“Ought” is Subordinate to “Is”

Epistemology is subordinate to ontology, because “ought” is subordinate to “is” . The question of primacy in epistemology is settled easily –ought is again subordinate to is (possible) , or to what can or could be. Any word must have a driving function whose fundamental nature can be delineated. For words not immediately related to experience of the external world, the menu is limited to neurological operations, to combinations and variations of parameters related to various neurological and neurological system states. There are only so many things I can put behind words such as true, explanation, knowledge etc., the question then becomes what are these things now, and what should they be.

A given speakers epistemology then becomes a question involving an individual lexicon at a given moment.

How does language work? As it is internalized either visually or audibly we convert from the sensible to the neurological. What is the next level- syntactic? Notice that “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously. “ is at some sense comprehensible just as it is simultaneously meaningless. What is the evidence that semantics follows syntax? That the processing isn’t simultaneous? Syntax and semantics maybe logical as opposed to neurological distinctions. There maybe some neuro- research on this. Fmri’s on the difference.

Grant that I comprehend a proposition and that it is meaningful, e.g. it is syntactically and semantically acceptable. Does it convey information? Can it do so outside of a wider context? “The cat is on the mat.” Is this informative unless I know what cat and what mat is being talked about? I need to know something about the referenced entities. “Lincoln was a great president.” Maybe, maybe not, perhaps I have a theory to the effect that he could have prevented the civil war, or that he put the union above the abolition of slavery and thus was morally deficient.

The Lincoln proposition is a value judgment, I understand it as such if I know English and importantly, history. I know that somebody who asserts it, if I understand that they are asserting it; they could be doing something else; is making a value judgment and is probably in their view representing a fact.

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