[MD] Putnam on Is-Ought and Truth

[david buchanan]

Craig said:
For Searle the Is-Ought gap is the same as the fact/value gap & the descriptive/evaluative gap.



Steve replied:

I'm not sure what he means by saying that they are the same. Can you point me to his essay? I couldn't find it on the web anywhere.


dmb says:

Seriously? I think the similarity between those three pairings is already contained in the conventional meanings of the terms used. In other words, I don't think you'd need to read a philosophical essay to see it.

But more importantly, don't you see how the MOQ destroys this gap? Lila is an inquiry into morals, after all, and it concludes by saying reality is nothing but. The ises are oughts in the MOQ. Everything is derived from value. Good is a noun, not an adjective. Even chairs are conceived as being composed of little moral orders. Etc., etc.,



Steve said:

...and the form such a better argument will need to take will need to presuppose not only some factual assertions but some agreement about what ought to be done under certain circumstances.


dmb says:

And what is good, Steve, and what is not good? Need we ask anyone to tell us these things? 

Oh, wait. Asking everyone is exactly what we need to do, if you subscribe to Rortyism because morality is just what society let's us say. 


"And today in those few Universities that bother to teach classic ethics anymore, student, following the lead of Aristotle and Plato, endlessly play around wht the question that in ancient Greece never needed to be asked: 'What is the Good? And how do we define it? Since different people have defined it differently, how can we KNOW there is any good? ...Happiness and good are not objective terms. We cannot deal with them scientifically. And since they aren't objective they just exist in your mind. So if you want to be happy just change your mind. Ha-ha, ha-ha. Aristotelian ethics, ...ha-ha ha-ha. And the Bones of the Sophists long ago turned to dust and what they said turned to dust with them..."


dmb adds:

Ha-ha, ha-ha, ha-ha. Why does this make me so sad? Ha-ha, ha-ha.

 		 	   		  
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