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Is the non-aggression principle ("NAP") prescriptive or descriptive? NAP (short-hand definition): No one has the right or right to claim a right to initiate force against another in order to cause harm to another or to another's property; to defraud another; to extort another; or, to break contract without cause*. *Cause being a moral argument. Now, I found that the NAP was not precriptive but rather descriptive, though I might be in error and any help would be appreciated. My reasoning is as follows: For it to be prescritpive, the NAP would have to derive an ought from an is. And, I fail to see how it's telling anyone how they ought to act when the ought is derived from one's interests, i.e. in this case, what outcome people want as far as human discourse goes. In other words, if you want a voluntary society, then you ought to abide by the NAP. To say that's prescriptive would be like saying a tuning fork tells you how you ought to tune a piano. But, that's not what it does. The tuning fork serves as a medium for deducing the harmonics of a sound as it provides a standard, i.e. a principle. Ultimately, it is the user that decides how the piano ought to be tuned. A valid moral theory works in the same way. What you ought to do is always going to be derived from your interests. What is going to happen is derived from governing principles be it NAP (a moral principle) or theory of gravity (a physics principle). Needless to say, since no one has a working crystal ball, the best we can do is use probability to predict outcomes. So, by understanding principles we can deduce probable outcomes, and with such understandings, one can make a more informed choice as to what he/she ought to do in order to achieve a desired consequence. Thus, moral theories help us extrapolate plausible outcomes of human action. The NAP is such a principle, and its function is to help one determine what actions will lead a society to more voluntary exchange as opposed to acts of conquest. Thus, to put it analogously, it is a compass (describes a direction, i.e. descriptive), not a heading (prescribes a direction, i.e. prescriptive).