On Saturday, November 10, 2018 at 2:52:25 PM UTC-7, Gary Harnagel wrote:

But there ARE sound reasons for deriving values from facts:

Facts certainly can enter into reasoning about values.

The philosophical concept of the "fact-value distinction" only means that it's a
mistake to deduce a value from facts alone. If you have a value to start with,
you can add facts to deduce other values.

So if you start from having fairness and justice as values, you can then add the
fact that while horses are less intelligent than people, African-Americans are
equal to white people in intelligence to deduce the value that Negro slavery was
wrong.

As to Heinlein's speech: there is much to applaud in it. I might quibble about a
few minor details. But it doesn't violate the fact-value distinction, since it
starts with the value that the survival of humanity is of value.

John Savard