Where Objective Facts and Norms Meet (and What this Means for Law)

In this essay, I will engage with the controversy that has sprung up between the proponents of the sharp separation thesis and those of the entanglement thesis. What I will be defending is a variant of the entanglement thesis. By drawing on contemporary action theory and on epistemic conceptualism, I will argue that, while objective facts and practical norms are indeed distinct categories of thought, that distinction does not amount to a conceptual gap—a dichotomy or unbridgeable divide. Their relation, in other words, is not one of logical dualism but one of mere (analytical) distinction between interdependent categories of thinking. Hence the entanglement view on which distinction does not entail dichotomy.