Journeyman Philosopher

Up until my previous year of schooling I looked at morality much more clearly. This could even be considered naive by me unfortunately. I lived in this moral paradise where I believed justifying vegetarianism/consequentialism/contractarianism was just a simple fact of explaining it clearly to individuals. That is of course until I was introduced to the concept of David Hume’s ‘Is ought gap’. 

Hume introduced the idea that it wasn’t possible to generate an ought from an is. This meant that even if you could convince someone of the sound reasoning behind a certain moral code, they would have no reason to adopt it unless it connected to their individual wants.If this is the case you don’t have a reason to accept Peter Singer’s Vegetarianism unless you value moral consistency, you don’t have a reason to accept anything unless you value something its connected to.

An example Hume used to explain this was ‘An individual could walk into a bar and says to a drinker. “You ought not to drink” “But I like to drink” “Well its bad for you so you ought not to” “Well I don’t care about that, I like to drink so I shall”‘

This creates a problem for all those that purport universal morality. It simply doesn’t exist, this ‘is ought gap’ damages these ideas of morality fatally. The key to moral debate and discussion is by connecting peoples wants to moral ideals.

This is a very important distinction for those that purport ultimate moral security. I hope to develop this idea further in the future. 

Note: I wanted to apologies to everyone who had their comments shuffled, its fixed now and as so I’m moving your comments around manually to the correct sections. Thanx for your comments again !