The Two Assumptions Foot Undermines

In her paper "Moral Beliefs", Foot sets out to investigate and undermine two assumptions underlying the thought that facts and values are entirely distinct. These two assumptions are: 1) One may without error base his beliefs about matters of value entirely on premises which non one else would recognize as giving evidence at all, and 2) Given the kind of statement which other people regard as evidence for an evaluative conclusion he may refuse to draw the conclusion because this does not count as evidence for him.

The thought that someone holding these assumptions would have is that saying that something is "good" is simply expressing a feeling or a "commending sentiment". Therefore because someone will feel however they feel and can commend whatever they like, not facts will change their mind unless they want themselves want to change their mind. To refute this, Foot considers the concept "dangerous" and says that it would be considered by people of this view to be a word expressing a "warning sentiment". The problem is however, that it only makes sense to warn someone about something that you yourself view as an actual threat and what you see as a threat is vulnerable to facts. For example, if you think that a lone ant is a threat you will warn against it and call it dangerous, yet if someone told you that an ant can not harm you and then proved it by picking up the insect and remaining unharmed, you would no longer view ants as such a threat. Thus, the concept "dangerous" could not have to do solely with value and have nothing whatsoever to do with the facts of the case.

Nevertheless, one may claim that what one counts as a threat is dependent on what one takes to be good and bad for himself and thus one may think that Foot has begged the question in this example. When one considers, though, such virtues such as prudence, temperance and courage it seems impossible to imagine them as being anything but good for a human life. No matter what someone's pursuit is, these qualities will be beneficial to (good for) that person. If this is true then values supervene on facts and are not entirely separate from them.

This just seems right to me, so I do not have much in the way of commentary. Nevertheless, I found it worthwhile and liked some of her examples. Now on to Taylor, but maybe a little Nagel first...