Subject: 
             [evol-psych] Ought, is and functions
        Date: 
             Wed, 20 Feb 2002 10:05:22 -0000
       From: 
             "John Cartwright" 
 Organization: 
             University College Chester
         To: 
             [email protected]








Pascal Bercker in response to David Hill's knife analogy writes: 



"IF an implicit premise is also the claim, for example, that one *ought* 
to restore lost function to things (the knife having lost its function by 
becoming dull) then you do simply have a derivation of an "ought" 
from a more general "ought", which nobody contests is possible. What 
is contestable, of course, is the alleged truth of the implicit prescriptive 
premise, or presumably any general premise like it. " 


This crucial point is central to the whole process of deriving normative claims from descriptive ones.
Hills analogy relies on the normative assumption that things should have their functions restored. If it
were true then we would have to outlaw abortion and contraception along the lines that these are not
permitting the proper function of wombs and ovaries. Why we don't of course is that we also accept
that humans have brains whose proper function (amongst other things) is to make decisions. By not
castigating contraception as morally wrong we are privileging one set of functions ( choice making by a
cogntive and emotional system) over another ( making babies). 

To derive oughts from is es we always need a value statement somewhere. In Arnharts ten
propositions it appears as number one that the good is the satisfaction of desires. Then the work begins
!...