A fact is an actual state of the world. For example, it is a fact that Mount Everest is taller than Mount Kilimanjaro. A value
is something good, or something one believes to be good. For example,
freedom is one of the central values of modernity; and to the extent
that people believe that freedom is good, they value freedom.
A great deal of twentieth century moral theory sustained a sharp divide
between facts and values—the fact-value distinction. On this view,
although the sentences “Roses are red” (descriptive) and “kindness is
good” (evaluative) have a similar grammatical form, their linguistic
functions are markedly different. Evaluative judgments are said to
fulfill special non-descriptive roles, that is, do something other than
state facts. More particularly, emotivists argue that evaluations serve
to express the speaker’s feelings and attitudes: saying that “kindness
is good” is a way of expressing one’s approval of kindness. Similarly,
prescriptivists argue that evaluative language aims to get people to
make certain choices. Saying that “kindness is good” is a way of telling
people that they should be kind. The emotive and imperatival functions
of evaluative language are, crucially, not attempts to state facts.
The fact-value distinction is much contested; and resistance comes from
opposite directions. Firstly, moral realists argue that evaluative
language is fact stating. A realist may argue that the sentence “freedom
is good” aims to state a fact, and, moreover, succeeds in doing so.
Secondly, some have argued that science is itself an evaluative
enterprise. If scientific language is not purely descriptive, then any
sharp contrast between factual and evaluative language will be
misconceived.
Much of the effort to establish the distinction between fact and value
was for the purpose of arriving at a value-free, objective description
of facts—on the positivistic premise that only facts are relevant in the
search for truth, not values. The facticity of phenomena, however, is
always surrounded by the ultimate question of the meaning of being.
Thus, any distinction between facts and value is secondary, for on the
ontological level they are inseparable. Furthermore, from the
perspective of religions that believe in a personal God, God's very
purpose for creating the cosmos is rooted in values: love and goodness
and creativity rooted in the emotional core of His heart. Thus the
values of love, goodness, and the desire to create preceded the facts of
the created material universe.
Facts and values
A fact is traditionally understood as a state of affairs that makes a
proposition true. A proposition is defined as a thought or content
expressed by a sentence, when it is used to say something true or false.
For example, the sentence “Mount Everest is taller than Mount
Kilimanjaro” expresses a proposition; it may be evaluated as true or
false. If it is true, which it is, then there is some state of affairs
that makes it true, namely the fact that Mount Everest is taller than
Mount Kilimanjaro.
A value is something good, or something one believes to be good. For
example, freedom is one of the dominant values of modern society; and to
the extent that people believe that freedom is good, they value
freedom. More generally, evaluative language—also sometimes labeled
‘normative’ language—includes terms such as ‘good’, ‘right’, ‘wrong’,
‘virtuous’ and ‘vicious’. Each of these terms has a different sphere of
application: ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ are used to appraise actions or types
of actions; ‘virtuous’ and ‘vicious’ appraise agents and states of their
character; ‘good’ and ‘bad’ may be used to evaluate almost anything.
The Fact-value distinction
A great deal of twentieth century moral theory sustains a sharp divide
between facts and values—the fact-value distinction. One way of dividing
facts from values is in terms of a distinction between descriptive
language, which aims to state facts, and evaluative language, which
evaluates people, objects, actions, etc, as ‘good’, ‘bad’, ‘right’ and
‘wrong’. For example, the sentence “roses are red” is descriptive; it
represents the world as being a certain way and may be evaluated as true
or false. By contrast, the sentence “kindness is good” is an
evaluation. Proponents of the fact-value distinction argue that the
former descriptive sentence (“roses are red”) may describe a true state
of affairs—state a fact—whereas the latter (“kindness is good”) does
not. Emotivists such as A.J. Ayer, and Charles L. Stevenson, hold that
evaluations express the speaker’s feelings and attitudes: saying that
kindness is good is a way of expressing one’s approval of kindness.
Similarly, R.M. Hare argues that evaluations are prescriptions
(commands): saying that kindness is good is a way of telling people that
they should be kind. Evaluative judgments are then understood as
emotive or prescriptive, and are contrasted with descriptive judgments.
Descriptive judgments are appraisable as true or false; evaluative
judgments are not. In this way, a fact-value distinction is upheld.
One historically important argument for the fact-value distinction comes
from logical positivism. The logical positivists embraced a theory of
the linguistic meaning called the principle of verification. This
principle says that a sentence is strictly meaningful only if it
expresses something that can be confirmed or disconfirmed by empirical
observation. For example, the sentence “there are possums in India” is
meaningful because it could be verified or falsified by actually
checking whether there are possums in India.
One important implication of the principle of verification is that
evaluative judgments are strictly meaningless. The sentence “murder is
wrong” cannot be confirmed or disconfirmed by empirical experience. We
may find that people believe that murder is wrong, or disapprove of
murder, but there is nothing in world corresponding to ‘wrongness’ that
could be investigated by empirical science. Therefore, according to the
logical positivists, all evaluative judgments are meaningless and so
they do not state facts.
Emotivism and prescriptivism may be understood as attempts to make sense
of evaluative language while adhering to the principle of verification.
If all evaluative judgments are meaningless, then what are people doing
when they say that kindness is good, or that cruelty is bad? Emotivists
take the view that if evaluative judgments do not state facts, then
they must have some other function. Ayer’s suggestion is that evaluative
language is intended to express attitudes and emotions. Similarly,
Hare’s suggestion is that evaluative language is intended to influence
people towards certain choices.
Another historically important argument pertaining to the fact-value
distinction derives from David Hume. Hume (1739/1740) famously argued
that ‘is’ statements do not follow from ‘ought’ statements. Hume’s point
is that any set of factual statements, such as, that killing causes
pain, killing is disapproved, and so forth, does not logically entail
that one ought not to kill. The inference from “killing causes pain” to
“you ought not to kill” is invalid. This view that ‘ought’ statements
cannot be logically inferred from ‘is’ statements has become known as
Hume’s law.
Some moral theorists (such as Hare 1952) have argued that the fact-value
distinction explains why ‘ought’ statements are not deducible from ‘is’
statements. One problem with Hume’s law as formulated above is that any
‘ought’ statement can be converted into an ‘is’ statement. For example,
“you ought not to kill” may be converted into “killing is wrong.” In
general, any ought statement may be converted into an ‘is’ statement by
predicating an evaluative term such as ‘good’ or ‘right’ of that object
or state. However, this need not be a counter-example to Hume’s law
because it still seems impossible to derive any evaluative conclusion
from a set of factual premises. The inference from “killing causes pain”
to “killing is wrong” is, for example, invalid.
According to Hare (1952) if one assumes a sharp distinction between
evaluative and descriptive terms, then the invalidity of inferences from
‘ought’ to ‘is’ is only to be expected, since ‘ought’ judgments are one
type of evaluation. If evaluations are of a logically different type to
descriptions, then we should not expect descriptive premises to entail
evaluative conclusions. So assuming the fact-value distinction provides
an explanation for Hume’s law.
Error theory and the fact-value distinction
Another way of drawing the fact-value distinction focuses not on
language—evaluative judgments—but the nature of values. J.L. Mackie
(1977) argues (contrary to Ayer, Stevenson, and Hare) that evaluative
judgments have descriptive and not only emotive meaning. Mackie’s view
on values is called an "error theory." Error theory says that evaluative
judgments purport to make factual claims but do not succeed because
values are metaphysically dubious entities. Consider in analogy that all
statements about witches, such as “every witch owns a broomstick,” are
descriptive—purport to state facts. Moreover, accounting for the truth
of statements about witches commits us to the existence of witches—facts
about witches would make statements about witches true. However, if
witches do not exist then all statements about them are false.
Similarly, Mackie argues that ethical discourse is committed to the
existence of objective values. However, the values required to make
evaluative judgments true are too strange to be accommodated by any
plausible metaphysics and epistemology. For one thing, values
(properties such as goodness) cannot be perceived by the senses, and so
human beings would require some mysterious sixth sense in order to
perceive them. This Mackie holds to be implausible. Secondly, values
seem intrinsically connected to motivation. Consider that a person who
comes to see that kindness is good must be motivated, in some sense, to
behave in a kind manner. According to Mackie, this shows that values
have action-guiding force, quite unlike natural properties such as being
square or blue. Mackie concludes that values are too strange to exist
and adopts an error theory of our evaluative discourse. There are no
objective values. Since every ethical judgment commits us to such
values, all ethical judgments are false. Mackie’s error theory opens up a
fact-value distinction: facts are real states of the world—presumably
of the world as described by physics, whereas values do not exist.
Objections to Fact-value distinction
Moral realists reject the fact-value distinction. Against the emotivists
and prescriptivists, they argue that evaluative judgments aim to
represent the world in some way. Moral realists argue that evaluative
statements purport to represent facts. So the claim that “Smith did
wrong in killing his wife” purports to say something appraisable as true
or false. Against Mackie, they argue that properties such as rightness
and wrongness may be real features of the world even if they are not the
subject matter of empirical science. This opens the possibility that
evaluative judgments may be true since the properties to which they
refer (such as goodness) really exist. Moral realists are likely to be
intuitionists in epistemology: if value-properties are not discovered by
science, then they must be known by intuition of some sort.
Moral realists reject the fact-value distinction because they believe in
moral facts. From the other direction, some philosophers, especially
those influenced by pragmatism, reject the fact-value distinction
because they believe that science, with all its claims to neutrality and
objectivity, is ultimately an evaluative endeavor. If scientific
language is not purely descriptive, then any sharp contrast between
factual and evaluative language will be misconceived. Hilary Putnam
(1981) is an important critic of the fact-value distinction, arguing
that that science does not support the fact-value because evaluative
norms are themselves present in the fact-finding enterprise.