I watched a video online which was a conversation between Patrick Flynn (Owner of some sort of Roman Catholic podcast called Philosophy For The People), entitled The Moral Consequences of the Fact-Value Distinction—Soylent Green Is People. I took notes on the conversation which I edited slightly, and then will comment on:
Madden: “Marcuse emphasizes, as he did in the prior chapter and in this chapter, that multidimensional thinking was lost in the transition of modernity, and this thinking was tried to be resurrected in Hegel, and was the idea that there is not fact-value distinction.”
My response: Madden is arguing apparently that old-time, multidimensional thinking, that was Pre-20th century, was big-tent thinking allowing both scientific and descriptive propositions to be discussed as intellectually fruitful, and alongside with and in addition, they could be mingled with or at least coexist with prevailing prescriptive, metaphysical or even theological propositions.
Madden, as one would expect from a Roman Catholic and Benedictine professor, seems to be arguing that there is no unbridgeable gap between facts and values, that there is no naturalistic fallacy, that what is, can be used to predict factually what ought to be, and that what ought to be can inform us about the facts that govern the world. Multidimensional thinking would seem to refer to Pre-20th century metaphysical outlook that values are real, true, and objective.
Let me quote a full paragraph out of Wikipedia, an article on the fact-value distinction, which I copied and pasted for this blog entry today (12/23/24): ‘Prior to Hume, Aristotelian philosophy maintained that all actions and causes were to be interpreted teleologically. This rendered all facts about human action examinable under a normative framework defined by cardinal virtues and capital vices. "Fact" in this sense was not value-free, and the fact-value distinction was an alien concept. The decline of Aristotelianism in the 16th century set the framework in which those theories of knowledge could be revised.[6]’ “
If this article is accurate and applicable, and I think it is, then it seems likely that Professor Madden, with a religious and traditional training and outlook that grows out of some version of Aristotelian/Scholastic metaphysics, would deny the fact-value distinction out of hand. If all actions and causes are interpreted teleologically, then all human action is examinable under a normative framework defined by cardinal virtues and capital vices.
Flynn and Madden as Christians, would easily conclude that no fact thus is value-free, and the bright line of demarcation between natural observable facts versus normative observable/unobservable facts, the gap insisted upon as epistemologically and ontologically existent, mutually exhaustive, mutually exclusive and absolutely final and in force, an insurmountable demarcation averred by Hume and modern Humeans and logical positivists, the gap is bridgeable, and likely never ontologically even existed, being just a popular, but empty scientific theory.
As an epistemological and ontological moderate, I side with the Roman Catholics that the distinction is bridgeable. I do not deny that natural facts and normative facts are different from each other, and the distinction about them being different each other and what one can differentiate about them is true, but, at bottom, the lack of distinction between natural facts and normative facts might just be another one of those true contradictions that is the world.
If I and Madden are right about the distinction being bridgeable, then neither naturalistic fallacy nor moralistic fallacy would hold, at least not in every instance where the distinction arose.
Madden: “Nature is suffused with the notion of final causes; therefore, nature is inherently of itself, normative. Marcuse, I would say rightly, notes that you cannot separate the notion of finality, intention, and purpose from normativity. If nature has any kind of intentional structure that is the same as natural normativity. Interestingly, this came up yesterday.”
My response: If nature is suffused with final causes, then Madden sees the principle of teleology at work everywhere in nature. I tend, as a moderate, to see the world of facts and values blurring and blending, so I largely accept what Madden said above. If one accepts that one can infer an ought from an is, then one is a metaphysical realist, and that likely God exists, and God as Logos is the author of the laws that govern nature, that God created nature, and God’s guidance and direction are at work everywhere in nature.
Madden: “The notion, that value is written into nature in and of itself, has been destroyed, and we are left with a nature with no values in and of itself. We should respect nature of course but nature provides us with no norms. Nature gives us no valuing at all.
Heidegger sees normativity in nature, and we need that, or we are untethered from normativity of any kind.”
My response: Madden is referring to Heidegger, so to some degree, he is arguing that Subjectivists/Irrationalists/Existentialist like Heidegger see normativity as operating in nature; note, that their metaphysical realist opponents, Objectivists/Rationalists/Essentialists like Sam Harris and Ayn Rand, also regard nature as normative, from a purely naturalistic, realistic outlook.
What these Roman Catholic podcasters and thinkers are alluding to here is that the logical positivist view that nature is without metaphysical, guiding axioms, and is missing normative implications are clearly mistaken. The positivist views deprive humans of objective moral guidelines to help them know how to act, and perhaps severs their connection from God, and even being able to humanize themselves and each other beyond the existence lived hellishly as bitterly contesting jungle beasts.
Madden: “We took value out of nature so we objectify, cannibalize nature and eventually ourselves.”
Flynn: “Normless nature just becomes a chunk of prime matter, and humans have no determinate structure.”
My response: I know the modern, Humeans insist that the natural world is all that there is, but though these Catholic believers are warning that nature without values (God exists they claim, and is absolutely morally and spiritually good, so to conceive of the natural world as just a chunk of prime matter without teleological, determinate structure, is to leave life in nature and in society reduced to degraded, immoral existants as human beings.) will lead to hell on earth, and, I agree with them, I have two comments to add.
First, to take value out of nature is to objectify, cannibalize nature and eventually ourselves, but, more so, to take the value out of nature is to subjectify ourselves, and that is the main epistemological and moral approach to nature which leads us to cannibalize nature and ourselves.
Second, humans—positivists, scientists, atheists, secular humanists and philosophers—can declare that God is dead or never existed, so they feel justified in declaring that there is no normativity in nature, but, saying something is so, and believing it is so, does not mean that it is so beyond the realms of human convention. Nature is replete with normativity and Logos-driven guidance from the Creator and creators.
I would argue, and I think these Roman Catholic podcasters would side with me, if they thought deeper about it, that nature never is or was but a chunk of prime matter, that it and human nature always have determinate structure (Caused by deities, both good and evil, caused by nature itself, caused by social mores, and caused by human free will--self-causing individual will to choose and act as one will, whether one’s will is evil or good.).
If humans abandon God or deny that God exists, then their attitude towards nature could then become vicious, wicked, and cannibalistic, but it—nature--would still be spiritually driven, though its practitioners would deny that demons exist. If humans drive the good deities and angels of light out from nature and society, this does not lead to nature and society being indeterminate or void of spiritual inputs. It only means and reveals the terrifying result: demons then are the determinate structure at work in nature, and humans will suffer terribly for their foolish rejection of the Good Spirits and good deities as at work in nature and society.
Madden: “Interestingly, this came up yesterday.”
Flynn: “That is exactly what came up yesterday.”
Madden: “It is interesting. Marcuse recognizes this: that if you think nature has any kind of intentional structure whatsoever, you’ve got a natural normativity, here, okay. He thinks what has happened and what is most important for modernity is that the notion of there being value written into nature in and of itself, has been destroyed.
And now we are left with a nature that has no value in and of itself. And we don’t mean value in that we should not respect it. We do mean that. An also it provides us with no norms.”
Flynn: “Yeah.”
Madden: “And it provides us with no norms. This is a very important theme. It is one that I have been obsessed with.”
Flynn: “Yeah, I want to spend some time on it.”
Madden: “It is this notion—you see this notion in Max Weber. Hegel is seeing this—even Nietzsche is seeing this. We have totally disenchanted nature. We do not see nature as having any kind of normativity whatsoever. Right. So, this is central to understanding Heidegger’s thought.
What that does is it then provides us with the sense that we are untethered from any kind of normativity. Whatsoever, right? And nature is there for our consumption and control, period, full stop.”
Flynn: “Right.”
Madden: “This is Heidegger’s point. And you saw this in C.S. Lewis, right. Every smart person in the early 20th century, in the late 19th century had an ‘Oh Shit,’ moment, like what have I done? Now we look at nature with no normativity that is something for our consumption and control, and, by the way, we are part of nature, too.
So, inevitably, humans will become grist for that same machine. Literally, like in gas chambers and abortion clinics. And in more subtle ways in our lives, ourselves, our self-conception, will be managed and manipulated like any other piece of indifferent, normless nature.”
Flynn: “Like a chunk of prime matter.”
Madden: “Like a chunk of prime matter. I encourage people to watch the Charlton Heston movie, Soylent Green. Where it is this dystopian, this environmentalist, like bleak future, futuristic film, where it turns out like everybody is being fed this very cheap, hyper-palatable food called Soylent Green.”
Flynn: “Right.”
Madden: “Spoiler alert. It turns out to be human beings.”
Flynn: “Right.”
Madden: “Now the metaphor of the movie is like look where we’re going is to see human beings as just one more thing that exists as just kind of a prime matter that has no natural normativity or teleological structure.”
My response: When we debase, degrade, dehumanize humans, or animals or nature itself, we are treating them without respect, and that may seem normless, but it is normative in that it is wicked degradation of any being or entity’s natural dignity and worth, and that is an act of hatred and malevolence, and that is evil incarnate.
Flynn” “No determinate structure.”
Madden: “With no determinate structure of its own, that we do violence to by reconfifuring it according to our whims.”
Flynn: “Yeah, so let’s unpack this a little bit because this is absolutely critical, and I agree with you that we should agree with Marcuse here. This is what happened. This is the problem.”
Madden: “What Marcuse is doing here he is reporting what is being said in very high academic circles. Husserl is saying it, what Heidegger is saying. Right, and . . .”
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