Answer:
In this article, I argue for a thesis, which I state in section D below, about the relationship between facts and normative principles (or, as I shall call them, for short, "principles"). A normative principle, here, is a general di rective that tells agents what (they ought, or ought not) to do, and a fact is, or corresponds to, any truth, other than (if any principles are truths) a principle, of a kind that someone might reasonably think supports a principle. Note that, under the foregoing stipulations, it is not excluded that normative principles might themselves be facts in a different sense of "fact" from that which is here stipulated. Principles might, that is, be facts in the broader sense of "fact" in which all truths, including, there fore, true principles (if there are any), represent facts. I myself believe that there exist true normative principles, but the thesis about principles and facts to be defended here is, as I shall explain at Q below, neutral with respect to whether any normative principles are truths.
This article represents the prelude to a long study entitled "Rescuing Justice from Con structivism," one that I have been working on for some time. I have received helpful comments on that study from many people, only most of whom have commented on the present prelude to it. Since I lack a record of who commented on the prelude part of the study in particular,
