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.
Date:
31 May 2019, 16:00
Venue:
42-43 Park End Street, 42-43 Park End Street OX1 1JD
Venue Details:
Ground Floor Seminar Room, Department of Sociology
Speaker:
Professor Andrew Abbott (University of Chicago)
Organising department:
Department of Sociology
Organiser:
Christiaan Monden (University of Oxford)
Topics:
Booking required?:
Not required
Cost:
Free
Audience:
Members of the University only
Editor:
Natasha Cotton
