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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.
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Stories and literature
Solaris and beyond – Stanisław Lem’s antidotes to the bores of American sci-fi
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Philosophy of language
For Ludwig Wittgenstein, language is a game, but not a frivolous one
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Art
Grotesque imagery meets religious conservatism in Hieronymus Bosch’s art
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Architecture
Why a sculptor pivoted from gallery installations to big-box stores design
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Mathematics
How a verbal paradox shattered the notion of total certainty in mathematics
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Values and beliefs
How a God-fearing Jewish woman found atheism – and bacon – in her later years
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War and peace
Before he leaves to go to war, Artem, 18, says goodbye to the man who raised him
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Metaphysics
To see the Universe more clearly, think in terms of processes, not objects
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Family life
A son of China’s former one-child policy remembers the sibling he never had
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