BIROn - Birkbeck Institutional Research Online

The "is-ought fallacy" fallacy

Oaksford, Mike and Chater, N. (2011) The "is-ought fallacy" fallacy. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 34 (5), pp. 262-263. ISSN 0140-525X.

Full text not available from this repository.

Abstract

Mere facts about how the world is cannot determine how we ought to think or behave. Elqayam & Evans (E&E) argue that this “is-ought fallacy” undercuts the use of rational analysis in explaining how people reason, by ourselves and with others. But this presumed application of the “is-ought” fallacy is itself fallacious. Rational analysis seeks to explain how people do reason, for example in laboratory experiments, not how they ought to reason. Thus, no ought is derived from an is; and rational analysis is unchallenged by E&E's arguments.

Metadata

Item Type: Article
School: Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Science > School of Psychological Sciences
Depositing User: Administrator
Date Deposited: 14 Nov 2011 12:43
Last Modified: 02 Aug 2023 16:56
URI: https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/4345

Statistics

6 month trend
0Downloads
6 month trend
337Hits

Additional statistics are available via IRStats2.

Archive Staff Only (login required)

Edit/View Item
Edit/View Item