The Virtual Reality of Fact vs. Value: A Symposium Commentary

Abstract

Reading these papers—each one a straightforward declaration of a preferred position—has the odd (and I trust, unintended) effect of projecting the reader into a world of virtual reality. The words, the concepts, the theories, the divisions and dualisms, the premises, the arguments themselves all seem to be real. They seem to make sense. Yes, we can say to ourselves, I see and understand what each one is saying. “Fact,” “value,” “empirical,” “normative,” “science,” “philosophy,” “naturalistic fallacy,” and similar terms all invoke meanings that seem to be clear and that help to clarify the issues being debated. But do they? To what extent is this particular discussion about business ethics only virtually real, a product of an imagined or invented dialogue that may rest on little more than the assumed and inherited meanings assigned to the phrases we toss around so freely?

By raising the question, it should be obvious that I am inclined to believe that the debaters have convinced themselves that they are engaged in a dialogue about something “real” but which actually exists only in the invented forms and phrases that they have brought to the debate. The issues are only “virtually” real. If that is so, then one needs to ask where did those inventions—the virtual realities of the debate—come from. Why are they so appealing? Why do they seem to make so much sense to us? Why are they defended so vigorously by both sides or, perhaps more aptly, by all sides?