Nancy Pearcey discusses The Tyranny of Rationalism in an article at World Magazine. In this interview she talks about the fact/value dichotomy. Nancy Pearcey's most resent book is entitled "Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from Its Cultural Captivity."
There is a lot of overlap in those two articles, but the main point of them is that it is very common for us to think of truth in terms of facts vs. values, knowledge vs. belief, or rationality vs. faith. Pearcey says that these are false dichotomies and truth should be thought of differently. Unfortunately, these articles are so short that people may end up misunderstand what, exactly, this means. Here is one example of such a misunderstanding. I don't think the misunderstanding is any fault of the author - it's just a combination of a short "get the point across" article, along with the presentation of an idea of knowledge that is radically different than the popular view.
Nancy Pearcey has been influenced by men like Abraham Kuyper and Herman Dooyeweerd, so what I hope to do is to try to make more explicit what she likely means when she talks about a "fact/value split" and also what she doesn't mean by it. Since I've also been influenced by these two men (and by others who have been influenced by them), I hope that I can give some idea as to what she might mean.
I've already listed a bunch of terms without definitions: facts, values, knowledge, belief, rationality, faith - for this discussion, it would probably be a good idea to include the terms certainty and doubt, too. I'm not going to pretend to come to a good definition of these terms - philosophers have been trying to do that for centuries. What I hope to do is look at how they are often used and see if we can come to any conclusions about them.
Knowledge. What does it mean to know? Does knowledge require certainty? If not, how much "uncertainty" is allowed? Can I know things about knowledge? Is there only one way to knowledge? Is there such a thing as knowledge without a knower? None of these are easy questions. What makes them even more difficult is that we often use the term "know" in very different ways. I know what year the Spanish Armada was defeated. I know my girlfriend. I know the smell of napalm (in the morning). I know racism is wrong. I know what red looks like. I know how to dribble a basketball. In these series of statements, only the third and the fifth use the term "know" in the same way. The first is propositional in nature - it is what is most often associated with a "fact." The Spanish Armada was defeated in 1588. None of the others are really propositional in nature, though (although many might argue that "moral knowledge" is propositional). I am familiar with my girlfriend or I trust my girlfriend (I know her, she'd never cheat on me). I am aware of what napalm smells like or what red looks like. I know racism is wrong, not because I've reasoned my way to that conclusion, but because I have a gut intuition that it is wrong or because I've seen the tragedies that racism has led to in the past. I know how to dribble a basketball, not because I read an instruction manual, but because my dad taught me how to when I was little and I practiced when I could get a chance - it's good, old-fashioned "know how." So, it appears that there are many ways in which we use the word "know." Unfortunately, I think that we often think of knowledge only in the propositional sense. I think this leads to a very narrow view of what knowledge is and only helps to reinforce the fact/value, knowledge/faith dichotomies.
Belief. In everyday language, "belief" is often used as a synonym for knowledge. "I believe racism is wrong." "I believe the Spanish Armada was defeated in 1588." However, it is just as often used to refer to a "weaker" form of knowledge. Sometimes it might just mean "Not as certain as some other things that I know." It is very often associated with "values" as opposed to "facts." Very often, it is used in a way that means "based on trust" or "taken on faith." This is the way that I'm going to use the term - "knowledge based on trust or commitment." This is not propositional knowledge. It is "belief-in," not "belief-that." Hendrik Hart has written extensively about some of these differences. Here is an excellent article where he shows how "conceptual beliefs slowly replaced the stories of faith; stories, that is, which were trusted as forms of practical guidance." On the difference between trust-based and proposition-based knowledge, he says: "Trust and propositional belief differ quite clearly. For example, placing ourselves in the hands of an unknown surgeon is typically a matter of trust rather than of beliefs. Beliefs can and do play a role. But most people's relationship to a surgeon is marked by trust rather than by propositional beliefs. Similarly, our appreciation of a famous soprano will not typically be characterized by our sharing her belief system. Rather, we appreciate her voice. These two examples illustrate how bodies of belief can be tangential to the heart of significant relationships among people. For what reason did we then make propositional belief central in the religious trust known as faith?" Later, he goes on to say, "Michael Polanyi ... re-introduced philosophers to the idea that knowledge is more than we think; in the sense that not all that we know can be thought, in the sense that we think of knowledge too narrowly, and in the sense that we know more than we think we do. Knowing is not identical with propositional assent. ... But if our knowledge is more than our true belief, we have an opening to consider religious trust or faith as a way of knowing, even when most of it cannot be rationally assessed." Hart's article is specifically talking about religious belief, but knowledge that is based on trust or commitment isn't just religious in nature. We trust other people. We trust technology (if I press the brake pedal on my car, I trust it will slow down). We trust our intuitions ("1+1=2," "It is wrong to kill an innocent person."). But I think the biggest thing to take from the above quote is a reinforcement of what I said above about knowledge - "Knowing is not identical with propositional assent." There may be more than one way in which we know.
Certainty. The fact/value or knowledge/belief dualisms may sometimes be presented in terms of certainty. Facts and knowledge are thought to be things that we can be certain of. But this way of thinking about things seems to make certainty an "attribute" of the thing that is known, rather than saying something about the knower. What's more is that the things that are often said to be "values" or "beliefs" are very often the things that people are most certain about. As a child (and still today), there was one thing that I was very certain about - that my parents would never get divorced. This was based on the commitment that I saw that they had for each other. It was based on my trust that when they said they loved each other, they meant it. I didn't reason my way to that conclusion (even though it was a very rational thing to believe). Even things like "the earth travels around the sun" and "matter is made of atoms" are believed based on the trust of authorities on those subjects. And most of us are quite certain about these things even though we've never done the actual experiments that would lead us to believe these things. So, it seems, that we often use the term "certainty" even when we aren't talking about propositional "facts."
Perhaps certainty doesn't have to do with the type of belief (i.e., facts are certain, while values less certain). Certainty seems, rather, to have to do with basic convictions that we have. With propositional knowledge, certainty has to do with "proper reasoning." If I start with some true statement and make a good argument, I can be certain that my conclusion is also true. But what about the statement "I know what napalm smells like." To tell you the truth, I have no idea what napalm smells like. I've never smelled it before. I know what pizza smells like. I know what "Old Spice" deoderant smells like. I'm certain that I could tell the difference between "Old Spice" and "Right Guard." This certainty didn't come through reasoning, though. It came from my sensory experience. If I woke up one morning and smelled something strange, and somebody asked if it was napalm, I wouldn't be able to answer with any certainty at all. I'm told it smells like victory, but that propositional statement doesn't help me. Similarly, I'm quite certain that torturing people for fun is morally wrong. But there are plenty of things that I feel morally less certain about - I can think of a bunch of ethical dilemmas, where if I picked one thing, I wouldn't have much certainty about it at all. Moral certainty, it seems, depends on some sort of moral intuition. "Certainly" we can use "proper reasoning" to arrive at moral conclusions and "certainly" we can use our sensory experiences to help inform us about our morality, but when we say we are certain about moral statements it has a lot more to do with our own "sense of what's right." So, perhaps certainty is used in as many different ways as the term knowledge is used.
One more thing that I should clear up, even though I've hinted at it already. None of these "ways of knowing" can be separated from each other completely. For example, I shouldn't just rely on my moral intuitions in order to gain moral knowledge. As I said, I might have moral intuitions that I'm certain about. I might use a logical argument to arrive at some conclusion that I'm similarly certain about. I might also have historical or cultural knowledge that informs my moral intuitions.
I've probably raised more questions than answers. If anything, what I'm suggesting is that we throw out epistemological dualism and, instead, hold some form of "epistemological pluralism." There are various ways in which we know. I've already suggested analytic(rational)-knowing, moral-knowing, fiduciary(trust)-knowing, pet-caring, and sensory-knowing. What if there were other ways in which we could know, too?
So, if I could sum up what I think Nancy Pearcey was trying to say, I think I would go back and quote Hendrik Hart again, "... we know more than we think we do. Knowing is not identical with propositional assent." Treating knowledge as propositional assent is a very narrow view and holding that view is probably one of the main reasons that people make such a hard distinction between facts and values. The reason why is that if all knowledge is propositional, then the only way to true knowledge - to certainty, to facts - is through logical reasoning. But (I hope) I've shown that we are often certain about things in nonrational ways and that we have no good reason to hold one type of certainty as superior to another type of certainty. Because of this, fact/value dualism is untenable.
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