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Ought we accept Hume’s severing of any connection between ‘is’ and ‘ought’?

Name: Ought we accept Hume’s severing of any connection between ‘is’ and ‘ought’? | Aeon Videos
Uploaded: 2016-08-12
Duration: 1 min
Description: Ought we accept Hume’s severing of any connection between ‘is’ and ‘ought’?

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How do you decide whether you ought to do something? Chances are you’ve employed statements about how things are or have been as the basis for making a judgment call. The 18th-century Scottish philosopher David Hume forcefully argued against this approach. According to ‘Hume’s law’, also known as the ‘is/ought problem’, determining what you ought to do based on what is represents a logical mistake because there’s a gap that reason cannot bridge between the facts of the world and the values you might espouse.

Video by BBC Radio 4 and The Open University

Script: Nigel Warburton

Animator: Andrew Park

12 August 2016

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