David Hume's Guillotine: the is-ought problem - Deepstash
David Hume's Guillotine: the is-ought problem

David Hume's Guillotine: the is-ought problem

David Hume, a 18th century philosopher, stated that no ought-judgement (prescriptive goal based) may be correctly inferred from a set of premises expressed in terms of is (facts). The implication being that if a reasoner only has access to non-moral and non-evaluative factual premises, the reasoner cannot logically infer the truth of moral statements. 

This is considered to be an un-solvable philosophical problem. Any existing try ends up with presuppositions of certain goal. In order to go from "Riding motorcycles is bad" to "You ought not ride motorcycles" one has to define bad in accordance with a goal. 

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vladimir

Life-long learner. Passionate about leadership, entrepreneurship, philosophy, Buddhism & SF. Founder @deepstash.

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