Facts and Values

Facts and Values

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The moral crisis of the twentieth century has often been expressed as the crisis of facts and values, and this is a distinction that Catholics must come to terms with if they wish to understand the moral climate of their time.

The fact value distinction was invented by the social scientists of the 19^th and 20^th centuries, and it essentially boiled down to the following claim. Facts (such as the laws of physics and chemistry) are defined as propositions that can be scientifically verifiable. Values (such as all moral and religious claims) are not scientifically verifiable. The conclusion of this is that facts (such as the law of gravity) can be known. Values (such as the claim that adultery is morally wrong) cannot be known.

There is just one problem that the great social scientists of the 19^th and 20^th centuries forgot to consider: How does one scientifically prove that values cannot be known? This is something that has simply not been shown. The most they can say is that values are not provable through the scientific method, but it certainly does not follow from this that values cannot be known. At bottom is a deep self-contradiction in the fact value distinction itself and the overly scientific worldview from which it follows. Proponents of that worldview want to say that scientific knowledge is the only kind knowledge there is. And yet none of them have been able to scientifically prove that scientifically knowledge is the only knowledge there is.

Perhaps for them, that’s where faith comes in.