[lbo-talk] "Ought" from "Is" (Was: I'm not sorry)

[C. G. Estabrook]

It's a point he makes frequently, more or less formally.  Here's a casual
example, from an interview in 1998:

"Our moral nature is as much a part of us as our legs or arms. It leads to
conceptions of justice which you can chart and refine. It enters into
every aspect of life from children playing together up to international
affairs. The reason people differ is because they assess circumstances
differently. For example, we can look at the Russian invasion of
Afghanistan as unjust. Or we can look at the Russians defending the
Afghans from terrorists supported by the CIA. Americans took a similar
view when they invaded South Vietnam."


On Fri, 16 Jan 2004, Curtiss Leung wrote:

> ... Chomsky's attempts at a universal grammar underlying languages are
> all *descriptive*, not *prescriptive*.  His famous sentence "Colorless
> green ideas sleep furiously" is supposed to demonstrate that humans
> recognize an utterance as a sentence on the basis of its syntax, not
> its semantics. By extention, I don't see how one could postulate that
> he would support a prescriptive, substantial universal grammar of
> human behavior.  The basis for his ethical thought must lie elsewhere.