“Science is not only a disciple of reason,

but also one of romance and passion.”[1]

(Stephen Hawking)

Philosophers, mathematicians and lovers of logic obsess about things that most of us never even think about. Like a dog with a bone, they won't leave it alone. Something does not quite add up and it bothers them and so they find themselves worrying it down. Sometimes their speculations on such things may even have major real-world consequences; often, even in those circumstances, most people still never think about them.

Elsewhere, I try to explain one such issue in computing – the ‘halting problem’ – which is fundamental to computer science and the way in which computer language is coded.

The Limits of Language and Logic

Long essay on the limits of language and logic with some consideration of the impact on AI and LLMs.

https://paragraph.xyz

Much of the world population uses a computer every day, but I expect that more than 99% of those users have never thought of or worried about the halting problem. This has not affected the popularity of computers. The ‘is–ought problem’ in philosophy is similar and has been a running philosophical problem for hundreds of years.

Every human living will usually make innumerable decisions in their life about what to do based on the ‘facts’ (as they see them). We may be wrong about the facts (all too often) or make bad decisions about what to do based on those facts (perhaps we are even more likely to be wrong in this respect as we are about the facts). Nonetheless, billions of humans still manage to successfully cross streets, navigate traffic, work, shop, eat, live, look for partners and procreate etc., making judgements all the time about what they ‘ought to do’ based on the ‘facts’. Other life-forms do the same. Many of these judgements happen so quickly or so subconsciously that the life-form is not really aware that it is making or enacting such decisions.

David Hume was a great philosopher and historian from Scotland. He is famous for a number of works, including A Treatise of Human Nature (1739 CE), Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals (1751 CE) and his Essays (1758 CE). 

Hume’s theories on this aspect of ethics can be summarised as follows:

“(1) Reason alone cannot be a motive to the will … (2) Moral distinctions are not derived from reason … (3) Moral distinctions are derived from the moral sentiments: feelings of approval (esteem, praise) and disapproval (blame) felt by spectators who contemplate a character trait or action … (4) While some virtues and vices are natural … others, including justice, are artificial.”[2]

In this article, I will be focusing on one aspect of the so-called ‘naturalistic fallacies’[3] that Hume considered. 

“[The problem] arises when a writer makes claims about what ought to be that are based solely on statements about what is … [there is] a significant difference between positive statements (about what is) and prescriptive or normative statements (about what ought to be), and that it is not obvious how one can coherently move from descriptive statements to prescriptive ones. Hume’s law … is the thesis that, if a reasoner only has access to … factual premises, the reasoner cannot logically infer the truth of moral statements.”[4]

Hume the empiricist

Hume can be described as an empiricist, that is, everything we believe results from experience. It is hard to disagree with that.

If we imagine living in a universe where humans have no senses (sight, sound, touch, smell, hearing), what could we humans possibly know about such a universe? How could we even interact with such a universe other than, assuming we had the ability to move, bumping into things in a very blunt way until we met our end rather quickly?

Whatever laws govern the universe, understanding them must come from our interactions in it. That understanding is also accumulated and usually passed down (unconsciously) in our code and (consciously) in culture. Likewise, our ethics must be based on analysis of the nature of and relation between things, experience of past interactions between life-forms and of usefulness. We must then synthesise the information we receive using our faculties of reason and as contended here, our faculties of compassion and the potential for wisdom about the nature of life and its underlying unity (as well as positive discrimination about those things that are not essentially the same). Hume is the preferred sceptic given that his approach to ethics is contrary to the one proposed here and due to his continuing significant influence on the subject.[5]

“Hume maintains against the rationalists that, although reason is needed to discover the facts of any concrete situation and the general social impact of a trait of character or a practice over time, reason alone is insufficient to yield a judgment that something is virtuous or vicious. In the last analysis, the facts as known must trigger a response by sentiment or ‘taste.’”[6] 

Under this interpretation, Hume is saying that the facts alone do not give rise to the reasonableness of any ethics, but also that ethics are not explicable by recourse to reason.[7] This claim is not limited to just whether people are interested to act on reason, that is, some people do not appear to be motivated to act on reason. It is an even greater claim: that any statement of what one should do, even a non-ethical statement, cannot be derived logically from the factual landscape.

This seems an extraordinary position for an empiricist to take but, given that he does not really explain what would distinguish a non-ethical value judgement of the ‘right’ action from an ethical one, it must be presumed it applies to any statement of what a life-form should do (as in Hume’s mind all value judgements are based on the feeling of the actor in question). It is a claim that ethical conduct and decisions are not objective or empirical, unlike scientific propositions of ‘truth’.[8]  

In his own words:

“...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 surpriz’d to find, that instead of the usual … 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 … [and] what seems altogether inconceivable, [no explanation is given as to] how this new relation can be a deduction from others, which are entirely different from it.”[9]

(David Hume)

Summary of Hume's is-ought problem

One must always deal with Hume with some care given the strength of his logic. I will attempt to simplify Hume’s points.

1. There are certain objective facts about the nature of things that we could agree on (empirical axioms – the ‘is’)

2. Moral reasoning usually seeks to move from these facts to making statements about what we should do given those facts (ethical assertions – the ‘ought’)

3. The reasoning as to what ought to be done can never be derived entirely from what is

4. Moral or ethical positions are relative value-judgements (based on sentiment, taste or non-objective feeling) and not of the same quality as objective statements about what ‘is’.

Hume is not saying that ‘ought’ statements are valueless, just that they are qualitatively different to descriptive statements about the nature of things and cannot be reached through reason. 

“Morals excite passions, and produce or prevent actions.

Reason of itself is utterly impotent in this particular.

The rules of morality, therefore, are not conclusions of reason.”[10]

(David Hume)

What we ought to do always requires additional extraneous and non-rational conditions, grounds or justification to be added – such as to a face-puncher:

‘Look here my good woman, one really ought not to punch me in the face, because I do not like the feeling of being punched in the face!’

In Hume’s world, punching faces is neither good nor bad in itself. If his claim stopped here, it would be easy to agree, since there is not enough information in that ‘fact’ to make an ethical analysis. Indeed, my above summary of Hume’s position is analogous to Gödel’s incompleteness theorem, which we will consider later. However, his much larger claim is that it is also not possible to introduce additional statements that could combine with the facts to give an objective rational ethical position.

Does Hume’s logic mean that Buddha, Jesus and Nelson Mandela are equivalent in their ethical statements or actions to Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler and Caligula?

“for there is nothing either good or bad,

but thinking makes it so.”[11]

(William Shakespeare)

If Hume’s logic led us there it would be very tempting to say this is self-evidently absurd, but that is not the way in which to reason such matters. So, we shall give him the benefit of the doubt in his claims. That said, for various reasons explained below, Hume is wrong in this claim and his so-called fallacy can be shown to be misguided. He is in error about the determinative nature of most ‘is’ truths or facts (as shown in his quote which references God as a less troubling category of ‘is’ statement even though it cannot be empirically ascertained) and in believing that ethics cannot be evidence-based and reasoned. The burden is on his theory to show why ethics are just expressions of feeling or passion.

Hume does not appear to explain why a description of some fact is qualitatively different from a description of what is better or worse conduct in any factual situation. Indeed, we might say he appears to move from asserting that objective statements are empirical (is) to saying that one ought not to then introduce statements about conduct arising from those empirical facts (ought). He does so without real evidence as to why, and without conceding that under his own logic this would not be valid reasoning if ethical statements were empirically founded. With all due respect to him, Hume’s ‘law’ appears to fail his own is–ought filter.

In any event, even if the above analysis is incorrect, if one can show an example when it is objectively reasonable to do something based on the facts (and not just as a matter of personal or relative subjective taste or sentiment) then his larger claim would fail. His remaining claim would be reduced to the simpler, more justifiable proviso that all terms (facts about what is and statements about what ought to be done) in any proposed course of action must be carefully described and rationally justified (no assumptions allowed).

Hume's Sceptical Filter

Hume’s critique still has some value. I prefer to see it as Hume’s helpful sceptical filter. He correctly reminds us to ensure that when we talk about morals and ethics any ‘oughts’ should be properly introduced, unpacked and the grounds for them made out in relation to the other relevant facts. Before we run some conduct scenarios through Hume’s filter, we should pause to note the very great difficulty in making descriptive objective propositions about anything that we can then apply ethics to. This also gives rise to compounding errors in ethics.

It is wise to have great reservations about thinking it is easy to be sure about both the facts and the ethics that might flow from them. This knowledge encourages humility and a belief in maximum consistent (compossible)[12] ethical and intellectual freedom of action, as well as great care in setting out the particular facts and the recommended course of conduct arising from those facts.

Nearly all objective statements about something are conditional on other things being a certain way – as Buddha is said to have said, “if this, then that”. There are very few universal laws about the nature of things that are not relative local descriptions of things. Most of our theories and scientific laws are vulnerable to future failure as our knowledge about things and the relations between things increases. Even our most cherished invariant scientific laws are begging to be proved wrong.

“How do I define history? It’s just one fucking thing after another.”[13]

(Alan Bennett)

The history of humans and their cultures shows how difficult it is to have confidence in accepted objective facts or truths. Many – perhaps most – prior objective truths subsequently turn out to have been no more than intersubjective delusions: the age of the world, the length of time humans have been on it, the shape of the world, the shape of the solar system, the age and size of the universe, the way life-forms work and are related, the importance of randomness and chance, the lack of absolute time, the incompleteness of logic. This list could go on for a very long time. That is why an empirical process is so wise and is designed on negative capability – it assumes that we are likely to be proven wrong in our beliefs about the very nature of things (the ‘is’ statements) and it permits in principle a continuous creative destructive attack on those statements, though in practice some ‘facts’ may go for longer periods than one might expect without amendment or falsification.

Testing the Is-Ought Filter

Let us start with a non-ethical scenario and Hume’s filter to get a feel for it.

Non-Ethical Scenario

1. A stove top (due to a burning fire inside) is 190°C to touch (1st ‘is’).

2. The average mammal’s skin burns at 70°C or higher (2nd ‘is’).

3. Mammals are very likely to be motivated to be self-protecting (3rd ‘is’ and an evolutionary theory empirical axiom).

4. Mammals are very likely to avoid unnecessary self-injury (4th ‘is’ and an evolutionary theory empirical axiom).

The third and fourth statements above are mammalian self-protecting axioms.

A mammal is considering whether it should put its hand on the top of the stove (assume no other life-forms are in any way engaged in this scenario).[14]

Objectively Good[15] Conduct

The mammal ought (1st ‘ought’) not to put its hand on the stove unless:

1. The overall consequences (in terms of self-harm) of not putting its hand on the stove are more injurious than those of putting its hand on the stove (condition 1)[16]; or

2. It is a very unusual species of mammal that can somehow cope with temperatures very far beyond the normal distribution for such life-forms and, for example, it would like to warm its hand (condition 2).

How does that feel? Do you feel cheated? Of course not.

The above statements moved perfectly sensibly and very comfortably from a series of ‘is’ facts to a perfectly logical ‘ought’ assertion (with a couple of minor conditions). We do not need to worry about any clever linguistic sleight of hand. If you agree, it is because it will seem entirely logical (reasonable) to the reader not to put one’s own hand on a hot stove given the stated ‘facts’.

It feels nice not to be burned unnecessarily (Hume’s reference to sentiment) but it feeling nice is not entirely subjective (unlike preferring Manchester United to Manchester City) or relatively arbitrary (like preferring green stoves to blue ones).

Mammals are programmed more or less the same[17] for it to feel nice not to be burned (or, if you prefer, for it to feel bad to be burned) because that’s how we stay alive and perpetuate our code. Those mammals that do not have this code or this view of good conduct do not usually live long enough to have offspring and pass on their poor code or beliefs. In addition, whether it is a human you imagine or another mammal, the answer would be the same. 

“Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.”[18]

(David Hume)

Here passion/desire is the motive force to take action flowing from the underlying reasons, whether we know them or not (or know evolutionary theory, physics, biology, chemistry and genetics or not). In this case, passion is the slave to conscious or embedded (coded) reason.

Our bodies will usually even enact a rational response without any need for us to calculate or even be conscious of the rightness of not being burned (what a clever failsafe!). The good conduct (the ‘ought’) is logical for a large variety of life-forms and not just because one is human or does not like heat. It is therefore potentially objectively true for all mammals. Note, also, that the answer does not change if you assume in the above facts that the mammal likes heat and yet somehow cannot feel pain – since the consequences of being burned badly go beyond just the risk of pain to cause the risk of not being able to hunt or forage and the risk of infection. That is, in extreme cases, the risk of failing to stay alive. Here pain is the slave to reason.

Perhaps the modest argument that could be put forward against the above analysis is that some mammals may not agree with the proposition (perhaps they are suicidal or simply not capable of understanding consequences and probability). The subjectivity of any particular life-form’s perception (or lack thereof) does not falsify the objective nature of the best course of action. To do that, we would need to show that whilst the best course of action appears objectively ‘good’, it is in fact biased or incorrect based on evidence. Likewise, belief that the Earth is flat does not qualify as a good challenge to an empirically derived statement about its roundness.[19]

So, we can have ‘ought’ statements, about better decisions and actions, that are objectively good (better than the alternatives), combined quite comfortably with objectively true facts when it is not an ethical issue. We may not usually derive the ‘ought’ statement entirely from just one particular fact, but we can potentially derive it from combining all of the facts (the reality of the factual landscape), checking there are no counterfactuals, considering any conditions and then using intelligence to determine the correct course of conduct. Computer programming is only possible due to the use of such conditional if–then statements for carrying out discrete computational functions.

Hume does not help us by making out his case on this point. He relies on assertions and assumptions about ethics, however well-intentioned his objectives are.[20]

First, for questions of conduct to be ethical questions, we also need to engage at least the potential for one other life-form to be involved and, somewhat less obviously, the concept of life itself. Adding more life-forms gives us quantitative complexity (the number of ‘is’ facts and ‘ought’ statements that may need to be engaged), requiring greater intelligence and, as the complexity scales up, wisdom.

Ethical Scenario, Slightly Modified Facts[21]

1. A stove has a burning fire inside with a temperature of 200°C (1st ‘is’).

2. The average mammal burns very quickly at 70°C or higher (2nd ‘is’).

A mammal (A) is considering whether it should put another mammal’s (B) hand in the stove (assume no other life-forms are in any way engaged in this scenario).[22]

Objectively Good Ethical Conduct

Mammal A ought not to put B’s hand in the stove unless:

1. The consequences (in terms of harm) of not putting B’s hand in the stove overwhelmingly appear to be more injurious to B than those of putting B’s hand in the stove (condition 1); or

2. The consequences of not putting B’s hand in the stove are sufficiently injurious to A, based on the mammalian self-protecting axioms (condition 2).

Finally, we get to an ethical dilemma, and you will immediately notice that its difficulty and potential resolution have nothing to do with the magical quality of the concepts of ‘is’ and ‘ought’. The issue is clearly about potential conflict of interests, which is primarily what ethics must try to deal with.

Ethics is entirely about managing conflicts of interest

Ethics is not a special category of things about the world that cannot be identified and assessed rationally; rather, it is usually a category of problem-solving where there are competing interests in play requiring judgement. The risk of conflict between different life-forms and different axioms requires the use of a degree of wisdom. As all of this complexity and uncertainty increases, so does the likelihood that there will not be a simple formula or algorithm that will give us an ‘ethical goodness’ number for each course of action. In this respect, ethics is no different to the deepest aspects of science and maths.

The ability to make good ethical decisions then becomes more an issue of insight into the underlying nature of things – and synthesis of lots of information as the complexities and uncertainties increase. The difficulty of accessing good factual information also becomes exponentially harder as the stakes get higher, given the tendency for high emotions and deceptive behaviour among interested parties. However, adding additional life-forms does not logically change the nature of the analysis that was used in the non-ethical scenario when moving from an ‘is’ (factual landscape) to ‘ought’ (what to do). If we do ethics correctly, in principle we are discussing likely better or worse courses of action in any applicable factual conditions for multiple life-forms.

The issues in ethics, which are quite amenable to reason, is to then decide: whose interests take priority; on what grounds; how justifiable the grounds are; whether we are justifying them on subjective, inter-subjective, objective or invariant features of life and the universe when adjudicating (and whether we are clear about that); whether we are relying on evidence; whose evidence; whether we are filtering evidence to take account of the risk of bias and self-centredness; what the consequences are on the affected life-forms if we are wrong; what is the probability that we will get it right etc.

In the above example, we can consider a human putting a non-human mammal into the oven to eat. Is that ethical?

We can consider a human putting another human into the oven to eat. Is that ethical? How will we adjudicate or decide? On what basis are we sure our decision is no different to saying, ‘I prefer Manchester United to Liverpool’ or ‘I like green more than blue’?

It is simple in principle. We will do what is done in other sciences and use empirically falsifiable truths when building our framework to make laws and use as much data as possible to apply the correct factual landscape. We will engage as wide a community of decision-makers as possible. We will expect to get it wrong (again and again); we will keep trying. We will test our statements of truth and our assumptions.

A suitable universal ethical framework requires maximal degrees of ethical freedom and freedom of action that are consistent with the framework – it is not possible or safe to seek to move from the axiomatic statements to deciding all potential ethical decisions about what one ought to do in all possible factual landscapes for eternity.

This is also consistent with a prime axiom of maximal diversity. The proposal for an evolving empirical framework is precisely because of the dangers of any absolutist position, as witnessed by the death and suffering visited on millions of people – including restrictions on their freedom to do useful things such as experimenting with consensual conduct and enjoying life – in the name of scientific, economic, religious or ethical ‘truth’.

“The pencil is mightier than the pen”[23]

(Robert M. Pirsig)

What remains from Hume’s naturalistic fallacy is the concept that many laws cannot be entirely logically derived from any particular axiom on which they are built. Hume is correct in that. The ethical framework must be constructed in a way that creates laws by considering all relevant empirical axioms known at any time – and that keeps all the interacting elements under review.

“[Human] understanding and insight cannot be reduced to any set of computational rules … [Gödel] appears to have shown … that no such system of rules can ever be sufficient to prove even those propositions of arithmetic whose truth is accessible, in principle, to human intuition and insight”[24]

(Sir Roger Penrose)

Laws and axioms not meeting a sufficiently high threshold will not be considered prime and decisions not reaching a threshold of ethical confidence will be more provisional. Bearing in mind the great difficulties we have in being absolutely confident about the truth or the nature of things at all – one can see already how dangerous ethical propositions can be that are built on top of such axioms and contain additional assertions (that may not be found in the axioms themselves). Hume was right to warn us to be suspicious of grand claims made as moral truths.

Our ethical frameworks and thinking must be specified very carefully and suitably humbly given the very low chance of such ethical assertions being objective (never mind universal) propositions about the proper nature of things. The risk of getting it wrong in conducting dealings between life-forms or making decisions affecting other life-forms and species is very high.

Under my proposed ethical framework, the only invariant or universal rational foundation for ethics is the need to balance freedom of action and the maximal diversity of life-forms using wisdom and compassion. The framework is based on the universal value of life itself and aims to support the greatest prospects of success of life as manifested in its various life-forms and species. Ultimately that means the ability to have some diverse life-forms and species with the freedom to undertake any relative actions at all.

“I call him free who is led solely by reason”[25]

(Benedictus de Spinoza)

Reason’s Lack of Motive Power?

“We would rather be ruined than changed

We would rather die in our dread

Than climb the cross of the moment

And let our illusions die.”[26]

(W. H. Auden)

The art keeps alive the feeling of complete control. Yet it is only lyrical mastery of the description of destruction of the place we thought our home. Our universal lament, the unwantedness of a soul that must suffer to grow. The beloved song, resonating the reverberations of a breaking heart.

Our self-protection drive ensures that inertia to destruction of our parts (our resistance to transformation) includes inertia to destruction of our beliefs. Hume is on his strongest footing in warning us that an ethics built on reason will be powerless to change people’s opinions about right and wrong or, more importantly, their behaviour (even if they would agree if it does not accord with their desires and feelings). That is simply to say, humans are animals and not computers. On this he is right; humans are a life-form with a brain, nervous system and strong feelings (like all mammals) first. Humans are only capable of more objective reason and wisdom as a consequence of a whole range of influences including family values, social values, education, sources of public information, culture and history.

Ultimately, a human must be motivated to want to look at the world and the nature of ‘nature’ more carefully and to care about all life-forms more deeply. At a subjective level, Hume is right too. A person can be wrong ethically but not be persuaded to change their view even if they agree. However, that is not the test of a reasonable ethics in action.

How will we switch passion to compassion with which to drive our motivation to act reasonably and wisely – to make reason the slave to compassion? Are our ethical frameworks to be dictated by the lowest common denominator?

Would we refuse to make technological innovations until every person on Earth understood how the combustion engine or computer worked?

We need to evolve our ethics as quickly as we innovate our technology – whilst also working on a more holistic approach to a new education system and new social movements, which teach the values of knowledge, compassion, interconnectedness, nature’s diversity, utility and freedom of action. Failure on this front would ultimately undermine the effectiveness of any rational ethical architecture. In our politics and discourse on what we should do we need to find a new middle way, between: (i) increasingly extreme liberalism, which chafes like a Jesuit hairshirt and requires all manner of convoluted contrition to the god of not offending people (even with the truth or facts) and (ii) encouraging people to party without shame and preach selfishness and hate whilst the world burns.

In the meantime, an empirically grounded ethics may not motivate everyone, but that is not a scientific ground for contesting it. We are left with having to agree that ethics will likely always have some issues of irreducible logical and computational incompleteness. However, these also exist in the other so-called ‘hard’ scientific fields including physics, mathematics (Gödel’s incompleteness theories) and computer science (the ‘halting problem’).

This incompleteness of logic or mathematical truth and the difficulty in knowing which truths are computable have not led to abandonment of those fields of enquiry or undermined belief in the utility of their application. We accept that knowledge, like matter and life, has a degree of irreducible uncertainty or unknowability and we humbly work, like our nature, with the concept of negative capability. It is long past time that traditional philosophy and ethics joined the modern scientific and technological world.

“Because a child doesn’t understand a chain of reasoning,

should adults give up being rational?

If reasonable people don’t feel the presence of love within the universe,

that doesn’t mean it’s not there.” [27]

(Rumi)

Footnotes:

[1] Mike Wall, “Stephen Hawking Speaks Out On Space Exploration, Time Travel”, space.com, 12 September 2010 CE.

[2] Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Hume’s Moral Philosophy”.

[3] There is some confusion in the use of this term and often his theories are divided by philosophers into naturalistic and moralistic fallacies. Here I am using it as it is more commonly used to cover the ‘is–ought’ issue.

[4] Wikipedia, “Is–ought problem”.

[5] It appears a little unfair to conduct a disagreement with a dead person, but I am sure he would have appreciated the attention, i.e., that his work is still useful all these years later. I suspect that the subsequent scientific innovations in the last 300 years may well have made his position somewhat different if he was writing today.

[6] Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Hume’s Moral Philosophy”.

[7] This famously gave rise to Immanuel Kant’s ethical philosophical awakening: “I freely admit that it was the remembrance of David Hume which, many years ago, first interrupted my dogmatic slumber and gave my investigations in the field of speculative philosophy a completely different direction.”

[8] I notably do not deal with Immanuel Kant’s important work since it would be very time-consuming and distracting to the reader (and me); I have largely taken a position, which Kant might agree with, in proposing that ethics can be grounded in reason and even invariant properties of the universe. Hume is therefore the ethical sceptic that I must treat with.

[9] A Treatise of Human Nature, 1739 CE.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Hamlet, c. 1600 CE.

[12] Per Leibniz.

[13] The History Boys, 2004 CE.

[14] Since it is axiomatic that ethics is not engaged in such circumstances.

[15] Here, ‘good’ is used in its non-ethical sense of useful conduct.

[16] For example, it is necessary to break a high fall.

[17] Though some humans show extraordinary tolerance of risk or pain that can make them seem superhuman. Whether they are missing the relevant code is not relevant to what the average person ought to do, but it is relevant to the freedom/free will issue.

[18] A Treatise of Human Nature, 1739 CE.

[19] I have used some artistic licence for the sake of the flow – it is an ellipsoid.

[20] The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on “Hume’s Moral Philosophy” also expresses some doubts about this: “Yet it is hard to see how Hume, given his theory of causation, can argue that no mental item of a certain type (such as a causal belief) can possibly cause motivating passion or action … since he surely does not mean to say, in the other premise, that moral evaluations generate actions as their logical conclusions.”

[21] The modifications do not impact the logic but are necessary for the sense of it.

[22] Since it is axiomatic that ethics is not usually engaged in such circumstances.

[23] Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, 1974 CE.

[24] Shadows of the Mind, 1994 CE.

[25] Ethics, 1677 CE.

[26] The Age of Anxiety: A Baroque Eclogue, 1947 CE.

[27] 'Sexual urgency, What a woman’s laughter can do, and the nature of true virility', 1200s CE, Rumi: Selected Poems, trans. by Coleman Barks, 2004 CE.