Editing Is–ought problem (section)

===Oughts and goals===
[[Ethical naturalists]] contend that moral truths exist, and that their truth value relates to facts about physical reality. Many modern naturalistic philosophers see no impenetrable barrier in deriving "ought" from "is", believing it can be done whenever we analyze goal-directed behavior. They suggest that a statement of the form ''"In order for agent ''A'' to achieve goal ''B'', ''A'' reasonably ought to do ''C''"'' exhibits no [[category error]] and may be factually verified or refuted. "Oughts" exist, then, in light of the existence of goals. A counterargument to this response is that it merely pushes back the "ought" to the subjectively valued "goal" and thus provides no fundamentally objective basis to one's goals which, consequentially, provides no basis of distinguishing moral value of fundamentally different goals. A [[Dialectical naturalism|dialectical naturalist]] response to this objection is that although it is true that individual goals have a degree of subjectivity, the process through which the existence of goals is made possible is not subjective—that is, the advent of organisms capable of subjectivity, having occurred through the objective process of [[evolution]]. This dialectical approach goes further to state that subjectivity should be conceptualized as objectivity at its highest point, having been the result of an unfolding developmental process.{{citation needed|date=June 2022}}

This is similar to work done by the moral philosopher [[Alasdair MacIntyre]], who attempts to show that because ethical language developed in the West in the context of a belief in a human [[Telos (philosophy)|telos]]—an end or goal—our inherited moral language, including terms such as good and bad, have functioned, and function, to evaluate the way in which certain behaviors facilitate the achievement of that telos. In an evaluative capacity, therefore, good and bad carry moral weight without committing a category error. For instance, a pair of scissors that cannot easily cut through paper can legitimately be called bad since it cannot fulfill its purpose effectively. Likewise, if a person is understood as having a particular purpose, then behaviour can be evaluated as good or bad in reference to that purpose. In plainer words, a person is acting good when that person fulfills that person's purpose.<ref name="after virtue">{{cite book |last=MacIntyre |first=Alasdair |authorlink=Alasdair MacIntyre |title=After Virtue: A Study in Moral Philosophy |url=https://archive.org/details/aftervirtuestudy0000maci |url-access=registration |location=Notre Dame, IN |publisher=[[University of Notre Dame Press]] |year=1981 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/aftervirtuestudy0000maci/page/148 148–50] |isbn=9780268005948 }}</ref>

Even if the concept of an "ought" is meaningful, this need not involve morality. This is because some goals may be morally neutral, or (if they exist) against what is moral. A poisoner might realize his victim has not died and say, for example, "I ought to have used more poison," since his goal is to murder. The next challenge of a moral realist is thus to explain what is meant by a "''moral'' ought".<ref>{{cite book |author-link=H. L. A. Hart |last=Hart |first=H. L. A. |title=The Concept of Law |title-link=The Concept of Law |year=1994  |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |isbn=9780198761228}}</ref>