The Unconditional Ought

[KrazyKaiju]

What is your opinion about the unconditional ought? It is the use of the word “ought” in a statement like “You ought not to steal”/“Thou shalt not steal”. Do you think that these unconditional relationships ever exist? Obviously, we make use of them in everyday speech, but is there a way to make sense of them that makes them truly different from conditional oughts?

I’ll withhold my full opinion on the statement for now, but I’ll give my (name removed by moderator)ut after I see some of the feedback.

 

[FidesSpesCarita]

What is your opinion about the unconditional ought? It is the use of the word “ought” in a statement like “You ought not to steal”/“Thou shalt not steal”. Do you think that these unconditional relationships ever exist? Obviously, we make use of them in everyday speech, but is there a way to make sense of them that makes them truly different from conditional oughts?

I’ll withhold my full opinion on the statement for now, but I’ll give my (name removed by moderator)ut after I see some of the feedback.

I read the word ought as “should”, so when I see “ought not” I hear “should not” which leaves the option to do what you are told you should not do. When I read “Shall/Shalt not” I hear shall/will not. Which does not leave anything open.

FSC

 

[tonyrey]

What is your opinion about the unconditional ought? It is the use of the word “ought” in a statement like “You ought not to steal”/“Thou shalt not steal”. Do you think that these unconditional relationships ever exist? Obviously, we make use of them in everyday speech, but is there a way to make sense of them that makes them truly different from conditional oughts?

I’ll withhold my full opinion on the statement for now, but I’ll give my (name removed by moderator)ut after I see some of the feedback.

Kant distinguished between the hypothetical and the categorical imperatives. The first refers to conditional and the second to unconditional “ought” statements. The Church teaches that our ultimate authority is our conscience and we must always obey it after careful consideration of other points of view. Another unconditional command (given to us by God) is that we should love others…

 

[RobNY]

What is your opinion about the unconditional ought? It is the use of the word “ought” in a statement like “You ought not to steal”/“Thou shalt not steal”. Do you think that these unconditional relationships ever exist? Obviously, we make use of them in everyday speech, but is there a way to make sense of them that makes them truly different from conditional oughts?

I’ll withhold my full opinion on the statement for now, but I’ll give my (name removed by moderator)ut after I see some of the feedback.

If you are asking whether I believe that there are certain actions with are intrinsically evil, i.e., which no circumstances can justify or make good, then, yes. I do believe that there are some actions which are malum in se, and of which the prohibition against them is absolute.

tonyrey,

That is only true of the properly formed conscience which is open to the Church’s teaching.

 

[ad_altare_Dei]

Kant distinguished between the hypothetical and the categorical imperatives. The first refers to conditional and the second to unconditional “ought” statements. The Church teaches that our ultimate authority is our conscience and we must always obey it after careful consideration of other points of view. Another unconditional command (given to us by God) is that we should love others…

It’s good of you to bring up the hypothetical-categorical distinction. Let’s look at an example to tease this out.

Here is a hypothetical, a conditional ought statement:
If you want to go from New York to D.C., you ought to go south.

We see that there is a real option here. The person does not have to go from New York to D.C., but if he chooses to do so, he has to act in a particular manner, namely going south.

An unconditional ought statement would be one in which the protasis (or the implied protasis) is not a real option and the apodosis does not admit of circumstances which change the nature of the act. The protasis (stated or implied) that tends to govern such unconditional ought statements is “If you want to live a good life” or some such like. The phrase “if you want to live a good life” does not really give you an option. You do want to live a good life–regardless of how you define what it is to live a good life–because the good is that which both is and is desirable, or alternatively, that for the sake of which, or that which all men seek. Obviously I’m summarizing a lot and cutting out many excellent debates about the meaning of “good,” but I hope you see where I’m going here.

So the apodosis in these cases is the delineation of how to go about living the good life. Let us take an example then:
[If you want to live a good life], You ought not to steal.

This is an unconditional ought statement. Now, KrazyKaiju asked, “Do you think that these unconditional relationships ever exist? Obviously, we make use of them in everyday speech, but is there a way to make sense of them that makes them truly different from conditional oughts?”

To the first question, I say that yes there are these unconditional relationships, but that they stem from the sort of thing that a human being is and are only justifiable once you’ve got a relatively robust concept of what it is to be human, and hence what it is to be a good human. To the second question, I hope I’ve shown with my brief explanation of an implied “categorical” protasis that unconditional ought statements are truly different from their conditional cousins. If, however, you are asking for a simple linguistic trick, I don’t think I can provide one.

 

[tonyrey]

That is only true of the properly formed conscience which is open to the Church’s teaching.

I agree, of course, but it raises the question of who is the final authority on whether an individual’s conscience is properly formed…

 

[AntiTheist]

An unconditional ought statement would be one in which the protasis (or the implied protasis) is not a real option and the apodosis does not admit of circumstances which change the nature of the act. The protasis (stated or implied) that tends to govern such unconditional ought statements is “If you want to live a good life” or some such like. The phrase “if you want to live a good life” does not really give you an option. You do want to live a good life–regardless of how you define what it is to live a good life–because the good is that which both is and is desirable, or alternatively, that for the sake of which, or that which all men seek. Obviously I’m summarizing a lot and cutting out many excellent debates about the meaning of “good,” but I hope you see where I’m going here.

This is an excellent quick summary of the concept. However, as you correctly note, this concept rests upon the idea that the “good life” is something known and agreed upon, which is far from certain.

I tend to be of the opinion that all “ought” statements are conditional. For example, you ought to be kind but people, but only “if you want to reasonably expect people to be kind to you in return” or “if you want to make friends.” If you don’t want either of those two things, you’re under no obligation to be kind to people. Now, as it so happens, most people do want to make friends and want to expect others to be nice to them. So as a kind of quick shorthand, it’s acceptable to say, “You ought to be nice to people.” But there’s nothing “objective” about the whole thing.

Negative “oughts” only come into play when a person first wants to do something. For example, I never seriously want to steal things, so I don’t need to consider the “oughts” of it. It’s just not something I’m going to do. But let’s say that one day I get an incredible urge to steal something. Then I would have to consider things. I ought not steal…if I don’t want to risk getting caught, or if I don’t want to feel bad for the victim of my crime or if I don’t want to undermine the lawful society that I live in.

If I don’t care about getting caught, if I don’t care about my victim, and if I don’t give two hoots about the lawful society I live in (or, more likely, if I judge that my minor violation of the law won’t make that much of a difference), then there’s nothing to stop me from stealing if I really want to. Fortunately, I do care about those things, sufficiently enough to prevent me from acting on my desire to steal if I should ever be struck with such a desire.

And that’s about it.

For other oughts – particularly victimless oughts, like “I ought not engage in homosexual sex” – these things apply only “if I want to follow the moral code of Catholicism,” or something like that. And that raises the question of why I would want to follow such a code in the first place: I don’t think there’s a god, and I don’t think the Catholic church’s teachings have any special significance.

 

[Strider]

I agree, of course, but it raises the question of who is the final authority on whether an individual’s conscience is properly formed…

God - eventually.

 

[ad_altare_Dei]

AntiTheist,

You make some interesting points. I am impressed by your thought out response.

I’m privy to the thought experiment of an amoralist, which you proffer to show that all “oughts” are conditional. Unfortunately, you did not respond to the meat of my point.
You said, “This is an excellent quick summary of the concept. However, as you correctly note, this concept rests upon the idea that the “good life” is something known and agreed upon, which is far from certain.”

That is not, in fact, what I noted. I said that what the good life is is debatable, but that is not the same as saying that the good life must be known and agreed upon in order to allow for any unconditional oughts.

Follow this for a second.

As I briefly described earlier, the good is something at both is and is desirable, or that which all men seek, or that for the sake of which. I’d be willing to work with any of those. Because of this, men seek that which is good, because it is and is desirable, or because it is that which all men seek, or because it is that for the sake of which. Something must at least be a perceived (though deceptively so) good in order for you to seek it. So, you seek the good life because it is good. Note that the details of the good life are not explicit yet, nor need they be.
Now that we have admitted that we seek the good life, we have arrived at the possibility of the unconditional ought, which is to say that, although the content of the apodosis of such statements must be determined, there can be unconditional oughts.

I’m simply saying that there can be unconditional ought statements. I have not spelled out what they are. Because I can demonstrate that unconditional ought statements are possible even though I did not take recourse to any specificity of what is good or not, you cannot claim accurately that my “concept rests upon the idea that the “good life” is something known and agreed upon, which is far from certain.”

 

[AntiTheist]

Hi ad altare Dei,

Thanks for the kind words and for a thoughtful response yourself. It’s encouraging to see nice interaction like this on the forums.

I said that what the good life is is debatable, but that is not the same as saying that the good life must be known and agreed upon in order to allow for any unconditional oughts.

Fair enough. I overshot the mark a bit. I think what I meant to say was that first we have to establish that there actually is a “good life.”

I submit that the “good” is merely a label we put on the things that we desire. In other words, we desire things not because they are good, but rather we call them good because we desire them. It’s an abstraction from reality, from the bottom up rather than the top down. We notice that most human beings desire similar things – as people are, you know, similar in structure and all – and from there, we can abstract certain things that most people want and slap the label “good” on them.

So, to use one of my examples, while the majority of people probably do want to make friends, that’s not the case for everyone. Some people are solitary by nature. If a person really doesn’t want to make friends or want to expect others to treat him kindly, the ought doesn’t apply to him, regardless of how common those desires might be among other people.

Furthermore, even if you could demonstrate the possibility of unconditional oughts existing, that isn’t the same as demonstrating that they do exist.

Now look, I’m not denying that there are some desires so commonplace that we might as well speak of them as being more or less “objective” given a particular society and a particular set of values endorsed by that society. But I think there’s a lot to be gained in terms of clarity when we understand that ultimately, all of our oughts are constructed on a conditional basis.

 

[tonyrey]

I agree, of course, but it raises the question of who is the final authority on whether an individual’s conscience is properly formed…

That is true, of course, and it implies that to set ourselves up as an intermediate authority in doubtful cases is perilous and can lead to excesses like those perpetrated by the Inquisition.

 

[SaintGobban]

Are any of you Catholics?

God is the final authority, of course. But, we absolutely know what God thinks because He told us. He gave us the Scriptures and the Traditions of the Church.

If you have a correctly formed conscience that conscience is in complete conformity to the Spirit and the Word as laid down by Jesus Christ, and interpreted by the Fathers and Doctors of the Church.

There is ****ABSOLUTE TRUTH **** applicable to everyone in every circumstance.

If you are obeying the Word of God and following the Traditions of the Church as laid down by the Fathers and Doctors, you are behaving morally. This applies to everyone in every circumstance.

If you are not obeying, if you are not in conformity, your actions are not moral. They are immoral.

No word games, no high flown philosophical concepts, no moral relativism.

Easy peesy one two threesy.

We can not judge what is in a person’s heart, but we certainly CAN and SHOULD judge a person’s actions as either in conformity with God’s stated words or not. “By their fruits you will know them.”

You should read more on the Inquistion. There are many sources which totally contradict the anti-Catholic propaganda so ubiquitous at this time. You are a victim of the current political climate.

 

[AntiTheist]

There is ****ABSOLUTE TRUTH **** applicable to everyone in every circumstance.

…]

No word games, no high flown philosophical concepts, no moral relativism.

…]

Easy peesy one two threesy.

Indeed, what you are describing is very easy, and it’s one of the reasons that I so very much dislike religious morality: it attempts to render simplistic an issue that is complicated, multi-faceted, and difficult.

Moral questions – taken in the broadest sense of “how should we act, how should we run society?” – are not easy, and I don’t see how it benefits anyone to pretend that they are, to pretend that the answers to modern problems can be obtained by consulting Bronze Age legends and completely ignoring the actual state of affairs entirely.

This is also why secular morality is so superior: it enables people to look at the real world situation, the real world desires and values of groups of people, and make a determination as to what is the best course of action.

Will that determination be perfect? No, of course not. Nothing is perfect. But we do the best that we can.

 

[tonyrey]

Indeed, what you are describing is very easy, and it’s one of the reasons that I so very much dislike religious morality: it attempts to render simplistic an issue that is complicated, multi-faceted, and difficult.

Your notion of Christian morality is distorted. There are absolute principles, e.g. that we should always do what we believe to be right and that we should choose the lesser of two or more evils, but each moral problem has to be considered individually.

Moral questions – taken in the broadest sense of “how should we act, how should we run society?” – are not easy, and I don’t see how it benefits anyone to pretend that they are, to pretend that the answers to modern problems can be obtained by consulting Bronze Age legends and completely ignoring the actual state of affairs entirely.

Do you consider the principles of liberty, equality and fraternity to be Bronze Age legends?

This is also why secular morality is so superior: it enables people to look at the real world situation, the real world desires and values of groups of people, and make a determination as to what is the best course of action.

On what principles do you base secular morality?

Will that determination be perfect? No, of course not. Nothing is perfect. But we do the best that we can.

Do you rely **entirely **on your own judgment? Is man the author of morality?

 

[SaintGobban]

Indeed, what you are describing is very easy, and it’s one of the reasons that I so very much dislike religious morality: it attempts to render simplistic an issue that is complicated, multi-faceted, and difficult.

Moral questions – taken in the broadest sense of “how should we act, how should we run society?” – are not easy, and I don’t see how it benefits anyone to pretend that they are, to pretend that the answers to modern problems can be obtained by consulting Bronze Age legends and completely ignoring the actual state of affairs entirely.

This is also why secular morality is so superior: it enables people to look at the real world situation, the real world desires and values of groups of people, and make a determination as to what is the best course of action.

Will that determination be perfect? No, of course not. Nothing is perfect. But we do the best that we can.

Why are you on a Catholic Answers forum? In order to debate the merits of Catholicism? In order to dispute the existence of God?

I knew no one on this thread is Catholic. If you were Catholic, in the true sense, not just in name only, you would know that these questions have all been thoroughly debated and concluded by men with far more intelligence, knowledge, reason, and grace than you, long ago.

I prefer their conclusions, as I know they are the TRUE ones. You can play your pseudointellectual Theology 101 games, but why play them here? You are convincing no one. You are an empty barrel.

 

[JohnDamian]

Are any of you Catholics?..

…If you are obeying the Word of God and following the Traditions of the Church as laid down by the Fathers and Doctors, you are behaving morally. This applies to everyone in every circumstance.

If you are not obeying, if you are not in conformity, your actions are not moral. They are immoral.

Ok, if we are to follow the teachings of the Doctors how do we reconcile Anselm and his philosophy with Peter Damians claim that the first grammarian is the devil?

 

[Betterave]

God - eventually.

God - always.

 

[rick43235]

You can play your pseudointellectual Theology 101 games, but why play them here? You are convincing no one. You are an empty barrel.

This is sad. When faced with tough questions that challenge your beliefs, you resort to personal attacks. Pitiful.

 

[Betterave]

Indeed, what you are describing is very easy, and it’s one of the reasons that I so very much dislike religious morality: it attempts to render simplistic an issue that is complicated, multi-faceted, and difficult.

Moral questions – taken in the broadest sense of “how should we act, how should we run society?” – are not easy, and I don’t see how it benefits anyone to pretend that they are, to pretend that the answers to modern problems can be obtained by consulting Bronze Age legends and completely ignoring the actual state of affairs entirely.

This is also why secular morality is so superior: it enables people to look at the real world situation, the real world desires and values of groups of people, and make a determination as to what is the best course of action.

Will that determination be perfect? No, of course not. Nothing is perfect. But we do the best that we can.

So you choose to dislike ‘religious morality’ by associating the concept with people like SaintGobban (who is apparently “anti-philosophy”)? That strikes me as rather dishonest.

“Secular morality is so superior”? Begging a few questions there, aren’t you?!

 

[SaintGobban]

Ok, if we are to follow the teachings of the Doctors how do we reconcile Anselm and his philosophy with Peter Damians claim that the first grammarian is the devil?

So, I guess this is one of those “tough questions, that challenge my beliefs?” Yea, my faith is really shaken by this sort of ****…as I said, straight from the Theology 101 mid-term.

So, you’re about 18 and you think you are a real brain buster. You think you have it all figured out and you’re really dazzling everyone with your brilliance. See how it all shakes out on judgement day.