prase comments on Pluralistic Moral Reductionism - Less Wrong

33 Post author: lukeprog 01 June 2011 12:59AM

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Comment author: prase 01 June 2011 03:50:09PM *  0 points [-]

I believe that (almost) everybody things "ought" means the same thing, and that people disagree about the concept that "ought" usually refers to.

What is the difference between what "ought" means and what it refers to?

Edit:

This concept is special because it has a reverse definition. Normally a word is defined by the situations in which you can infer that a statement about that word is true. However, "ought" is defined the other way - by what you can do when you infer that a statement about "ought" is true.

In the above, do you say that "You ought to do X." is exactly equivalent to the command"Do X!", and "I ought to do X." means "I will do X on the first opportunity and not by accident." ?

Is it the case that Katy ought to buy a car? Well, I don't know. But I know that if Katy is rational, and she becomes convinced that she ought to buy a car, then she will buy a car.

Ought we base the definition of "ought" on a pretty complicated notion of rationality?

Comment author: Will_Sawin 01 June 2011 04:07:52PM 1 point [-]

In the above, do you say that "You ought to do X." is exactly equivalent to the command"Do X!", and "I ought to do X." means "I will do X on the first opportunity and not by accident." ?

To the first one, yes, but they have different connotations.

To the second one, sort of. "I" can get fuzzy here. I have akrasia problems. I should do my work, but I will not do it for a while. If you cut out a sufficiently small portion of my mind then this portion doesn't have the opportunity to do my work until it actually does my work, because the rest of my mind is preventing it.

Furthermore I am thinking about them more internally. "should" isn't part of predicting actions, its part of choosing them.

Ought we base the definition of "ought" on a pretty complicated notion of rationality?

It doesn't seem complicated to me. Certainly simpler than lukeprog's definitions.

These issues are ones that should be cleared up by the discussion post I'm going to write in a second.

Comment author: prase 01 June 2011 04:13:40PM 0 points [-]

These issues are ones that should be cleared up by the discussion post I'm going to write in a second.

It seems that my further questions rather ought to wait a second, then.

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