In A Treatise of Human Nature, published in 1739 and 1740, the philosopher David Hume identified a problem in human reasoning that still matters in almost every serious disagreement. We often move from a statement about what is to a conclusion about what ought to follow without explaining the step between them.
Facts describe what happened. Meaning, judgment, and action require something more: interpretation, values, context, and a decision about what should come next.
Philosophers call this the is–ought problem. In mediation, it helps explain why two intelligent people can agree about an event and still disagree completely about what that event means.
The gap between a fact and a verdict
Consider a familiar example:
“He was twenty minutes late to the custody exchange.”
That may be a verifiable fact. Then comes the conclusion:
“He does not care about the children.”
The second sentence may feel every bit as certain as the first, but it is not the same kind of statement. It is an interpretation—a verdict wearing a fact’s clothing.
Being twenty minutes late could reflect indifference. It could also reflect traffic, a flat tire, an unexpected work problem, confusion about the schedule, or something else entirely. The fact matters. But the fact alone does not prove every meaning someone may attach to it.
That distinction does not make the interpretation irrelevant. It means the interpretation needs its own support.
Intelligence does not close the gap
This is not a low-intelligence problem. Smart, careful people make this leap all the time. I have seen it in legal arguments, professional disagreements, family disputes, and my own reasoning.
Intelligence does not inoculate us against confusing evidence with judgment. Sometimes it makes us better at defending the first interpretation that occurred to us.
The useful discipline is not pretending we have no interpretations. We cannot avoid them. The discipline is noticing when we have moved from observation to conclusion—and then asking whether the conclusion is justified.
What competitive debate taught me
I learned to notice that movement in competitive debate. Before practicing law, I taught communications and coached and directed a college speech and debate program.
Debate trains participants to separate evidence from the standard used to evaluate it. Facts, statistics, and expert testimony matter, but they do not decide a debate by themselves. The participants still have to explain why that evidence matters and what conclusion should follow.
Lincoln–Douglas debate makes this especially visible. Debaters commonly identify a value or framework and explain the standard by which the judge should evaluate the competing positions. The evidence supplies much of the “is.” The framework helps explain the “ought.”
Skip that step, and even strong evidence may not answer the actual question being debated.
The same thing happens outside a debate round. In many disagreements, the parties are not fighting only about what occurred. They are fighting about an unstated standard, assumption, or conclusion attached to it.
How the leap appears in mediation
At the mediation table, the pattern often sounds like this:
- “He filed first” becomes “He is trying to destroy me.”
- “She wants the house” becomes “She thinks she deserves everything.”
- “The appraisal came in at $280,000” becomes “That proves I am entitled to half.”
Each pair moves from information to interpretation or proposed outcome. The second statement may deserve serious consideration, but it does not become a fact merely because it follows the first sentence.
The appraisal example is particularly useful. An appraisal may provide evidence about value. It does not, by itself, decide how property should be divided. Legal rights, disputed facts, settlement choices, and the factors Missouri courts consider under section 452.330 require separate analysis.
As a mediator, part of my role is to help keep those categories visible. I may ask:
- What do we know?
- What remains disputed?
- What meaning is each person assigning to the event?
- What information supports that interpretation?
- What decision actually needs to be made?
The questions sound simple. Using them in a difficult conversation is not. People do not usually experience their interpretations as interpretations. They experience them as what happened.
Separating the two is not about dismissing anyone’s experience. It is about making the reasoning visible enough to examine.
The verdicts we deliver about ourselves
There is a quieter version of the same problem:
“Something I tried did not work.”
That describes an event. Then comes the verdict:
“I am a failure.”
“Failure” in the first sentence describes an outcome. In the second, it becomes an identity. The conclusion is not a fact contained inside the event. It is a meaning someone assigned to it.
People do this to themselves with the same confidence they bring to doing it to one another. The discipline works in both directions: notice the gap, name the interpretation, and decide whether it is warranted.
A two-column exercise
The next time you are locked in a disagreement—with a spouse, a co-parent, another party, or yourself—try a simple exercise.
Draw a line down the middle of a piece of paper.
On the left, write What happened. Limit that column to concrete observations, documents, dates, words spoken, and other things that could be verified.
On the right, write What I think it means. Put the motives, judgments, predictions, and conclusions there.
Then ask:
- How much of the right column does the left column actually establish?
- What other interpretations might fit the same facts?
- What additional information would help?
- Which decision still has to be made, even if everyone agrees about the facts?
This exercise does not guarantee agreement. It does something more modest and often more useful: it identifies what the disagreement is actually about.
Meaning is a second decision
Many disputes are not lost on the facts. They become stuck in the gap between facts and the verdicts we deliver without noticing.
Hume identified the problem in moral reasoning. Debate taught me to make the missing framework explicit. Mediation taught me how useful that can be when people are trying to make decisions under stress.
What happened matters. But what happened is not automatically what it means.
Meaning is a second decision. It deserves to be made like one.