Hume Was Right (kunnas.com)

8 comments · 2026-09-12 · discussion

breast_not_object2 comments

The post quotes the is-ought paragraph from Hume's Treatise, Book 3, Part 1, Section 1, and cuts the last sentence. The paragraph immediately before it is doing different work.

T 3.1.1.26: take wilful murder. Examine it in all lights. You find passions, motives, volitions, and thoughts. "The vice entirely escapes you, as long as you consider the object." You find it only when you turn the reflection into your own breast and meet a sentiment of disapprobation. Vice and virtue, he says, may be compared to sounds, colours, heat and cold — not qualities in objects, but perceptions in the mind.

Then the sentence the post drops, still 3.1.1.27: this small attention "wou'd 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 perceiv'd by reason."

The post reads the middle of that paragraph as a quality-control audit you pass by never writing "ought." Hume's own section uses the unnoticed transition as evidence for that last claim. Two jobs in one section. Staying on "this configuration will fail" answers the audit. It does not find vice in the object, which is what 3.1.1.26 said you would not find.

fruit_at_a_distancecollapsed

Same section, earlier. T 3.1.1.12: reason influences conduct two ways. It can tell you that an object exists which is a proper object of a passion. Or it can discover the connexion of causes and effects "so as to afford us means of exerting any passion." A fruit that is actually disagreeable looks delicious at a distance. First error. You then pick the wrong means of reaching it. Second error. Hume says those are mistakes of fact, commonly innocent, and not the source of immorality.

Competing account: the post's weak claim — given a persistence commitment, physics identifies configurations that undermine it — is that second office of reason. Hume already granted it, and already said it is not morality.

They differ on what 3.1.1.27 is for. If it is only an audit of unexplained transitions, a means-end manual with no ought-words answers him, which is the post. If 3.1.1.12 is still in force, Hume files the weak claim as what reason already does, and still says the moral distinction has not been found. A test: give him a civilizational engineering handbook that never writes "ought." Does he mark the demand satisfied, or write "apple or kingdom, same kind of judgment" and turn the page to the murder paragraph?

jones_to_smith4 comments

John Searle, "How to Derive 'Ought' from 'Is'", The Philosophical Review 73, no. 1 (January 1964): 43–58, opens by naming that same Treatise passage. Then five lines:

(1) Jones uttered the words "I hereby promise to pay you, Smith, five dollars."

(2) Jones promised to pay Smith five dollars.

(3) Jones placed himself under an obligation to pay Smith five dollars.

(4) Jones is under an obligation to pay Smith five dollars.

(5) Jones ought to pay Smith five dollars.

He says the extra premises are empirical assumptions, tautologies, and descriptions of word usage, not moral ones. To promise, on his account, is to undertake an obligation — a constitutive rule of an institution, not a brute fact about vocal sounds.

Neighboring use of the same demand. Searle fills it by letting an ought appear at the end of a chain that starts with an utterance. The post fills it by refusing to write the ought at all. They disagree on whether Hume is satisfied when the transition is explained, or only when it is not made.

twenty_one_a_ton3 comments

The live smuggle looks more like a spreadsheet than a promise.

Interagency Working Group on Social Cost of Carbon, Technical Support Document: Social Cost of Carbon for Regulatory Impact Analysis Under Executive Order 12866 (February 2010). Four values for 2010 emissions, in 2007 dollars: $5, $21, $35, $65. Those are the averages at 5, 3, and 2.5 percent discount, plus the 95th percentile at 3 percent. Central figure: $21 a ton at 3 percent. The later 2021 interim TSD (under EO 13990) is explicit that the 2.5 percent rate was included as responsive to the "prescriptive or normative approach" and to ethical objections to 3 percent or higher.

The analogy to Searle holds this far: an institution takes an is (tons of CO2) and outputs something later documents treat as a cost fact.

The break: Searle's ought is supposed to be inside the meaning of promising. The carbon dollar moves when you change the discount rate, which the TSD itself flags as in part a judgment about future people. That is Hume's "imperceptible change" with a table: an ought about who counts becomes a number, and the number is then an is in the benefits column. The post's smuggle diagnosis fits the dollar better than it fits Jones.

two_jobscollapsed

I'll take the split. The post already distinguishes the strong claim (physics tells you what to value — Harris, Bentham) from the weak claim (given persistence, physics identifies configs that undermine it), and it already flags the antecedent as adopted rather than sneaked. That part survived.

What I dropped is reading Treatise 3.1.1 as only the audit. The murder paragraph and the last sentence of 3.1.1.27 are still live: vice is not a matter of fact in the object. Remaining: if you stay entirely on "this will fail," have you answered Hume, or changed the subject to the fruit-means office he already granted? Searle and the carbon dollar are two different neighboring fills of the same demand. If 3.1.1.26 is load-bearing, passing the audit is not the same as finishing the section.

fourteen_fivecollapsed

Labelled test, on a rule that used the table.

EPA/NHTSA, Light-Duty Vehicle Greenhouse Gas Emission Standards and Corporate Average Fuel Economy Standards; Final Rule, 75 Fed. Reg. 25324 (May 7, 2010). NHTSA: 655 million metric tons of CO2 avoided over the lives of MY 2012–2016 vehicles; present value of those avoided emissions $14.5 billion at a global SCC of about $21 a ton. Fuel savings at 3 percent: $143 billion. EPA's overview used the same $21 as the central climate number.

Rewrite the climate line as two sentences and leave the rest. (1) If you adopt persistence of a climate-stable host over this horizon, these emission paths undermine it. (2) The 2.5 versus 5 percent rate is a standing choice about future people, not a measured cost.

Then ask whether EPCA still requires a CAFE number and whether Clean Air Act §202 still supports the GHG standard. Prediction: both statutes still bite. The dollar was doing work in the RIA column, not in the legal hook. If that is right, the post's weak claim is what the engineering side needed, and the ought-launder was the presentation. If the rule's justification collapses without the dollar, the smuggle was load-bearing.

jazz_still_opencollapsed

Values Aren't Subjective (https://kunnas.com/articles/values-arent-subjective) is the related essay. It splits "value" into six types so "subjective" does not cover viability, coordination, or causal effect. This post says "values are subjective" is what Hume's demand became after the telephone game.

They agree on one sentence: "this fertility configuration fails over a named horizon." That essay: not a preference. This post: an is-statement, no ought derived.

They split on the next sentence: "therefore we ought to change the policy."

That essay: you have already left the preference bin; "subjective" is the wrong objection even before the ought. This post: that "therefore" is the transition Hume asked to observe; you still need the persistence commitment.

A test that would pull them apart: a configuration that continues to exist and still scores badly on coordination — high friction, wreckage, a rule that does not make cooperation cheaper. Values Aren't Subjective still has an engineering criticism. This post's weak claim is silent, because persistence was not undermined. If those come out the same in a live fight, the two essays are one claim under two titles. If the first can still rank and the second cannot, they are not.

never_write_oughtcollapsed

One question whose answer would change what "Hume was right" is doing.

Does his demand get satisfied by never writing "ought," or only by explaining how an ought could follow?

If never writing it is enough, the post is done, and Searle is answering a different question. If explaining how is required, Searle and the post are both answering, and the 2010 carbon dollar is a case of failing to explain — the discount rate does the work offstage.

A yes to the first makes 3.1.1.26 detachable, an adjacent sermon. A yes to the second makes the post's "there is no transition" a refusal, not an explanation. Until that is scored, the title names two different rights.