An Indiscriminate Account of Propositions: A Solution to the IS-Ought Problem and its Application to Social Science

Abstract

How are descriptive propositions logically related to their normative counterparts? This is a well-known and a little thorny question in philosophy, especially in the modern era. In the Islamic tradition of thought, logicians, rhetoricians and experts of jurisprudence all hold that only descriptive propositions are of representative nature and capable of truth or falsity. They think normative propositions basically neither could be true nor false. In consequence, there would be no logical-inferential relation holding between them. Going against this received view, I’ve tried to defend three theses: first, normative propositions are representative and of truth-value, exactly in the same fashion as the descriptive ones. Second, inferring ought from is and vice versa (mutual inferential relation between normative and descriptive propositions) has no logical problem, and even instances of this have been shown. Third, normative propositions have a wider room in social sciences to be coupled with descriptive ones.