I think you rephrased it very nicely, Robin. I doubt not the fact/value
distinction generally but rather only with regard to particular invocations
of high-level values. At the fundamental level of arational preferences, I
think the distinction holds up. I also agree, therefore, that disagreements
arise primarily over facts--but with this caveat: To say that people share
values does not at all necessitate the conclusion that they will live
together without conflict. Given the sort of self-centered values that
humans arationally hold, quite the contrary holds true. I value my own
social status, my own pleasure/pain maximization, my own reproductive
success, and so forth. My neighbors value theirs. Put us in a world of
limited resources and . . . voila: conflict.
I here use "conflict" to distinguish that sort of fight over resources from
"disagreements," or fights over ideas. But that's an on-the-fly taxonomy
that probably does not do as well as more carefully considered accounts and
may not hold up at all upon closer scrutiny. (Hey, what do you want? It's
email!)
>T.0. Morrow wrote:
>>I doubt that the fact/value distinction holds up under close scrutiny.
> What
>>seem like values almost always represent positions held only contingent
>on
>>certain factual assumptions. Take, for example, valuing "the environment."
>>Though proponents of environmentalism often present it as a per se good,
>they
>>in truth accept certain claims--industrialism increases human suffering,
>>ecosystems exist in balanced harmony absent human intervention, population
>>growth increases pollution, and so forth--that may or may not be facts.
> Only
>>at a very fundamental, arational level--seek social status, maximize
>>pleasure/pain ratios, reproduce, and so forth--do values not rely on beliefs
>>about facts. And at that level, almost everyone agrees.
>
>T. appears at first to reject the fact/value distinction, but as far as
>I can
>tell then embraces it as holding at a fundamental level. And I agree that
>decision making often uses multiple levels of beliefs, where beliefs at
>each
>level are built on beliefs from the level below, and that beliefs above
>the
>base level are often mixtures of facts and values. If every disagreement
>at
>a higher level can be traced to disagreements about lower level beliefs,
>however, then it seems we can still talk about how much a disagreement
>is
>due to facts versus values. In principle, we just trace disagreements
>back
>to the fundamental level belief disagreements they are due to, and see
>how
>much of those are values versus facts. And given T.'s last statement,
>it
>seems that T. thinks most disagreements are about facts, presumably including
>our disagreements with opponents.
>
T.0. Morrow
http://members.aol.com/t0morrow/T0Mpage.html
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