Dismantling the Guillotine

[Phil Roberts, Jr.]

I've just posted the final version of a paper I recently
presented in Cincinnati.


Dismantling the Guillotine

Abstract: Aside from the mind body problem, there is perhaps no more infamous
philosophical perplexity than ‘Hume’s Guillotine’, i.e., the purported logical gap between
‘is’ (factual/ descriptive) premises and ‘ought’ (normative/ prescriptive) conclusions.
Based on the premise that our prescriptive ‘ought’s are actually referencing an implicit
theory of rationality along with my own proposed procedure for deciphering some of its
parameters, I offer a derivation of a moral prescriptive ‘ought’ (‘Love thy neighbor’)
from a descriptive ‘is’ (an implicit theory of rationality that is demonstrably “true”) on
the grounds that the concept/ attribute of rationality is the fount from which all
normativity flows. I also offer an explanation for why we, as quasi rational naturally
selected organisms experience and often respond to the tug of this moral maxim (‘Love thy
neighbor’) including those occasions when doing so falls well outside the predicted
parameters of inclusive fitness theory (Mother Teresa, self-endangering Greenpeacers,
self-incinerating Buddhist monks, etc.).


www.rationology.net/abstracts.htm#guillotine