The is-ought gap

Facts help us choose how to act, but a recommendation also needs a value or goal.

Hume calls attention to arguments that move from statements about what is to statements about what ought to be without explaining the transition. Making the evaluative premise explicit lets people disagree more precisely about evidence, priorities, or both.

For example: A feature increases time spent in an app. Calling that an improvement adds a value judgment; it does not follow from the measurement alone.

Keep in mind: Philosophers dispute the strongest formulations of the gap. It does not imply that evidence is irrelevant to ethics or that all moral claims are equivalent.

Think about it

Take a recommendation you support. Write its factual premise and its value premise separately.

Connected ideas

The veil of ignorance · Evolution has no foresight · The map is not the territory

Sources and further reading

• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Hume's Moral Philosophy

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