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The Is-Ought Gap

This video presents the same text shown beside it, spoken and on screen. It adds nothing the text does not say.

State

Hume's is-ought gap: no set of purely factual premises entails a normative conclusion—somewhere, an "ought" premise must be supplied.

Show

"Smoking causes disease, therefore you should quit" hides a premise: you ought to avoid disease. State it, and the argument is honest.

Watch for

The gap does not make ethics arbitrary—it makes the ought-premises the part worth debating.