There is a need here to understand the logical distinction between facts and values. Facts are objective statements about the world, while values are expressions of moral sentiment. An argument about facts can be resolved by recourse to evidence, whereas an argument about values relies on moral persuasion. The values of a scientists do influence perceptions about which facts are important and useful, but such values should not influence scientific opinion regarding the truth of those facts.
If only argument could be resolved so easily by establishment of facts. If I say I found a blacksnake dead on the road that measured seven feet, you still might doubt me from what you think you know of blacksnakes. You'd want to make the measurement yourself. We rarely can get this kind of confirmation in reality. Trust is very important when it comes to fact. and it's easy to see that we're going to distrust 'facts' that work against our beliefs. No doubt we have a sense that it can be important to our survival to verify in person, and if we can't, we're loathe to accept anyone's word.
Argument is primarily about values, with facts only used to support value statements. A value can appear good and correct to its holder either because it seems to synthesise the lessons of many facts or because it represents an authoritative statement that they trust.
Yes, if an argument is really about a single fact, we're likely to say that the matter can settled easily and find out the answer. If it's about a bunch of facts, different story, and if it's about how we weigh, i.e., value, facts, still a more difficult job. The 'fact' is that there will almost always be more than one valid way to weigh or value facts. If it's a fact that certain inhabited islands will disappear before long, whether one favors massive world action to prevent such a happening may depend on whether one lives on an island or a continent. Self-interest and past experience may dictate.
But if an untrue claim has somehow wangled its way in to be perceived as fact, values can go skewiff. I think that is why Interbane put such emphasis on the detection of bias. I agree with him on this, and think one of the most interesting areas of conversation is in working through people's assumptions. All argument is affected by attachment, but commitments can be made explicit.
I don't know about the relationship between healthy facts and healthy values. Plenty of believers hold to things I think are counter-factual, yet their values are often not objectionable and even admirable. Basing values on facts can be a bad thing. Eugenicists thought they were doing this when they advocated for, and sometimes succeeded in, weeding out mental defectives from the breeding population.
Commitment can in theory be made explicit, but if this happened very often, argument would decrease by at least half. What would be the point if both sides admitted that they have a stake in maintaining a position? It's an agree-to-disagree. Usually, each side sees its commitment as being to the facts, and the other side's as being to emotion, and the argument is allowed to rage on.
It wouldn't be much of an argument if there was no emotion. Debates about facts can mostly be resolved by objective research. It is only when we dispute which facts are important, and what the implications of partial facts might be, that we get into real argument. This requires assessments of values, and extrapolation from partial information, both of which are intrinsically emotional.
Facts are rarely neutral, at least in any kind of public discourse. The weighing of facts, and making judgments about porportionality, is the part that bedevils everybody.
There is debate about whether policy can be based on evidence. This would mean proving that our values are based on facts. Some idealists have argued for this, but realistically, policy values can only be informed by factual evidence, not determined by it. The facts always have to be placed in a moral framework of the values we consider important.
Two opposing policy stances can each be informed by the facts, just not by
the facts, in the view of the opposing side. Democracy rears it head here, as there isn't a mandate for unilateral action by the side that has determined the facts and may be able to wield the necessary power.
Value judgments and preferences are intrinsically metaphysical, meaning they cannot be based solely on physical information. All statements of rights and principles ultimately rest on such metaphysical preferences - on moral sentiment, not on facts. This all left the positivist philosopher David Hume in something of a nihilist quandary, as his logical argument that you cannot derive an 'ought' from an 'is' left him with no objectively reliable values. Immanuel Kant claimed to have refuted Hume's so-called naturalistic fallacy by arguing that support for duty is a necessary condition of experience, and so moral law has factual status. Logically, Hume cannot be refuted, but practically we cannot live without such a Kantian synthesis.
I agree. Well said.