On the difference between facts and values

Kristijan Krkač
09/05/2018
[Working paper]
kristian.krkac@gmail.com

1. Introduction

It was and still it is assumed by many that a major ethical questions and answers rest on the answer to the question on
the relation of “is” and “ought”, or perhaps the more general question on the relation of “facts” and “values” in terms
of their more or less obvious and radical difference. The difference was presupposed by claim that “ought to” cannot
be derived from “it is”, “facts” from “values”, and meaning of moral expressions from meaning of natural expression
by D. Hume (Hume’s Law), G. E. Moore (Naturalistic Fallacy) and many contemporary philosophers.
More to that, even those who argue that it is possible to derive “ought” form “is”, such as J. R. Searle, A. N. Prior, and
A. McIntyre, or even vice versa, and those who argue that there is a “moralistic fallacy”, meaning that from the
meaning of moral expressions it is possible to derive the meaning of natural expressions, such as E. C. Moore and B.
Davis, are presupposing the difference. So the difference wasn’t questioned, and yet it seems to be the essential
presupposition in these principles and analyses.
However, H. Putnam in his book “The Collapse of The Fact/Value Dichotomy and Other Essays” (2002) supplied
some arguments for the claim that the difference, or the dichotomy, between “is” and “ought”, “natural expressions”,
“moral expressions”, and “facts” and “values”, isn’t absolute as it was presupposed to be without being analyzed,
chiefly by Hume, but by other later on as well, rather that it is relative, and the question is only to which extant it is
relative, or how many R’s there are in an expression of the form “I is different from O in relation to R 1, R2 … Rn.”. If
Putnam is right, than the whole discussion on Hume’s Law, Naturalistic Fallacy, etc. loses much of its sense and use.

2. Is the difference between “is” and “ought” absolute or relative?

The dichotomy rests on a quite simple analysis of the concepts of is and ought. “Is” is obviously factual, or
constitutive, and “ought” is obviously evaluative, or normative. For instance “David is washing his hands before
meal.” is obviously factual, and descriptive, while “David ought to wash his hands before meal.” is obviously
normative.
However, is it possible that this distinction is in fact quite rare, and that in majority of cases there is an identity, or that
the difference isn’t absolute, but in fact relative? In other words is the following possible: “A is B.” = “A ought to be
B.”, “A is not B.” = “A ought not to be B.”, “A ought to be B.” = “If A can be made B, than A will be made B.”, and
“A ought not to be B.” = “If A can be prevented to be B, than A will be prevented to be B.”?
In order to describe these possibilities as valid of course a series of examples should be supplied, further on, an
additional argument that these examples are examples of the majority of possible and actual cases should be supplied,
but previously to that perhaps the analysis of “is” as normative, and “ought” as factual should be supplied, and in
addition the comparison of these two analyses as well. In what follows only some elements of these analyses and their
comparison will be supplied without entering into the first and second task, since it seems that such analyses is
something on which these tasks rest in a substantive way (as shown in Table 1).

Factual / Constitutive Normative / Evaluative

 
Is
(presupposed) (disbelieved)
 
Ought
(disbelieved) (presupposed)
Table 1: The presupposed absolute difference between “is” and “ought”.

There are two possibilities here, and both can and should be analyzed, namely that an “ought” has an “is” aspect, and
that an “is” has an “ought” aspect. If this can be argued for, than the difference between “is” and “ought” isn’t an
absolute, but the relative one.

2.1. Is there an “is” in “ought”? (The case of Pragmatist Maxim)

The first possibility that is not presupposed by the distinction as being absolute is that “ought” can have factual or
constitutive meaning. This is not the same as the Moralistic fallacy which says that it is invalid to infer a factual
conclusion from a purely evaluative premise, rather that a purely evaluative expression isnt purely evaluative, but also
factual. For example, the pragmatists’ conception of truth or facts directly relates to an end (namely, empirical
predictability) that human beings regard as normatively desirable, so the pragmatist concept of normativity implies
consequences of actions as being factual.
The most common basic thesis of pragmatism supplied by G. Schurtz in his paper “Kind of Pragmatism and
Pragmatic Components of Knowledge (Schurtz 1998:39-57) runs as follows: “The truth or justifiedness of our belief
or belief-producing methods has to be defined or evaluated – not as some kind of matching with a presupposed
external world, but – in terms of the success of acting on the basis of our beliefs with respect to a certain set of
practical or at least concrete purposes.” (Schurtz 1988:39) This criterion itself, if it is correct, and it seems to be,
shows that the pragmatist concept of truth is in fact factual and normative in the same time and sense.
As far as the American pragmatists are concerned, and especially C. S. Peirce, the root of this criterion comes from
the definition of a belief by Scottish philosopher A. Bain who wrote that a belief is “that upon which a man is
prepared to act” in his book “The Emotions and The Will” (Bain 1859:505), and which was emphasized by Peirce’s
friend and philosopher N. St. John. How Bain came to this idea is not known with certainty (perhaps the influence of
Mill is probable). Peirce influenced James, Schiller, and Dewey, and of course contemporary neoclassical pragmatists
such as S. Haack and N. Rescher. However, this criterion was (de)formed in various directions by mentioned
philosophers, and especially by American neo-pragmatists such as H. Putnam and R. Rorty.
Even more elaborated and quite far from Peirce’s criterion are those of Italian pragmatists, Austrian and British
pragmatists (such as Wittgenstein and Toulmin), German pragmatists (such as Apel and Habermas), Brazilian (such as
Mangabeira) etc. However, parallel to Peirce, Nietzsche and Kierkegaard developed a similar pragmatist theses
especially concerning knowledge (generally speaking epistemological contextualism can be regarded as essentially
pragmatic account). It is important that e.g. philosophers such as Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, and Goethe, as well as
James influenced Wittgenstein in his pragmatism-like ideas. Goethe famously claimed “In the beginning was the
deed.” (connected to Wittgenstein’s ideas are Austin’s theory of performative action and Ryle’s theory on know-how
and behaviorism).
Further on in history there is the famous “Pascal’s Wager” which can be understood as essentially pragmatic
argument, and there are also considerations on know-how (techne) in Hellenistic and Ancient Greek philosophy
(especially by Aristotle). After all, according to the Gospel of Mathew Jesus famously said: “Yes, just as you can
identify a tree by its fruit, so you can identify people by their actions.” (Mt 7:20). In this context there is also an idea
by a Christian personalist Karol Wojtyła, under the influence of Scheller, from his book “Acting Person” that an old
principle “acting presupposes existence” (“agere sequitur esse”) should be reversed so that it says “existence
presupposes acting”.
What is similar to all pragmatist, neo-pragmatist, and even to all pragmatist-like basic thesis are the three similar
principles which all imply that the difference between “is” and “ought” is not absolute but relative, and these are the
following: (1) An action (techne, praxis, know-how) has a primacy over a thinking (theoria, thinking, know-what), (2)
The consequences of any action are the criterion of an action, and (3) The consequences of a human action are the
criterion of a human action (and not the action itself, or preconditions of an action). All of these criteria (1-3)
presuppose that “ought” has the “is” aspect.

2.2. Is there an “ought” in “is” (The case of Performatives)

The second possibility that is not presupposed by the distinction as being absolute is that “is” can have normative or
evaluative meaning. According to the major contemporary view the “Frege-Russell Tetrachotomy” differentiates
between the “is” of: existence, predication, class-inclusion, and identity. For instance, as argued by R. Ferber in his
paper “The normative is”, the sentence “A point is that which has no parts.” (Euclid, “Elements” Def.1) seem like an
“is-statement”. However, it is a stipulation, because the sentence is an “is-statement” only within the system of the
“Elements”. So, the “is” in this stipulation doesn’t have a constantives, bu a normative character. Further on, the is-
statement is disguised ought-statement which says “A point ought to be that which has no parts.” (Ferber 1988:17-20)
Ferber argues that not just “is” of identification, but other uses as well have normative meaning, e.g. “The land
register is public.” (Art. 970, Swiss Civil Code) means “The class of land registers ought to be included in the class of
public things.” (Ferber 1988:18) So, sentences like “There is a solution” can have a constative and a normative
meaning. There cannot be a purely syntactic or semantic criterion for the distinction of sentences into a class of
constative and normative sentences. (Ferber 1988:19) Ferber argues that the criterion must be pragmatic in its nature,
and that one needs to look into the whole speech-act in order to identify a sentence as constative or normative one.
However, Ferber is aware that his proposed criterion isn’t sharp, and that features of particular speech-act should
always be taken into account. The conclusion of his paper is a modest one, yet allowed by analysis and his arguments,
and it says that the difference between “is” and “ought” isn’t absolute because there is no absolute meaning of “is”
and “ought”, only relative, and that means relative “to a given system of interpretation which usually is not stated
explicitly.” (Ferber 1988:20)

3. Conclusion
If previously stated analyses stand, i.e. if they show the contrary to the presupposed difference between “is” and
“ought”, namely that it is absolute, than it is not absolute. That much can be concluded from the arguments of they are
conclusive. However, to say that the difference is relative is much harder, because it would be shallow to claim the
relativity of it without claiming, or even lightly suggesting to what it is relative, namely to what an “is” and an
“ought” are relative to? It is easy to say in the case of Pragmatist maxim that the maxim shows that there is an “is” in
“ought”, and vice versa concerning the Performative theory, but this needs a further argumentation which is implied
here but not argued for. However, if the difference between “is” and “ought” isn’t absolute, the claim that the
arguments seem to back up, than the Hume’s Law, the Naturalistic Fallacy, the Moralistic Fallacy, and the Fact-value
distinction all rest on the distinction and difference which is presupposed as absolute but which in fact is not such.