99Percent

Alonzo Fyfe: Yes, you are correct. My clock example is flawed.But suppose that the clock itself does care one way or another. Suppose that clocks have consciousness, that they are aware of their own existence. Then it becomes obvious that the clock is an end on itself and which also leads to the fulfillment of its own which is to keep time.

Likewise man has consciousness and therefore is aware of its own existence as man himself. Therefore he is his own tool which has an end for himself.

That is why I cannot, simply stated, pretend to take someone else irises if mine failed for example. Or use another man as a slave for my own purposes.

But man qua man himself is a tool for himself. He is both the tool (including hands, feet, ears, irises, brain etc) for himself and the tool user!

Alonzo Fyfe

First, to restate my original objection to objectivist "reasoning" -- it is the unjustified leap from value as a tool, to value as an end in itself.

The above example is, actually, a classic example. It begings by talking about "clocks" -- which are tools, created to take time, and have value to clock-users.

The thesis, then, is that by taking this value-as-tool, and adding consciousness, one then gets value as an end in itself.

But let's add consciousness to this clock, and say that now the clock does care "one way or another". What does it care about? More importantly, according to this discussion, what SHOULD or OUGHT the now-conscious clock care about.

Your argument seems to be that it OUGHT to care about keeping time, because that is what clocks do. But this does not follow from the premises. What crime is committed, what wrong has been done, if the clock decides instead to care about being a paperweight.

I have a friend who collects clocks. These clocks sit, unused -- because using them would cause them to wear out, and a worn-out clock would lose its value. So, what evil is done if the concious clock aspires to being a piece of art in my friend's collection, not keeping time at all?

I would not find any justification for condemning the clock even if it were to aspire to be a movie star, or a philosopher. I would not find any justification for condemning the clock even if, in its conscious state, it decides that it could care less about keeping time -- that function can be adequately served by mechanical clocks and it wishes not to spend its life merely duplicating the function of mere machines.

In short, there is no rule of logic, no principle of reason, that allows us to go from the fact that we build clocks as a tool to tell time, to the conclusion that a clock (with consciousness) ought to want to tell time - that even if conscious it would be wrong for it to aspire to be anything other than a tool for clock-users.

The leap from the value of a tool qua tool, to a tool qua end in itself, remains uncrossed. And, so far as I can tell, uncrossable.

tk

The word "clock" here refers both to an object and a property of an object, and this is a source of confusion. We know that objects can change properties over time: a person can be a policeman at one moment but be a storekeeper the next.

So when we talk about a "clock", we are really referring to an unnamed object which currently satisfies the predicate "is a clock". Call this object x. Then in temporal predicate calculus notation, we can assert the predicate IsClock(x).

When x ceases to be a clock at the next moment, it simply means that x is no longer logically required to keep time. In temporal predicate calculus notation, this means ~[]IsClock(x). ("[]" = in the next time instance). This in no way impacts on the truth of IsClock(x).

What "moral responsibilities" can we deduce from here? Precisely none.

Gurdur

How odd you leave out all the other possible options.

Try Option 4:
"Ought" statements are a creation of advanced self-consciousness.

You mean "fairy tale", not "tail".
Fallacy of false dichotomy. See above.
In which case you shouldpay far more attention to evoultionary psychology, but it still won't help you, since you're making a blunder in your denial of human imagination.
Hint: effects of complexity.
A skyscraper does not exist in theoriginal mixture of atomic particles at the time of the Big Bang.
Yet it comes to exist at a later time.
Fallacy of false dichotomy.
The same precision ?
Sure, show me the electrons of morality.

BTW, there's an advanced academic area of applied and theoretical ethics research --- namely medical ethics.
I recommend it to you.

Alonzo Fyfe

This is actually a subset of my option "3" -- that "ought" is reducable to some element of the world of "is".

Created things (like skyscrapers) and complex structures not present in the first days of the big bang are a part of the world of "is."

dk

I don't understand if qua man is for himself and of himself a tool, then how does qua man differ from man; or if man is a tool and you cut off a man's hands then does the man become half a tool, half a man, another man, or what?.

99Percent

The leap is achieved by actually distinguishing the fact that man is conscious vs any other being living or non-living.

With a clock you can't say by its definition that clock qua clock it is a means on itself to achieve time keeping, because as we have explored a clock does not have consciousness.

But with a man, you can say so - a man has consciousness. And this is critical - how can you tell that man has consciousness? Because he is rational, he can communicate, verbalize his consciousness and awareness in a meaningful way. He shows he has has free-will. He shows the capability of choosing to be one thing or another (a paperweight or a movie star). With a clock you cannot perceive this.

From here you derive the ought. For a clock you cannot say a clock ought to be rational, or conscious or have free will because a clock never shows this capability. Where as in man qua man you do.

Now its important to see where the ought is directed at ie to whom the duty is applied. The ought in man qua man is for himself and for his own means only, because we are also man qua man apart from a specific individual man. So when you say Person X ought to be rational, it is for person X's sake that he be rational in order for you to be able to deal with X on equal rational terms. Or else that person ceases to work as man qua man and instead becomes dead weight - a being that you cannot count on as being conscious or rational. You cannot be an equal to him and trade your own value as man qua man.

Alonzo Fyfe

Do you want to say that man IS rational, or man OUGHT TO BE rational?

Either way, you have problems.

If you say man IS rational...

...then man cannot error in his rationality. Because, to the degree that he errors, to that degree he IS NOT rational, which contradicts the statement that he IS rational.

If you say that man OUGHT TO BE rational....

....then you need to defend the 'ought' claim, which you cannot do if you start from the premise that man IS rational, because you would would enter the 'man IS rational' contradiction discussed above.

Again, we find ourselves once again looking across the is/ought chasm.

Actually, I never dreamed of arguing that a clock ought to be rational. My argument (which I actually took to be your argument) was that a conscious clock ought to tell time - because that is what clocks do.

Against which I answered: Why can't a clock (who obtains consciousness) concern itself with something other than keeping time, and leave time-keeping to the purely mechanical clocks?

99Percent

Remember we are dealing with man as a concept which automatically entails a value judgement as I explained in my first post.
Taking a clock as a concept you say for a example "a clock is a device to keep track of time". If we follow your argument then a clock cannot error in its capacity to keep time to the degree that if it errors, to that degree it is not a clock which contradicts the statement that it is a time keeping device. As you can see there is nothing nonsensical about the analogy. If a clock is not keeping time then it is not acting as a clock - it fails to act as a clock. It is no longer a clock while it is not working. Likewise if a man is not acting rationally then he is not man - he is failing to behave like a man in the conceptual sense - man qua man.
Again we are looking at "man" in the conceptual sense - as that as differing from all other living beings and non-living objects too for that matter.No, if you realize that we are dealing with concepts which are supposed to be meaningful and communicatible and which become sources of value judgements that turn into ought statements.Because if a clock obtains consciousness then it becomes a moral being of which necessarily means having rationality. A clock in this case would have an entirely different conceptual definition and therefore a different ought.

The clock analogy serves as a way to make a meaningful distinction.

tk

There can be no way to achieve a "science" of good and evil if we constantly harp on the fuzzy concepts of "consciousness", "rationality", "ought", "meaningfulness" and "free will". Ultimately, in order for there to be a science, we need to be able to express morality in terms of mathematical predicates.

Then again, cult leaders don't like that, since their own well-being thrives on the ambiguities of natural language.

I can imagine a "science" of good and evil created as follows: On one side, we have a set of logical propositions which describe the current universe as it is. On the other side, we have a set of logical propositions which describe the universe as it morally ought to be. The question then is, is there any connection between the two? I'm pretty sure some mathematician has studied this problem before...

99Percent: There's a whole lot of circular arguments inside there. Man is a moral being, because man is rational, because man is conscious, because man is a moral being. A clock ought to keep time, because if it doesn't keep time it's not a clock, because a clock ought to keep time. Value judgements exist, because without value judgements communication can't be meaningful and communication is meaningful, and communication is meaningful because value judgements exist.

Have we heard the same arguments before? Yes. "The Bible is the Word of God, and the Bible says God exists, therefore God exists."