science is about facts…
philosophy is about values…
Can facts explain values?
does the fact that the earth is 93 million miles from the sun
give us values?
but what are values? a value is justice or honor or beauty or creativity
or fairness, faith, fun, love, pleasure, respect, wisdom are a listing of some,
some of the possible values we can have…
science cannot tell us about values because values aren’t facts…
you cannot create a fact about fun or a fact about love or a fact about respect…
a value is a theory… we have action and we have theories…
we need both in order to have a successful completion of any activity…
action without theory is mindless and theory without action is impotent…
we act in some fashion… we build a tree house and we say about that
experience, it created pleasure or it create self-respect or we might say
happiness or we might say peace or optimism or meaningful work or learning or
inner harmony or growth or determination or we can use any other VALUE word to
describe our experience of building that tree house…
this description of our house building is not about facts…
we used 17 cords of wood and 13 bags of nails to build our tree house…
that doesn’t tell us anything about building a tree house…
or how we felt about building that tree house…
values give us some emotional idea about our building that tree house…
we felt pride at building that tree house or we felt at peace while building
that tree house…
values are an emotional description of events…
is justice an emotional event? is equality an emotional event?
my wife is always telling me to describe how I feel about something whereas
I usually give facts… it cost me 50 bucks to build the tree house and it took me
13 bags of nails… but I won’t give any type of emotional response to the
building of the tree house… I won’t give a value to building that tree house…
and the fact I won’t give an emotional response to something, pisses off my wife
no end…I normally won’t give an value description of something, I will give
a fact about something… except IQ45, I’ll give you value descriptions of that fucking
moron…anyway, values seem to be an emotional description of an event…
or I could just be really wrong…
science gives us facts…
values give us some emotional response…
and we need both to successfully accomplish and to describe both…
a value is a judgment about something… a value also can give us the why to
something…I built that tree house to give me some peace…
I needed to learn some skill… with learn being the value here…
building that tree house gave me some self respect…
building is the action and the value word can be learn or peace or
self respect…
so let us take another example… the GDP went up by 1.2% last month…
ok, we have the fact, what would be the value? the Gross domestic product
went up and that created …what value word would be appropriate?
what would be an appropriate emotional word to describe a 1.2% rise in the
GDP? what word would give us a why? or what word would tell us
what that means to America? relief? but is that a value word?
all this about value words is tricky stuff…as philosophy is tricky stuff…
because a value word like honesty can mean different things to different
people… to one person, honesty can be or mean something different then
to another person… my idea of honesty is different then my wife’s…
let us say, hypothetically of course, let us say while in Vegas I went to
a strip club, of course this is hypothetical… I never would do something like that,
anyway, I went to a strip club… I didn’t tell my wife about his visit, why would I
given this is hypothetical, now is not telling her being honest… I just never volunteer
this hypothetical fact… my wife would say I am being dishonest by not telling her…
but I didn’t lie to her… I was completely honest with her… I just left out the hypothetical
strip club… and what judgment would you make? honest or dishonest?
this value judgment is at the heart of philosophy…going to this hypothetical strip club
is fact, but what value would you put on it? what emotional response would you make about
the visit and not telling my wife?
science would say, Kropotkin gets this physical response when seeing tall, beautiful
women but science can’t give us a value judgment about this visit or if I am being
honest or dishonest about my visit with my wife…this hypothetical visit…
that is the value of values… they complete the facts given…
for facts can only get us so far and values get us the rest of the way to
some sort of answer about events or people or life itself…
the average human being lives to 70 years of age… fact, I think,
anyway this fact doesn’t give us any value to this information…
it doesn’t tell us anything outside of the fact the average human being lives
to 70… we must supply the rest of the needed information with values,
both about the why and the emotional content of being able to live to 70…
living to 70 with crippling physical aliments is not my idea of quality of life…
I wouldn’t live to 70 if I was in so much pain as to make my life not livable
or bearable…I would make a value judgment as to whither life is livable or not…
this emotional response to a fact is as important as the fact itself…
let me think some more about values and facts… science and philosophy…
judgment and truth… a rather good name for an autobiography…
anyway, what are values and what are facts?
and you get to the heart of philosophy and science…
Kropotkin