Critical Thinking Fundamentals: Normative & Descriptive Claims

We humans are a chatty bunch--we talk A LOT. But each claim we make can be sorted neatly sorted into one of two categories: it either describes something or it evaluates something (philosophers call these descriptive and normative claims respectively). In this video Kelley Schiffman (Yale University) illustrates the descriptive/normative distinction, and it's importance, with the use of ample examples.

(gentle music)

- [Kelly] Hi, I'm Kelly Schiffman.

I'm a PHD student at Yale University

and today I wanna talk
about the distinction

between normative and descriptive claims.

So, people make claims all the time.

Someone might say, "The
sky is beautiful today."

Or, "I just saw a UFO."

Or "Chris Rick is hilarious!"

Or "The Golden Gate Bridge
is in San Francisco."

Now, of course, it's
important for us to figure out

whether claims like
these are true or false

but before we can do that it's important

to understand what sort of claim it is.

Philosophers find it useful

to distinguish between two
different sorts of claims:

normative claims and descriptive claims.

When you make a descriptive claim,

you're describing something.

You merely express your understanding

of how something is or could be

without offering any even implicit

evaluation of it relative to a standard,

or ideal, or alternative.

Examples of descriptive claims include:

"The moon is made of cheese."

"Dinosaurs used to exist."

"Obama's president."

"That boys has large ears."

"I could have more money."

Notice that even if I'm likely to have an

opinion about somebody having large ears

or the fact that I could have more money

this opinion isn't being expressed

in the descriptive claim itself.

Based just on the claim, you can't tell

whether I think the way
things are is better or worse

than the way they could be.

When you make a normative claim

you express your evaluation of something.

When you evaluate something
you're assessing it,

often implicitly,
relative to some standard,

or ideal, or alternative
way that it could be.

It's to say that something is,

well, in some respect,
better than or worse than

or on par with some standard,

or ideal, or alternative.

When you make normative
claims we often use words like

good or bad or better than.

For example, "Leonardo Di
Caprio's a really good actor."

That's a normative claim.

Or that "Tomatoes taste bad
but ketchup tastes great."

Or "My math class is no better than

"and no worse than my English class."

These are all normative claims.

They contain an element of evaluation.

Normative claims also include words like

should and shouldn't

or right and wrong.

Example, "You should do your homework."

"You shouldn't pick your nose."

"It's not okay to steal a candy bar."

"Sending a thank you note
is the right thing to do."

These are also normative claims.

But there are many, many
more evaluative words

that can appear in normative claims.

Consider the following, "It's fine to eat

"three burgers a day."

"The movie was ridiculous."

"Broccoli is disgusting."

"Video games are awesome."

And, "It's not cool to skip school."

These are all normative claims as well.

Now, once we figure out whether a claim is

normative or descriptive that helps us

to assess its truth,
answer certain questions,

settle certain disagreements.

Consider a case in which you
think our neighbor's car is red

and I think it's not.

I think it's blue.

Here we're disagreeing
about a descriptive claim.

So, all we need to do to
settle the disagreement

is to figure out whether

that descriptive claim is true or not.

We need to figure out how the world is.

So, contrast this with
a case in which you say

that red cars are better than blue cars

and I say that blue cars
are better than blue cars.

Here we're disagreeing
over normative claims

so what we need to do
is sort through that.

For example, I might
argue that well blue cars

are better than red cars because red cars

get pulled over
disproportionately by the police.

Here we're working
through a normative issue.

Either way, getting clear
on whether something's

a normative claim or a descriptive claim

is the first step towards figuring out

and towards settling debates like this.