4 ms·

Values Are Facts

24 points by cinquemb 4y ago

arisbe__ 4y ago
Does he mean that there are facts about who values what? And people value different facts more or less (i.e. economics of information)? Also we should stop talking about facts as truth and instead assume we always mean "provisional facts" with differing degrees of certainty. Digressing just a bit, I feel that facts and values aren't of the same type in the same way that electrons and protons kind of aren't atoms (the exceptions make the analogy somewhat richer). That is somehow maybe values compose to form provisional facts like terms compose along with a copula to form propositions. This also lends itself to the notion that there should be a third category that is more often than not helpful to emphasize. This would be something analogous to argument in logic or chemical reaction in chemistry. Lastly this makes me wonder about the relation between explanatory, imperative and declarative sentences and also dependent clauses which I imagine people have commented on. (I imagine none of this is new)
- Helmut10001 4y ago
  I think it is a bit confusingly formulated in the article. Facts in the common sense are objectively measured "information", whereas values are akin to facts in that they represent the objective truth perceived by people. That could be a single person's truth, as everyone has a certain way for seeing the world; or (as the authors argues), a number of other people share this view - this is when subjective observations become society values, norms etc. Therefore, by being shared by many people, values can become comparable to objective facts. I would argue they are still a different type, albeit no less or more important.
- PikachuEXE 4y ago
  > Also we should stop talking about facts as truth and instead assume we always mean "provisional facts" with differing degrees of certainty. Just providing related references here Phrase: "I know that I know nothing" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_that_I_know_nothing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_that_I_know_nothing - https://betterhumans.pub/i-know-that-i-know-nothing-is-the-only-true-wisdom-c1844eee564c https://betterhumans.pub/i-know-that-i-know-nothing-is-the-o... Search using the keyword if you want more sources/related content 2nd ref above also contains another quote worth mentioning here: "The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge" Note that the phrase is originally from Latin so it might not be translated very accurately
drewcoo 4y ago
It's a redefinition of the word values to mean something more like Heidegger's dasein, I think. It's not the same as fact or value, so thank goodness it has its own name. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dasein https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dasein We usually mean values to be scope-dependent (individual, group, nation, etc.) beliefs. But those are always defined within boundaries, so not true outside the boundary. A fact can't be true and untrue at the same time, so values aren't facts.
- nonrandomstring 4y ago
  Yes, about half-way though I saw where this was going. A bottom-up positivist attempt to redefine "values" has (as you say Heidegger) precedent, but is usually steps along the way to defining what philosophers mean by value (so distinguishing universaliable/simpliciter kinds of "good/bad") Those kinds of "facts" have utility. It's useful to know such "states of mind facts" as "That dog will bite you if it doesn't like you". But that's not real values. IIRC this is the difference between cognitive and non-cognitive value theories, but I forget now why that difference matters.
nullc 4y ago
You can encode an opinion into a fact by attributing it, but this doesn't make the opinion a fact-- only its fact encoded version is a fact and they aren't the same thing. "This is a beautiful sunrise" -- opinion. "Nullc thinks this is a beautiful sunrise" -- fact But the beauty of the sunrise remains an opinion. Being able to fact-wrap opinions and unmeasurables is an important communication skill since sometimes working with fact-wrapped views is sufficient, but it often isn't especially when it comes to setting rules for other people's behavior.
- morelisp 4y ago
  > "Nullc thinks this is a beautiful sunrise" -- fact Even that's not a fact; the closest one can get is perhaps "nullc said 'This is a beautiful sunrise'". (You can't even really get to 'nullc said this is a beautiful sunrise'.)
manholio 4y ago
The fact vs. value distinction is fundamental in establishing functional and peaceful political structures where rational apes can collaborate and achieve common goals despite their inherent disagreements. It's completely irrelevant if a bike is factually a superior urban vehicle to a car or a tram. Or if a purely imaginary political border passes to the west of a certain field of maize, making it part of Russia, or to the east, making it Ukraine. The existence of a great being in the sky cannot be factually proved, but tell that to ~5 billion people. Humans care very deeply about many contentious "facts" that are not settled and widely accepted. The only way to not implode is to call them values, and agree to disagree while establishing systems that can reach conclusions despite them, for example the democratic process. This also provides a frame where people can discuss such issues and expose "values" that turn out to be simply wrong facts, for example anti-vaccinationism.
horseAMcharlie 4y ago
To paraphrase a joke from model theory, allowing facts to make claims about other facts up to recursion is a fine way to prevent any long-term success in natural language processing. If you drop absoluteness, the consequences will never be the same.
satisfice 4y ago
The reason that we want to say that a value is not a fact is not because it literally isn't a fact that, for instance, I hate licorice. Instead it's because that sort of fact is subjective-- bound to a particular valuer and not necessarily shared. We say that values are not facts as a figure of speech; a rehtorical shortcut. Logic does not compel us to share any value with anyone else, which is, after all, what drives the dynamics of free markets. If the farmer and the grocer didn't value licorice differently no licorice would ever get to market and give me the opporutnity not to purchase it. However, whenever you are dealing with social dynamics, feelings should be treated as facts. No matter how ephemeral, every feeling is real within each person, in that it has real consequences for behavior. And so my wife might buy licorice to tease me.
- feet 4y ago
  Your dislike of licorice is a fact at a specific point in time because it is determined by your biology
  - twiceaday 4y ago
    You are only saying that because you assume they were telling the truth.
ajuc 4y ago
So this is about values as heuristics. The jump from facts like "if you move your pieces to the center - likelihood of winning increases" to values like "taking the center is good". Or from "having law system increases the quality of life in a society" to "law is good". I don't think anybody disagree about these. What people disagree about is when there are trade-offs between different heuristics. Or about what the goals for the heuristics should be.
apienx 4y ago
Facts are, by definition, supposed to be indisputable. Values are generally fuzzy and harder to demonstrate.
- tablespoon 4y ago
  > Facts are, by definition, supposed to be indisputable. Values are generally fuzzy and harder to demonstrate. I think there's something wrong with your definitions. Facts obviously are disputable in a lot of contexts (e.g. reliability of witnesses, "he said, she said"), and recent times have shown that they probably are only "indisputable" within a shared system of values.
mattnewport 4y ago
There seems to be a bit of a sleight of hand going on here. The argument being made is mostly about what values people hold being facts. Usually when people make a distinction between facts and values though they are not saying that what values people hold are not facts but rather that what values people should hold are not facts. Is vs ought. Obviously the author understands this distinction so I'm not sure why it seems to be ignored / glossed over here. You can make a case that what values ought to be is also connected to facts and I would tend to agree with that argument but it's not really the case that is being made here.
- rayiner 4y ago
  But arguing about what values people “should” have is dumb and pointless.
  - Joker_vD 4y ago
    It's the preliminary step before making people to adopt new values: which values, exactly, are we going to make people adopt? Obviously, that's where "should" comes in.
    - rayiner 4y ago
      Another reason it’s dumb.

24 points by cinquemb 4y ago

Does he mean that there are facts about who values what? And people value different facts more or less (i.e. economics of information)? Also we should stop talking about facts as truth and instead assume we always mean "provisional facts" with differing degrees of certainty. Digressing just a bit, I feel that facts and values aren't of the same type in the same way that electrons and protons kind of aren't atoms (the exceptions make the analogy somewhat richer). That is somehow maybe values compose to form provisional facts like terms compose along with a copula to form propositions. This also lends itself to the notion that there should be a third category that is more often than not helpful to emphasize. This would be something analogous to argument in logic or chemical reaction in chemistry. Lastly this makes me wonder about the relation between explanatory, imperative and declarative sentences and also dependent clauses which I imagine people have commented on. (I imagine none of this is new)

Helmut10001 4y ago
I think it is a bit confusingly formulated in the article. Facts in the common sense are objectively measured "information", whereas values are akin to facts in that they represent the objective truth perceived by people. That could be a single person's truth, as everyone has a certain way for seeing the world; or (as the authors argues), a number of other people share this view - this is when subjective observations become society values, norms etc. Therefore, by being shared by many people, values can become comparable to objective facts. I would argue they are still a different type, albeit no less or more important.
PikachuEXE 4y ago
> Also we should stop talking about facts as truth and instead assume we always mean "provisional facts" with differing degrees of certainty. Just providing related references here Phrase: "I know that I know nothing" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_that_I_know_nothing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_that_I_know_nothing - https://betterhumans.pub/i-know-that-i-know-nothing-is-the-only-true-wisdom-c1844eee564c https://betterhumans.pub/i-know-that-i-know-nothing-is-the-o... Search using the keyword if you want more sources/related content 2nd ref above also contains another quote worth mentioning here: "The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge" Note that the phrase is originally from Latin so it might not be translated very accurately

drewcoo 4y ago

It's a redefinition of the word values to mean something more like Heidegger's dasein, I think. It's not the same as fact or value, so thank goodness it has its own name. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dasein https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dasein We usually mean values to be scope-dependent (individual, group, nation, etc.) beliefs. But those are always defined within boundaries, so not true outside the boundary. A fact can't be true and untrue at the same time, so values aren't facts.

nonrandomstring 4y ago
Yes, about half-way though I saw where this was going. A bottom-up positivist attempt to redefine "values" has (as you say Heidegger) precedent, but is usually steps along the way to defining what philosophers mean by value (so distinguishing universaliable/simpliciter kinds of "good/bad") Those kinds of "facts" have utility. It's useful to know such "states of mind facts" as "That dog will bite you if it doesn't like you". But that's not real values. IIRC this is the difference between cognitive and non-cognitive value theories, but I forget now why that difference matters.

nullc 4y ago

You can encode an opinion into a fact by attributing it, but this doesn't make the opinion a fact-- only its fact encoded version is a fact and they aren't the same thing. "This is a beautiful sunrise" -- opinion. "Nullc thinks this is a beautiful sunrise" -- fact But the beauty of the sunrise remains an opinion. Being able to fact-wrap opinions and unmeasurables is an important communication skill since sometimes working with fact-wrapped views is sufficient, but it often isn't especially when it comes to setting rules for other people's behavior.

morelisp 4y ago
> "Nullc thinks this is a beautiful sunrise" -- fact Even that's not a fact; the closest one can get is perhaps "nullc said 'This is a beautiful sunrise'". (You can't even really get to 'nullc said this is a beautiful sunrise'.)

manholio 4y ago

The fact vs. value distinction is fundamental in establishing functional and peaceful political structures where rational apes can collaborate and achieve common goals despite their inherent disagreements. It's completely irrelevant if a bike is factually a superior urban vehicle to a car or a tram. Or if a purely imaginary political border passes to the west of a certain field of maize, making it part of Russia, or to the east, making it Ukraine. The existence of a great being in the sky cannot be factually proved, but tell that to ~5 billion people. Humans care very deeply about many contentious "facts" that are not settled and widely accepted. The only way to not implode is to call them values, and agree to disagree while establishing systems that can reach conclusions despite them, for example the democratic process. This also provides a frame where people can discuss such issues and expose "values" that turn out to be simply wrong facts, for example anti-vaccinationism.

horseAMcharlie 4y ago

To paraphrase a joke from model theory, allowing facts to make claims about other facts up to recursion is a fine way to prevent any long-term success in natural language processing. If you drop absoluteness, the consequences will never be the same.

satisfice 4y ago

The reason that we want to say that a value is not a fact is not because it literally isn't a fact that, for instance, I hate licorice. Instead it's because that sort of fact is subjective-- bound to a particular valuer and not necessarily shared. We say that values are not facts as a figure of speech; a rehtorical shortcut. Logic does not compel us to share any value with anyone else, which is, after all, what drives the dynamics of free markets. If the farmer and the grocer didn't value licorice differently no licorice would ever get to market and give me the opporutnity not to purchase it. However, whenever you are dealing with social dynamics, feelings should be treated as facts. No matter how ephemeral, every feeling is real within each person, in that it has real consequences for behavior. And so my wife might buy licorice to tease me.

feet 4y ago
Your dislike of licorice is a fact at a specific point in time because it is determined by your biology
- twiceaday 4y ago
  You are only saying that because you assume they were telling the truth.

ajuc 4y ago

So this is about values as heuristics. The jump from facts like "if you move your pieces to the center - likelihood of winning increases" to values like "taking the center is good". Or from "having law system increases the quality of life in a society" to "law is good". I don't think anybody disagree about these. What people disagree about is when there are trade-offs between different heuristics. Or about what the goals for the heuristics should be.

apienx 4y ago

Facts are, by definition, supposed to be indisputable. Values are generally fuzzy and harder to demonstrate.

tablespoon 4y ago
> Facts are, by definition, supposed to be indisputable. Values are generally fuzzy and harder to demonstrate. I think there's something wrong with your definitions. Facts obviously are disputable in a lot of contexts (e.g. reliability of witnesses, "he said, she said"), and recent times have shown that they probably are only "indisputable" within a shared system of values.

mattnewport 4y ago

There seems to be a bit of a sleight of hand going on here. The argument being made is mostly about what values people hold being facts. Usually when people make a distinction between facts and values though they are not saying that what values people hold are not facts but rather that what values people should hold are not facts. Is vs ought. Obviously the author understands this distinction so I'm not sure why it seems to be ignored / glossed over here. You can make a case that what values ought to be is also connected to facts and I would tend to agree with that argument but it's not really the case that is being made here.

rayiner 4y ago
But arguing about what values people “should” have is dumb and pointless.
- Joker_vD 4y ago
  It's the preliminary step before making people to adopt new values: which values, exactly, are we going to make people adopt? Obviously, that's where "should" comes in.
  - rayiner 4y ago
    Another reason it’s dumb.