Hume’s Guillotine: pro et contra

Abstract

Hume’s Guillotine is a criticism of ethicists who make normative claims (about what ought to be) based on descriptive premises (about what is). Not all philosophers agree that is-ought problem is a real one, or that it is correctly described. The paper examines the main versions and objections against Hume’s law. Accepting the Hume’s idea of logical incompatibility of norma-tive and descriptive claims the author purposes at the same time to make more exact the Hume’s formula and thus to avoid incidental interpretations and controversies.