On 11/1/2020 2:37 AM, Lawrence Crowell wrote:
On Saturday, October 31, 2020 at 8:25:34 PM UTC-5 Brent wrote:
On 10/31/2020 4:21 PM, Lawrence Crowell wrote:...David Hume argued
that saying some state of affairs that “IS” does not logically
imply an “OUGHT.” This is the “is-ought” fallacy. It is not hard
to prove this within the context of modal logic, but I will skip
that for now.
It's not so fallacious as Hume thought in the real world though.
If your "oughts" are inconsistent with what "is" you're likely to
go extinct (e.g. consider any cult whose "oughts" include drinking
Kool-aid).
It is still not a matter of deductive logic.
It is with the empirically supported premise that one's oughts need to
comport with what is. With that added premise you can deduce that if
you exist as a species your oughts do not conflict with what is. Or put
another way, what is constrains oughts. A simple application would be
parents ought not dislike their children.
...
But purely transactional, economic relations are inconsistent with
the fact that humans are social animals and live and die by social
organization.
Brent
"No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of
the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the
sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well
as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's
death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and
therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for
thee."
--- John Donne, 1623 Nunc Lento Sonitu Dicunt, Morieris
Then again, the libertarian types might argue that all social
interactions are in the end transactional and economic. These
political types are good at coming up with infuriating come-back
arguments.
But not at all persuasive, since the larger, more cooperative
society/business/army will always prevail over the smaller more
individualistic one.
To this point I have been reading, "The Weirdest People in the World" by
the anthropologist Joesph Heinz. It's a book about how culture has
shaped psychology and even neurology. He describes the Matsigenkas
people of Peru as having an actual libertarian culture. They live in
nuclear families that are utterly self-reliant. But a consequence is
that they were a source of slaves for more the organized Inca, until the
Spaniards came and then they were sold to the Spaniards.
Brent
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