Can facts be separated from values? Anyone know logic statements?

[longlg00]

Hi all

I’m new to this board so please be patient with me!

I’m writing an essay on Facts and Values and it would be great to get some input. The question relates to an article by Grey 2004:179) The brief is as follows:

“Facts are always impregnated with values, and there is no real distinction between morally and politically neutral means (such as management has traditionally been conceived to be) and value-laden ends (such as profitability or humanisation)”.

I want to provide a critical assessment of this based on my own experience in business as well as give some philosophical background/review/context. I thought about discussing power and knowledge - Marx, Freud, Butler, Foucault etc?

First of all I want to dissect the whole fact/value ‘thing’. How would people approach this brief? Is it possible to break this down into some form of logic statement? I would support Grey’s claim that facts cannot be separated from values!

Thanks a lot!!!

[FlashDangerpants]

That statement doesn't sound like it comes from a philosophy paper, it reads more like political science. I don't believe the facts that 1+1=2, or that light travels faster than sound are value laden. So the starting point is a question of what is actually under examination here.

Assuming the sort of fact being considered here is limited to matters of political policy ("it is desirable to reduce poverty", "punching nazis is good exercise", that sort of thing) then you probably need to stop and look at whether you want to respond in a philosophical manner or a social sciences method. FWIW I accidentally took a poli-sci course at uni thinking it would be much like a philosophy course - the methodologies are massively dissimilar and I was not really able to adjust.

From a philosophical perspective, announcing that all facts of a political nature are value laden is entirely pointless because the observation is necessarily true by reason of the fact that it excludes from consideration all facts which are not value laden (see 2+2=4 which is not terribly political). It is nothing more than a tautology.

From a political science perspective, you normally have to take some survey of a bunch of people's views, even if one of those people is Bruno Latour (I'm still pissed off that I had to take that idiot seriously for one essay 10 years ago). However you would (in this context but not in a philosophy paper) really want to think about whether that tautologous observation was masking an actual difference between explicitly value oriented objectives, and management methodologies designed to mitigate the effects of them.

At first glance, the argument looks wildly overstated to me. It amounts to a claim that because two things are similar in some respects, they are the same. Cats and dogs are four legged mammals that people keep as pets, but they aren't the same thing. Likewise, claims that some management theory is unbiased by evaluative desires aren't realistic, but that doesn't mean they are just the same as some proposal that attends only to evaluative desires.

[Celebritydiscodave2]

Sure, for only those facts which the knowing of can either directly or indirectly affect our well being, or that of any and all other life forms, have any actual intrinsic value in current time, or value which can be measured. Strictly speaking a measure is a reading taken in current time. Over perplexity of any system in its arriving at a valuation may render it impractical to service, and for any system of logic best of the rest to define value it is a requisite that it will be serviced by the most individuals. Facts and their values to us as individuals are, theoretically at least, of equal significance to us all.

[FlashDangerpants]

Over perplexity of any system in its arriving at a valuation may render it impractical to service, and for any system of logic best of the rest to define value it is a requisite that it will be serviced by the most individuals.

That sentence appears to have spilled from a random word generator. Was it intended to convey some sort of information?

[A_Seagull]

“Facts are always impregnated with values, and there is no real distinction between morally and politically neutral means (such as management has traditionally been conceived to be) and value-laden ends (such as profitability or humanisation)”.

Real facts are never impregnated with values.

Propaganda is always impregnated with values.

Decisions are based on a combination of facts and values

[Celebritydiscodave2]

“Facts are always impregnated with values, and there is no real distinction between morally and politically neutral means (such as management has traditionally been conceived to be) and value-laden ends (such as profitability or humanisation)”.

Real facts are never impregnated with values.

Propaganda is always impregnated with values.

Decisions are based on a combination of facts and values

Facts may or may not have a value.

Propaganda can always be argued to have a value.

Decisions are always founded in values, but not always in facts. Those decisions founded in facts tend to being, but only tend, the better decisions.