PHL 406 Lecture : PHL406 - Week 1 Summary Notes
16 Oct 2011
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Descriptive statements (sometimes called is" statements) purport to tell us what is the case, or how things are in the world. By contrast, the point of prescriptive claims (or ought" statements) is to tell us what ought to be the case, or how things really ought to be in our world. In ethics, our main focus is on prescriptive statements that tell us how we should (or ought to) act. Some prescriptive claims are not really ethical in nature but are, rather, merely prudential; that is, their aim is to tell someone how to act if she is to advance her own interests. Merely prudential claims are generally explicitly or implicitly hypothetical. That is, they are if , then " statements which tell someone what he should do if he wants to achieve a given goal (an example is if you want to pass the test, then you should study for it").
