Science isn't defining happiness in any overarching way. Its merely discovering how the individuals are defining it. (By which I mean as evident from their behavior, not from their assertions. It seems likely to me that most people do not consciously know what they truly want, and empirical examination of their behavior can elucidate that.) Using those results, science can then empirically investigate which actions individuals can take to advance their happiness. And since we live in a world of societies, that will necessitate interactions with other humans and therefore those interactions will shape your actions. After that, its all game theory.

opiate of everyone

I want to know why do you belive otherwise. Would you still value creativity if creative people made everyone feel miserable?

I think "we" tend to understand the "the", when it precedes a philosophical label (the naturalistic fallacy), as individuating one view or argument or fallacy at a time. If a philosophical label preceded by "the" refers to two completely different things, "we" tend not to use it as if it referred only to the thing that "we" want it to refer to. "We" are generally more careful than that. Of course, "we" also know about "the bandwagon fallacy", so "we" are usually not impressed by the fact that "we" happen to favor one usage over another when "we" ask what usage is correct.

Source, or pic of the passage please? If argumentation textbooks are appropriating philosophical labels and using them ahistorically, then that's a problem. In no course readings of or about Hume have I encountered the term "naturalistic fallacy". It's always the is-ought problem or the fact-value distinction (which in itself, isn't exactly the is-ought problem, as far as I understand).

But don't listen to me.

Yes. I understand all that -- which is why I keep saying it is a political/religious/philosophical issue not a scientific issue.

Unless you mean that science just publishes the book of "How To Be Happy" and it is up to individuals to freely pursue it or not.

What if we could scan your brain and discover what makes you happy specifically?

It depends, again, on the cost.

But to avoid getting mired in semantics, let's try it this way:

I doubt that a thorough, scientific investigation into what is the "optimal" living arrangement in human society would decide in favor of the arrangement that "makes the most people happy".

I think some discontentment is both inevitable and desirable. We evolved to feel unhappiness for a reason. Artificially removing that feeling would not be optimal. It would remove a motivation for improving things. Honestly if we were a naturally happy species we would likely still be in the forest eating termites and bananas.

I would relocate far far away from you.

You should get a job making points like these.

You should get a job making posts like these.

This is an absolute truth, so I suggest you think about how you are wrong on this one.

Your example about atomism is a philosophical question that is in the realm of empiricism - how far can we divide matter? Is matter discrete? The questions are exactly what empiricism is designed to answer - what are the rules governing the physical world?

But you are thinking far too narrowly. Your brain has clearly been rotted by empiricism. Below is a tiny fraction of the important questions where philosophy will always - regardless of what we know - be more important than scientific results:

How should humans live?
Should there even be a "should" that we apply to everyone?
Is it right to maximise happiness, or is human suffering a important part of who we are?
What is the value of a life?
According to what principles should we organize our social and legal institutions?
It is right, or desirable, to err on the side of freedom, or safety and control?
Is slavery tolerable, or even good, in the grand scheme of things?
Is the individual more important than the whole?

I defy you to tell me any way in which these incredibly important questions have been answered by science - or even could be.

Will post tomorrow. You going to eat your crow?

Of course, if you answer relevantly.

Hint: You can post that your logic textbooks do in fact define the naturalistic fallacy as Hume's is-ought problem. That's why I said, "If argumentation textbooks are appropriating philosophical labels and using them ahistorically, then that's a problem." However, if you hit me with some Hume scholarship that uses "the naturalistic fallacy" to refer to the is-ought problem, without hesitating to say that Moore invented the term 200 years later for an unrelated argument, then you can pass me the salt.

To the degree that the answers to these are nonempirical (there's certainly an empirical component to analyzing the structure of legal systems, for example), it's not like philosophy has answered- or ever will answer- these questions in a way that somebody like me will find meaningful or satisfactory.

The answers- at least the intellectually honest ones- are of the general form "Given value judgments X, Y is better than Z." But why is value judgment X correct? Either because of some other value judgment W, or now or eventually, because the speaker just decided he liked it and pulled it out of his ass (or regurgitated it after swallowing it out of somebody else's ass).

But there's no response to somebody who simply says "I don't believe value judgment X is correct", or even "I don't see why value judgment X is better than value judgment Y, Z, P, D, or Q" (assuming all are self-consistent). There's no way to demonstrate to a neutral party that X is better/correct (by definition, if there were, it would be empirical).

The only reason responses like that are taken seriously at all (in 2011) as actual answers is because enough people believe the value judgments are actually correct and treat the philosophical answers as actual answers instead of just conditional logical analysis (I made this point in another thread, that philosophers were presenting their ideas as actually true instead of metaethically conditional). It may as well be a mass religious belief- because when trying to pass off the crap that was written as actual answers, you may as well be talking about how Lord Xenu infected you with midichlorians- it makes perfect sense to scientologists and none to anybody else. The ideas themselves- and the ridiculous level of acceptance of them as actual meaningful answers- are just laughable to somebody who hasn't been indoctrinated in the same cult.

Nonempirical philosophy has nothing for me- and never can or will have an actual answer for me- when it comes to real-world questions. That anybody is even under the delusion that it does or will have actual answers is depressing.

What if scientists could prove that cockroaches are happy and also developed a device to transform you into a cockroach?

You're shifting goalposts. I said that current philosophers tend to use 'naturalistic fallacy' only to describe the is-ought mistake. That's all I need to show.

I doubt there are meaningful empirical answers to some of the big questions.

I think the truth is that we have the ability (opportunity, responsibility, burden, whatever you like) to choose certain answers and proceed as if they are true.

You can not like that. I think a lot of people don't like that, which is why they are so fond of gods.

If any empirical answers come along to the big questions, I'll be happy to learn of them, but I'm still going to ask "is this answer better than the other answers?"

If current philosophers tend to use "naturalistic fallacy" only to describe the is-ought mistake then I'd conclude either:

1) They don't know the history of the term and don't know/remember Moore's original discussion and how it differs from is-ought.

2) They know the history of the term, they understand Moore's original discussion, they understand that it's a different discussion from is-ought. And they don't care. They just like the ring of "naturalistic fallacy"; "is-ought problem" is just not sexy enough. So they're abducting the term and saying screw the philosophy student from 2021 who will get an F on his "Moore and the Naturalistic Fallacy" term paper because half of his research will be on Hume's is-ought problem.

P.S. Why would you want to call the is-ought problem the naturalistic fallacy anyway? Hume is making a purely formal point.

I'd resist the claim that contemporary philosophers only use the "naturalistic fallacy" to describe the is-ought problem. Search for it on SEP and all of the uses of the "naturalistic fallacy" on the first page are about Moore, not Hume. I think where the confusion comes from here is that many philosophers think (incorrectly) that Moore was making the same point as Hume.

I actually think it makes more sense to call the is-ought problem a fallacy, as it identifies a logical error, whereas Moore's concerns are about the semantic properties of "goodness," and not clearly logical at all.

You don't reject the answers, you reject the questions.

Do you reject the foundations of science because they are non-empirical?

Science is the best method we have ever devised to understand the universe. It will solve most problems.

I'm definitely resisting it. Durka is claiming his logic textbooks and the philosophers in his dept or in his circle favor using "naturalistic fallacy" only to describe the is-ought problem. I did see a couple of logical fallacy links on google that supported durka in so far as some of some entries where flatly saying stuff like: The Naturalistic Fallacy: the notion that you can derive ought from is.

It seems to me that philosophers should steadfastly resist using it to describe anything other than Moore's use of it.

Precisely, this is what I remembered from your post in the other thread, and I've since tried to look up a few things on my own. It SUCKS that I don't have JSTOR access otherwise I would read this in a heartbeat: Moore Is-Ought

Yeah, in my googling last night I came across 'is-ought fallacy' and I thought that was a good name. My question here was, why do they want to call is-ought a naturalistic fallacy when it is, as you say, a point of logic. What does naturalism have to do with the logical problem in is-ought?

Yes, the SEP says this, but so what? Go around polling philosophers what they think the Naturalistic Fallacy is, and they'll overwhelmingly say the is-ought mistake. That's ALL I'M SAYING. For f's sake, this is absurd.

bandwagon fallacy

durka, you say to the guy abruptly "you're beginning the question with a big fat juicy naturalistic fallacy"

This is borderline trolling. If you're borderline trolling the guy and you make a whopper of a mistake in the process of shtting on him, some of us here won't let it stand. So absurd or not, take your medicine or be nicer.

Meaning is use.

For durka, OP or anyone who knows -

In my googling, I came across this comment: "2) Does No-Ought-From-Is afford any support for non-cognitivism? No. That is a vulgar error. No [non-vacuous]
hedgehog conclusions can be validly derived from ‘hedgehog’-free premises, but it does not follow that hedgehog propositions are of a fundamentally
different semantic kind from non-hedgehog propositions."

Does this mean that is-ought problem is just one instance out of many of a more general logical fallacy?