As a strong free will sceptic I agree that you can never reasonably tell someone “you ought to do X over and above Y”.
However, it makes complete sense to me in a purely deterministic world to make one small addition to the phrase:
“you ought to do X over and above Y in order to achieve Z”. The ought has no meaning without the Z, with the Z representing the ideal world you are deterministically programmed to want to live in.
Thanks for the comment (and welcome to the Forum! :) ). Yeah using conditional oughts seems like a pretty reasonable approach to me, though of course has some convenience cost when the Z is very widely shared (‘you ought to fix your brakes over drive without brakes in order to not crash’) so can perhaps then be implied.
As a strong free will sceptic I agree that you can never reasonably tell someone “you ought to do X over and above Y”.
However, it makes complete sense to me in a purely deterministic world to make one small addition to the phrase: “you ought to do X over and above Y in order to achieve Z”. The ought has no meaning without the Z, with the Z representing the ideal world you are deterministically programmed to want to live in.
Thanks for the comment (and welcome to the Forum! :) ). Yeah using conditional oughts seems like a pretty reasonable approach to me, though of course has some convenience cost when the Z is very widely shared (‘you ought to fix your brakes over drive without brakes in order to not crash’) so can perhaps then be implied.