What are the facts?: First tell me the values which you use to determine your facts

        Many academic arguments that appear to outsiders to be "about the facts" really are about competing ways of valuing the evidence.  When you convince your audience to trust your reasons for deciding "what the facts are," you are half-way to persuading them to accept your conclusions.  If you have not yet thought about why we should accept your facts as necessary and sufficient to a solution of the problem at hand, you never will persuade us unless by accident we share your values.