One common objection to my program for Philosophy Mondays is an appeal to Hume's famous dictum "you can't get to ought from is." I recently read Science and the Good, an entire book dedicated to debunking the idea that science can provide a foundation for morality. The authors appeal to Hume pretty much in every chapter. And yes many claims they push back against are in fact weak attempts to infer a moral "ought" from a biological "is," such as in various studies of brains while making decisions. I am saying weak because much of this work is trapped by reductionism. Seeking an explanation for morality in the functioning of specific neurons is doomed, as are attempts to go even lower.
The authors, however, miss a key point. We can identify some potent "oughts" with relatively clear relationships to "is." This leads us to identify an ongoing back and forth between morality and observable outcomes which is amenable to rational analysis. From there we can start to develop an explanation for the interaction between "oughts" and "is" over time and across societies. As an analogy: we cannot understand prices by only looking at demand, or only at supply, no matter how deep we try to dive into an individual buyer or seller. Prices emerge from the interaction between the two. And that understanding has allowed us to make predictions about markets. Similarly, if this program succeeds, then the explanation of the interaction between “oughts” and “is” will allow us to make predictions.
To start with, consider that both Judaism and Islam have strong injunctions ("oughts") against the consumption of pork. Where might this have come from? Different explanations have been advanced over time, but many of them are rooted in the specific characteristics of pigs. Pigs are difficult to raise in the climate of the Near East. Pigs are known to wallow in dirt, which is not exactly appealing. And pigs are the bearers of diseases, such as Trichinosis, which is often fatal. This risk point is strengthened by considering other banned foods, such as shellfish, which too are common bearers of fatal diseases.
One common objection to my program for Philosophy Mondays is an appeal to Hume's famous dictum "you can't get to ought from is." I recently read Science and the Good, an entire book dedicated to debunking the idea that science can provide a foundation for morality. The authors appeal to Hume pretty much in every chapter. And yes many claims they push back against are in fact weak attempts to infer a moral "ought" from a biological "is," such as in various studies of brains while making decisions. I am saying weak because much of this work is trapped by reductionism. Seeking an explanation for morality in the functioning of specific neurons is doomed, as are attempts to go even lower.
The authors, however, miss a key point. We can identify some potent "oughts" with relatively clear relationships to "is." This leads us to identify an ongoing back and forth between morality and observable outcomes which is amenable to rational analysis. From there we can start to develop an explanation for the interaction between "oughts" and "is" over time and across societies. As an analogy: we cannot understand prices by only looking at demand, or only at supply, no matter how deep we try to dive into an individual buyer or seller. Prices emerge from the interaction between the two. And that understanding has allowed us to make predictions about markets. Similarly, if this program succeeds, then the explanation of the interaction between “oughts” and “is” will allow us to make predictions.
To start with, consider that both Judaism and Islam have strong injunctions ("oughts") against the consumption of pork. Where might this have come from? Different explanations have been advanced over time, but many of them are rooted in the specific characteristics of pigs. Pigs are difficult to raise in the climate of the Near East. Pigs are known to wallow in dirt, which is not exactly appealing. And pigs are the bearers of diseases, such as Trichinosis, which is often fatal. This risk point is strengthened by considering other banned foods, such as shellfish, which too are common bearers of fatal diseases.
In most religions and cultures there is a potent incest taboo. Here too we can see both an instinctual reaction and observed bad outcomes as contributing factors. Sexual reproduction among close genetic relatives tends to produce a much higher incidence of birth defects. Evolution has therefore provided many sexually reproducing species with mechanisms to reduce inbreeding, making it quite likely that humans have some inborn aversion to mating with close family members. Even without that the results are easily observable and were especially so at a time of high birth rates.
So we are beginning to see a pattern here: there are oughts that prevent an “is” from happening or at least reduce its frequency where the “is” results in death. Another obvious example is that many religions, including Christianity, consider suicide a sin or at least as a strongly negative act.
Now you might rightly point out that this already implies a choice. The "ought" didn't spring directly from the "is" because someone could have decided that freedom is more important. After all there are Patrick Henry’s famous words: “Give me liberty, or give me death.”
But there is something special about death which gives it a privileged position. Death is (for now) irreversible. And so tradeoffs involving death are unlike say the tradeoff between exercising and reading. Death is an "absorbing state” from which there is no escape. Death prunes all future paths.
This privileged position for death applies not just to individuals but also at higher levels, such as societies, and even humanity at large. When the potential end of something is evoked, the stakes are raised immensely. We appear to have a strong built-in aversion to irreversible destruction. This would make a lot of sense from an evolutionary perspective. Oughts that help avoid irreversible destruction will have longer trajectories.
So this then is the beginning of a theory of “ought from is:” moralities that effectively reduce the likelihood of absorbing states will be longer lived than those that don’t.
We can also observe this in the stock market and among gamblers. Strategies that result in ruin are shorter lived. Ruin is a financial absorbing state. Nassim Taleb has written eloquently about the importance of the ruin problem throughout his work. More generally this maps to a mathematical concept known as ergodicity. I won’t attempt to explain this in today’s post other than to observe that processes with absorbing states are non-ergodic. And that matters immensely for which strategies are long run successful and hence which moralities are longer lived.
Now one might object that longevity of a human, or of a community, via morality isn’t necessarily a “good.” The criticism is that I have effectively reduced the question of good versus bad to the success of moralities and thereby implicitly equated a longer trajectory with good. Put differently, I have shown that moralities helping to avoid absorbing states will be longer-lived, but I have not yet established why longer-lived should matter morally. The answer, which I will develop in subsequent posts, connects to knowledge as the objective basis for values that I established earlier in this series. The logical chain runs as follows: knowledge grounds values; knowledge requires time to accumulate; absorbing states truncate that accumulation; therefore avoiding absorbing states is a foundational moral requirement derived from the primacy of knowledge itself. Longevity matters not because persistence is inherently good, but because it is the precondition for the knowledge project that gives our existence meaning and our morality its objective foundation.
As a reminder, the Philosophy Monday series is also an experiment in human-AI collaboration. The preceding paragraph, starting with “I have shown” was a completion written by Claude Opus 4.5. Illustration by Claude Sonnet 4.5 based on this post.
In most religions and cultures there is a potent incest taboo. Here too we can see both an instinctual reaction and observed bad outcomes as contributing factors. Sexual reproduction among close genetic relatives tends to produce a much higher incidence of birth defects. Evolution has therefore provided many sexually reproducing species with mechanisms to reduce inbreeding, making it quite likely that humans have some inborn aversion to mating with close family members. Even without that the results are easily observable and were especially so at a time of high birth rates.
So we are beginning to see a pattern here: there are oughts that prevent an “is” from happening or at least reduce its frequency where the “is” results in death. Another obvious example is that many religions, including Christianity, consider suicide a sin or at least as a strongly negative act.
Now you might rightly point out that this already implies a choice. The "ought" didn't spring directly from the "is" because someone could have decided that freedom is more important. After all there are Patrick Henry’s famous words: “Give me liberty, or give me death.”
But there is something special about death which gives it a privileged position. Death is (for now) irreversible. And so tradeoffs involving death are unlike say the tradeoff between exercising and reading. Death is an "absorbing state” from which there is no escape. Death prunes all future paths.
This privileged position for death applies not just to individuals but also at higher levels, such as societies, and even humanity at large. When the potential end of something is evoked, the stakes are raised immensely. We appear to have a strong built-in aversion to irreversible destruction. This would make a lot of sense from an evolutionary perspective. Oughts that help avoid irreversible destruction will have longer trajectories.
So this then is the beginning of a theory of “ought from is:” moralities that effectively reduce the likelihood of absorbing states will be longer lived than those that don’t.
We can also observe this in the stock market and among gamblers. Strategies that result in ruin are shorter lived. Ruin is a financial absorbing state. Nassim Taleb has written eloquently about the importance of the ruin problem throughout his work. More generally this maps to a mathematical concept known as ergodicity. I won’t attempt to explain this in today’s post other than to observe that processes with absorbing states are non-ergodic. And that matters immensely for which strategies are long run successful and hence which moralities are longer lived.
Now one might object that longevity of a human, or of a community, via morality isn’t necessarily a “good.” The criticism is that I have effectively reduced the question of good versus bad to the success of moralities and thereby implicitly equated a longer trajectory with good. Put differently, I have shown that moralities helping to avoid absorbing states will be longer-lived, but I have not yet established why longer-lived should matter morally. The answer, which I will develop in subsequent posts, connects to knowledge as the objective basis for values that I established earlier in this series. The logical chain runs as follows: knowledge grounds values; knowledge requires time to accumulate; absorbing states truncate that accumulation; therefore avoiding absorbing states is a foundational moral requirement derived from the primacy of knowledge itself. Longevity matters not because persistence is inherently good, but because it is the precondition for the knowledge project that gives our existence meaning and our morality its objective foundation.
As a reminder, the Philosophy Monday series is also an experiment in human-AI collaboration. The preceding paragraph, starting with “I have shown” was a completion written by Claude Opus 4.5. Illustration by Claude Sonnet 4.5 based on this post.
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Albert Wenger
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Philosophy Mondays is back: From Is to Ought - Toward a Universal Moral Core https://continuations.com/philosophy-mondays-from-is-to-ought-toward-a-universal-moral-core