If we suppose now that the only type of substance having any reality is material substance--atoms, energy and the rest of the physical world--we see that, as has been known since Hume, we have no support for an ontology concerning what ought to be, or ought not to be.

The reason for this is that any “ought” in reality can only denote something psychological, and could never enter into any system that has only what is physical. Were there no life in all the cosmos, just atoms, the Earth and its minerals, wind, sand and stone; in such a word, can there be any way anything “ought” to be? Is it not completely absurd that a given stone “ought” to be round, hard, or porous, in a world with no life or consciousness? Obviously, just as “perception” always denotes something living to perceive, the idea that something, anything “ought to be” or “ought not to be” can only denote, speak to, or speak of, something psychological --consciousness with purpose, interest, and design. And if we are materialists who hold that zero psychological existence boils down to anything but physical existence, fundamentally, then all notions of “ought to be” and “ought not to be” are only so much nonsense, speech that denotes modes of psychology that, like the idea of Spirit and Soul, have no ultimate basis in reality.

But when we come to the realm of human life and experience--crossing now into the realm of Continental philosophy--we find that how reality ought to be is a fundamental and elemental aspect of human life. To take a bare perception of pain--a hand burnt in cooking--in that bare perception is the very essence of “ought not to be”--we flee from it, we can only desire to eradicate the pain of burn. The pain of the burn and the essence of “it ought not to be” are inextricably joined. Likewise with a wider view of life--we all have desires for what our future turns out to be, we all have ideas as to what would be less and more desirable lives for ourselves and usually plan accordingly--this too is a sense in which we inextricably join what ought to be to what is real. Of course, if what is physical were the only thing that were real on any level, no part of reality having a basis for what ought to be, we are denying that there is any truly existent “ought” in this world; but if so, we are basically lying to ourselves when we deny the reality of the “ought”. Nobody is totally disinterested in what his future may hold, nobody considers all destinies ultimately equal and value-neutral, nobody feels a burn in cooking and remains indifferent as to eradicating the sensation. Every day of our lives we are working and striving for what we experience as “how life ought to be”--is this all some lie we tell ourselves day after day, year after year? Is this all some fiction that we see through as illusion--is there really no level on which “what ought to be” is real?--is this all just human subjectivity having no basis in reality at all? I would hold that any man who says so is lying to us or to himself. What matter the mind/body dualism debate if all of us go to eternal hell? Or if it is our fate to die tortured in prison, but its pains and tortures made up of that “ought” are merely “human subjectivity” having no true or real ontology at all, is torture then easy, and is a horrifying death a small matter to consider?

Obviously the human subject through-and-through lives with the “ought” as distinct from what is. Obviously too the “ought” in things is real, and from some perspective is the most real thing there could be. The human condition is to have a stake in life. That stake is composed of value in experience--the perception that this or that is desirable or not (ought or ought not to be). Having a stake in life means that we have a goal and (we hope) a solution; and likewise the possibility that we may fail. How things ought to be can never enter into a system where all that is, is material substance, atoms and energy. But the human condition is a state of value--hardly any experience is totally value-neutral in terms of its desirability--and value means pain and pleasure. And we are what is at stake, the human condition being subject to a success, or failure in, life.