The gap between ‘is’ and ‘should’

Abstract

It has often been held that ethical statements cannot follow from premises consisting exclusively of statements of fact. Thus Karl Popper once said: Perhaps the simplest and most important point about ethics is purely logical. I mean the impossibility to derive [sic] nontauto« logical ethical rules — imperatives; principles of policy; aims; or however we may describe them — from statements of facts. Only if this fundamental logical position is realized can we begin to formulate the real problems of moral philosophy, and to appreciate their difficulty.1 KeywordsMoral ConclusionMoral ConsiderationValid ArgumentLogical NecessityPractical ArgumentThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.