[5] Hume shared a political viewpoint with early Enlightenment philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) and John Locke (1632–1704).
Specifically, Hume, at least to some extent, argued that religious and national hostilities that divided European society were based on unfounded beliefs.
In effect, Hume contended that such hostilities are not found in nature, but are a human creation, depending on a particular time and place, and thus unworthy of mortal conflict.
This rendered all facts about human action examinable under a normative framework defined by cardinal virtues and capital vices.
The fact–value distinction is also closely related to the moralistic fallacy, an invalid inference of factual conclusions from purely evaluative premises.
The idea that one value-system is no more worthy than the next, although it may not be directly ascribed to Nietzsche, has become a common premise in modern social science.
"[12] In his 1919 essay Politics as a Vocation, he argues that facts, like actions, do not in themselves contain any intrinsic meaning or power: "any ethic in the world could establish substantially identical commandments applicable to all relationships.
"[17] Albert Einstein remarked that the realms of religion and science in themselves are clearly marked off from each other, nevertheless there exist between the two strong reciprocal relationships and dependencies.
[18]Virtually all modern philosophers affirm some sort of fact–value distinction, insofar as they distinguish between science and "valued" disciplines such as ethics, aesthetics, or the fine arts.
[19] Philosophical pragmatists, for instance, believe that true propositions are those that are useful or effective in predicting future (empirical) states of affairs.
Other thinkers, such as N. Hanson among others, talk of theory-ladenness, and reject an absolutist fact–value distinction by contending that our senses are imbued with prior conceptualizations, making it impossible to have any observation that is totally value-free, which is how Hume and the later positivists conceived of facts.
[23] Philippa Foot adopts a moral realist position, criticizing the idea that when evaluation is superposed on fact there has been a "committal in a new dimension".
[25]Foot argues that the virtues, like hands and eyes in the analogy, play so large a part in so many operations that it is implausible to suppose that a committal in a non-naturalist dimension is necessary to demonstrate their goodness.
Philosophers who have supposed that actual action was required if 'good' were to be used in a sincere evaluation have got into difficulties over weakness of will, and they should surely agree that enough has been done if we can show that any man has reason to aim at virtue and avoid vice.
Strauss acknowledges the philosophical trouble of deriving "ought" from "is", but argues that what Weber has done in his framing of this puzzle is in fact deny altogether that the "ought" is within reach of human reason.