An Interesting Concept..

The concept that I found most interesting was the section labeled, Prescriptive Claims and Value Judgments, from the Critical Thinking book. It talks about the difference between a descriptive claim and a prescriptive claim. A descriptive claim is when it says what is. A prescriptive claim is when it says what should be. An example of a descriptive claim is, drinking and driving is against the law. Since it is stating something that has to do with “what is”, it falls into the category of being a descriptive claim. Whereas, if it would have said, “people should not drink and drive“, would have turned the sentence into a prescriptive claim, since the sentence is stating it in a way that is suggesting how something “should be”, it then in turn makes it a prescriptive claim. A value judgment is when someone uses the word or words: good, better, best, bad, worst, and worse. Using any of these word automatically turns the statement into a prescriptive claim because it is giving the feeling that we should not do what is bad/ wrong/worse and in turn should do what is good/better/best for us.