Here, we'll examine Hume's distinction between Factual statements and statements of Desire. We'll see why he believes you cannot derive an "Ought" statement from an "Is" statement. Perfect for the study of A-level RS / Philosophy
Very good video! The way I see it is that while I agree with Hume that passions drive our actions, I think our passions can be guided and shaped by reason, so they're not completely distinct from each other. This is how people develop, they reason the world around them and find their emotional reactions develop and change. And then we behave in 'better' ways driven by our emotions in a newer mature way. It is difficult though, and I agree that reason rarely, if not never, usurps our passions. They dominate our intuition and instincts.
I'm deeply confused by that moral distinction in that, for example, there are reasoned facts about health. While we're far from having perfect knowledge of what's healthy, we can at least conclude with very near-certainty through empiricism that drinking turpentine is unhealthy. While we can't objectively state categorically that one ought not to drink turpentine (since that requires the subject to value being healthy), we can at least objectively state that it is unhealthy behavior to do so. Why can't we do similarly with morality and state that torturing babies is objectively immoral? That's not to say that one ought not to torture babies, but merely that it would be objectively immoral to do so. Isn't the only problem that we've abysmally failed at defining what "moral" even means in any reasonable way? For example, suppose I throw out a definition of "moral": "adj. Used to describe benevolent actions for which their intended outcomes are beneficial to the harmonious interaction and flourishing of members in a given society." That doesn't seem like a very good one (I expect philosophers collaborating with anthropologists could come up with much better) but suppose we hypothetically agree on that definition. Wouldn't this then open up the door for empiricism and reason to begin to describe which set of actions are moral and which are not without appealing to passions?
In my opinion, the problem is a lack of atomization; that is, we don't really have a smallest unit of goodness or badness that we could measure in a precise or reliable way. The smallest unit of goodness or badness is a fundamentally subjective experience. That's not to say _all_ morality is subjective (I certainly think most of morality can be objective), but it means we have a very difficult time doing science with it. But perhaps someday with a sufficiently advanced technology and sufficiently advanced understanding of conscious experience, we might be able to find some smallest unit (or units) of morality.
@@JM-us3fr Might not there be a similar dilemma for health as well? There appear to be endless debates even among experts on what is the healthiest lifestyle or healthiest foods, e.g., or even the ideal prescription for a patient suffering symptoms. There's also the dilemma where, even if an expert comes up with a semi-accurate prescription for a patient to improve their health, the patient may knowingly violate it still if it's too difficult for them to follow (ex: for an alcoholic patient to give up alcohol even if it's the ultimate source of all their health problems). Yet we can still extract a crude definition of health as that which promotes mental and physical well-being in a patient, to be free of pain and disease, to live a long life, etc, and from that at least extract some general and evolving guidelines we can be confident as promoting health when followed (ex: at least get some decent sleep, exercise regularly, and avoid copious amounts of sugar and alcohol, e.g.) even if we can't distill it down to the most atomic units.
@@darkengine5931 I think we can distill it down to atomic units, such as nerve receptors, bacteria, viruses, white blood cells, etc. Furthermore, we can ask the patient when they feel pain (subjectively). However, if we ask someone if they fundamentally value something, the person is so clouded by their own subjective experience, social pressure, and their ability to articulate that they we can’t be as confident in their response. At least, that’s my speculation.
@@JM-us3fr I see! Might it be somewhat more comparable to diagnosing and treating mental health in that case? I lack expertise in psychology but it seems as though it must tackle the difficulty of consciousness, promoting productive values and discouraging counter-productive ones, and subjective experience. Again I lack expertise on the topic but from my limited understanding of it, it at least strongly appears to me as though a lot of what promotes psychological well-being is aligned with virtue ethics, to refrain from the seven deadly sins as identified in Catholicism, to reciprocate kindness, to become valued members of a community, to overcome temptations to act on destructive impulses, and so forth.
@@darkengine5931 Yes I think that’s about as close as we could get, but even therapists say they are just helping the patient pursue their own goals, and not trying to instill a particular worldview in them. I imagine that’s why psychopaths or sociopaths can be so difficult, since they lack certain moral intuitions that most of us have, so it would be impossible to instill our values in them. Nonetheless, I think therapy is generally a good thing that helps people become better
Yeah, I never understood the can't get an aught from an is thing myself. I seem to be able to get an aught from an is every time I look at the dam thing.
