ABSTRACT
The salient consideration is that values almost emerge from facts—that the gap between facts and values, while important, is nevertheless often such a small one that it can be crossed by a step so short as to be effectively trivial, namely by means of truisms. Subjectivists accordingly obtain no aid and comfort from recognizing that values cannot be derived from facts alone—that explicitly or implicitly evaluative claims are always required to render such argumentation cogent. Values and descriptive facts are both governed by norms. The coherence approach to value criteriology in terms of judgmental systematization accordingly runs wholly parallel to the coherence approach to acceptance criteriology. The sort of circularity at issue with thematic homogeneity is not a matter of viciousness but rather of rational cogency, seeing that in these cognitive contexts the principle ex nihilo nihil obtains. Values too can be altogether objective, in that value claims admit of rational support through impersonally cogent considerations.
