Part I: Foundations

The Is-Ought Gap Dissolves

Introduction

0:00 / 0:00

The Is-Ought Gap Dissolves

Let $D_{\text{exp}}$ be the set of facts at the experiential scale, including valence. Then normative conclusions about approach/avoidance follow directly from experiential-scale facts.

The is-ought gap was an artifact of looking only at the bottom (neutral-seeming) and top (explicitly normative) of the hierarchy, while ignoring the gradient between them. There is also an $\iota$ dimension to the artifact (the inhibition coefficient, introduced in Part II). The is-ought problem was formulated by philosophers operating at high $\iota$ —the mechanistic mode that factorizes fact from value, perception from affect, description from evaluation. At low $\iota$ , the gap does not appear with the same force: perceiving something as alive automatically includes perceiving its flourishing or suffering as mattering. The participatory perceiver does not need to bridge the gap because the participatory mode never separated the two sides. This does not make the dissolution merely perspectival. The viability gradient is there regardless of $\iota$ . But the perception that facts and values inhabit separate realms is a feature of the perceptual configuration, not of reality. The is-ought gap and the hard problem are ethical and metaphysical instances of the same $\iota$ artifact.

Normative Implication

Once we recognize that valence is a real structural property at the experiential scale—not a projection onto neutral physics—the fact/value dichotomy dissolves. "This system is suffering" is both a factual claim (about structure) and a normative claim (suffering is bad by constitution, not by convention).

Dependency note: This dissolution rests entirely on the identity thesis. If the identity thesis is wrong—if experience is something over and above cause-effect structure—then valence is a structural property without guaranteed normative weight, and the is-ought gap reopens. The normative force of the framework is exactly as strong as the case for the identity thesis, no stronger. This is why Part II's honest treatment of that thesis (including its unverifiability) matters: the normative conclusions inherit whatever uncertainty attaches to the metaphysical foundation.

The trajectory-selection framework developed above deepens this dissolution. If attention selects trajectories, and values guide attention—you attend to what you care about, ignore what you don't—then values are not epiphenomenal commentary on a value-free physical process. They are causal participants in trajectory selection. The system's "oughts" (what it values, what it attends to, what it measures) literally shape which trajectory it follows through state space. This is not the claim that wishing makes it so. The a priori distribution is still physics. But the effective distribution—the product of physics and measurement—depends on the measurement distribution, and the measurement distribution is shaped by values. In this sense, "ought" is not a separate domain from "is." Ought is a component of the mechanism that determines which "is" the system inhabits.