Acts and Facts

It is widely held that facts cannot entail values, so many argue that an 'ought' cannot be derived from an 'is'. Searle has attempted to refute that presumption by proposing the existence of a third realm, which he calls 'institutional facts', e. g. the fact of uttering the phrase 'I promise. . .' commits one to an institution in which the utterance is the assumption of an obligation. Presumably in contrast is the derivation of the evaluation 'X ought to be stopped' from the fact of X's utterance 'I will kill you', because the latter can occur without the former obtaining. But, the distinction between the two examples is not clear. For, every act, Speech or otherwise, is subject to valuation, which suggests, on analogy with Searle's proposal, that the realm of institutional Facts, is the realm of Acts, i. e. every act can be similarly construed as commitment to an 'institution', namely to the social realm. So, the derivation that even Searle leaves unexplored is that of Fact from Act.