Monday, March 31, 2008

The Is-Ought Challenge

We have been challenged to come up with a bunch of "Is" statements in order to get the "ought" statement: "Hurting is wrong."

First off, I am changing it to "Hurting without just cause is wrong."

1. When you hurt someone they recieve pain
2. Pain, according to humans, is an unpleasant feeling in the extreme
3. Humans do not like to have unpleasant feelings in most cases
4. Humans base things on morals
5. Human morals say that causing pain and other unpleasant feelings are not right


We need to attribute the ought claims, which Johnson says makes it an "is" instead of an "ought".

I still think I win...

1 comment:

David K. Braden-Johnson said...

I see the 5 "is" (descriptive) claims; but still looking for the "ought" (prescriptive) conclusion...