The Is-Ought Problem

David Hume published A Treatise of Human Nature in 1739. He later wrote that the book fell dead-born from the press, but it has become one of the most famous books in philosophy. Therein he posed the is-ought problem -- how can an "ought" statement be derived from an "is" statement? It has become one of the central questions of ethical theory.

While much has been written about it, I have not investigated it much. Anyway, having thought about it off and on for many years, I eventually decided that an "ought" statement cannot be deduced from an "is" statement, but an "ought" statement can be based on an "is" statement.

Reading some of Henry Hazlitt’s The Foundations of Morality (1964; free download here), I found that Hazlitt decided similarly.

“For ethics is a "normative" science. It is not a science of description, but of prescription. It is not a science of what is or was, but of what ought to be.”

“True, it would have no claim to scientific validity, or even any claim to be a useful field of inquiry, unless it were based in some convincing way on what was or what is” (11).

“And others have even gone on to assert that there is no way of getting from an is to an ought. If the latter statement were true, there would be no possibility of framing a rational theory of ethics. Unless our oughts are to be purely arbitrary, purely dogmatic, they must somehow grow out of what is" (11-12).

“Actions or rules of action are not "right" or "wrong" in the sense in which a proposition in physics or mathematics is right or wrong, but expedient or inexpedient, advisable or inadvisable, helpful or harmful. In brief, in ethics the appropriate criterion is not "truth" but wisdom” (52).