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    If 'ought' statements are indexed to the agent's own ends... — Carmelics
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    Challenges→Indexing 'ought' to different ends fails as an analysis of moral obligation

    If 'ought' statements are indexed to the agent's own ends, then 'We ought to bomb London' (Nazi) and 'Nobody ever ought to bomb anything' (pacifist) would not contradict one another

    Moral ResponsibilityPhilosophy of Language
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    Topics

    Moral ResponsibilityPhilosophy of Language

    Key Terms

    'Ought' statements(as used in ethics)
    Claims about what someone should do or what is the right thing to do—like 'you ought to help your friend' or 'we ought to tell the truth.'
    Agent's own ends(as used in ethics)
    A person's own goals, desires, or purposes—what they personally want to achieve or accomplish.
    Contradict one another(as used in logic)

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    Browse more in Moral Responsibility
    Related propositions within the same area of thought.
    When two statements directly oppose each other in a way that makes them both cannot be true at the same time—like saying 'it is raining' and 'it is not raining.'
    Indexed to(as used in ethics)
    Connected or adjusted according to something else; in this case, obligations that change based on how much risk someone is creating.
    Nazi(as used in the example statement)
    A member of the German fascist party that controlled Germany during World War II and committed horrific atrocities; used here as an example of a group with extreme moral views.
    Pacifist(as used in the example statement)
    Someone who believes violence and war are wrong and refuses to use force to solve problems.

    Connections

    1 topic

    Truth & Knowledge2 linked

    Related

    An analysis of 'ought' that eliminates genuine contradiction between such statem...Indexing 'ought' to different ends fails as an analysis of moral obligationIt is evident that those two statements do contradict one another

    Similar

    Under a consequentialist, self-indexed reading of 'ought', 'I ought to...83%If 'ought' is indexed to what a given agent believes to be good, then ...77%The inference from 'ought'-statements to meaning statements is questio...77%An analysis of 'ought' that eliminates genuine contradiction between s...77%

    Source

    AI-extracted
    SEP: russell-moral
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    But, as Russell plainly believes, there is a subject of debate between them, which means that relativistic readings of “good” and “bad” must (at least sometimes) be wrong. A similar problem afflicts his own subsequent analyses of “ought” and “right”. Since their “oughts” are indexed to different ends, it seems that when the Nazi says “We ought to bomb London” and the pacifist says “Nobody ever ought to bomb anything” they are not contradicting one another, though it is as clear as daylight that

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