That's quite true. Why I value something is certainly a fact about me, but it's not a fact about that value. Someone else can have the same value for different reasons, and they can share all my reasons without having the same values. I do believe that the project of ethics is parallel to the the project of science, and that their methods are analogous, but in science, it's an idea or hypothesis that resolves conflicts between facts, in ethics, it's an act that resolves conflicts between values. We can disagree about what ought to be done, while agreeing on all the relevant facts surrounding the issue.Quote:
One thing is that ethics might somehow involve facts about the reasons for which values are held; those are still facts. And perhaps ethics is, like science, bound up with knowledge - it's not just about cataloguing facts, but also in various ways about providing us with knowledge. So the assessment of reasons and arguments is then crucial.
Kant is very good at coming up with these sorts of theories, and when you interpret and apply these theories on your own, they almost always seem right. But he's very bad at interpreting and applying his own theories. For instance, he uses the the "lying to a loan officer" example as evidence that lying is always impermissible, even to an inquiring murderer. But his own description of how his theory is supposed to work doesn't allow that kind of generalization. All the example proves is that it's impermissible to lie to loan officers, not that it's impermissible to lie in any other context. He makes these sorts of mistakes all the time, and in other contexts than his ethical theory. But his argument that establishes the Categorical Imperative is very hard to dispute, and all four formulations of it have irreducibly social elements.Quote:
Kant gives examples that use methods that take that sort of stuff into account, but it's surely not completely clear how that's justified; he seems to import rather questionable contingent assumptions in doing so.
I look forward to your return tomorrow!