What is the relationship between Facts and Values?

Positive sciences are related with facts. Fact is related with ‘what is’. Fact stands for things or events as they exist in a particular space and time. Facts and phenomena have no concealed significance beyond what they present to us in external experience. They are descriptive in nature. Fact is something known to be true. It is a piece of information or reality. Facts satisfy our intellect.

Normative science deals with values. It is concerned with ‘what ought to be’. Values are something to be pursued in life. Values belong to the background of facts and they are recognized by consciousness. Values are prescriptive in nature. They are evaluative. Values are over and above the framework of facts that is constituted by matter, space, time and causality. Values are neither true nor false. Values satisfy our desires & aspirations.

We become aware of the world of nature by sense and reason. Values do not exist in space and time like the objects of nature do. Values subsist in themselves above space and time. Values are not existents, they are subsistent. Consciousness of values is immediate and intuitive. Values transcend the spatio- temporal world.

The awareness about values is inevitable development of the estimation of things and events. Facts and values are closely connected. So long as the fact is there; there is value by implication. Facts and values are inseparable from one another. There can be no existence without values and no value without existence.