That's kind of dubious too. I bet you could get very guarded statements, like "eating nothing but icecream (factually-)makes you fat", but then going from that to "fat people are unhealthy" is very hard work.
In fact I think your distinction is not a moral / factual one, its a measurable / unmeasurable one*. So is the earth flat, is now quite easilly measurable. Are people fat, is quite measurable. Are people unhealthy is harder, because you have to define unhealthy, and then measure it.
like take "women are worse at maths than men", which you wouldn't want to say was a "moral" claim, but also isn't a "factual" claim, really. You could say "women (factual- )do worse in the maths tripos" etc etc etc... "societies with more theft (factual** - ) have people with more debt" but the problem is when you start trying to use words like worse, or bad, that can't be measured.
In fact this reminds me a lot of the equality of sin debate I had with Chess years ago, which I now can't find. But the point was we agreed lots of points were true, that the thing in debate was "further from gods plan as expressed in the bible", "more harmful for the people doing it" etc etc etc, but not that it was "more bad".
*This was quite a eureka moment when I typed it.
** I have no idea if it is, but shrug. *Something* must be true about societies with more theft
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Date: 2005-04-05 03:33 pm (UTC)That's kind of dubious too. I bet you could get very guarded statements, like "eating nothing but icecream (factually-)makes you fat", but then going from that to "fat people are unhealthy" is very hard work.
In fact I think your distinction is not a moral / factual one, its a measurable / unmeasurable one*. So is the earth flat, is now quite easilly measurable. Are people fat, is quite measurable. Are people unhealthy is harder, because you have to define unhealthy, and then measure it.
like take "women are worse at maths than men", which you wouldn't want to say was a "moral" claim, but also isn't a "factual" claim, really. You could say "women (factual- )do worse in the maths tripos" etc etc etc... "societies with more theft (factual** - ) have people with more debt" but the problem is when you start trying to use words like worse, or bad, that can't be measured.
In fact this reminds me a lot of the equality of sin debate I had with Chess years ago, which I now can't find. But the point was we agreed lots of points were true, that the thing in debate was "further from gods plan as expressed in the bible", "more harmful for the people doing it" etc etc etc, but not that it was "more bad".
*This was quite a eureka moment when I typed it.
** I have no idea if it is, but shrug. *Something* must be true about societies with more theft