Facts and Values: A Processual View

After briefly sketching the Kantian position on facts and values and its implementation in classical sociological theory, I develop an alternative position based on an ontology taking change as primary and stability as secondary. I first relate the fact/value distinction to the distinctions between past and future and between other and self. I then develop a notion of “facting” and “valuing” processes that operate on present experience to construe experience (respectively) in terms of facts (enduring, causally formed, definable, constraining) and values (objects of possible choice, modes of choosing, rules for choosing). Moral rules emerge as universalizing rules for governing (maintaining and/or changing) these processes in the light of current experience.