I have encountered several attempts to derive moral values from empirical observation, from "The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values" by angry atheist Sam Harris, to the Lobster hierarchies of neoconservative hero Jordan Peterson. Most of these attempts revolve around the mundane rhetorical strategy of "we observed these behaviors consistently in nature, which means they must be ethically normative for humans". Which of course is the very definition of the naturalistic fallacy in logic. Furthermore, most of the attempts to collapse the fact/value distinction depend on a metaphysics of eliminative materialism, while sneaking in a transcendent value for “life” or “actualization” without acknowledging it.
For instance, the argument is often made that “ought” is simply a function of “could”, and “could” is simply a function of “is”. The way things are implies certain possibilities about how they could be, when extended through a causal chain of events. “Ought” simply takes one or more of these potential states and designates it as preferable to other potential states. Generally, the preferable states are those that maximize life and health and creative capacity. Why are these states preferable? Because in evolutionary biology we see that creatures seek to maximize survival through adaptation, therefore the universal drive to maximize life is something like an empirical fact. Thus the “ought” of maximizing life is dissolved into the “is” of evolutionary observation.
But notice the transcendent value that has been assumed and snuck in: That life ought to be preserved and maximized. Why?
If all of biological history flows in one direction, but we have the capacity to choose against that direction and decide against instinct, why not do that? After all, as a species we seem to highly value choosing AGAINST instinct. All technological creations can be seen as exercises in choosing against instinct to do things in a NEW way. So why not go against instinct and choose death and destruction? Surely the existential fulfillment of destroying a city can equal or surpass building one. If the drive to life is just an observed fact, and observed facts could always be other than they are, why not make them otherwise?
Why not choose death? Or why not choose enhancing personal pleasure or power or profit at the cost of anyone and anything that gets in the way? Surely any of these values can be more satisfying for an individual person than choosing some kind of long term survival strategy that may not work in the end. Why have a healthy diet, and avoid dangerous activities, and refuse addictive substances, if you might die young anyway? Eat, drink, and be merry: For tomorrow we die! And short term rewards can definitely be more individually satisfying than some notion of "species survival" that the individual will never be around to see the fruition of.
Furthermore, both predation and cooperation are equally observable behaviors in the process of evolutionary adaptation. On what basis do we prefer cooperation for long term gain, over predation for short term gain, in most situations (especially when cooperation costs us resources or opportunities)? Conversely: On what basis do we determine when predation is the more helpful route? If we are an eliminative materialist, it won’t do to revert to “strategies to survive and thrive”, because it is precisely the drive to survive and thrive which has no empirical grounding. In eliminative materialism, all volitional choices dissolve into some kind of irrational intuitionism or blind “will to power”. You may ask one person: Why choose life? Because it feels better to me. To another you may ask: Why choose death? Because it feels better to me. There is no objective basis for choosing life over death if value itself is not Real and all that exists is matter.
So we can choose one of two routes that I can see:
First, we can eliminate “value” and retreat into the volitional irrationalism of choosing to maximize “life”, while also admitting that the drive to death and destruction is of equal value and equal validity.
Second, we can admit that there is a transcendent value for life knit into the fabric of the universe, which cannot be reduced to the world of facts, which summons our obedience in maximizing life for ourselves and all others. If we choose the second route (or rather, are chosen by the second route) we admit that both fact and value are part of reality and not collapsible into each other. And while intuition does not prove anything in a philosophical or scientific sense, the intuition of most people would strongly indicate that the altruistic drive to maximize life for ourselves and others is not just a subjective preference. It is something like a universal moral law written into the narrative of Reality.
To approach the same conclusion from the perspective of Fact rather than Value, we could say this:
Eliminative materialism seems to say that all facts are physical states of affairs in our four dimensional spacetime. But even facts do not have to be physical, if by physical we mean something consisting of matter/energy or relations of objects within four dimensional spacetime. There could be entities or structures or relations in some other dimensionality beyond or beside our spacetime. Quantum physics imagines particles existing in 11 or more dimensions described in pure mathematics, as well as a multiverse of separate realities all existing in their own different spacetimes. So, we do not need to imagine facts as constrained to what we naively call "matter".
Yet I doubt that values— imperatives which contain ought or should— can be described as facts in any dimension. Values insist that certain arrangements of facts ought to, or ought not, occur. Those arrangements of fact could exist in our spacetime, or in another spacetime, or another kind of dimensionality altogether. But the value which states that some arrangement of facts ought to occur instead of other arrangements of facts is not contained in any of the universes of facts it seeks to bring order to. And so the values are not themselves the arrangements of fact they insist on. Values INSIST on certain arrangements of facts, but values do not EXIST as a fact in any dimension or universe. In other words the fact/value distinction goes all the way down to the foundations of Reality.
Thus Reality seems bigger and more inclusive than just the world of facts that exist. I think we can differentiate things that are "real" and things that "exist". Real things include things that DO "exist" by actually occuring in some spacetime, but Real things also include POSSIBLE things that could occur in some spacetime (but have not or will not), as well as the VALUES that insist some states of affairs that could occur in spacetime are preferable to other states of affairs that could occur. Thus, the following propositions are meaningful and are not reducible to each other:
POSSIBILITY: Nate has certain properties.
ACTUALITY: Nate has certain properties and actually exists as a fact in some spacetime.
VALUE: Nate has certain properties and ought to exist as a fact in some spacetime.
So, while I think prescriptive values are real, I doubt that they exist. The set of all real things includes the set of all things that exist, but also includes other real things. Those other real things would include possibilities which have yet to be actualized in any universe, as well as prescriptive values that call for certain possibilities to be actualized. And in this view values are more real than, and foundational to, all factual states of affairs. Or put another way: Reality is made of facts and values, and while facts exist, values insist.
Things that exist seem to actualize real things as facts in some kind of spacetime, but values are real things that are prior to them and give rise to them. Unfortunately, I don't feel like I have time to sufficiently read and study to clarify my clunky language (or even see if such language ultimately holds together coherently). But this is what seems to me to be the case about reality. And furthermore, it seems in my mind that I am not merely describing two kinds of "existence", but that the qualities of reality and existence are conceptually distinct yet overlapping.
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