In response to the current News post on Denton’s new book, Seversky raises the IS-OUGHT gap issue again in comment no. 2, casting it in terms of DERIVING ought from is.
I think this is worth a discussion, but that would be off topic there. So, I responded at 3 and now headline for discussion:
>> . . . Hume’s “surpriz’d” guillotine argument does establish that ought cannot be injected into the world — thus, any worldview aiming to be accurate to reality — at any level subsequent to world-root.
We also face the dilemma that conscience is deeply embedded in our inner life, urging us to the right and the truth in ways that pervade all of mindedness. So if its testimony that we are responsibly free and duty bound is delusional, as there are no firewalls in our inner life, human rationality comes under taint of general delusion. Absurdity, we cannot escape the force of ought and cannot escape the impulse of responsible rationality. Not even the hyperskeptic dismissing others as . . . in the wrong or else unable to confidently attain the right.
Credibly, we are under moral government of OUGHT, and live in a world that IS.
So, how can this be resolved at world-root level?
Not by DERIVING ought from is, but by seeing how they can be fused inextricably.
The only serious candidate for such fusion is that they are both to be found in the inherently good creator God, a necessary and maximally great being, worthy of loyalty and the reasonable, responsible service of doing the good in accord with our evident nature.
Which includes persisting in the path of the right and the true despite stumbles along the way.
Even, crawling, if we must.>>
A start point for reflection and discussion. END