The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• Literature of Liberty a Review of Contemporary Liberal Thought
• Editorial Staff
• Associate Editors
• Editorial
• Bibliographical Essay: Henry B. Veatch, Natural Law: Dead Or Alive?
• I: Natural Law
• “nature” and “law” In Natural Law
• The Anatomy of Natural Rights
• Egoism and Rights
• The Is/ought Chimera
• Deriving “ought” From “is”
• Facts Vs. Value-laden Whims
• Is/ought and Probable Reasons
• Does Righteous Anger Imply Rights?
• Why Be Moral?
• Truth As an Objective Value
• Was the Revolution Objectively Necessary?
• Natural Law and State of Nature
• Natural Law and the State
• Natural Rights and Anarchism
• Dworkin On Rights
• Liberalism, Rights, and Abortion
• Rights and “mercy Killing”
• Rights and the “brain Drain”
• The Natural Law Right to Work
• Grotius: Contract and Natural Law
• Rights and Communication
• II: Autonomy, Privacy, and Authority
• Bureaucracy and “the Organization Man”
• Autonomy and Anarchism
• Autonomy and Taking Responsibility
• Autonomy, Motivation, and “buck-passing”
• Schooling For Conformity
• The Schoolroom Vs. Autonomy
• Obedience to Authority
• The Meaning of Privacy
• Privacy and Autonomy
• Privacy and Consent
• The Court and Privacy
• III: The Ambiguities of Liberty
• Clarifying Freedom
• Rehabilitating Mill's “harm Principle”
• Experiencing Freedom
• Do Offers Coerce Freedom?
• The Danger of “dangerousness”
• Freedom, Motivation, and Government Programs
• Freedom Vs. Determinism
• Negative Vs. Positive Freedom
• Smith and Utilitarian Economic Freedom
• Locke, Freedom, and Tacit Consent
• Religious Freedom
• Freedom, Existentialism, and Innocent Victims
• Does Censorship Harm Freedom?
• IV: Slavery
• Slavery, Ideology, and Subordination
• Slavery and Imperialist Ideology
• Enlightenment Liberalism Vs. Slavery
• The Anatomy of a Slave Revolt
• Colonial American Slave Law
• Jefferson On Slavery
• Slavery and the Poor
• V: Planning
• Regulation and the Warfare State
• Mail, Privacy, and Social Control
• Corporate State Capitalism: Coal
• French War “planification”: Chlorates
• Bureaucracy and British Regulation
• British Foreign Policy and Stagnation
• Political Decisions and the Economy
• Government, Labor, and Multinationals
• Black Markets Vs. Regulation
• Regulation Vs. Academic Autonomy
• Government Schools and Social Control
• The Economics of Charity
• International State Planning and Inflation
• Competition and Individual Knowledge

Facts vs. Value-laden Whims

Antony Flew

• University of Reading, England

“Ideology and ‘a New Machine of War’.” Philosophy (UK), 51 (1976): 447–453.

Does personal taste or cultural prejudice determine our values and so vitiate our claims to objective knowledge in science and moral values? If true, this doctrine would reduce our criteria of knowledge to extreme relativism and scepticism. One currently fashionable version of this sceptical notion claims that there cannot be “a realm of facts independent of theories which establish their meaning.”

This thesis of “value-laden” facts serves as an ideological weapon or “machine of war” to silence one's opponents in social and economic theory by labeling the “scientific” status of rival theories as mere vested-interest briefs. Thus, Robin Blackburn in Ideology in Social Science (1972) argues that the attempt to justify social theories by appealing to an independent realm of facts is unscientific. In reality, the choice of the field of study and the range of concepts selected “all express assumptions about the nature of society and what is theoretically significant and what is not.”

This sceptical assault is not convincing. It is true that we cannot know any propositions without being equipped with their constitutive concepts. This, however, fails to prove “that all propositions are theory-laden,... that we cannot know the phenomena themselves.” In addition, even granting that humans create concepts and necessarily employ them in making discriminations, do not reveal objective differences in the universe around us.”

Finally, this argument recoils upon its wielder by suggesting that his own sceptical argument is value-laden and “unscientific.” The modern ideological sceptics would wish us to accept their own social theories through relativist intimidation. Rashly to accept such relativism would mean replacing the true intellectual's search for truth with “in-group” mentalities.