This is because for freedom to survive, it has to be based on the idea that there is such a thing as objective reality that we can all turn to to settle arguments of fact.
Butler had little doubt that arguments from abstract relations and arguments from matters of fact were complementary, but he held that the latter had major advantages over the former as a method in ethics.
Their ostensible grasps at scientific credibility crumble upon even a cursory inspection, and their odious arguments, bereft of facts, should not be allowed set the tone of the conversation.
Bereft of rational arguments and terrified of fact, they traffic in demagoguery and paranoia.
Use the phrase liberally every year, for one day: with your spouse, with your boss, in the car, even to yourself (you could make an argument, in fact, that most of McEnroe's tantrums were actually self-directed).
If aspects of "Reality Hunger" were familiar, refrains on old arguments (in fact much of the book consists of direct quotations from other books), Shields's points are worth considering again, both because he is laudably serious about what literature ought to aim for and because his ideas about the novel are so firmly entrenched in contemporary literary culture.
Constructivists have seldom dealt with the argument from the fact of reason, or they have downplayed its role in Kant's general argument for the objectivity of moral obligations (O'Neill 2002, 81 97; Łuków 1993, 204 221; cf. Engstrom 2009, 243).
Many interpreters take the argument from the fact of reason to show that Kant's claim about the objectivity of moral obligations ultimately relies on perception of some moral facts (the fact of reason), hence on a realist foundation (Ameriks 2003, 263 282; cf. Kleingeld 2010, 55 72).
The more conservative Wall Street Journal is fulsome in its praise for Mitt: he appeared Presidential, "showed a superior command of fact and argument than the incumbent, and made a confident, optimistic case for change".
While he illustrated this powerful theory with examples of ugly, unclear and ultimately misleading prose, today the Orwell prize, established in his name, positively celebrates work that speaks truth to power and shines a light on the darkest distortions of fact and argument.
Behind the headlines on Friday, whatever they are, will lie the truth that the dynamism of this argument transcends the fact of the result itself, whichever way it falls.
