Facts and Values: What’s the Connection?

In this episode of “Facts, Values, and Flourishing,” we’ll consider the so-called “is–ought” or “fact–value” dichotomy, the notion that you can’t derive moral principles (“oughts”) from the facts of reality (what “is”). We’ll see how this alleged impossibility supports the popular claim that “If there is no God, anything goes.” And we’ll consider Sam Harris’s effort to bridge the fact–value gap via the idea that the standard of value is the “well-being of conscious creatures.”

Finally, we’ll walk through the initial steps by means of which Ayn Rand derived objective morality from perceptual reality.

Download your PDF of the course outline here.

Tune in each week at 9:00 PM Eastern Time on either Facebook or YouTube. And let your friends know about the series. They can catch up on missed episodes at either link. —Craig Biddle

About Craig Biddle

Craig is cofounder and editor of The Objective Standard, cofounder and director of education at Objective Standard Institute, and executive director of Prometheus Foundation. He is the author of Loving Life: The Morality of Self-Interest and the Facts that Support It; Rational Egoism: The Morality for Human Flourishing; and the forthcoming Moral Truths Your Parents, Preachers, and Teachers Don’t Want You to Know. He is currently working on his fourth book, “Thinking in Principles.”

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