Fact and Value: The False Dichotomy

Image credit: The Guardian.

Posted by Thomas Scarborough

The fact-value distinction is one of the most important problems of philosophy.  The Scottish philosopher David Hume gave it its classical formulation: it is impossible to derive an ‘ought’ from an ‘is’.  That is, it is impossible to establish any value amidst an ocean of facts. 

On the surface of it, Hume would seem to be unimpeachably right.  The facts cannot tell us what to do.  But here is a problem.  Neither can value.  While one cannot derive an ‘ought’ from an ‘is’, neither can one derive an ‘ought’ from an ‘ought’, as it were.

Take, as an example, a statement of fact: ‘We are ready to hoist the spinnaker.’  Such a statement gives us no idea as to whether we should hoist the spinnaker.

Yet we find no difference with a statement of value: ‘We ought now to hoist the spinnaker.’  Why ought we to?  What gives us the authority to say so?  We find that such a statement is quite adrift, and equally unable to tell us whether we should or not.

What, then, was Hume thinking when he wrote about ‘ought’? 

It would seem to me that Hume made a lazy assumption, of the kind that philosophers fail to examine any further, on thinking that they have gained a special insight.  The assumption would be something like this: that there is a certainty which lies in value which fact does not possess.  Thus Hume equated value with a ground for our behaviour—if one should ever find it. 

To put it another way, Hume’s fact-value distinction would seem to be a false dichotomy.

What is it, then, that fact and value have in common, that neither will deliver ‘value’—in the sense of a ground for our behaviour?

I would propose that the scope of both fact and value is too limited for either to deliver universal truth.  Both statements of fact and statements of value exist in limited contexts, without being referenced to any fixed points except their own—while the question of certainty lies beyond this, in something which is far more expansive.

It may be easy to see, for instance, that I should hoist a spinnaker if I wish to win the race—and this I may state both as an ‘is’ and as an ‘ought’:

Given such and such conditions, the spinnaker will secure a win—alternatively, I ought to hoist the spinnaker to clinch it.  In both cases, it would be true and compelling that I need a spinnaker—yet not if I should expand my horizon, to ask whether I should have entered this race at all.

How then might we reference statements to something broader than simple fact and value?  An analogy might help.

I am in a boat on the ocean, to anchor a buoy.  If I reference its position to the seaweed I see underneath it, or the birds which circle overhead, I have in this case an unstable reference.  Or I may reference it to a spit of land that I see in the distance.  This would seem to be more stable, though not completely so—the wind and the waves may change it.  Or I may reference it to the stars—but even the stars will move. 

Ideally, my buoy would be referenced to everything.

This may not be as absurd as it sounds.  If the context is big enough—and if we should know just what kind of a context this should be—we may well be able to ground both fact and value.

If we reference everything to everything, there may be a way forward.  While space does not allow me to explore this further here, readers may refer to a post in which I sketched some thoughts on how this might be done: How Shall We Re-Establish Ethics in Our Time?

How Shall We Re-establish Ethics in Our Time?

Posted by Thomas Scarborough

We have nothing to show today, writes Simon Blackburn, for ethical foundations. At the beginning of the 21st century, we are ethically adrift. Not reason, not religion, not intuition now seem adequate for grounding our behaviour.

Not only does this present us with a philosophical problem. On a social level, we are conflicted and disorientated with multiple ethics, while on a global level, our ethics increasingly seem to have come apart – with deepening poverty, social disintegration, and environmental destruction being the order of the day.

Philosophically, it was David Hume who first observed that we cannot derive an 'ought' from an 'is'. We cannot, on the basis of a handful of facts, derive any values. Gradually, over the following centuries, this idea took hold – until, with Ludwig Wittgenstein, it achieved a wide acceptance. 'Whereof one cannot speak,' he wrote, 'thereof one must be silent.' He was referring, most importantly, to ethics.

How, then, shall we re-establish ethics in our time?

Many, today, would consider the very question to be foolish. Yet given two simple conceptual prerequisites, I propose that we may indeed re-establish ethics, philosophically:

• Prerequisite 1. The fact-value distinction would have to be set aside. This, I believe, should be possible by ridding ourselves of facts – and with facts, of things (facts are, after all, about things). This may not be as difficult as it seems.

• Prerequisite 2. We would need to reduce our world to relations, and only relations – without the existence of facts or things. Ethics – together with all other fields of inquiry – may then be defined in terms of relations, and relations alone.

With regard to the fact-value distinction then, it is important that we first understand that this rests on Hume's notion that all knowledge is subdivided into relations of ideas on the one hand, and matters of fact (and things) on the other. On closer examination, however, we find that this view cannot be sustained.

It was Francis Bacon who observed that the definitions of words have definitions. Similarly, we know that the features of words have features. Words, I have myself proposed, represent 'relations within relations'. Given that this is true, there can be no self-contained 'things'. Rather, our words (and thoughts) reach into an infinity of relations, and we speak about 'things' only by way of a truncated shorthand.

If, then, there are no self-contained 'things' in this world, and if our words (and thoughts) reach into infinity, then this must mean that we cannot speak truly about our world on the assumption that it is a closed system, in which we begin with axioms, origins, or specific reference points. This flies in the face of what we have before us. Rather, we need to step back from all systems, to view our world as an infinite canvas of relations.

I propose that we shall find, when we do this, that relations as a whole possess certain features – call them meta-features – many of which may only be recognised from a bird's eye view.

These features hold the promise of new ethical foundations:

• Feature 1. As we survey the infinite canvas of relations, we realise that some of the relations which we trace in this world do not in fact exist – and those relations which do not exist cannot form the basis of an acceptable ethics. Falsehood and deceit are, at bottom, attempts to trace non-existent relations.

• Feature 2. Since relations represent an infinite canvas – and any containment of relations detracts from this – the relations which we trace should range through all the world. The more we limit the scope of the relations which we trace, and the more we view things in isolation, the more we are at risk of fault or shipwreck, in any field.

• Feature 3. Since the relations which we trace should range through all the world, our ability to trace relations should not be obstructed or manipulated. This means that secrecy, propaganda, and misrepresentations are ruled out. Above all, an ethics of relations would favour an open society, since openness is a prerequisite for arranging our world.

• Feature 4. Relations are infinite, yet our minds are finite. Since our minds are capable only of encompassing limited regions of relations, this means that there will inevitably be relations which lie beyond our power to explain – and beyond our control. We need therefore to be acutely aware of our limitations of thought. There is no place for hubris.

• Feature 5. Infinite control is required to conquer infinite relations. Therefore our limitations may create within us powerful totalising urges. In view of our limitations therefore – which preclude any final ability to master our world – any ethics should avoid such totalising tendencies.

• Feature 6. When we elevate any given values above others in an infinity of relations, our (justified) fear that such values are empty and illusory grows. This may lead to a dysfunctional ethics, which drives us to fundamentalism – where fundamentalism is resistance to the fear of finding one's foundations to be exposed as baseless.

• Feature 7. We need to consider that we live in a world where new relations are continually emerging, which did not exist before, and in many cases were unimaginable just so many years ago. This means that ethics does not and cannot stand still.

Finally, when we view our world as an infinite canvas of relations, and only relations – having banished both 'facts' and 'things' – we may now define fact as those relations which are as we think they ought to be, and value as those relations which are as we think they ought not to be. In both cases, then – in all cases – we speak, at bottom, of 'ought'.

With careful consideration, we come to see that all of the natural and the human sciences, and all of our common life, represent value, not fact. Thus we escape the albatross of the fact-value distinction, and bring back ethics into the fold of philosophy.
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For a deeper exploration of these themes, one may refer to the author's Metaphysical Notes.