According to the book “Critical Thinking” by Richard L. Epstein, a claim is prescriptive if it says what it should be. I have spoken many claims recently not realizing that they were prescriptive. A prescriptive claim I said just the other day to m friend was, “You should get your keys out of your car.” Often statements in ads on television and in everyday conversations contain lots of prescriptive claims. On T.V., you may hear in an ad, “You shouldn’t take this drug with alcohol.” “You should recycle that bottle,” is a prescriptive claim you may hear someone say in a conversation.
Value judgments take place when there is a personal reasoning on whether something is good, better, or best. Value judgments are prescriptive but too vague to be a claim. Other key words that suggest value judgments are; bad, worse, or worst. An example is, “Mr. Rowe was the best teacher I ever had.” The word “best” adds a value system to the statement causing it to be a value judgment.
I too wrote about prescriptive claims, but after reading your post, I learned another way to view this topic. I really like how you connected prescriptive claims with advertisements we hear everyday. I never actually thought about it, but these claims are what advertisers use to get past many laws to sell their products. We find ourselves surrounded by these claims and now through better understanding we can hopefully get past or better understand them.
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