# On the Fusion of Fact and Value: A Reply to Professor Fuller

**Year:** 1958
**Author:** Ernest Nagel
**Keywords:** #fuller #human_ends #fact_value_dichotomy #is-ought-gap #humes_law #interaction
**Permanent Notes:**
**Literary Notes:**

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**Summary:**

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(Nagel, 1958, p. 78)Nagel wants to argue that, although he has no problem with Fuller's conclusions, (i) the premise which bases his argument is false or at least unwarranted; (ii) his conception of purposive behaviour and human history is dubious and (iii) his premises are not obviously relevant for his conclusion

> But despite my agreement with what I understand to be the aim of Professor Fuller's paper, I am frankly puzzled by the considerations he introduces to support his views; and I am not at all confident that I have grasped either his intent or his argument. I shall nevertheless try to show that 1) insofar as I do understand it, the contention upon which he places greatest weight is thoroughly unsound; 2) his implicit conception of purposive behavior and of human history is at least dubious; and 3) his premises are not obviously relevant for grounding his conclusions.

(Nagel, 1958, p. 78)Nagel first considers Fuller's idea that the "truism" that "from *what is* nothing follows as to what *ought to be*"" is false when we are dealing with purposive actions. In cases where we are interpreting purposive actions, Fuller argues, fact and value merge.

> 1) Professor Fuller begins his discussion by challenging what he calls the "truism" that "from what is nothing follows as to what ought to be." He bases his dissent on the claim that "in any interpretation of events which treats what is observed as purposive, fact- and value merge," so that value judgments cannot be regarded as "something foreign to a purely factual account." (p. 69)

(Nagel, 1958, p. 78)Nagel highlights that _if_ what Fuller has in mind is the idea that nothing that _is_ is relevant to determine what _ought to be_, then Fuller is right in rejecting this idea .

However, this does not seem to be the kind of fact-value dichotomy that Fuller has in mind, nor is it the kind of idea that philosophers whom Fuller has criticized have in mind.

> The dictum may be, and indeed has been, interpreted to assert that statements of what is the case are always irrelevant to the determination of what ought to be. And if Professor Fuller finds the dictum so construed to be dubious, I must again admit my agreement with him. If, however, he is merely challenging the dictum when read this way, he has misunderstood many writers whom he has criticized for subscribing to the dictum, since they espouse the dictum with a different interpretation of it.

(Nagel, 1958, p. 78)Nagel highlights that legal realists and positivists both sustain that in order for us to make solid judgements about what ought to be, we should preferably be supported by empirical studies, for instance.

This is not to deject the fact value dichotomy.

> There certainly have been thinkers in recent years, even among the group of so-called legal "realists" and "positivists," who, though they profess the truism Professor Fuller is questioning, also maintain that responsible claims as to what ought to be must be supported by empirical study of the physical, biological, and social requirements of human life, and of the import of various institutions and regulations. Within the framework of such a moral theory, judgments as to what ought to be done do not follow logically from judgments as to what is actual; nevertheless, judgments asserting what ought to be are conceived as hypotheses about ways of resolving conflicting needs and interests. Accordingly, though on this view there is a sharp distinction between what is and what ought to be, value judgments are not thereby regarded as foreign intrusions into the study of human behavior.

(Nagel, 1958, p. 78-79)Nagel highlights, however, that Fuller is claiming something stronger than the idea that factual judgements are often relevant to the adequacy of normative judgements.

He is claiming that the examination of purposive behaviour is an instance where (i) notions of fact and value merge and (ii) no sharp distinction between judgements of fact and value can be made.

> ) It seems unlikely, however, that Professor Fuller is claiming no more than that judgments of fact are relevant to the determination of the adequacy of judgments of value, For as he explicitly says, he believes that in the examination of purposive behavior the notions of fact and value merge, so that a sharp distinction between judgments of fact and judgments of value cannot be made

(Nagel, 1958, p. 79)The gist of Fuller's claim for the rejection of the fact-value dichotomy in the interpretation of purposive action is the following: when we are looking at purposive action, such as a boy trying to open a clam, we can _anticipate_ (or judge, or assess...) whether a certain action will be continued or not because we can recognize whether the purposive action is a good or bad means for achieving the boy's objective.

> According to him, when we once grasp the purpose which actuates a boy's manipulation of a clam, we discover in the structure of events as they unroll "an element of value"; and we can anticipate whether a certain action will be continued or not, because the action is recognized as good or as bad as a means for achieving the boy's objective.

(Nagel, 1958, p. 79)Nagel denies that Fuller's example shows that fact and value merge in the examination of purposive action.

As he argues, when we are assessing the boy's action as good or bad according to its purpose, we _can_ and in fact _must_ be evaluating something that is "descriptive of a fact".

The point of Nagel is that we can only evaluate adequately whether some action X is a good means for accomplishing end Y _if_ we can adequately describe or gain descriptive knowledge of what X _is_. And this is something different from the evaluation we make of X in light of Y.

> But just how does the example show that fact and value merge? In characterizing one of the boy's actions as "bad," it is surely pertinent to ask what it is we are so characterizing; and the answer must inevitably be descriptive of a fact. Indeed, unless a careful factual account can be given, one which is not colored by a surreptitious value imputation, we cannot judge competently whether the act does have the value attributed to it. When a physician prescribes penicillin as good for the cure of pneumonia, his value judgment, if it is competently grounded, is predicated on the assumption that he knows the condition of the patient as well as the effects of the drug on the human body; and though the physician may tacitly assume the correctness of the factual data, and may be uninterested in the descriptive facts except insofar as they bear upon his aim to effect a cure, it is imperative to distinguish clearly between what the facts are and an evaluation of them with respect to a certain end.

(Nagel, 1958, p. 79)Nagel also adds that it is true that many people do not distinguish their value imputations from the facts they are judging. But it does not follow that it is impossible for them to do it; in fact, Nagel even thinks it is regrettable they don't

> It is undoubtedly true that many people do not distinguish their value imputations from the facts they are judging; but this is surely regrettable, and does not mean that the distinction cannot be made

(Nagel, 1958, p. 79-80)Nagel also argues that Fuller's claim that there is an element of "intrinsic" value in situations of purposive behaviour is, at best, a tautology.
This is so because, when we are dealing with purposive action, we are _by hypothesis_ concerned with, among other things, whether and to what degree a given set of actions X is a good means to accomplish end Y.

As Nagel puts it, it would be self-contradictory to hold that we are seeking to determine what an act achieves Y and to deny that in value judgements occur or that they are irrelevant (this formulation is a bit different from Nagel's; he says "that in such an inquiry value judgements do occur because they are irrelevant", but I think those are two different things).

> ii) I next want to argue that in claiming an element of "intrinsic" value to be present in situations involving purposive behavior, Professor Fuller is asserting what is at best a tautology. When we are dealing with such behavior, we are by hypothesis concerned with ascertaining among other things whether, and if so with what degree of effectiveness, a given set of actions contributes to the realization of some assumed goal. It would therefore be self-contradictory to maintain, on the one hand, that we are seeking to determine just what an act achieves in bringing about a certain end, and to deny, on the other hand, that in such an inquiry value judgments do occur because they are irrelevant.

(Nagel, 1958, p. 80)Nagel holds that whenever we are analyzing the operations of a system which is teleological or goal-directed, _whether the system is purely physical or involves human agents_, value judgements necessarily will take place, since we are concerned precisely with the aptness of some given operation X in achieving end Y.

> Indeed, whenever we are analyzing the operations of a system which is assumed to be a teleological or "goal-directed" one, whether the system is a purely physical one or involves the presence of human agents, value judgments necessarily occur with respect to the roles played by the component "parts" of the system in maintaining or progressively realizing specified "goals." All this, however, seems to me logically truistic, for it simply explicates what it is we are doing when we are studying purposive or other forms of teleological behavior.

(Nagel, 1958, p. 80)Nagel then wants to challenge Fuller's assumption that (i) even in a simples case of an "immediate" or "single" purpose, as in the case of the boy trying to open the clam, there is a structure of related purposes which is always operative and that, (ii) as a consequence of this fact, we cannot understand the course of purposive action simply by perceiving what immediate purpose is being pursued without understanding background operative purposes.

> He reminds us that the structure of purposive action is not constituted by a set of discrete happenings. He notes that even in the case of the working out of what is ostensibly an "immediate" or "single" purpose (as in the example of the boy manipulating a clam), a "congeries of related purposes" is in general operative, and that in consequence we cannot hope to understand the course of purposive action "simply by perceiving at any given moment whatever immediate purpose is then being pursued." (p. 70) So far these observations seem to me sound.

(Nagel, 1958, p. 80-81)Another way to formulate Fuller's point is to say that understanding a human purpose is not an entreprise that can be done by isolating different purposes, since purposes are part of a system and interact often interact and influence one another.

> \[He declares, for example, that "any single human purpose ... is an incomplete thing when severed from the total system of which it forms a part," (p. 71) and he also says that the meaning of any single purpose is always controlled by the "latent" purposes in interaction with it.

(Nagel, 1958, p. 81)Nagel thinks that Fuller's account of human purposes as generally being a collaborative process of establishing and articulation of common goals is (historically) dubious. 
I think Fuller's point can be weaked to the (apparently) acceptable thesis that human purposes are frequently, though not always or necessarily, articulated and reshaped by other interests shared by the same individual or by other individuals.

> Such a view, in any case, I find incredible, for it is incompatible with the identifiable facts of contemporary human experience, as well as with the known character of human history. There is much evidence to show that individuals and groups sometimes engage in a collaborative process in which common goals are established and articulated. There is no evidence that the total life of a human individual or of the human race is a process in which a shared common purpose is gradually though imperfectly created and unfolded. (Indeed, I cannot make clear sense of the supposition that what is loosely called "human history" is a single process.)

(Nagel, 1958, p. 81)Nagel also rejects Fuller's account of the common-law as something which could be interpreted according to this "common end-in-view" account of purposes.

> a process; and I find it gratuitous to assume that the manner in which legal precedents were used in courts of common law in the nineteenth century for settling historically novel issues, would have been regarded by seventeenth century common law judges as implementations of a common end-in-view, where that end-in-view was "then out of view because not stirred into active consciousness by the facts of the case being decided." (p. 74)

(Nagel, 1958, p. 81)Nagel mentions that the fact that the mere existence of purposes and goals does not settle the question of what should be done when a moral problem arises is one of the motives why we should separate fact and value.
Notice that Nagel is not _only_ making a point about the usefulness of this separation. He is also claiming, it seems, that the is/ought gap is _unavoidable_.

> Accordingly, the mere existence of purposes and goals does not settle the question as to what ought to be done when a moral problem arises. It is chiefly for this reason that the distinction between what is actual fact and what ought to be is both unavoidable and useful when moral deliberation is initiated.

(Nagel, 1958, p. 82)Nagel says he doesn't see how Fuller's claim about the fusion of fact and value in cases of purposive action is relevant to either (i) his belief about the possibility of objetive moral evaluation of the law or (ii) how it sheds light on the nature and the "authority" of the principles we use in evaluating the law (it's not totally clear to me what Nagel means by "authority" here).

> 3) This brings me to my final difficulty with Professor Fuller's essay. I am entirely unclear how his claim concerning the fusion of fact and value, even if the claim were sound, is relevant to his belief in the possibility of an objective moral evaluation of the law, or what light that alleged fusion throws on the nature and authority of the principles to be employed in such evaluation.

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NAGEL, Ernest. On the Fusion of Fact and Value: A Reply to Professor Fuller. *In*: **Natural Law Forum**, v. 29, p. 77-82, 1958.