done wrong. Similar problems apply to the is/ought dichotomy and the naturalistic fallacy. There is too much emphasis on the mechanics of language; intensional meaning; symbols of words rather that the substance they represent; and an oversimplifying the conceptual scope of human morality. Analyzing logic implied by language alone may not be a productive route to take in resolving the issue of is and ought.

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