Scientism and Values.pdf - Ludwig von Mises Institute

40 Scientism and. Values
nature would be looked on indifferently. But there are some facts
that if allowed to exist might threaten the existence of a rational
social order. Could a rational social order exist if no one was willing
to risk his life to keep such facts from coming into existence?
It is necessary in any reasonable examination of the problem of
objectivity to consider the possibility that both Antigone and
Creon were trying to discover the m.eanings of the facts that they
had before them and struggling to do what they felt necessary to
establish and maintain a rational social order.
But, it might be said, this is an ancient example and we have
not faced in it the question of the, meaning of fact. We have to
face this problem, so let us take a few samples of what has been
said in the last fifty years or so on the question what facts are. We
shall start with William James. James does not give us a definition,
but he speaks of facts as hard, stubborn, irreducible. "The toughminded,"
he says,
are the men whose Alpha and Omega are facts. Behind the bare
phenomenal facts ... there is nothing. When a rationalist insists that
behind the facts there is the ground of facts, the possibility of facts,
the tougher empiricists accuse him of taking the mere name and
nature of a fact and clapping it behind the fact as duplicate entity
to make it possible ...19
If we examine this statement seriously, we see that James refuses
to try to account for facts before their appearance and after
their appearance. James was doing essentially the same thing that
men do now when they repeat the proposition of Descartes,20 "I
think; therefore, I am," without considering that this formula,
when used as an article of faith today, cries for expansion into the
question: There was a time when I did not think; therefore if I
believe what I am told about myself and the world, I was not.
Now, I think; therefore, I am. I am approaching a state when
again, if I believe what I am told, I shall not think; therefore I
shall not be. But this is something coming from nothing and going
into nothing. This is a miracle. And I am told not to believe in
miracles. Is there anything that I can believe that makes sense?