Narrated Version:
HUME'S GUILLOTINE
David Hume was an English philosopher in the 1700s. The following quote by Hume became the foundation for the concept of “Hume’s guillotine”.
“In every system of morality, which I have hitherto met with, I have always remarked, that the author proceeds for some time in the ordinary way of reasoning, and establishes the being of a God, or makes observations concerning human affairs; when of a sudden I am surprised to find, that instead of the usual copulations of propositions, is, and is not, I meet with no proposition that is not connected with an ought, or an ought not. This change is imperceptible; but is, however, of the last consequence. For as this ought, or ought not, expresses some new relation or affirmation, it's necessary that it should be observed and explained; and at the same time that a reason should be given, for what seems altogether inconceivable, how this new relation can be a deduction from others, which are entirely different from it. But as authors do not commonly use this precaution, I shall presume to recommend it to the readers; and am persuaded, that this small attention would subvert all the vulgar systems of morality, and let us see, that the distinction of vice and virtue is not founded merely on the relations of objects, nor is perceived by reason.”
Essentially, Hume is saying that people frequently “smuggle” moral assumptions (oughts) into their logic. Hume says you can’t state some fact, and then conclude some moral judgement. Hume’s guillotine is used as a metaphoric punishment for those who break this rule of logic. In order to reach a moral conclusion, you need to first define your moral axiom - your meta-ought. Then you can derive your moral conclusion from facts.
For example, the following would be an “is” clause - “My pet snake is suffering from hunger.” Consequently, an “ought” clause could be assumed – “I ought to feed my pet snake some mice.” Technically, from the perspective of logic, it does not necessarily follow that just because your pet snake is hungry that you ought to feed him mice. There are many moral assumptions hidden inside this this ought clause. Without first exposing your own moral assumptions, feeding your pet snake lands you in Hume’s guillotine.
At first glance, this seems like a common sense conclusion for what we “ought” to do. Yet, if we think about it more deeply, there are several assumptions being made in order for us to derive this conclusion.
It doesn't make sense to value your pet snake over other animals unless you grant certain additional moral assumptions. Perhaps, “I ought to care about the wellbeing of my pet snake” is being assumed. Perhaps, “I ought to have less regard for the wellbeing of mice and wild snakes” is also being assumed. Absent assumptions like these, you cannot go from the “is” clause to the “ought” clause. In order for us to derive the initial conclusion, we must first assume that we ought to prefer our pet snake over other animals.
The deeper we explore the reasons behind our moral intuitions the closer we get to the root idea that is inspiring our morality. We can see a pattern from these two moral 'oughts' highlighting the fact that tribal sentiments are probably inspiring our morality. This allows us to logically prefer our pet snake over other animals. When we do this, we appeal to a meta-value – "I value my tribe" (axiomatically). With this core value at the foundation of our morality, we have a basis upon which to build moral conclusions. Perhaps we don't have scientific or objective reasons for valuing our tribe. But that doesn't matter to our personal morality. Our feelings inspire us to value our tribe. As part of our morality, we can just inject this core feeling as the basis for our moral conclusions. Then any animals defined within the tribe will naturally receive greater preference over that of other animals. This tribal meta-value can then guide our morality across a variety of situations.
Meta, as I am using it here, is referring to the definition “denoting something of a higher or second-order kind.” This definition of meta is used to identify a deeper layer of logic that guides further logic. A meta-is would be a deeper fact about reality. A meta-ought would be a deeper 'ought' that guides many 'oughts'. A meta-value would be a deeper value that guides many values.
IS/OUGHT SYNONYMS
This gets into semantics. What is the difference between an “ought” and a value? Philosophically there are a lot of words that can be used to guide us into Hume’s guillotine. When we think about all of these words similarly, we can produce helpful analogies to show us how morality operates logically.
MORAL MATH
So essentially, what David Hume is implying is that we cannot merely move from “is” to “ought” (or any “is/ought” synonym above). We must conjoin an “ought” with and “is” to produce a more detailed “ought”. “Meta-oughts” could be thought of a higher order “ought” that guides all the “oughts” below it. As below, our instinct for tribalism might be the meta-value that informs our “oughts”.
After we produce an “ought” from our “meta-ought” we can chain this to another “is” statement about reality to get a more detailed “ought”.
So, when it comes to society, we have to figure out what our “meta-oughts” should be so that we can apply our values to social policy.
The democratic perspective of morality relies on the wisdom of the majority. If the majority of humans have an instinct to value justice, then we ought to collectively value justice. If the majority of humans value life, then we ought to collectively value life. This democratic perspective of morality relies on a democratic meta-ought – “we ought to socially organize around principles that the majority of people value.” Only with this meta-ought can we get through Hume's guillotine unscathed.
These examples violate Hume’s guillotine and commit a type of naturalistic fallacy, or the appeal to nature fallacy. Philosopher G. E. Moore coined the “naturalistic fallacy” as conflating that which is pleasant or desirable with that which is good. It can be pleasant or desirable to value justice, but that doesn’t necessarily mean justice is good. It can be pleasant or desirable for some people to commit immoral acts. There must be something beyond positive emotion that makes things moral.
This set of conclusions more accurately makes the “appeal to nature” fallacy, which is to assume that that which is natural is good. Merely being natural isn’t a robust enough foundation for the idea of goodness. Some people can be natural murderers – that doesn’t make murder good. Some people can be natural tyrants – that doesn’t mean tyranny is good. At least to our common intuitions, we have ideas about what “goodness” is, and our idea of “goodness” can be naturally contradicted by individuals who have natures that disagree with our morality.
Humans are very complex creatures. We have a symbiotic relationship between our bodies and our brains; our minds and our culture; ourselves and our families; our families and our tribe/government. Sometimes cultures can have opposite perspectives on the definition of goodness. If one culture views slavery as good and another culture views slavery as evil, which is right?
OBJECTIVITY VS SUBJECTIVITY
Many people gravitate towards “objective morality” which is a position that assumes that the definition of goodness is written within the fabric of reality. Objectivity requires measurable verification from any observer. These people want to believe that there is a type of cosmic goodness that guides us all, and that anyone can tap into that. These people often occupy the religious persuasion - believing that God is the author of goodness, and that we can measure his existence and measure his definition of goodness as found in his books. They think that only this “cosmic goodness” provides us with a stable foundation for morality, whereas they fear any other foundation would be like building a house upon the sand, and moral intuitions are no longer stable – goodness is just an opinion, instead of an eternal law.
The problem is – traditional objective morality doesn’t exist. There is no definition of cosmic goodness written into the fabric of reality. We can’t use microscopes and find goodness at the quantum level. Attempts to measure God’s existence have failed. Spiritual experiences are based on a variety of fallacies that allow individuals to use their bias in interpreting things that happen. Scientific experiments are able to filter out bias. If spirits exist, we could measure them. If prayers worked, we could measure their effects. If God existed, we could measure his location and his impact on the world. If ghosts existed, we could measure them. The fact that we can’t, despite having great measurement tools at our disposal, is evidence of wishful thinking rather than evidenced-based conclusions about reality. If magical things only occur at the same rate as delusion and coincidence, then you don’t have evidence for anything other than delusion and coincidence.
Even if God existed, traditional objective morality STILL wouldn’t exist, because this idea of objective morality violates Hume’s guillotine.
Just because God defines goodness, that doesn’t mean we ought to follow his definition. You can’t logically go from this “is” to “ought”. You need some meta-ought to derive this. What meta-oughts are available? We ought to obey God? What higher-level meta-ought justifies the idea that we should obey God? Perhaps, “we ought to follow goodness” conjoined with “God is goodness”? But, is God objectively good? How is God’s goodness measured? Are God’s actions measurably consistent with his definition of goodness? Biblically, this method epically fails as the God of the Bible violates almost every important commandment he utters. But even if God is good according to his own standard, this is still circular reasoning. You can’t use God’s definition of goodness to justify his own goodness, you need an external source of goodness to measure God against.
EUTHYPHRO'S DILEMMA
In Euthyphro's dilemma, the concept of divine command theory was compared and contrasted to natural law theory. Socrates basically asks Euthyphro, "Is [virtue] loved by the gods because it is [good], or is [virtue] [good] because it is loved by the gods?" As you can see, Socrates is trying to separate something that is naturally good verses something that is good only by opinion.
Divine command theory is basically the idea that goodness is defined by that which God likes/commands/ordains. Divine command theory bases goodness on divine opinion. The problem with divine command theory is that goodness becomes as arbitrary as an opinion. Divine command theory is the easiest way to convince good people to commit atrocities, because there is no amount of evil that can’t be explained away by “God’s ways are mysterious. Trust that this atrocity is actually good because God said so.” Since God is axiomatically assumed to be good (and therefore always right), there is never any way to judge him and verify that he is actually right.
Natural law theory is basically the idea that good things are good by their nature, perhaps they contain the natural essence of goodness. The definition of goodness is a priori – it preexists any opinion. This means that goodness is separate from God, and that God likes/commands things because they were already good before he liked/commanded them.
Natural law theory gives us the ability to judge God’s opinions to see if they hold up against our natural values. For example, we could investigate nature and come to the conclusion that “freedom is good”. Consequently, we can look at scriptural doctrine regarding slavery. Any doctrine that supports slavery would be inconsistent with the natural goodness of freedom, so natural law can judge scriptures supporting slavery to be wrong and immoral. Conversely, scriptures that affirm freedom will be approved by natural law theory.
But either way, morality still seems to be based on a subjective foundation rather than an objective one. At the base of morality there is a subjective “ought to be good” that is at the root of the tree of logic. Then there is a subjective opinion that God is good. Or a subjective opinion that natural law is good. It seems very hard to escape subjectivity as a core part of any morality. You can’t measure God’s goodness with a microscope, nor can you measure the goodness of freedom (or any other value) in nature. There are no “goodness units” of energy to discover and measure.
THE 'IS' PROBLEM OF MORALITY
One way to think about goodness is to define it in relation to our goals. If we want to have a safe society (goal), then anything that increases crime is bad because it takes us away from our destination. But if we like danger, then our morality might change in accordance with this preference. The problem with this model is it makes the idea of “goodness” very arbitrary. We can change the definition of goodness by merely changing our goals.
But there is also a further problem with this model. The definition of goodness is also vulnerable to corruption at the level of truth. If one has an incorrect understanding of reality (starting point) then their direction to their destination will be based on a falsehood.
If one truly lives in an unjust society, there might be an argument that some violence is necessary to increase the fairness in the society.
But if one is wrong about the fact that society is unjust – if the society is not so bad that violence is required to fix it, then the people who are confused about the state of reality have their morality is upside-down. That which is “good” to do in an unjust society becomes “bad” to do in a fair society. So, this is why understanding reality is so important – because you can’t do good in an accurate way (based on your own moral code [meta-oughts]) if you don’t understand reality.
So, I would say we can call this “the ‘is’ problem of morality.” If your ‘is’ clause is upside-down, then your morality will be upside-down. For example, if you see someone holding a gun over a dead body, your ‘is’ clause may cause you to believe that they are a murderer and hence ‘ought’ to be punished. But your understanding of reality fails to include the fact that they fired the gun in self-defense against a violent aggressor – hence your ‘ought’ conclusion that they ought to be punished is completely wrong (upside-down moral conclusion).
THE 'OUGHT' PROBLEM OF MORALITY
But there is another problem of morality – “the ‘ought’ problem of morality”, essentially the idea that if you have the wrong ‘ought’ then you will also have an incorrect morality. For example, if society believes that citizens ‘ought’ to be free, but your morality leads you to believe that ‘we ought to obey god’ and ‘god allows slavery’, hence your moral conclusion that ‘we ought to keep slaves’ gives you a morality that is in contradiction with your society. But the question remains – who’s ‘ought’ is correct, the society’s, or the fringe ideology’s? If we don’t have an objective foundation for our root ‘ought’ that guides all other ‘oughts’ then we are unable to verify that we have the correct ‘ought’, hence “the ‘ought’ problem of morality”.
Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher in the 1700s. He was bothered by Hume’s philosophy and wanted to try and establish a rational objective morality that wouldn’t be as arbitrary as opinions. He tried to look for a root ‘ought’ that could guide a society’s morality. He came up with the categorical imperative. Kant understood Hume’s concept of a ‘hypothetical imperative’ that was structured in the form of a goal. “If you want ‘x’, then you have a moral duty to do ‘y’”. But Kant was frustrated by the arbitrariness of the ‘if’ clause, since anyone could desire a different goal in their ‘if’ clause. Kant finally determined that there was a certain type of way to demand morality from people that wasn’t arbitrary. His categorical imperative states, “Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.” Basically, Kant was appealing to the principle that “everyone has a moral duty to not be a moral hypocrite.” If you think that “other people should not murder or steal”, then you have a duty to follow your own ‘ought’ statements and not make yourself an exception to the rule. Since everyone naturally has moral intuitions, everyone can become morally obligated to follow these ‘oughts’ inside our souls.
The problem with Kant’s categorical imperative is that while producing a solid ethic at the individual level, it starts to fall apart at the collective level. There is no guarantee that everyone’s internal ‘oughts’ will be the same. Perhaps one group of people believes that it ought to be a universal law that everyone pays taxes, and they are willing to follow their own ‘ought’, yet another group of people believe that no one ‘ought’ to pay taxes, and hence there can be a conflict between moral systems. This is because the root ‘ought’ that Kant’s moral system relies upon is a subjective feeling of the individual. To the extent that humans have differing subjective feelings, the “’ought’ problem of morality” triggers and has us arguing about which subjective feeling is the correct one.
EVOLUTIONARY GAME THEORY
Modern evolutionary logic points to game theory as the main driver behind animal morality. Game theory involves experimenting with different strategies to see which strategy ‘wins’ the game. Simplistic Hobbesian perspectives on reality might imagine a game strategy based on “survival of the fittest” with a “dog-eat-dog” type ethic, where only the strongest, most tyrannical, powerful, and manipulative will survive and thrive. But when you run computer simulations on fictional game characters, game theorists find that violent, abusive, and coercive strategies aren’t the most successful, because other people will attempt to get revenge on you. Cooperative strategies that include a little bit of vengeful justice when needed are much more successful. So, what this means is that evolution is programming our morality with the best game theoretic strategy it can. Evolution is a wild process that includes random mutations and errors, so not every human will be programmed with the best game theoretic morality, but on average, most humans will have a good game theoretic strategy. Murder is bad for the game of evolution because it harms your own tribe, so it is extremely natural for humans to evolve the subjective feeling that murder is wrong. Stealing is also bad for the game of evolution because it creates internal conflict within a tribe which damages cooperation. Tribes that cooperate better survive and thrive better. So, in a sense, we can have faith that game theory evolution will give the average human a sufficiently good natural morality.
But just because evolutionary game theory tells us to do something, that doesn’t mean that evolution is correct. Evolution might give a sociopath genes that inspire him to murder, but this isn’t evidence that murder is good. Again, this goes back to the appeal to nature fallacy. Goodness is not the same as that which is natural.
So given that we now have a foundation for looking at how subjective axioms help build our morality, we can start to see how moral intuitions form a tree of branching conclusions based on higher-order moral principles. Meta-oughts conjoined with “is” statements help us generate ‘ought’ branches. For mapping purposes, we can signify different levels of meta-oughts by appending a sequencing number to the end of the statement.
Under this paradigm, “is/ought” level 1, is just the “is/ought” at the most obvious layer of analysis. “Meta-is/ought” level 1 is just the layer of logic just above the current level of analysis. “Meta-is/ought” level 2 is just the layer of logic above level 1. Similarly, “is/ought” level 2 is just the layer of logic below the “is/ought” at the main level of focus.
This is an example of an attempt at trying to use this model to build a hierarchy of moral logic.
So, in constructing this example, it can be seen that it seems very hard to escape the "appeal to nature fallacy" and even Hume's guillotine. Even if we reconstructed a different tree of moral conclusions, the root of any moral tree is an unjustified is-ought jump between 1) the state of existence, and the conclusion that 2) we ought to be good. Just because a universe exists doesn't mean we ought to be good. There must be a deeper ought to justify this jump. Religion often returns the core of morality back to wellbeing, saying that "If you don't want to suffer for eternity, you ought to be good." Secular moralities often appeal to the idea that "you ought to be good" because "it feels good", also appealing to wellbeing. But nothing about existence (is) requires us to want to feel good (ought), nor does it require us to want to avoid suffering (ought). The foundation of either morality is a personal preference to feel good instead of suffer. So we can see that wellbeing seems to play a major role in being a core motivator for morality.
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