I
It is my purpose to apply the conclusions previously drawn as to the
implications of practical judgment to the subject of judgments of
value. First, I shall try to clear away some sources of
misunderstanding.
Unfortunately, however, there is a deep-seated ambiguity which makes
it difficult to dismiss the matter of value summarily. The
_experience_ of a good and the _judgment_ that something is a value of
a certain kind and amount have been almost inextricably confused. The
confusion has a long history. It is found in mediaeval thought; it is
revived by Descartes; recent psychology has given it a new career. The
senses were regarded as modes of knowledge of greater or less
adequacy, and the feelings were regarded as modes of sense, and hence
as modes of cognitive apprehension. Descartes was interested in
showing, for scientific purposes, that the senses are not organs of
apprehending the qualities of bodies as such, but only of apprehending
their relation to the well-being of the sentient organism. Sensations
of pleasure and pain, along with those of hunger, thirst, etc., most
easily lent themselves to this treatment; colors, tones, etc., were
them assimilated. Of them all he says: "These perceptions of sense
have been placed within me by nature for the purpose of _signifying_
what things are beneficial or harmful."[82] Thus it was possible to
identify the real properties of bodies with their geometrical ones,
without exposing himself to the conclusion that God (or nature)
deceives us in the perception of color, sound, etc. These perceptions
are only intended to teach us what things to pursue and avoid, and as
_such_ apprehensions they are adequate. His identification of any and
every experience of good with a judgment or cognitive apprehension is
clear in the following words: "When we are given news the mind first
judges of it and if it is good it rejoices."[83]
This is a survival of the scholastic psychology of the _vis
aestimativa_. Lotze's theory that the emotions, as involving pleasure
and pain, are organs of value judgments, or in more recent
terminology, that they are cognitive appreciations of worth
(corresponding to immediate apprehensions of sensory qualities)
presents the same tradition in a new terminology.
As against all this, the present paper takes its stand with the
position stated by Hume, in the following words: "A passion is an
original existence, or, if you will, modification of existence; and
contains not any representative quality, which renders it a copy of
any other existence or modification. When I am angry I am actually
possest with the passion, and in that emotion have no more a reference
to any other object, than when I am thirsty, or sick, or more than
five feet high."[84] In so doing, I may seem to some to be begging the
question at issue. But such is surely the prima facie fact of the
matter. Only a prior dogma to the effect that every conscious
experience _is_, _ipso facto_, a form of cognition leads to any
obscuration of the fact, and the burden of proof is upon those who
uphold the dogma.[85]
A further word upon "appreciation" seems specially called for in view
of the currency of the doctrine that "appreciation" is a peculiar kind
of knowledge, or cognitive revelation of reality: peculiar in having a
distinct type of reality for its object and in having for its organ a
peculiar mental condition differing from the intelligence of everyday
knowledge and of science. Actually, there do not seem to be any
grounds for regarding appreciation as anything but an intentionally
enhanced or intensified experience of an object. Its opposite is not
descriptive or explanatory knowledge, but _de_preciation--a degraded
realization of an object. A man may climb a mountain to get a better
realization of a landscape; he may travel to Greece to get a
realization of the Parthenon more full than that which he has had from
pictures. Intelligence, knowledge, may be involved in the steps taken
to get the enhanced experience, but that does not make the landscape
or the Parthenon as fully savored a cognitive object. So the fulness
of a musical experience may depend upon prior critical analysis, but
that does not necessarily make the hearing of music a kind of
non-analytic cognitive act. Either appreciation means just an
intensified experience, or it means a kind of criticism, and then it
falls within the sphere of ordinary judgment, differing in being
applied to a work of art instead of to some other subject-matter. The
same mode of analysis may be applied to the older but cognate term
"intuition." The terms "acquaintance" and "familiarity" and
"recognition" (acknowledgment) are full of like pitfalls of ambiguity.
In contemporary discussion of value-judgments, however, appreciation
is a peculiarly treacherous term. It is first asserted (or assumed)
that all experiences of good are modes of knowing: that good is a
term of a proposition. Then when experience forces home the immense
difference between evaluation as a critical process (a process of
inquiry for the determination of a good precisely similar to that
which is undertaken in science in the determination of the nature of
an event) and ordinary experience of good and evil, appeal is made to
the difference between direct apprehension and indirect or inferential
knowledge, and "appreciation" is called in to play the convenient rôle
of an immediate cognitive apprehension. Thus a second error is used to
cover up and protect a primary one. To savor a thing fully--as Arnold
Bennett's heroines are wont to do--is no more a knowing than is the
chance savoring which arises when things smelled are found good, or
than is being angry or thirsty or more than five feet high. All the
language which we can employ is charged with a force acquired through
reflection. Even when I speak of a direct experience of a good or bad,
one is only too likely to read in traits characterizing a thing which
is found in consequence of thinking, to be good; one has to use
language simply to stimulate a recourse to a direct experiencing in
which language is not depended upon. If one is willing to make such an
imaginative excursion--no one can be compelled--he will note that
_finding_ a thing good apart from reflective judgment means simply
treating the thing in a certain way, hanging on to it, dwelling upon
it, welcoming it and acting to perpetuate its presence, taking delight
in it. It is a way of behaving toward it, a mode of organic reaction.
A psychologist may, indeed, bring in the emotions, but if his
contribution is relevant it will be because the emotions which figure
in his account are just part of the primary organic reaction to the
object. In contrary fashion, to find a thing bad (in a direct
experience as distinct from the result of a reflective examination) is
to be moved to reject it, to try to get away from it, to destroy or at
least to displace it. It connotes not an act of apprehension but an
act of repugning, of repelling. To term the thing good or evil is to
state the fact (noted in recollection) that it was actually involved
in a situation of organic acceptance or rejection, with whatever
qualities specifically characterize the act.
All this is said because I am convinced that contemporary discussion
of values and valuation suffers from confusion of the two radically
different attitudes--that of direct, active, non-cognitive experience
of goods and bads and that of valuation, the latter being simply a
mode of judgment like any other form of judgment, differing in that
its subject-matter happens to be a good or a bad instead of a horse or
planet or curve. But unfortunately for discussions, "to value" means
two radically different things: to prize and appraise; to esteem and
to estimate: to find good in the sense described above, and to judge
it to be good, to _know_ it as good. I call them radically different
because to prize names a practical, non-intellectual attitude, and to
appraise names a judgment. That men love and hold things dear, that
they cherish and care for some things, and neglect and contemn other
things, is an undoubted fact. To call these things values is just to
repeat that they are loved and cherished; it is not to give a reason
for their being loved and cherished. To call them values and then
import into them the traits of objects of valuation; or to import into
values, meaning valuated objects, the traits which things possess as
held dear, is to confuse the theory of judgments of value past all
remedy.
And before coming to the more technical discussion, the currency of
the confusion and the bad result consequences may justify dwelling
upon the matter. The distinction may be compared to that between
eating something and investigating the food properties of the thing
eaten. A man eats something; it may be said that his very eating
implies that he _took_ it to be food, that he judged it, or regarded
it cognitively, and that the question is just whether he judged truly
or made a false proposition. Now if anybody will condescend to a
concrete experience he will perceive how often a man eats _without_
thinking; that he puts into his mouth what is set before him from
habit, as an infant does from instinct. An onlooker or anyone who
reflects is justified in saying that he _acts as if_ he judged the
material to be food. He is not justified in saying that any judgment
or intellectual determination has entered in. He has acted; he has
behaved toward something as food: that is only to say that he has put
it in his mouth and swallowed it instead of spewing it forth. The
object may then be called food. But this does not mean either that it
_is_ food (namely, digestible and nourishing material) or that the
eater judged it to be food and so formed a proposition which is true
or false. The proposition would arise only in case he is in some
doubt, or if he reflects that in spite of his immediate attitude of
aversion the thing is wholesome and his system needs recuperation,
etc. Or later, if the man is ill, a physician may inquire what he ate,
and pronounce that something not food at all, but poison.
In the illustration employed, there is no danger of any harm arising
from using the retroactive term "food"; there is no likelihood of
confusing the two senses "actually eaten" and "nourishing article."
But with the terms "value" and "good" there is a standing danger of
just such a confusion. Overlooking the fact that good and bad as
_reasonable_ terms involve a _relationship to other things_ (exactly
similar to that implied in calling a particular article food or
poison), we suppose that when we are reflecting upon or inquiring into
the good or value of some act or object, we are dealing with something
as simple, as self-inclosed, as the simple act of immediate prizing or
welcoming or cherishing performed without rhyme or reason, from
instinct or habit. In truth just as determining a thing _to be_ food
means considering its relations to digestive organs, to its
distribution and ultimate destination in the system, so determining a
thing found good (namely, treated in a certain way) _to be_ good means
precisely ceasing to look at it as a direct, self-sufficient thing and
considering it in its consequences--that is, in its relations to a
large set of other things. If the man in eating consciously implies
that what he eats is food, he anticipates or predicts certain
consequences, with more or less adequate grounds for so doing. He
passes a judgment or apprehends or knows--truly or falsely. So a man
may not only enjoy a thing, but he may judge the thing enjoyed to be
good, to be a value. But in so doing he is going beyond the thing
immediately present and making an inference to other things, which, he
implies, are connected with it. The thing taken into the mouth and
stomach _has_ consequences whether a man thinks of them or not. But he
does not _know_ the thing he eats--he does not make it a term of a
certain character--unless he thinks of the consequences and connects
them with the thing he eats. If he just stops and says "Oh, how good
this is," he is not saying anything about the object except the fact
that he enjoys eating it. We may if we choose regard this exclamation
as a reflection or judgment. But if it is intellectual, it is asserted
for the sake of enhancing the enjoyment; it is a means to an end. A
very hungry man will generally satisfy his appetite to some extent
before he indulges in even such rudimentary propositions.[86]