. . . All valuation begins with truth discernment because that is the first order of valuation, the first sorting we must do as living creatures. But human beings, because we have a cultural dimension to our lives, made possible by the cognitive capabilities that enable us to conceive our disparate sensory inputs as a world, move beyond this level, beyond the recognition of the true and the false, to the valuation of things in terms of their effects on us. The idea that value questions are not amenable to truth determinations is simply wrong. Truth is just another form of valuation and, as the most basic form there is, the underlying ground for all the other claims of value we can make.

The idea that moral questions are cut off from claims of truth is misleading because, insofar as moral valuation is valuation at all, it comes from the very same place our truth claims come from. . . .