Moral Oughts

[Acrobat]

Lol.  Of course oughts follow from moral facts, and at least one evaluative premise.

Unclog your ears.

You can’t go from is to ought without one.  

Stealing is wrong
Therefore you shouldn’t steal

....doesn’t actually follow.

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As for instrumental goods and intrinsic goods, moral statements play heavily with those two concepts.

We often consider our “is”-es to be representative of intrinsic goods.  Our evaluative premises dip heavily into instrumental goods.  Good for confirming to our moral schema.  Good for generating positive consequence.  Good for our mental state.

Moore has a wonderful comment on how we experience morality as a brute fact.

All you have to do to teach a person what “bad” is, is make them stand there watching four adults kick a toddler.

All of their evaluative premises will flow from having seen this and contemplating their relationship to it.  Subjective premises, objective ones, considerations of instrumental and intrinsic goods.

In his view, all were rational but non empirical products.  Insomuch as he considered the experience of that event and the subsequent thought processes beyond empirical verification.

Hence his non natural realism. This sort of realism reverses the distribution above.  More intrinsic goods, fewer instrumental.  Seeing Bad in things, rather than seeing Things that are bad.

I desire to eat a warm pizza.

There's a warm pizza on the table. 

I ought to eat the warm pizza. 


Does the ought stem from the pizza being on the table, or from my desire to eat it? 

You've indicated before that when you saying stealing is wrong, what you mean is descriptive, similar to saying stealing is harmful.

I desire to steal your wallet that you dropped because I want to use the money in it to buy an xbox, i acknowledge that stealing is harmful.

No ought not steal is derived from stealing being harmful. An ought would have to be based on something, such as I ought not do things that are harmful, which isn't derived from that fact that something is harmful, but some overarching goal or aim.