You can describe how people play. Can you derive how they should play?
Play It
Characterization
In Book III of A Treatise of Human Nature (1739), David Hume observed that writers on morality routinely shift from statements about what is the case to statements about what ought to be the case — and that this transition is never justified. No collection of factual premises, however complete, entails a normative conclusion. The world can be described exhaustively — every particle catalogued, every behaviour predicted — and the description will not tell you what you should do. This is the Is–Ought Problem, sometimes called Hume's guillotine, and it remains one of the deepest unsolved problems in moral philosophy. G. E. Moore's open question argument (1903) reinforced it: for any natural property X, it always makes sense to ask "but is X good?" — which means goodness cannot be identical to any natural property. Attempts to bridge the gap have been persistent and unsuccessful. Sam Harris's The Moral Landscape (2010) argued that science can determine human values by grounding "ought" in the well-being of conscious creatures; critics (including Hume scholars and professional ethicists) objected that this merely relocates the normative premise rather than deriving it. Hilary Putnam challenged the fact–value dichotomy itself, arguing that facts and values are entangled at every level of inquiry. The Academy hosts the Is–Ought Problem in the Heart School because it asks the question that haunts every rule: you can describe how people play, but can you demonstrate how they should?
Lineage
David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, Book III, Part I, Section I (1739). G. E. Moore, Principia Ethica (Cambridge University Press, 1903). The label "Hume's guillotine" was coined by Max Black. Sam Harris, The Moral Landscape (Free Press, 2010). Hilary Putnam, The Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy (Harvard University Press, 2002). Philippa Foot, "Morality as a System of Hypothetical Imperatives," Philosophical Review 81(3), 1972. John Searle, "How to Derive 'Ought' from 'Is'," Philosophical Review 73(1), 1964, proposed a derivation; critics (including Hare and Flew) rejected it.
Quests
The Magus
Attempt to construct a valid argument whose premises are purely descriptive (containing no normative terms) and whose conclusion is genuinely normative. If you succeed, defend your argument against the charge that a hidden normative premise lurks within. If you conclude the bridge cannot be built, explain precisely why — drawing on Hume, Moore, and Putnam — and consider what this failure means for moral reasoning in practice.
The Adventurer
Identify a real-world policy debate (climate change, public health, criminal justice) where factual claims and value claims are deeply entangled. Disentangle them as carefully as you can: Which claims are purely descriptive? Which are purely normative? Which resist classification? Reflect on whether Putnam's critique of the fact-value dichotomy illuminates your findings.
Trace the history of the is-ought problem from Hume's original observation in A Treatise of Human Nature (1739) through Moore's naturalistic fallacy, the logical positivists' fact-value distinction (Ayer), Philippa Foot's challenge, Hilary Putnam's critique, and Sam Harris's attempted bridge. For each thinker, explain what they contributed and why the gap remains unbridged.