What Are Ethical Facts

What are facts in ethics? There are no moral "facts" in the way that we understand facts. We know the facts of the world because they can be detected empirically. We can touch, smell, hear, taste, or see them, either through our senses directly, or through the mechanical extension of our senses. This is the world of the "is." But philosophers recognize that "isness" doesn't imply "oughtness." In other words, just because something exists, that doesn't mean that it ought to be that way. This is why a scientist, who knows a great deal about the material world, isn't necessarily a good ethical guide. It is the difference between knowledge and wisdom.

Let’s take a look at material facts and then compare them to moral facts. Take, for example, the fact that Mumbai is a city along the Arabian Sea. You are free to disagree with these two facts but you would be wrong. But what, exactly, is the city? Is it the buildings? Wankhede Stadium is in Mumbai and is likely to crumble before the city disappears. Yet Mumbai is still Mumbai without it. Even less certain as a fact is a team called the Mumbai Cricket, which now happens to play in Wankhede Stadium. You know what the city is; you know what the stadium is. But what exactly is the cricket club that calls it home? Certainly not the players. They change from season to season, sometimes even from day to day. Yet the newspapers report the team’s progress, and you know there is such an entity. And the city, while it is the people who are in it, isn’t defined only by the people who live in it today. Those who came before are also part of the city and when everyone who lives there today is dead there will still be Mumbai.

Ethical facts are much like facts about an organized team. You can’t make any claim you want about Mumbai Cricket and be right. Your opinions must be governed by something real. Similarly, ethics is rooted in the reality of human nature, but you can’t find facts about morality in the same way that you can about material objects. Ethics is a way of feeling, thinking, choosing, and acting. Because morality is in motion, it can’t be captured by rules that are completely fixed in time and place. Moral facts are more like facts about Mumbai Cricket. You know where they play and who is on the roster. But tomorrow those same players may be elsewhere, and new ones may have taken their place. Still, it is the same team. Even though you can’t pin down facts about Mumbai Cricket in the same way you can about the city or the stadium, you know there is a cricket team and that you can agree as to what and who they are.

Moral facts, too, are based in reality. That reality is not material but relational. So while there are ethical facts, those facts take on their existence when placed in the context of human relations. Morality, then, exists in the realm that is neither relativism nor dogmatism. The Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions explains, “Without guiding principles, case studies are difficult to evaluate and analyze; without context, codes of ethics are incomprehensible.” Ethical principles and values assume their reality in the context of life situations.