Suppose love, respect, compassion, justice etc - summed up by the word morality are of extreme importance.
Then we need logic to affirm them as such and as true.
They need that total validation in themselves.
We need that total validation for ourselves.
We know that if people are not trusting enough of moral values, how things soon come apart.
The validity and importance of morality is a very big and basic claim. Big claims need proof or the best evidence out there. Otherwise there is nothing left but how we feel or think we intuit what is right. That will harm for we know feelings are poor guides.
Psychologically, facts and values are intertwined, but the feeling that something is a moral obligation doesn’t make it one.
The mind glues every is to an ought; yet a sense of moral duty is not proof of moral truth.
David Hume famously emphasized — the so-called is–ought problem. Just because something is a certain way, it doesn’t logically follow that it ought to be that way. Our moral feelings can make an “ought” seem obvious, but that feeling doesn’t justify it on its own. No matter how much somebody suffers that does not prove that he ought to be helped even a bit.
Not only is there the general human tendency to conflate is and ought, but also the first-person illusion that can occur within your own moral experience.
Let’s unpack that:
• Psychological fusion:
When you perceive something as being a certain way — especially in social or
emotional contexts — your mind often automatically appends an evaluative or
prescriptive stance. For instance, seeing someone act rudely might immediately
evoke the sense “they shouldn’t do that.” This “ought” feels built into
perception itself.
• The phenomenological illusion:
• It may feel to me like a moral ought, but that does not mean it is a moral
ought to me.
Here you’re distinguishing between:
• The felt sense of moral obligation — an internal impression of “this is wrong.”
• The reflective endorsement of that obligation — what you, upon reflection, actually recognize as your moral standard.
In other words, your mind can generate what feels like a moral imperative, but you might later judge that it was really just a socially conditioned reaction, an emotional bias, or an automatic norm you don’t actually endorse.
• Philosophical implications:
This distinction mirrors the difference between moral intuition and moral reasoning.
• Intuitions (the felt “oughts”) are fast, automatic, and often inherited from culture or evolution.
• Reflected moral judgment (“what is a moral ought to me”) involves deliberation, coherence with one’s values, and possibly rejecting some intuitions.
This points to an important kind of moral phenomenology:
“It feels like obligation from the inside, but I might later see that it was only a psychological ‘ought’ — not a genuine moral one by my own lights.”
SO?
Logic cannot show an is - somebody suffering - gives rise to an ought - I should help.
It should for it is a very serious matter - big claims need big verification.
Psychology only seems to have an answer. It is not a great help either. The glue it puts between the is and the ought is very weak indeed. Every person has favourite evils - for them the glue is not there at all. If the glue is needed to be there, then it follows that they are not doing wrong when they harm.
Saying God gives you your psychology so that means he has glued the is and the ought is an interesting suggestion. But if the glue is there, who cares why it is there? Just be glad it is. And it does not change the fact that psychology is not reliable. God is only a red herring.
Every one of us knows we cannot prove an is gives rise to an ought.
Are we gluing them psychologically for there is no other way to do it? That is fearful and a very negative way to approach good. We seem to do it automatically as if conditioned by others - by society.
That exposes our morality not as pure and good ideal but as a construct - a necessary evil. A necessary evil is about trying to keep evil in a cage rather than getting rid of it. If we try to control evil, we do not convince, for evil by definition does not tolerate being controlled. And to quarantine it is to say, “We are okay with evil as long as we put that wall around it.” We have evil inside of us.