Picking up from the previous thread.

I have written significant arguments in support of that simple assertion.

You either have a demonstration that true categorical imperatives exist that don’t reduce to hypothetical imperatives, or you do not. So far, you have not presented any here. So you have made no relevant point here.

For clarity, allow me to quote what I am rejecting, and state why I am rejecting it.
“3. All imperatives (all ‘ought’ statements) are hypothetical imperatives.”
The core problem with that premise, as written, is that it lacks some critically necessary qualifiers.

There are no necessary qualifiers. (3) is not an analytical but an empirical statement. On current evidence, “All imperatives (all ‘ought’ statements) are hypothetical imperatives” just as on current evidence “The Earth is not flat.” That it is logically possible the Earth is flat is irrelevant to the premise. Only what is known to be true pertains to what is known to be true. Mere logical possibilities cannot do the work of established facts. We must draw conclusions from the known, not the unknown.

Statements remain statements even if they express untruth.

This article is only about true imperatives. Not false ones.

This is plainly stated before the premise list you are referring to (“In short, if we can answer the “how do you know [x] is fact and not merely your opinion?” question for any x in any other science, we can do it for any x in moral science. And in precisely the same ways.”).

So we are not discussing “mere opinions” but “what is known.” What is unknown is of no relevance to answering the question “What Exactly Is Objective Moral Truth?”

(Carrier)
“So just “saying” you reject it is not a response”
Not a significant or substantial response by itself, agreed, although, manifestly, I have written significant arguments in support of that simple assertion.

For clarity, allow me to quote what I am rejecting, and state why I am rejecting it.
“3. All imperatives (all ‘ought’ statements) are hypothetical imperatives.”
The core problem with that premise, as written, is that it lacks some critically necessary qualifiers. That is at the heart of why I reject your premise 3 above.

By contrast, in your post of January 6, 2025 at 1:33 pm your argument contains two critical qualifiers:
“All known categorical imperatives we can assign a truth value to reduce to hypothetical imperatives.”
Agreed. By adding the qualifiers “known” and “we can assign a truth value to” you have corrected the incomplete wording of premise 3. Further, that truth value is necessarily the truth value of an objective standard, like the rules of a card game, true only by convention but subjective or emotive at base.

But premise 3 as worded in your post of 4 September 2013 refers to “ought statements”. Statements remain statements even if they express untruth.

Thus, there are at least these 2 sorts of imperative statements:
1.Hypothetical imperative statements that have conventional truth value.
2.Categorical imperative statements that do not contain meaningful truth value, do not reduce to hypothetical imperative statements, and remain “ought statements” nonetheless.

Imperatives (“ought statements”) that do not reduce to hypothetical imperatives exist in abundance. The statements exist, they can be read and heard ad nauseum. There are a multitude of people telling us what we ought to do as mere subjective or emotive commands, with no identifiable sound reasoning to support those “ought statements”, yet those “ought statements” exist.

I agree, for a moral statement to have any meaningful truth value at all it must reduce to a hypothetical imperative, in which case the truth value of that statement is necessarily only by convention, while remaining subjective or emotive at base.

Hypothetical imperatives are just a way of organizing and communicating our subjective and emotive moral beliefs and utterances. If one subjectively or emotively desires X, then there are scientifically demonstrable better and worse ways to go about achieving that desire.

To be fair, you wrote that particular line (premise 3 above) over 11 years ago, and I am not trying to play gotchya with every word you have ever written. Still, the post does ask the reader which premise the reader rejects, and I reject premise 3 above, the claim that “all ought statements are hypothetical imperatives”, at face value of the plain text as it was then written, since a multitude of counterexample statements exist.

I reject premise 3. I believe that is responding to the article’s argument, at least in part.

No, it is not, because I make an argument for that premise. So just “saying” you reject it is not a response. You have to explain how you can reject it given what the article says about that.

Kant’s (or everybody’s) inability to establish a categorical imperative does not entail that categorical imperatives do not exist

That still requires one to prove they do exist, and can’t be reduced to hypotheticals and still carry any meaningful truth value. Which is the point of the article you are supposed to be responding to.

Your reasoning on this point is a case of the fallacy of denying the antecedent, which is to invalidly conclude the negation of the consequent by denying the antecedent.
If (we can establish a categorical imperative), then (categorical imperatives exist).
We cannot establish a categorical imperative.
Therefore, categorical imperatives do not exist.

That is not my argument.

My argument is:

All known categorical imperatives we can assign a truth value to reduce to hypothetical imperatives.

If all known categorical imperatives we can assign a truth value to reduce to hypothetical imperatives, then all known imperatives that have an assignable truth value are hypothetical imperatives.

If all known imperatives that have an assignable truth value are hypothetical imperatives after thousands of years of searching, then we have no good reason to deny that all imperatives are hypothetical imperatives.

Therefore, we have no good reason to deny that all imperatives are hypothetical imperatives.

Obviously I am here paraphrasing into formal language six colloquial paragraphs. But that’s the argument made there.

You then discuss Philippa Foot and other survey items but provide no further support there for your assertion that “all ought statements” are hypothetical imperatives.

I cite two proofs (Foot’s and mine). That is called support.

e.g., “I have a demonstration of it (with references to the supporting philosophical literature) in my chapter on Moral Facts (pp. 340-42)” which includes a citation to Foot’s demonstration.

That statement is of the form:
(categorical imperatives) are in the set of A or B.
It would not make sense that B is a sort of A, since that would make B a subset of A, which would eliminate B as distinct from A. Therefore, per your statement B is not an A, in other words, B is a sort of categorical imperative that is not a hypothetical imperative and is also incapable of being true in any meaningful sense.

That is not a correct analysis of anything I have argued. See above.

…the statement itself can simply be an emotive command, or the statement itself can be asserted to simply be a law of nature, or an edict from some non-human source such as god perhaps somehow channeled through non-rational revelation, or simply a real existent ontological feature of the cosmos that is a matter of objective fact whether we have a means to establish that fact through reason or not.

Possibly is not probably.

To deny that all known imperatives capable of being meaningfully true are hypotheticals, you have to demonstrate that any of these hypothesized categoricals are meaningfully true without thereby reducing to hypotheticals.

This indeed includes commands of god, which fail either to be meaningfully true (we have no reason to obey them or even care about them at all) or reduce to hypotheticals (any reason to heed them always analyzes the command into a hypothetical imperative).

See, for example, The Moral Bankruptcy of Divine Command Theory.

Hi Richard,
I appreciate the response.  I generally agree with most things you say on most subjects, for example:
Objective Moral Facts
https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/11727
“Whenever you get into or see an argument over whether objective moral facts exist, stop everything until you ascertain what it is you or others are actually arguing about.”
Sound advice indeed.

You quite reasonably requested, “So, can you please respond to the article’s argument?”
Under the heading above “Breaking It Down Into Easier to Follow Units” you present 6 premises and ask which one the reader rejects.  I reject premise 3.  I believe that is responding to the article’s argument, at least in part.  A broader response seems likely to become unwieldy in the context of a blog conversation.

I agree with this statement under premise 3 above in the scientific sense of “true”:
“A hypothetical imperative is an imperative proposition that reduces to an “if, then” conditional, such that “if you desire x, then you ought to do y” can be factually and objectively true (and empirically discoverable and demonstrable as such).”

I am not contesting this assertion, but it is not relevant to my rejection of premise 3:
” his (Kant’s) attempt to prove there was a second kind of imperative failed”.  
Kant’s (or everybody’s) inability to establish a categorical imperative does not entail that categorical imperatives do not exist, or that there does not exist a non-human source for a categorical imperative, or that a categorical imperative cannot be a law of nature that is prior to humanity.  Further, premise 3 refers to “statements”.  An inability to rationally establish a statement as objectively true does not entail that such statements are not statements generally or categorical imperative statements specifically.

Your reasoning on this point is a case of the fallacy of denying the antecedent, which is to invalidly conclude the negation of the consequent by denying the antecedent.
If (we can establish a categorical imperative), then (categorical imperatives exist).
We cannot establish a categorical imperative.
Therefore, categorical imperatives do not exist.

You then discuss Philippa Foot and other survey items but provide no further support there for your assertion that “all ought statements” are hypothetical imperatives.

But this is just a single blog post.  I am not trying to play gotchya or cherry-pick or proof-text your blog posts.  You provide arguments elsewhere, such as here (that you kindly referenced in your above response to me).
https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/8903
Open Letter to Academic Philosophy: All Your Moral Theories Are the Same

However, part of what you say under premise 3 serves to contradict premise 3. I agree with this statement:
“Basically, categorical imperatives must either be hypothetical imperatives or incapable of being true in any meaningful sense.”

That statement is of the form: 
(categorical imperatives) are in the set of A or B.  
It would not make sense that B is a sort of A, since that would make B a subset of A, which would eliminate B as distinct from A. Therefore, per your statement B is not an A, in other words, B is a sort of categorical imperative that is not a hypothetical imperative and is also incapable of being true in any meaningful sense.

To see how B is not a hypothetical imperative please allow me to return to your definition of the form of a hypothetical imperative I agree with:
“if you desire x, then you ought to do y”

A categorical imperative form, then, could be described as a statement that:
“you ought to do y”
To attempt to establish through reason that you ought to do y I agree that hypothetical imperatives may be employed, however, the statement itself can simply be an emotive command, or the statement itself can be asserted to simply be a law of nature, or an edict from some non-human source such as god perhaps somehow channeled through non-rational revelation, or simply a real existent ontological feature of the cosmos that is a matter of objective fact whether we have a means to establish that fact through reason or not.

I appreciate the links and references to investigate details that you might not have room to repeat in every post.  However, that referenced post (Open Letter to Academic Philosophy: All Your Moral Theories Are the Same) neglects what the majority means when they assert a moral truth, objective morality, or categorical imperative. Rather, what is argued is that the attempt to establish a moral theory as true always reduces to a system of hypothetical imperatives.

One example of what many would cite as a moral truth, objective moral fact, or categorical imperative, is “thou shalt not kill”.  Establishing this assertion through reason or moral theories or philosophical debates is typically irrelevant to such an assertion of objective morality,  ultimate authority, or moral categorical imperative.  It is commonly believed that this moral command resides as a real feature of existence outside of any human being, predates humanity, and has been simply channeled to humanity from this extra-human source quite apart from any process of rational deduction.  

Such assertions of categorical imperative statements do not reduce to hypothetical imperatives; rather, they are naked emotive expressions of non-rational beliefs.

I agree that such assertions of extra-human sources for a categorical imperative are provably untrue, but that is the most common sense in which the term “objective morality” is popularly employed.  Further, such an “objective morality” is proved logically impossible not by your arguments, but rather, by the form of argument Plato wrote in his dialog between Socrates and Euthyphro.  

But that gets into further discussion in which I assert that a hypothetical imperative is merely a rule in an objective standard, like the rules of a card game, true only by adherence to a convention, and thus subjective at base.  Thus, all moral hypothetical imperatives are examples of subjective or emotive expressions because the desire for x in the antecedent is always fundamentally subjective or emotive, even though the consequent can be shown scientifically to follow from the antecedent. I can expand on that as well, but I think I will close here for now.

Thus, I stand by my original rejection of your premise 3 for the reasons stated above.  All the best, I really appreciate your work generally.

I’m not sure what you are talking about. I refuted this argument in the article you are commenting on (I demonstrate all categorical imperatives reduce to hypothetical imperatives).

So, can you please respond to the article’s argument?

(It might help you to read subsequent work expanding on the very point I make here. But only bother reading that if you are going to take any of this seriously.)

You go on to disprove your own premise.  Categorical imperatives are not necessarily hypothetical imperatives. You show that yourself.

(Carrier)
“Basically, categorical imperatives must either be hypothetical imperatives or incapable of being true in any meaningful sense.”

Thus, you correctly identify two sorts of categorical imperative statements:
1. Those that reduce to hypothetical imperatives.
2. Those that do not reduce to hypothetical imperatives and are “incapable of being true in any meaningful sense”.

Categorical imperative statements that cannot be meaningfully true are categorical imperative statements nonetheless.  Thus, you disprove your own premise 3., concurrently proving moral antirealism.

You are correct in identifying all ought statements as being in the form of:
A. “if you desire x, then you ought to do y” 
or 
B. “incapable of being true in any meaningful sense”

In case A there can be no objective truth of the moral matter that one ought to desire x.  Desire for x is necessarily a mere subjective or emotive expression. Desire is itself an emotion. One simply does desire or want x directly, or perhaps there are reasons for wanting x, but such reasons necessarily reduce to further desires or wants for p, q, r, and so forth, which are in turn not objectively morally good or evil, only objectively what one simply is experiencing as a want. Moral realism is thus ruled out in case A.

In case B there can be no objective truth of the moral matter because there is no truth in any meaningful sense whatsoever.

You have correctly identified that statements claiming to utter descriptions of an objectively true moral good, or objectively true moral evil, either reduce to a hypothetical imperative (in which the antecedent expression of desire cannot be an expression of an objective moral truth), or the claimed objective moral truth statement simply is “incapable of being true in any meaningful sense”.

Plato, more than two millennia ago in his story of Socrates and Euthyphro, gave us an example of the form of argument that decisively rules out moral realism by showing that statements claiming to express objectively true moral good or moral evil always result in either a non-converging infinite regress or a mere arbitrary emotive expression.

You, through your analysis of imperatives, have given us another form of moral antirealism proof that shows that all ought statements are either merely conditional on a subjective or emotive desire, or simply make no meaningful sense.

Thank you.

“even Kant’s deontological ethics reduces to a special form of teleological ethics which reduces in turn to a special form of virtue ethics, which reduces in turn to a system of hypothetical imperatives.”

I’ve been thinking along exactly the same lines, and this clears up a few of the remaining details.

Thanks!

Although I quite like some of the points Harris makes regarding morality (e.g., his coverage of the ‘moral landscape’), there have always been some major gaps. As you mentioned above, he really does need to be more rigorous. Everyone says that Harris is just being colloquial and casual for the laypeople, but a tremendous problem with his approach has been – as again you mentioned – his indifference to the philosophy of morality. The Moral Landscape was a remarkably thin book, which really needed a great deal more elaboration of points and address given to opposing arguments from both theists, and perhaps secular humanists (e.g., Anthony Grayling, though he tends to get side-tracked by romanticising the good life and rarely addresses the scientific / psychological literature regarding morality).

If you leave gaping holes in your own knowledge, you are asking for a whole heap of trouble. For example, in his debate with Dr. Craig, he failed to address some ostensibly damning arguments from Craig, which were proclaimed to be ‘knock-downs’; no doubt because he was unsure how to respond. Despite annihilating Dr. Craig’s objective moral foundation, he left his own open to the same fate. He seemed to be much more interested in delivering a polemic on theistic morality, than in delivering an alternative. His ‘casual’ approach may lead to the very laypeople he is trying to communicate his ideas to seeing them as having more flaws [floors for analogy] than a skyscraper. Consequently, they will dismiss a pre-existing thesis which has been better argued for by proponents for that same thesis such as yourself.

Admittedly, I have also committed the crime you noted. I have never even heard of Phillipa Foot, so I will have to read up. On that note, are there any debates of this nature on YouTube that you would recommend watching (i.e., ones where metaphysical naturalism / secular morality have been more comprehensively argued for and defended)? At this rate if I stick to books, I’m going to go cross-eyed, lol.