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Showing results for tags 'Is/ought'.
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I apologize in advance if my ignorance is irritating to the members of this board, who have no doubt answered these questions multiple times before, but I would be very grateful for the intellectual company. Thank you for your time.BACKGROUND: Let me start by saying that I will be a junior in high school in 3 days, and that I am about as amateur as a person can be as far as morality and philosophy goes, but I am greatly attracted to Objectivism as I've always valued the scientific method and empiricism. I have given much time over the past months to researching objective philosophy, reading Stefan's material, and also listening to his podcasts. I grasp all that he is explaining, and the NAP also seems to be what I've based my life around up to this point without knowing about it. However, when I try to build these ideas from the ground up, I just can't seem to do it, and I fear that in the future I may not be able to convince anyone in my school or life because I don't understand these concepts thoroughly enough myself.QUESTIONS #1 - THE IS/OUGHT PROBLEM:In Universally Preferable Behavior, Stef admits the prevalence of the Is/Ought Problem, which is the inconsistency between a descriptive statement and a prescriptive statement.Descriptive: "When not pressured, humans tend to dislike killing." or "Without outside influence, humans tend to dislike killing."Prescriptive: "Therefore, humans should not kill." or "Therefore, humans ought not to kill."If this is the case, then how can an objective system of morality be measured? If the jump between these two statements is logically impossible, then isn't a system of morality that strives for empirical consistency on the level of biology virtually impossible?I have also read the review that Danny Shahar did on UPB, and I will continue to read this in order to absorb more of it. As I was reading some of the comments, Stefan said that UPB is not an ethical conclusion, but a methodology for deriving truth from falsehood in a moral debate. Is there any simple outlined system where one can plug in a moral idea to see if it "works," in the same way of the scientific method? Basically, what is the moral test that UPB proposes as its holy grail of philosophy that "slays the beast" of Post-modern relativism?I will simply leave this at 1 question, as I will not articulate my other ideas at this time, but I would appreciate some assistance in my thinking, as God knows public school doesn't help it. Thank you so much for your time, I hope to better understand this.