Talk:Brute fact
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[edit] ethical facts
Characterizing ethical facts as institutional rather than brute is correct, but certainly not NPOV, in the Wikipedia sense. There are many philosophers who would argue the reverse. John McDowell, for instance, refers to many ethical principles as 'demands of reason', which would presumably give them a similar status to, e.g. mathematical facts, described here as (probably) 'brute'. Ncsaint 11:33, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
- You're right! I'll change it a bit... Velho 12:43, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
What I'm reading at the moment, gives what may be a different account. It gives an example of 'J.H. signed a chaque' and says that it may be a brute fact in some contexts, and not in others. It says that the status of brute fact is relative to another fact. This should be included, I think. Also, it might be worth including the more common but less technical definition as "a terminus of a series of explanations which is not itself further explicable" Oxford Companion to Philosophy 2005 "Brute Fact". I don't know anything on this subject myself, so I don't want to change anything.
Hope the edit is ok :)
