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The fact–value distinction is also closely related to the moralistic fallacy, an invalid inference of factual conclusions from purely evaluative premises. For example, an invalid inference "Because everybody ought to be equal, there are no innate genetic differences between people" is an instance of the moralistic fallacy.
For example, the fact described by the true statement "Paris is the capital city of France" implies that there is such a place as Paris, there is such a place as France, there are such things as capital cities, as well as that France has a government, that the government of France has the power to define its capital city, and that the French ...
First of all, Hilary Putnam, by tracing back the quarrel to Hume's dictum, claims fact/value entanglement as an objection, since the distinction between them entails a value. [ clarification needed ] A. N. Prior points out, from the statement "He is a sea captain," it logically follows, "He ought to do what a sea captain ought to do."
Naturalistic fallacy – inferring evaluative conclusions from purely factual premises [105] [106] in violation of fact-value distinction. Naturalistic fallacy (sometimes confused with appeal to nature) is the inverse of moralistic fallacy. Is–ought fallacy [107] – deduce a conclusion about what ought to be, on the basis of what is.
Robbins was instrumental in promoting the fact-value distinction in economics and insisting that ethical or value judgments should not be a part of the discipline, [10] and by the 1950s some economists even asserted that Arrow's impossibility theorem proved any attempts to construct normative standards in economics were doomed to fail.
Most notably, Quine argues that the analytic–synthetic distinction is illegitimate: [5] But for all its a priori reasonableness, a boundary between analytic and synthetic statements simply has not been drawn. That there is such a distinction to be drawn at all is an unempirical dogma of empiricists, a metaphysical article of faith.
In modern times, many thinkers discussing the fact–value distinction and the is–ought problem have settled on the idea that one cannot derive ought from is. Conversely, Harris maintains that the fact-value distinction is a confusion, proposing that values are really a certain kind of fact.
There is large debate in philosophy surrounding whether one can get a normative statement of such a type from an empirical one (i.e. whether one can get an 'ought' from an 'is', or a 'value' from a 'fact'). Aristotle is one scholar who believed that one could in fact get an ought from an is.