I remember reading something to the effect that the moral and aesthetic preferences influence scientific belief in his collected works. Was C.S Peirce the first philosopher to posit that value belief serves as some sort of guide for scientific belief?
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1$\begingroup$ "Value/belief is a continuum" does not make much sense without context. Can you provide a reference? Is it something along the lines of Putnam's collapse of the fact/value dichotomy, epistemic values, ethically thick concepts, etc.? $\endgroup$– ConifoldCommented Nov 23, 2020 at 22:44
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$\begingroup$ @conifold Yes it's something alone the lines of the collapse of the fact/value dichotomy. What I had in mind initially was something close to Sellar's connection of "manifest image" to his "scientific image". Did Peirce ever express something close to the fact/value dichotomy(I suppose his pragmatism may be interpreted as something close to that statement)? $\endgroup$– GEPCommented Nov 24, 2020 at 19:21
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1$\begingroup$ Putnam himself names Hume's is/ought guillotine as the point of origin, and enlists the help of his fellow pragmatists in rejecting it:"Beginning in Chapter 2, I argue (following Peirce and the other classical pragmatists) that science itself presupposes values - that epistemic values (coherence, simplicity and the like) are values, too, and in the same boat as ethical values with respect to objectivity". His reference is to Peirce's conception of "normative science" in CP 5.121ff. $\endgroup$– ConifoldCommented Nov 25, 2020 at 9:16
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$\begingroup$ @conifold Was Peirce the first philosopher to reject Hume's is/ought guillotine? $\endgroup$– GEPCommented Nov 27, 2020 at 18:10
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In his Metaphysics, Aristotle says:
To say of what is, that it is not; or if what is not, that it is, is false; whilst to say of what is, that it is; and that what is not, is not, is truth.
I would not normally have suggested that truth was a value, assuming that all held to this; but given the disinformation climate of our times, it seems that truth is a value, and one not held by all. And in this situation, it seems that Aristotle was one of the first to say so. But of course he was simply paraphrasing Parmenides here; for example, in Parmenides poem, he says:
Come now, I will tell thee - and do thou hearken to my saying, the only two ways of searching that can be thought of: the first, that it is, and that it is impossible for it not to be - is the way of conviction, for truth is it companion.
The other, namely that it is not, and that something needs not be - that I tell you is a wholly untrustworthy path. For you cannot know what is not - that is impossible - nor utter it.
and possibly Parmenides was paraphrasing Zoroaster - given that there was commerce between the Greeks and Persians - and who is known for taking truth to be a religious value. For example, one of of his gathas (hymns) has:
I approach you with Good Thought, O Mazda Ahura, so that you may grant me the (blessing) of two existences, the material and that of thought. The blessing emanating from Truth, which one can put support in with comfort.
