"It is a practical truth," the administration official said, that without a deal, "our Congress would not likely follow through on the assistance promises we've made, nor would other partners".
By the supreme moral law Bolzano means "a practical truth [i.e., a true ought proposition] from which every other practical truth can be derived objectively, i.e., as the consequence from its 'ground'" (RW I, 228; cf. also RW I, 44, 244, 256, RW IV, 27, 217, 221, and WL II, 348, WL IV, 178).
It resides in the insight that the nature of practical truths should be explained in terms of the constitutive features of practical reasoning.
(i) There are truths, he says, which are accessible to natural reason, that is, to ordinary experience (including the specialized observations of natural scientists), insight, and reflection; and these include practical truths about good and evil, right and wrong.
It must therefore be a basic truth, i.e., a truth that does not have an objective "ground", but can only be an objective "ground" of other (practical) truths (WL II, 375, RW I, 229, RW IV, 207).
It can function not only as an independent endeavor in search for abstract truth, but also as intentional pursuit of practical truths, which to be applied in everyday life.
But the accounts of the first two types are almost entirely in terms of how they differ from the rational type, whose rationality is self-evident to Weber and his readers on the basis of their own knowledge of human goods (basic aspects of human wellbeing) and related practical truths.
Obama's impeccable manner, by contrast, speaks of a man with faith in his Truth, even if the practical and political expressions of that Truth so many of us are counting on from him are proving to be difficult and elusive.
Still, even if the difference between the two views is in some sense only semantic, or one of emphasis, the fact is that most people intuitively do make a distinction between the truth and the practical usefulness of scientific theories.
