Facts, values, and ethics

Query: Is there a clear distinction between facts and values? Do we have a world of hard facts about physical objects on one hand, and a wealth of intangible, fuzzy claims about 'values' on the other? Can 'values' just be whatever we want, or can they be different for different people?

Let's ask this a different way: Are value-statements clearly true or false (a view called cognitivism)? Notice this is a separate query from that of whether or not we can ever know that a value claim is true or false – you must answer the first question in the affirmative to have any chance of answering the second affirmatively.

The belief in an objective morality – involving a confutation of ethical relativism – depends on answering the first query in the affirmative. In other words, it depends on (at least) some values being facts. Hence, an inquiry into objective ethics already assumes a position in what’s called meta-ethics – the process of deciding between different ways of justifying moral judgments, which are made on basis of reasons.

The belief in an objective morality normally corresponds to a metaethics of moral realism (the idea that moral claims correspond to an external moral reality, independent of the individual or society). Here are some other possible metaethical views: Nihilism is the view that no way of justifying moral judgments is possible, because moral facts don’t exist. Contrast that to moral relativism (moral facts are relative to the individual (subjectivism) or a society/ culture (cultural relativism). Or emotivism – moral claims are simply disguised emotional attitudes/ outbursts. And so on.

Ethics is not merely an intellectual tool; its use (and misuse) informs many roles and jobs in our society. There are 4 basic types of moral investigation, or applying reason to morality:

Social Scientists – usually engage in descriptive ethics, describing the moral codes of a group, usually without passing judgment on their rightness or wrongness – e.g., a sociologist, or anthropologist, or some psychologists.

Casuists – apply ethics to concrete situations, usually to attempt to achieve some goal; they offer adjudication, defense, advice, enforcement, and a whole host of other activities related to a moral code for specific situations. Such casuists obviously include lawyers, but also judges, police, social workers, psychiatrists, therapists, teachers, and others.

Moralists/ Hortatory specialists – these people specialize in exhorting/persuading people to adopt certain moral rules or codes, or to adopt a certain way of life as better than others – they include ministers, politicians, and advertisers.

And finally, there’s what I do (and am doing right now), the:
Ethical theorist – who engages in critical examination and evaluation/ invention of ethical theories; they specialize in meta-theorizing - judging which systems can best render rational moral judgments. They evaluate the rational defensibility of various theories of ethics, and hence primarily engage in metaethics, or act as a philosopher of ethics. The primary focus is not directly on what one ought or ought not to do, but how to rationally justify whatever claims are made about what one ought or ought not to do. Of course, if the most rational ethical theory is the correct one, an ethical theorist will also have considerable practical information about what one ought to do, as one means of testing the metaethical virtues of competing theories. But the focus is on whether particular ethical theories (such as virtue ethics or utilitarianism) are true or false, and not on the practical issue of whether or not you should, say, give to charity.

So what ethical theory is the best – the truest? Or is it all relative? Stay tuned…