Fact Value

7/27/2019 Fact Value

1/5

The Fact- Va lue Dichotomyas an Intellectual Prison

D A N T E G E R M I N O

TWENTY-FIVEEARS AGO, the political scientistDavid Easton mad e the following observa tionsabout the widespread acceptance of the fact-value dichotomy in American social science:This assumption, generally adopted todayin the social sciences, holds that values canultimately be reduced to emotional re-sponses conditioned by the individualstotal life-experiences. In this interpreta-tion, although in practice no on e proposi-t ion need express either a pure fact or a purevalue, fac ts and values are logically hetero-geneous. T he factual asp ect of a propositionrefers to a part of reality; hence it can betested by referen ce to the facts. I n this waywe check i ts truth. The moral aspect of aproposition, however, expresses only theemotional response of an individual to astate of real or presumed facts. It indicateswhether and the extent to which an indi-vidual desires a partic ular state of affairs toexist. Although we can say that th e aspe ct ofa proposition referring to a fact ca n be trueor false, i t is meaningless to characterizethe value aspect of a proposition in thisway.Eastons inelegant formu lation of the logicalpositivist fact-value dichotomy has the advan -tage of its bruta l frankness. So-called valuepropositions, do not refer to reality at all.Reality apparently is what we discover bybarefoot empiricism, to employ WilliamGlasers felicitous phrase. In any event, Ea stontells us, fa cts and v alues are logically hetero-geneous. T his means that were w e to attemptto derive a no rm (o r value) from a fact (or a partof reality), we should be com mittin g the na t-uralistic fallacy which forbids us under painof methodological death to derive an oughtfrom a n is.The logic of logical positivism is this: stick to

your last and d o not mess around in the muck ofvalues and soul stuff.To be su re, e ach of uscould go about parading our value judgm entsbut why should we do so, given that they are ourirrational responses conditioned by our totallife experiences to a set of rea l or presumedfacts? The profession is interested in ourfacts not in our psyches, says Easton.As an illustration of the markedly defla-tionary effect of the fact-value dichotomy onso-called statem ents of value, I offer the follow-ing translation, as it were, of Jeffersonian En-glish into Eastonian political sc ienc e. Thom asJefferson, who died in 1825an d of course wasb e n i g h t e d l y u n a w a r e o f t h e f a c t - v a l u edichotomy, could w rite: LLW eold these truthsto be sei:-evident: that aii men are crea tedequal and are endowed by their Creator withcertain unalienable rights.Rendered into mainstream political sci-ence, Jeffersons words would sound todaysomething l ike this:

We ho ld these values, which do not refer toa part of reality, and cannot be said to beeither true or false, and which can ult i-mately be reduced to our emotional re-sponses, not to be self-evident of course,but rathe r to indicate the exten t to which w edesire a particular state of affairs to exist:that all men are created equ al and are en-dowed by their Creator with certain una-lienable rights; except that neither the no-tion of creation, nor that of a Creator, northat of una liena ble rights is testable. Andso, perhaps we might just as well forget thewhole thing.I sha ll not dwe ll on ,the obviously nihilisticimplications of ma instream socia l sciencesfact-value dichotomy. Many good books havebeen written on t hi s ~ u b j e c t . ~did find inter-

la0 Spring 1979


2/5

esting th e following observation in Rudolf Car-naps Autobiography offered in rebuttal ofthe cha rge that value relativism promo tes polit-ical nihilism:Someones acceptance or rejection of anyparticular thesis concerning the logical na-ture of value statements and the kind andsource of their validity has usually a verylimited influence upon his practical deci-sions. The behavior in given situations andthe general attitude of people is chiefly de-termined by their characte r and very little,if at al l, by the theoretical doctrines to whichthey adhere.4

It is noteworthy that Ca rnap , once a leadingmember of the Vienna Circle, here refers tosomething so untestable by the canons oflogical positivism as char acter, as if it were afact. However, I am not interested in huntingdown all the inco nsisten cies of advoca tes of thefact-value dichotomy. Rather I wish to callattention to the defective conception of real-ity at the basis of the positivist fact-valuedichotomy, a conception, I contend, that pre-ven ts main~t ream~ocial science from be-coming a critical science of politics in thefully-developed sense .One problem with the mainstream notion ofreality is that it cannot accoun t for the large rreality in which the two worlds of fact andvalue are situated. If factual reality consistsof phenomena out there to be observed by aself-conscious observer, there is no provisionfor the very rea l capaci ty of the sel f-conscious, valuing subject to get behindhimself or herself as it were and see thereality encompassing both the observed factsand the observing subject. Nor is there provi-sion for the reality of the interaction betweenthe perceiving mind and the perceived realphenomena. Such considerat ions as theseeventually led Karl Popper, one of mainstreamsocial sciences leading philosophers, to posita third world beyond that of either objectivefacts or subjective values.5Poppers third world construction repre-sen ts a seemingly important departure from thefact-value dualism to which in one form oranother he had long been committed. As de-

scribed by S ir John Ecc les, who follows Poppe rin endorsing the third-world construction,World 1 represents physical objects andstate s; it is the tota l world of the ma terialists.World 2 con sists of sta tes of consciousn essand subjective knowledge. World 3 repre-sents the whole world of culture, or knowl-edge in the objective sense.6 For both Ecclesand Po ppe r there is a reality resulting from theinteract ion of objectivity and subjectivitywhich is not explainable by the fact-valuedichotomy. Popper calls the third world therealm of epistem ology without a knowing sub-ject.Despite Poppers attempt to move beyondthe fact-value dichotomy by positing a thirdworld, he fails to cope with the dichotomysdeflationary effect upon all non-empiricaldiscourse. Indeed, in the sam e volume con-taining his third-world speculation, he makesclear that he stands by his earlier teachingconcerning a l ine of demarcation distin-guishing the statements of empirical sciencefrom non-em pirical statements. As the phi-losopher Henry Veatch ha s noted, in claimingto solve the so-called problem of demarca-t ion, Popper appoints himself a kind ofpope to oversee the proper drawing of theline. Veatchs remarks on this subject willonly lose in paraphrase, so le t us hear himdirectly:

Time w as when only a pope was deem ed a fitofficer to draw a line of demarcation; butnowadays th i s onet ime papal funct ionwould appear to have devolved upon anu n b l u s h i n g a n d e v e r r e a d y S i r K a r l .Moreover, he would appear to have confi-dently drawn his line in su ch a way that onthe one side are to be reckoned all of thoseenterprises that are properly scientific incharacter, and scientific just in the sensethat they place their reliance upon thehypothetico-deductive method; and on theother side of the line, there would seem tobe ranged an indeterminate and somewhatmotley crew of enterprises-some of themresem bl i ng m e t aphys i ca l specu l a t i on ,others being perhaps clsssifiable as reli-gious discourse or theological argument,

Modem Age 141


3/5

others reminding one of ethic al or aesthe ticjudgem ents, and stillothers as amounting tolittle more than projects of ordinary, every-day human reflection and discussion. Byand large, enterprises of these latter kindsare scarcely marked by any exclusive ore v e n p r e c i s e r e l i a n c e u p o n t h ehypothetico-deductive method. But if theyd o not rely upon the proper an d distinctivemethod of science, then all suc h enter pris esas lie on what w e might refer to as the farside of the line of demarcation cannot pos-sibly claim to be scientific. And if not sc ie n-tific, then can they claim to be even prop-erly cognitive enterprises at all? True, Pop-per himself has always refused to go alongwith . the old-line positivists and simplywrite off metaphysics, theology, ethics, eta l . as meaningless. But while not meaning-l e s s , i t i s s t i l l q u e s t i o n a b l e w h e t h e rmetaph ysical language, religious language ,and, for that matter, any and all forms ofnon-scientific discourse c an be regarded asproperly informative or descriptive. Inter-esting. suggestive, inspirine they may wellbe at times, but do they convey knowledge?Likewise, a s regards truth, w hile theremight be som e hesitation in denying flat-outthat metaphysical statements or religiousaffirmations or even such statem ents as maybe implicit in poetry or in art generally-while it might be going too f a r to say thatstatements of these varying sorts are inca-pable of being either true or false, still itwould seem that such truths as are to berelega ted to the far side of the line of dem ar-cation ca n hardly claim to be truths of fact ortruth s about the world in the way scientifictruths are.*N o t s u r p r i s i n g l y , P o p p e r a t t e m p t s t opositivitize, as t were, the con ten ts of h is thirdworld, callin g it the realm of objective knowl-edge. In this way, World 3 can fall mainly onthe positive side of the line of dem arc atio n an d

count as something empirical and objective,even though it perforce contains elements ofsubjectivity. Thus, even poetic thoughts andworks of art are subsumed under World 3,which comprises the world of objective con-

tents of thought. (Poppers italics.) To sum-marize, Poppers three worlds are: World 1: th ephysical world; World 2: the world of ourconscious experience; and World 3: theworld of the logical contents of books, librarie s,computer memories, and such like.Compared with the Eastonian m ainstreamfact-value dichotomy, Poppers third worldconstruction marks a tiny opening of the doortoward the multidimensional reality whichmust be the basis of any critical science ofpolitics and society. It is interesting to notewhat convolutions scholars who accept thefact-value dichotomy as their starting pointhave to go through in order to prod uce even atiny chink in the prison. Other movementssuch a s the Frankfort school have attem ptedto arrive at a different solution to the fact-value problem . So me of these attem pts havebeen discussed by Richard Bernstein in a bookwhich also implicitly acc epts the regnant fact-value assumption as the starting point for acritique an d for what he calls a restructuringof social and political theory.1 However,such a restnirtiiring as Remstein describesamo unts only to a shuffling aroun d of the furni-ture in the same warehouse (or lets say in thesame minimum-security prison).Eric Voegelin has penetrated to the core ofthe problem . As he wrote in TheNew ScienceofPolitics:

The notion of a value-judgment . . . ismeaningless in itself; it gains its meaningfrom a situation in which it is opposed tojudgments concerning facts . . . and thissituation was created through the positivis-tic conceit that only propositions concern-ing facts of the p henom enal world were ob-jective, while judgments concerning theright order of the soul and society weresubjective. Th e classification made se nseonly if the positivistic dogma were acc eptedon principle. . . .

The language of values serves only to pre-vent the development of a critical science ofpolitics. Such a science would need as itsstarting-point an openness the experience ofthe order of Being, an order which is notcreated by man, but within which man finds

11

142 Spring 1979


4/5

himself situated. Th e language of Being aroseout of the quest by the noetic philosophers inGreece for the ground of the ir being and of allbeing. The language of Being is ignored ortwisted beyond recognition by the lang uage ofvalues; hence w e need to jettison the langu ageof values an d attempt to recover the languag e ofBeing before w e can move forward to develop acritical political scien ce adeq uate for our owntime.As w e know, Popper lays great stress onopen ness; yet in the language he employs hehimself is closed to the experience of crea-tureliness. Popperian man is pictured as fac-ing a pheno men al reality external to him u ponwhich he projects his values and in interac-tion w ith w hich he creates a third world ofculture or objective knowledge. Thus, hedescribes his third world as a man-madeproduct.12 It is true that Popper struggles toget out of the positivist prison into which hevoluntarily put himself by a lso recognizing thatthere is something super-human and auton-omous, something that transcend s its mak-ers13 in the Third W orld idea. W hat he ispre sumably a t t empt ing (de sp i t e t he deadweight of the fact-value dichotomy ) to articu-late is the experience of nonm etric, spiritualreality, a reality that cannot possibly be ac-commodated within the fact-value universe.For experiences of spiritual reality (or non-metric reality to use A rthur Edd ingtons term)are supposed to be on the deflationary side ofthe line of demarcation, are supposed not tohave truth-content, are supposed not to beempirical. In other words, such experiencesfor Popper can only be made real by beingobjectified into a world of th e logical contentsof books, libraries, computer memories andsuch like.In Objective Knowledge Popper even citesthe very Plat0 he had so me rcilessly savaged inhis ope n society book as the philosopher who,fo r a ll h i s e~~ en t i a l i s t rrors, might lead usback to a language of the reality not accountedfor in the langua ge of values. l4Struggle as h edoes, however, P opp er cannot bring himself tobreak through and re-enact within himselfPlatos exper ienc e of the reality of hum an ex is-tence in the Metaxy or the B etween. For all

his attem pts at revising the ina dequa cies of thefact-value language, Poppers man remains f a c in g t h e r e d u c e d r e a l i ty o f t h eneopositivists. All he has accomplished is tohave add ed a realm of cultural facts (in thecreation of which his Pelagian-like individualshave had a share through their self-consciousinteraction with th e ph ysical world and with therealm of objective knowledge) to the physicalfacts of the positivists.I wish to conclude with som e brief observa-tions on the requ iremen ts for a critical scienceof politics in our time. Such a scien ce would beopen to the lan guage of past s earch ers for real-ity (not the positivist reality but the realityexperienced by the whole human being). Itwould learn as much from an E gyptian hymn ora Buddhist prayer or a Biblical text or aPlatonic dialog ue as it do es from th e pages ofthe C ongres sional Record or the New YorkTimes abo ut what co nstitutes the political real-ity i n which we all participate. In its language acritical sc ien ce of politics would not mirror thevery world-the m odern world-which it issup pos ed to interpre t. It would know itself to bea sc ie n ce -a form of knowledge-rather than amere blik (as the fact-value dichotomy im-plies). It would b e ab le to identify and exposeideological second-reality construction s forthe th reats that they are to the freedom of thespirit and the dignity of the person. It wouldalso know its limitations and have no moreillusions than did positivisms greatest repre-sentative, Max W eber, abou t offering up reci-pes for practice for the specific problems ofthe day. Its knowing would be a questioningknowing and a knowing questioning.I contend, then, not as my private blik orvalue-judgment bu t as a m atter of record, thatfor there to be a critical scie nc e of politics theremust be openn ess on the p art of its practition-ers to the reality of the Between in which weparticipate and to the search for the ground ofBeing. Such a conslusion may sound dogm aticand arbitrary. For those who wish to pursu e thesearch, however, there exists a rich body ofliterature which they may use to help them tore-enact w ithin them selves the experiences ofreality to which the language of Being re-fers.5*

Modem Age 143


5/5

*This article is drawn from a paper delivered at the an nualmeeting of the American Political Science Association,held in New York City in September of 1978.David Easton, The Pol i t i ca l System (New York, Knopf,1953), p. 221. If by the naturalistic fallacy one meansderiving an ought from an is, the positivists them-selves are guilty of committing it. T hey a ssu me reality tobe split between fact and value with the subjectivevaluing individual as the source of norms rather thanfactual reality itself. Thus, they accept a s real thefact that the individual is the source of norms ratherthan , say, th e community or th e traditions of a civilization.In truth, there is no way of avoiding the fallacy.Positivists arg ue that reality is such that the individualimposes hisvalues on the real world: L e. the positivistassumes that h e ought no t to regard values as deriva-ble from reality.In any even t, the prob lem of a critical scien ce of politicsis not to avoid deriving an ought from an is, bu t to strive tosee that the ought in question isderived from what truly,enduringly, and ultimately is rather than from theZeitgeist or some evanescent and perhaps brutal ly success -ful fact. If by is one means m erely what exists a s abrute fact in the phenomenal world, then no one but aclod or a time-server would favor making that t he source ofthe ought. When Thomas Aquinas wrute that bonum etem convertuntur, he did not mean by is what merelyexists. Indeed, what other source can there possibly befor an ought that is authori ta tive for us than that it may bederiv ed from the ultimately true is, or the ord er of Being?Of course, vast opportunity for error inkeading the O rderof Being exists, which is why the ought is better ex-pressed in the language of the sense of movement towardreality or the ground of Being than in apodictic statements.The pre-analytical quality of openness to the ques t for(enduring) reality is presupposed for a n y valid ethicallanguage; suc h openness is th e sine qua non for avoiding

mega lomaniaca l ideologica l cons t ruc t ions and se l f -righteous repressiveness, both of which ignore the truth ofmans creatureliness, imperfection, an d finitude. T he manwho presumes to measure must experience himself asmeasured by aT ru th which h is judgm ents may at best onlyapproximate. 3See, for example, John H. Hallowell, M ainCurrents in Modem Political Thought (New Yurk: Holt,1950). C h a p t e n 9 and 10 and the literature cited there arepar t icula r ly re levant , as i s h i s a r t ic le Pol i t i c s andEthics , XX XVIIIA mrican Pol i t ica l Science Review (Au-gust , 1944), 639-655. 4Paul Arthur Schilpp, ed. , ThePhilosophy of Rudolf C a m p (La Salle, Illinois: OpenCourt, 1963), p. 82. Thi s is from Cam aps IntellectualAutobiography, pp. 3-84. 5Karl R. Popper, ObjectiveKnowledge: An Evolruionary Approach (Oxford: Clarendo nPress, 1972), p. 111. 6JohnEccles, The Understanding ofthe Br ain (New York: McGraw Hill, 1973). p. 193. Pop-per, op. eit., p. 12, n. 19. *Henry Veatch, A NeglectedAvenue in Co ntemporary Religious Apologetics, 13Reli-g i o w Studies (1977), 29-48 a t 31-32. BPopper, op. c i t . ,pp . 166,74. loRichard J. Bernstein, TheRestructioningofSocial an d Poli t ical Theory (New York and London: Har-court Brace Jovanovich, 1976) for the latest criticism ofmainstream social science. Som e of the leading contem-porary politica l philosophers who point the way beyond thelanguage of values are not even discussed by Bernstein.For example, Hannah Arendt and Eric Voegelin are noteven cited, which is rath er odd for a book on the restruc-turing of political thought. Eric Voegelin, Th e NewScience of Politics (Chicago: 1952), p . 11. 12Popper, op.ci t . , p. 158. 131bid., p. 159. Ybid., pp. 122, 158. 15Seein particular Eri c VoepelinsOrrlPra d k t q 4 v n ! l ~ ~ e s ,LSU Press, 1956-74) and my ar ticle Eric VoegelinsFramework for Political Evaluation, 72 APSR (March,1978), 110-121, and the literature cited therein. Voege-l i d s theory of experiences of reality an d their symboliza-tion has been furth er developed in essays to be publishedin Order and History, Volume V (forthcoming).

I 4 4 Spring 1979

Documents

Fact Value