PHLA11H3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Universalizability, John Stuart Mill, Felicific Calculus
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Descriptive claim: a claim that describes the world as it is: ex. Obama is the president of the united states. Normative claim: a claim about how the world should be rather than how things: ex. Both descriptive and normative claims can be true or false. The difference is in the subject matter a difference in what the claims are about. Moral claims are claims about how people ought to act, rather than about how people do in fact act. Prudential claims: claims about what would be prudent or in your self- interest: you should eat a lot of leafy greens . Normative epistemic (concerning knowledge) claims: claims about what one should believe, or how one ought to reason: one should not hold inconsistent beliefs . The chief tool cannot be experiment or observation. One cannot assume a normative claim from a purely descriptive claim. You cant derive an ought" directly from what is.
