Fact And Value Dichotomy Criticism

Since the so-called Hume's Law was established, the fact and value dichotomy had gradually became a main opinion in modern and contemporary western philosophy and ethics. Plainly speaking, the idea is that, the fact is the fact, the value is the value, they two completely different, facts can't boil down to values, and values can't boil down to facts too. This view is so prevalent and thorough popular feeling that had became a common sense and a cultural convention called by Putnam. Almost everyone in daily life will declare in some cases, this is a fact judgment, which can be judge correct or incorrect by objective standard; That is a value judgment, which just a personal subjective judgment, and there is not an absolute objective standard can judge whether it is right or not.Because the view is so common, it has important influence, not only in the ethical field, but also in other academic fields, not only in the academic field, and in all aspects of our social life. As this article is going to argue, because of this dichotomy is in essence a kind of metaphysical doctrine, so the impact of it must not completely is positive. Therefore, it is very necessary and has important academic and practical significance to analyse this dichotomy in philosophy and ethics, points out its wrong, and clarify the inevitable entanglement, interdependence and unity of fact and value. Especially for contemporary China, which had turned into deeper level of economic market reform, and need to continue promoting political reform, it is more necessary to critique the fact and value dichotomy, avoid unfavorable influences bring about by extreme market liberalism, which is base on this dichotomy in philosophy and ethics.More strictly speaking, the so-called fact and value dichotomy, mainly is a or a category of metaphysical ideas, which roughly insists views such this:there transcendentally exist a fact field and a value field in metaphysics, they uniformly and absolutely contrast with each other, and can be strictly separate from each other; the fact is objective and value free, can be objectively research by reason, the value is subjective, can't be reasoningly investigate, can't objectively get guarantee; an object can't be classed into value field no more, if it have been classed into fact field, and vice versa; it can't logically deduce the value judgment from the factual statement. The emotivism in ethics is the typical representative of this view. Emotivists say, that a factual statement is a synthetic judgment which can be objectively judge true or not; a value judgment is just the pure expression of one's subjective feeling, which lack of cognitive meaning, thus out of the true or false question, and can't be really investigated by reason. Emotivists are mostly logical positivists, their views were influenced by Hume's empirical epistemology, the distinction between analytic judgment and synthetic judgment, and his transcendental ethics.Putnam and Dewey have deeply critiqued the fact and value dichotomy. Putnam points out, that the fact and value dichotomy base on the narrow empirical understanding of fact, the non-cognitive understanding of value, and the analysis and synthesis dichotomy. The entanglements of facts and values, which were embodied in the concept of cognitive value and thick ethical concepts, indicate that fact judgments and value judgments are interdependent and bond with each other. The viewpoint that fact fields and value fields severally have their own definite boundaries and completely different with each other is a kind of metaphysical fantasy that does not match the reality. Dewey demonstrated that the ethical judgment and scientific judgment essentially have logical consistency, and took human needs which must be examined beforehand by operational experiment of rational thoughts defined value, and clarified the basic role of practical activities which restricted by habit on connect facts with values. The critique of Putnam and Dewey, especially their attention to practice, provide helpful use for reference for us to criticize the fact and value dichotomy.As a system of world view and methodology, Marx's practical materialism can provide a set of strong theoretical tool for us to critical fact and value dichotomy, and correctly understand their interrelationships. From the perspective of the practical materialism, the objective practical activities of human really connect the fact and value fields. The fact is not unchangeable objective thing-in-itself, the value is not the human's pure subjective emotion or a kind of unique value entity. Facts are objective things that have been remoulded by human's practical activities, and the relations—which can be objectively described—between those things and human, and the developing process of these relations; values are in the dynamic processes of the human needs and the meet of these needs, which constantly create and change in their own objective practical activities. In the active, objective, historical, social and concrete practical activities, facts and values indivisibly interweave and entangle with each other, really achieve intrinsic unity.