"From Sinks to Webs: Critical Social Science after the
Fact-Value Distinction." Canadian Review of Sociology /Revue canadienne de sociologie 54(4):423-44.
As in the works written since After Virtue, MacIntyre's main concern in his new book is the
fact-value distinction. "I have feelings about what would please me and that's what I value and what motivates me," is an expression we would expect from someone who hews to this distinction.
Law scholars debate the
fact-value distinction in interdisciplinary studies of law.
In this new volume targeted to undergraduate students of economics, James Halteman and Edd Noell lament the
fact-value distinction found in modern economics.
The discussion of these objections gives particular attention to the legacy of Hume's
fact-value distinction.
In my reading, Ward employs the
fact-value distinction as a surrogate for the unresolved science-religion demarcation, and he thereby ignores one of the bigger philosophical questions of the last century (i.e., whether this is a legitimate distinction).
(It is not necessarily the case that Hailer subscribes to a fictitious distinction between action and belief just because his argument relies on it--he could be attempting a shrewd manipulation of belief.) Haller's arguments depend, furthermore, on additional, related and similarly questionable distinctions, including a
fact-value distinction which treats modem science as if it possessed moral neutrality and did not presuppose certain goods, as well as a distinction between ethics and prudence that forgets that prudence is a virtue that is always entangled with purposes.
"To argue from the existence of a
fact-value distinction to the obligation to take responsibility for our actions is to violate the
fact-value distinction" (p.
Schmitt and Copenhaver make a plausible case that many supposedly modern philosophical issues - the embeddedness of thought in language, the need to choose among incommensurate conceptual schemes, the problem of the
fact-value distinction - have roots going back to the Renaissance.
Some of the implications are interesting, especially the author's view that a satisfying theory of content has to appeal to notions of value, and his related attack on the
fact-value distinction. But unless the theory can produce an analysis of at least some legitimately intentional concepts, the value of these far-reaching claims is largely mooted.
Lang's convictions are precise: human beings are not objects, and, in descriptions of human beings, the
fact-value distinction fails; morality is more important than law; there are dimensions of human existence which fall outside the scope of the political; corruption in people and in politics goes hand in hand with a corruption of language.