Facts Are Morally Neutral

Are facts morally neutral?

  • Yes

    Votes: 11 73.3%

  • No

    Votes: 3 20.0%

  • Potato

    Votes: 1 6.7%
  • Total voters
    15
Reason With Logic Filling said:
@sprinkles what I meant is that in the incident itself you might not have acted with morally neutral intentions but the recognizing that such an incident occurred is not aligned with any kind of morality- the incident did occur regardless of what judgements we place upon it or upon the people who caused or contributed to its occurrence.
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Ah ok, that makes a slight difference.

Yeah I agree that's the case. I was just pointing out pretty much that facts can be custom manufactured. This doesn't make them less factual but it might mess with the possible usefulness of facts.
 
sprinkles said:
Ah ok, that makes a slight difference.

Yeah I agree that's the case. I was just pointing out pretty much that facts can be custom manufactured. This doesn't make them less factual but it might mess with the possible usefulness of facts.
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No worries

I'm glad I meet people more knowledgeable than I am everyday, it helps me grow.
 
The concept that it is possible to establish something as "fact" originates in a philosophically essentialist position, which is not morally neutral, but is a decision that is made to understand the world in a certain way. Currently, scholarly disciplines do not seek to do this... broadly speaking, scientific disciplines seek to test hypotheses about "reality", while artistic disciplines seek to describe various subjective perspectives on "reality". These approaches seek to generate valid conclusions for certain purposes that will be useful to human beings... neither seeks to establish "facts" exactly.

Data are not "facts"... they are a selection of measurements or statements, ie. premises, that are assembled in an argument to describe a conclusion that will have some level of validity in some given context, depending on the strength of the argument and its relevance to that particular context. They don't exist until we measure them... we get them to be data by measuring them, which is a selective process... before this they are elements of phenomena.

I can't help getting annoyed when I see claims of "fact" in popular media. I grasp its application for popular communication, but it's just not "right". When I see this claim it usually doesn't involve sophisticated arguments for doing things some certain way, it is more usually the same thing as saying, "STFU, it's a fact." If a good argument can be stated clearly and defended properly, it is never necessary to use the word or concept of "fact".
 
invisible said:
If a good argument can be stated clearly and defended properly, it is never necessary to use the word or concept of "fact".
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You wanna fight about it? Lol.
No but, I was gonna write essentially what you wrote except less good, but then lazy happened and I just wrote "Facts"

:unamused::wink:
 
invisible said:
The concept that it is possible to establish something as "fact" originates in a philosophically essentialist position, which is not morally neutral, but is a decision that is made to understand the world in a certain way. Currently, scholarly disciplines do not seek to do this... broadly speaking, scientific disciplines seek to test hypotheses about "reality", while artistic disciplines seek to describe various subjective perspectives on "reality". These approaches seek to generate valid conclusions for certain purposes that will be useful to human beings... neither seeks to establish "facts" exactly.

Data are not "facts"... they are a selection of measurements or statements, ie. premises, that are assembled in an argument to describe a conclusion that will have some level of validity in some given context, depending on the strength of the argument and its relevance to that particular context. They don't exist until we measure them... we get them to be data by measuring them, which is a selective process... before this they are elements of phenomena.

I can't help getting annoyed when I see claims of "fact" in popular media. I grasp its application for popular communication, but it's just not "right". When I see this claim it usually doesn't involve sophisticated arguments for doing things some certain way, it is more usually the same thing as saying, "STFU, it's a fact." If a good argument can be stated clearly and defended properly, it is never necessary to use the word or concept of "fact".
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*swoon*

My own two cents: a FACT is something that is indisputably the case. Indisputable is something that cannot be argued.

How someone gets to the facts can be questionable, immoral, etc... but those things do not change the truth.

That is all.
 
Well, since everyone is agreeing about the moral neutrality of facts, let’s try to shake things up a bit.

I think it may depend on what we mean by “fact”. On the one hand there is the state of affairs obtaining in the world, and on the other there is the proposition representing the state of affairs.

Let’s use the example of the practice of mass rape of the Yazidi population by ISIS fighters in Iraq. If you say “The ISIS fighters practice mass rape among the Yazidis”, this is a fact formulated as a proposition and I do agree that it is morally neutral. We can say that it is true, not false. But it would be nonsense to say “this proposition is evil”. So the proposition exists outside of the perimeter of moral valuation. It’s either true or not true. There is no moral value inhering in the statement itself.

But if by “fact” we understand not the true proposition depicting a state of affairs, but the state of affairs itself, maybe then there is a way to instill some morality into facts. I think that for a moral realist, the fact that ISIS fighters practice mass rape among the Yazidis is evil. It is by essence a morally condemnable state of affairs. Of course this requires committing to the view that morality is objective and that reality is not conditioned by our perception and judgements of it, but instead can be accessed without mediation. It’s not my view but a realist/moral realist might defend it along similar lines.

Long story short, I’m not sure an objective morality can ground its valuation in the mere perception and interpretation of facts. It has somehow to come to regard facts themselves as susceptible to being brought directly to its tribunal. On this view some facts can be both objectively true and objectively wrong/evil.

But since I am not a moral realist, I pretty much agree with the OP statement :D
 
Ren said:
Long story short, I’m not sure an objective morality can ground its valuation in the mere perception and interpretation of facts. It has somehow to come to regard facts themselves as susceptible to being brought directly to its tribunal. On this view some facts can be both objectively true and objectively wrong/evil.
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dneecey said:
*swoon*

My own two cents: a FACT is something that is indisputably the case. Indisputable is something that cannot be argued.

How someone gets to the facts can be questionable, immoral, etc... but those things do not change the truth.

That is all.
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I disagree with the idea that human beings are capable of knowing the "truth". I think we are overwhelmingly ignorant of the nature of our existence and only "God" can know the "truth". I think that we just obtain measurements of things that we use to make arguments for some particular case or other. Anything can be argued, it's just that some arguments are incredibly crappy and should be discarded because they have no usefulness to the desired purpose.
 
I think that what we tend to call "facts" is really nothing more than "our most adequate established accumulated knowledge for guiding decisions at this particular point in time".
 
Who started this thread, and can I add "potato" as a third option? :tearsofjoy:
 
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Wyote said:
@Ren fancy bullshit is the best kind of bullshit though. There's a morally neutral fact for ya.
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The best case I can make for my defense is that I laboured on my text for an hour :tearsofjoy:

But now that I look back at it, I think it's pretty objectively, you know.... morally good.
 
Yes, I do; however, the issue is determining what constitutes fact. Our cognitive faculties and sense-perception are limited, and we are also at the mercy of intersubjectivity when it comes to knowledge of fact.

Even in science this is much room for bias and error. The theory-ladenness of observation is a huge issue, and the effect is magnified when you are dealing with social sciences.

Now throw in the reality that we are all constantly making value judgments both subconsciously and consciously, determined mainly as a result of the society we live in. It is difficult to gain a truly good understanding of things. The best approach in my view (or what I do anyway) is to read multiple accounts from differently biased sources. Most people cannot stomach the cognitive dissonance involved with that though and instead prefer to live in information bubbles.
 
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