| 4547 | Plato measured the degree of reality by the degree of value [Nietzsche on Plato] |
| Full Idea: Plato measured the degree of reality by the degree of value. | |
| From: comment on Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 518d) by Friedrich Nietzsche - The Will to Power (notebooks) §572 | |
| A reaction: A most interesting comment. It epitomises the Nietzschean reading of Plato, in which the will to power leads the sense of value, which in turn creates the metaphysics. |
| 4581 | Virtues and vices are like secondary qualities in perception, found in observers, not objects [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Vice and virtue may be compared to sounds, colours, heat and cold, which, according to modern philosophy, are not qualities in objects but perceptions in the mind. | |
| From: David Hume (Letters [1739], to Hutcheson 1740) | |
| A reaction: Very revealing about the origin of the is/ought idea, but this is an assertion rather than an argument. Most Greeks treat value as a primary quality of things (e.g. life, harmony, beauty, health). |
| 4008 | Modern science has destroyed the Platonic synthesis of scientific explanation and morality [Hume, by Taylor,C] |
| Full Idea: From our modern perspective, the Platonic synthesis of scientific explanation and moral insight lies irrecoverably shattered by the rise of natural science. | |
| From: report of David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature [1739]) by Charles Taylor - Sources of the Self §3.2 | |
| A reaction: Modern attempts to challenge Hume's separation of fact from value have failed, but a return to the Greek perspective presents a plausible alternative. |
| 8067 | The problem of getting to 'ought' from 'is' would also apply in getting to 'owes' or 'needs' [Anscombe on Hume] |
| Full Idea: Hume's objection to passing from 'is' to 'ought' would equally apply to passing from 'is' to 'owes' or from 'is' to 'needs'. | |
| From: comment on David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature [1739]) by G.E.M. Anscombe - Modern Moral Philosophy p.176 | |
| A reaction: Profound and important. The empirical and emotivist (nay, nihilist) clinging to the total independence of duties from facts crumbles when looking at facts of human nature or of social groups. Creatures ought to feed; societies ought to flourish. |
| 4578 | You can't move from 'is' to 'ought' without giving some explanation or reason for the deduction [Hume] |
| Full Idea: In many writers I find that instead of the usual propositions 'is' and 'is not', I then find no proposition that is not connected with an 'ought' or an 'ought not'. It is necessary that a reason be given for how one can be a deduction from the other. | |
| From: David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature [1739], III.1.1) | |
| A reaction: A huge claim, the basis of the value-free modern scientific world view. Possible escapes are Greek virtue theory, or Kantian principles, or some sort of a priori values (as in Charles Taylor). |
| 5576 | We cannot derive moral laws from experience, as it is the mother of illusion [Kant] |
| Full Idea: With respect to moral laws, experience is (alas!) the mother of illusion, and it is most reprehensible to derive the laws concerning what I ought to do from what is done, or to want to limit it to that. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B375/A319) | |
| A reaction: Kant agrees with Hume, and turns to a non-naturalistic and cognitivist explanation, whereas Hume turns to a non-cognitivist naturalistic one (based on human feelings). Aristotle's view is somewhat based on the experience of human nature. |
| 22203 | Only facts follow from facts [Husserl] |
| Full Idea: From facts follow always nothing but facts. | |
| From: Edmund Husserl (Ideas: intro to pure phenomenology [1913], I.1.008) | |
| A reaction: I presume objective possibilities follow from facts, so this doesn't sound strictly correct. I sounds like a nice slogan for those desiring to keep facts separate from values. [on p.53 he comments on fact/value] |
| 22155 | We are disenchanted because we rely on science, which ignores values [Weber, by Boulter] |
| Full Idea: Weber contends that modern western civilisation is 'disenchanted' because our society's method of arriving at beliefs about the world, that is, the sciences, is unable to address questions of value. | |
| From: report of Max Weber (works [1905]) by Stephen Boulter - Why Medieval Philosophy Matters 6 | |
| A reaction: This idea, made explicit by Hume's empirical attitude to values, is obviously of major importance. For we Aristotelians values are a self-evident aspect of nature. Boulter says philosophy has added to the disenchantment. I agree. |
| 20748 | We do not add value to naked things; its involvement is disclosed in understanding it [Heidegger] |
| Full Idea: We do not throw a 'signification' over some naked thing which is present-at-hand, we do not stick a value on it; but when something is encountered as such, the thing in question has an involvement which is disclosed in our understanding of the world. | |
| From: Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927], p.190-1), quoted by George Dickie - The Myth of the Aesthetic Attitude 3 'Undoing' | |
| A reaction: Analytic philosophy and science have tried to dismantle experience, and Heidegger wants to put it back together. I would say there is a big difference between encountering a thing (which is a bit facty), and understanding it (which is more valuey). |
| 20928 | Facts don't oppose values; they are integrated into each person's aspirations [Gadamer, by Zimmermann,J] |
| Full Idea: Gadamer shows that we cannot oppose facts to values, but that all facts are integrated into meaningful wholes through a personal commitment to some kind of vision of how things ought to be. | |
| From: report of Hans-Georg Gadamer (Truth and Method [1960]) by Jens Zimmermann - Hermeneutics: a very short introduction | |
| A reaction: Straw man here. Whoever said that facts were 'opposed' to values? Certainly not David Hume. Any sensible empiricist of that type would try to develop values that integrated nicely with the facts. Gadamer seems to be denying facts. |
| 23434 | There is no fact-value gap in 'owls should see in the dark' [Foot] |
| Full Idea: If you say 'an owl should be able to see in the dark' …you're not going to think that there's a gap between facts and evaluation. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Interview with Philippa Foot [2003], p.33) | |
| A reaction: I take this to be a major and fundamental idea, which pinpoints the failure of Humeans to understand the world correctly. There is always total nihilism, of course, but that is a sort of blindness to how things are. Demanding 'proof' of values is crazy. |
| 22487 | Moral arguments are grounded in human facts [Foot] |
| Full Idea: The grounding of a moral argument is ultimately in facts about human life. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Does Moral Subjectivism Rest on a Mistake? [1995], p.207) | |
| A reaction: The best slogan I can find for summarising Foot's metaethics. The facts she refers to the basic human needs. She is right, and this almost bridges the fact-value divide (as long as you give a damn about human needs). |
| 22377 | Whether someone is rude is judged by agreed criteria, so the facts dictate the value [Foot] |
| Full Idea: Whether a man is speaking of behaviour as rude or not rude, he must use the same criteria as anyone else. ...We have here an example of a non-evaluative premise from which an evaluative conclusion can be deduced. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Moral Arguments [1958], p.104) | |
| A reaction: We would now call 'rude' a 'thick' ethical concept (where 'good' is 'thin'). Her powerful point is, I take it, that evidence is always relevant to judgements of thick concepts, so there is no fact-value gap. 'Rude' has criteria, but 'good' may not. |
| 22378 | We can't affirm a duty without saying why it matters if it is not performed [Foot] |
| Full Idea: I do not know what could be meant by saying it was someone's duty to do something unless there was an attempt to show why it mattered if this sort of thing was not done. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Moral Arguments [1958], p.105) | |
| A reaction: The Kantian idea assumes that duty is an absolute, and yet each duty rests on a particular maxim which is going to be universalised. So why should that maxim be universalised, and not some other? |
| 22376 | Facts and values are connected if we cannot choose what counts as evidence of rightness [Foot] |
| Full Idea: To show that facts and values are connected we must show that some things do and some things don't count in favour of a moral conclusion, and that no one can choose what counts as evidence for rightness or wrongness. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Moral Arguments [1958], p.99) | |
| A reaction: But what sort of facts might do the job? I can only think of right functioning and health as facts which seem to imply value. Pleasure and misery don't quite get there. |
| 22491 | Moral evaluations are not separate from facts, but concern particular facts about functioning [Foot] |
| Full Idea: A moral evaluation does not stand over against the statement of a matter of fact, but rather has to do with facts about a particular subject matter, as do evaluations of such things as sight and hearing in animals. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Natural Goodness [2001], 1) | |
| A reaction: She avoids the word 'function', and only deals with living creatures, but she uses a 'good knife' as an example, and this Aristotelian view clearly applies to any machine which has a function. |
| 7624 | The word 'inconsiderate' nicely shows the blurring of facts and values [Putnam] |
| Full Idea: The use of the word 'inconsiderate' seems to me a very fine example of the way in which the fact/value distinction is hopelessly fuzzy in the real world and in the real language. | |
| From: Hilary Putnam (Reason, Truth and History [1981]) | |
| A reaction: Interesting, but not much of an argument. What would Nietzsche say? Was Agamemnon morally deficient because we might think him 'inconsiderate'? |
| 4135 | Some ethical ideas, such as 'treachery' and 'promise', seem to express a union of facts and values [Williams,B] |
| Full Idea: Some 'thicker' ethical notions, such as 'treachery', 'promise', 'brutality' and 'courage', seem to express a union of facts and values. | |
| From: Bernard Williams (Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy [1985], Ch. 8) | |
| A reaction: The onus does seem to be on the followers of Hume to disentangle what the rest of us have united. They may, of course, manage it. |
| 3835 | If it is true, you ought to believe it [Searle] |
| Full Idea: To say that something is true is already to say that you ought to believe it. | |
| From: John Searle (Rationality in Action [2001], Ch.5.II) |
| 3836 | If this is a man, you ought to accept similar things as men [Searle] |
| Full Idea: From the fact that an object is truly described as "a man", it follows that you ought to accept relevantly similar objects as men. | |
| From: John Searle (Rationality in Action [2001], Ch.5.IV) |
| 8012 | The value/fact logical gulf is misleading, because social facts involve values [MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: One reason why it is highly misleading to talk of a logical gulf between value and fact....is that we cannot characterize the social life of a tribe in their factual terms and escape their evaluations. | |
| From: Alasdair MacIntyre (A Short History of Ethics [1967], Ch.10) | |
| A reaction: Personally I like the objection that facts about functions cannot avoid the value of good functions, but this is very good. It is much better than simply trying to find a specific counterexample, such as facts about promises. Values just are facts. |
| 21837 | Morality is normative because it identifies best practices among the normal practices [Flanagan] |
| Full Idea: Morality is 'normative' in the sense that it consists of the extraction of ''good' or 'excellent' practices from common practices. | |
| From: Owen Flanagan (The Really Hard Problem [2007], 4 'Naturalism') |
| 4937 | Systems that generate a sense of value are basic to the primitive brain [Edelman/Tononi] |
| Full Idea: Early and central in the development of the brain are the dimensions provided by value systems indicating salience for the entire organism. | |
| From: G Edelman / G Tononi (Consciousness: matter becomes imagination [2000], Ch.13) | |
| A reaction: This doesn't quite meet Hume's challenge to find values in the whole of nature, but it matches Charles Taylor's claim that for humans values are knowable a priori. Conditional values can be facts of the whole of nature. "If there is life, x has value..". |
| 4770 | Nothing is more usual than to apply to external bodies every internal sensation which they occasion [Psillos] |
| Full Idea: Nothing is more usual than to apply to external bodies every internal sensation which they occasion. | |
| From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002], §1.8) | |
| A reaction: This is the core of Hume's is/ought claim - what he calls the mind 'spreading itself'. It is a powerful claim. Personally I think we have become TOO sceptical here, and have the delusion that crucial features of nature are created within our minds. |
| 22156 | The facts about human health are the measure of the values in our lives [Boulter] |
| Full Idea: The objective facts relating to human health broadly construed are the facts that measure the moral value of our actions, policies and institutions. | |
| From: Stephen Boulter (Why Medieval Philosophy Matters [2019], 6) | |
| A reaction: This is the Aristotelian approach to facts and values, which I thoroughly endorse. To say there is nothing instrinsically wrong with being unhealthy is an absurd attitude. |