The knowledge of good: critique of axiological reason 9789042012202

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THE KNOWLEDGE

OF GOOD

Critique of Axiological Reason

Robert S. Hartman An Expanded Translation by the Author

Based on His Conocimiento del bien: Critica de la razon axiological

Edited by

Arthur R. Ellis Rem B. Edwards

Rea Amsterdam — New York, NY 2002

THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOOD Critique of Axiological Reason

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VIBS Volume

126

Robert Ginsberg Founding Editor Peter A. Redpath Executive Editor Associate Editors G. John M. Abbarno

Mary-Rose Barral

Gerhold K. Becker

Raymond Angelo Belliotti Kenneth A. Bryson C. Stephen Byrum H. G. Callaway Rem B. Edwards William Gay Dane R. Gordon Haim Gordon J. Everet Green

Heta Aleksandra Gylling Matti Hayry Steven V. Hicks Richard T. Hull

Laura Duhan Kaplan Joseph C. Kunkel Vincent L. Luizzi Alan Milchman George David Miller Jon Mills Alan Rosenberg Arleen L. F. Salles Steven Schroeder John R. Shook Alan Soble Eddy Souffrant Tuya Takala Oscar Vilarroya Anne Waters John R. Welch

a volume in

Hartman Institute Axiology Studies HIAS Rem B. Edwards, Editor

The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of “ISO 9706:1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents Requirements for permanence”’. ISBN: 90-420-1220-X (bound) ©Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam — New York, NY 2002 Printed in The Netherlands

CONTENTS 1X

Editorial Foreword Rem B. Edwards

xill

Acknowledgments

The Levels of Value Language 1. First Level: Empirical Value Language A. Indefiniteness of the Moral Realm B. Vagueness and Arbitrariness of Empirical Value Concepts 2. Second Level: Analysis of Empirical Value Language A. Pragmatic Analysis B. Semantic Analysis C. Logical Analysis D. Epistemological Analysis E. Mathematical Analysis 3. Third Level: Systematic Value Language

THREE: Value Science and Natural Science 1. The Present State of Ethical Theory 2. The Formal Analogy Between Natural Science and Moral Science A. Third-Level Construction in Science and in Ethics

3. Primary Qualities in Science and in Ethics

A. The Value Freedom of Value Science B. The “Galilean Revolution” in Value Science FOUR: Moore’s Metaethics: The Science of Good 1. Moore’s Axiomatic of the Science of Ethics A. “Good” is Unknown but not Unknowable

W

TWO _

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The Knowledge of Value 1. The Nature of Critique 2. The Axiological Fallacies 3. The Cognition of Value

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Part I: The Order of Value Reason

25 28 28 29 34 34 40 4] 46 47 49 53 53 56 57 65 65 70 75 77 82 86

B. Propositions with “Good” are Self-evident C. All Ethical Propositions Must Rest for their Self-evidence “Upon Some Proposition Which Must be Simply Accepted or Rejected” 88 D. All Ethical Propositions are Synthetic 90

vl

THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOOD E. “Good” May be Subject to Formal Structurization F. The Formula for the Structurization of ““Good” 1s

Provided by Moore

2. The Axiomatic of the Science of Value

92 94 95

Part II: Reason and Reasons of Value

FIVE: Non-Cognitivists and Semi-Cognitivists 1. Non-Cognitivists A. Non-Cognitivist Empiricist B. Non-Cognitivist Formalists

103 103 103 105

2. Semi-(Non)-Cognitivists A. Semi-Cognitivist Empiricists B. Semi-Cognitivist Formalists i. The Oxford School 11. The Midwest School

106 106 112 112 153

SIX: Naturalistic Cognitivists 1. Naturalistic Empiricists 2. Naturalistic Formalists

163 165 182

SEVEN: Non-Naturalistic Cognitivists 1. Non-Naturalistic Empiricists A. Ontologists B. Phenomenological Empiricists 2. Non-Naturalistic Formalists 3. The Formal Nature of Value: Axiological Science

209 209 209 226 235 249

Part III: The Value of Reason

EIGHT: The Axiological Value of Reason 1. The Logical Necessity of Reason in Moral Conduct A. Logical Relativism: The Problem B. Logical Relativism: The Formal Solution C. Methodological Relativism: The Problem D. Methodological Relativism: The Formal Solution 2. The Logical Relation Between “Is” and “Ought”

257 259 259 263 266 267 269

NINE: The Symbolization of Value 1. The Transposition of Synthetic System and Analytic Reality 2. Analytic and Synthetic Formulae: “Exemplification” and Intensional Fulfillment

277 277 281

Contents

3. The Symbolization of “Ought” 4. Analytic Shorthand and Synthetic Symbolization

Vil

289 295

TEN: The Measurement of Value 1. Analytic Reality and Synthetic Reality 2. Analytic and Synthetic Measurement of Value 3. Analytic “Value Measurement” 4. Synthetic Value Measurement and Prediction

307 307 309 316 324

ELEVEN: The 1. The 2. The 3. The

339 339 360 364

Formalization of Value Non-Reality of Value Situational Reality of Value Formal Reality of Value

Notes

373

Bibliography

413

About the Author and the Editors

445

Index

449

EDITORIAL FOREWORD Early in 1999 Dr. David Mefford found in his files part of a book manuscript that Robert S. Hartman gave to him some time before his death on 20 September 1973. David passed it along to Dr. Arthur Ellis, who diligently searched for a more complete manuscript in the Hartman archives in the Hoskins Special Collections Library at The University of Tennessee where, before her death, Mrs. Rita Hartman sent all of her husbands papers and manuscripts. There, Art eventually found an extensively revised and finished copy of the manuscript of the present book, which Bob Hartman apparently completed shortly before his death. In June of 2001, Gary Acquaviva alerted us to the possibility that this might be a translation of Robert S. Hartman’s E/ Conoci-mimento del Bien: Critica dela Razon Axiologica, originally published in Spanish in Mexico City—Buenos Aires by the Fondo de Cultura Economica in 1965, copyrighted by Hartman himself. Up to this point, the editors were proceeding on the assumption that this was a new book that Hartman completed just before his death. Our reason for thinking so was that he refers frequently in it to his own The Structure of Value, published in 1967. It now appears, thanks to Gary Acquaviva’s information, that it is indeed an extensively revised translation of his El Conocimimento del Bien: Critica dela Razon Axiologica which Hartman translated, updated, and completed shortly before his death, but it is not a previously unpublished book. The first edition was published in Spanish by the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico and the Fondo de Cultura Economica of Mexico City and Buenos Aires in their Dianoia series (1965). Many thanks to the Editors at Dianoia and to the original publisher for their kind permission to publish in English this expanded translation of Hartman’s book. The immense significance of this book for formal axiology was readily apparent to the editors, even from a cursory examination of the manuscript; and Art Ellis and Rem B. Edwards agreed to edit it for publication in the Hartman Institute Studies in Axiology special series of the Value Inquiry Book Series. This proved to be a mammoth undertaking for both editors. First, the library copy of the manuscript was photocopied, no easy task since Hartman usually filled every page completely and left absolutely no margins on the sides or at the top and bottom of his pages. This photocopy was then scanned to get a version of it onto a computer disk. Unfortunately, the typewriter Hartman used to produce his original manuscript had a well-used ribbon that printed only dimly and with many broken letters, so the scanned version was a total mess requiring literally months of work just to make the computer version readable and faithful to the original. Many additional months of effort went into editing it to conform to the exacting editorial standards of the Value Inquiry Book Series. Hartman’s voluminous footnotes contained both reference materials and substantive comments. As Rodopi requires, the substantive comments have been integrated into the main text, and the references were converted from footnotes

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THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOOD

into endnotes. In providing documentation, Hartman gave only the year and place of publication but never the publisher of a book; he usually gave only the last name of authors of books and articles; and he often omitted page numbers. All of this information had to be looked up, completed, and corrected. In the very few instances where Hartman’s sources could not be traced, relevant notes will give all the information Hartman made available. We editors now feel like we have been wrestling for well over two years with the Great Leviathan of Axiology! Despite all the difficulties, we are convinced that this book contributes significantly to the philosophical defense and development of Robert S. Hartman’s formal axiology. In it, Hartman takes on practically everyone who was anyone in value theory at the middle of the 20th century; and he shows exactly where everyone went astray or fell short in light of formal axiology. Even a partial list of those he takes on Is impressive. Proceeding alphabetically with a very incomplete list, Hartman draws what he can from, but then trounces A. J. Ayer, Kurt Baier, Brand Blanshard, R. B. Braithwaite, Daniel Christoff, Felix S. Cohen, Donald Davidson, Abraham Edel, Paul Edwards, Albert Einstein, Herbert Feigl, William K. Frankena, Risieri Frondizi, A. C. Garnett, Everett W. Hall, Stuart Hampshire, Ingemar

Hedenius, R. M. Hare, Nicolai Hartmann, Martin Heidegger, Thomas Hill, A.

L. Hilliard, Henry Lanz, C.1. Lewis, G. E. Moore, Henry Margenau, Charles W.

Mormis, F. S. C. Northrop, P. H. Nowell-Smith, Jose Ortega y Gasset, A. N. Prior, D. D. Raphael, Bertrand Russell, Charles Stevenson, Patrick Suppes, Paul W. Taylor, Stephen E. Toulmin, J. O. Urmson, and Georg Henrik von Wright. French, German, Italian, and Spanish speaking value theorists are also much better represented in the book itself than in the preceding list. — If, as Robert S. Hartman maintained, goodness is complete concept or standard fulfillment, we can assess the goodness or adequacy ofa philosophical position only by applying to it a well developed concept of good-making criteria. Good philosophy incorporates conceptual clarity, logical consistency, systematic orderliness, comprehensive inclusiveness, immense explanatory power, faithfulness to experience, relevant applicability, intuitive allure, and fruitfulness in guiding future research. A good philosophy is creatively insightful; it goes further, sees further, illuminates more, pushes back more

darkness than other perspectives. It persuasively identifies and illuminates the errors and confusions of its competition. In all these respects, the axiology developed in this book and in other writings by Robert S. Hartman is good philosophy. This book especially is a powerful defense of formal axiology as the premier value theory of the twentieth century. Prior to the publication of this book, professional philosophers have neglected Robert S. Hartman. With its publication, they can no longer afford to do so. This does not mean that Hartman is above reproach, that he did not make mistakes, or that he solves all the problems associated with human values and valuations. It does mean,

Editorial Foreword

X1

speaking metaphorically, that he is a heavyweight champion in axiology, or, to use a metaphor he would have preferred, he is a virtuoso. The editors of this book regret that finding the book manuscript and bringing it to the public took so long. We greatly appreciate Robert Ginsberg and the staff at Editions Rodopi for all their support of our efforts and for publishing this and all the other books now existing in the Hartman Institute Axiology Studies special series. Art Ellis is grateful for technical support from Steve Hrivnak and Lori Bouton. Thanks also to Dr. Mark A. Moore for paying the permission-to-quote fees. Rem B. Edwards Lindsay Young Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus The University of Tennessee

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The editors thank the following publishers for their kind permission to reprint and/or paraphrase copyrighted materials reprinted in this volume. Short quotations and references should fall within the realm of “fair use,” but for permission to use more detailed material we thank: Cambridge University Press: G. E. Moore, England: The University Press, 1903.

Principia Ethica. Cambridge,.

Columbia University Press: (1) C. I Lewis, The Ground and Nature of the Right. New York, Columbia University Press, 1955; (2) A. L. Hilliard, The Forms of Value, The Extension of a Hedonistic Axiology. New York: Columbia

University Press, 1950.

Cornell University Press: Felix S. Cohen, Ethical Systems and Legal Ideals.

Copyright © 1959 by Comell University. Used by permission of the publisher, Cornell University Press. Curtis Brown Group: Stuart Hampshire, Thought and Action. London: Chatto and Windus, 1960. Reproduced with permission of Curtis Brown Group Ltd, London on behalf of Stuart Hampshire. Copyright Stuart Hampshire, 1959. Hall,

Richard J.:

Everett

W.

Hall,

Modern

Princeton, N.J.: D. Van Nostrand, 1956.

Science

and Human

Values.

Henry Holt and Company: THE PRACTICE OF PHILOSOPHY by Susanne Langer, © 1930 by Susanne Langer. Reprinted by permission of Henry Holt and Company, LLC. Fundacio José y Gasset: José Ortega y Gasset, [ntrocuccion a Una Estimativa, Obras Completas, Vol. 6. Madrid, Spain: Revista de Occidente, 1955. Courtesy of Herederos de José de Gasset. Translated here by Robert S. Hartman. Macmillan,

UK: David McCracken,

Macmillan,

1963.

Thinking and Value. London, England:

Najar, Regeen R.: (1) Albert Einstein, Out of My Later Years. New York, Philosophical Library, 1950; (2) W. D. Lamont, The Value Judgment. New York: Philosophical Library, 1955. Open Court Publishing Company: Risieri Frondizi, What is Value? An Introduction to Axiology, 1963. Reprinted by permission of Open Court Publishing Company, a division of Carus Publishing Company, Peru, II. From What is

XIV

THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOOD

Value? An Introduction to Axiology by Risieri Frondizi, copyright 1963 by Open Court Publishing Company. Oxford University Press: R. M. Hare, The Language of Morals. Oxford, England: The Clarendon Press, 1952. By permission of Oxford University Press. Pearson Education: J. V. Langmead Casserley, Morals and Man in the Social

Sciences. London. England: Longmans Green, 1951.

Penguin Group, UK: P. H. Nowell-Smith, Ethics. Harmondsworth, Middlesex,

er England:

Penguin

Books,

1954. Reproduced by permission of Penguin

Books, Ltd.

Philosophical Review, Paul W. Taylor, “Four Types of Ethical Relativism.” From Philosophical Review 63 (1954). Copyright 1954 Commell University. Reprinted by permission of the publisher. Random House, from On the Knowledge of Good & Evil by Philip B. Rice, Copyright © 1960. Used by permission. Routledge, (Taylor & Francis): Bertrand Russell, Human Society in Ethics and Politics. Simon & Schuster, 1955.

Stanford University Press: Henry Lanz, In Quest of Morals. Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1941.

Cal.:

University of California Press: Brand Blanshard, The Impasse in Ethics and the Way Out. Berkeley, Cal.: University of California Press, 1955. University of Chicago Press: Charles Morris, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956.

Varieties of Human

Value.

University of Toronto Press: F. E. Sparshott, An Enquiry into Goodness. Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto Press, 1958.

Part One

THE VALUE OF REASON I want to see you experts in good. St. Paul, Romans, 16:19 Est enim virtus perfecta ratio. Cicero, De Legibus, 1, 45

One

THE KNOWLEDGE

OF VALUE

Give the argument itself your attention and observe what will become of it under the test of logical refutation.' Plato 1. The Nature of Critique When Immanuel Kant wrote the Critique of Pure Reason he had the double task of any pioneer in a new science: to construct the new science and, in the light of it, to criticize preceding philosophies. Before his mind were the notion and structure of a new science of metaphysics based on reason in its transcendental use, in the light of which he criticized the old philosophies of metaphysics based on reason in its transcendent use. In the famous Third Question of the Prolegomena, “How Is Metaphysics in General Possible?” corresponding to the Transcendental Dialectic in the Critique, he shows that metaphysics is the discipline of pure transcendent reason, of reason without reference to experience, fundamentally different from

transcendental reason. Whereas transcendental reason can be checked by sense perception, as in any natural science, transcendent reason cannot. Whatever checks there are must be contained within reason itself. The checks inherent in it appear in the transcendental Ideas, which in turn are based on three fundamental forms of reason, the three forms of the syllogism. These checks appear in the form of contradictions of reason with itself in its transcendental use. These contradictions arise invariably when reason speculates about non-empirical objects such as the Soul, the World, or God. The task of scientific meta-

physics, in the transcendental dialectic, is to show up the contradictions reason gets entangled in (paralogisms, antinomies, fallacies of the Ideal of reason) when soaring off into the transcendent realm, contradictions that make all the efforts of reason futile—as if it were a dove that thinks it can fly more easily in the stratosphere. Contradiction, in various forms, is the technical tool Kant uses for his critique of reason. In the Fourth Question of the Prolegomena, “How is Metaphysics as a Science Possible?” Kant shows that metaphysics as a natural disposition of reason is real, but considered by itself alone it is illusory. Taking principles from it and using them to follow its natural but false illusions, we can never produce a science but only a vain dialectical art in which one school may outdo another but none can ever acquire a just and lasting result. In order for metaphysics to be a science it must be a system that exhibits the whole stock of a priori concepts in completeness and consistency. In this sense, critique itself is the science of metaphysics.

4

THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOOD Whoever has once tasted critique will be ever after disgusted with all dogmatic twaddle which he formerly had to put up with. Critique stands in the same relation to the common metaphysics of the schools as chemistry does to alchemy, or as astronomy to the astrology of the fortunetellers. I pledge myself that nobody who has thought through and grasped the principles of critique will ever return to that old and sophistical pseudoscience.’

The reason is that pre-critical metaphysics was nothing but analyses of concepts, and dissections of concepts do not advance a subject matter. Ever since I have come to know critique whenever I finish reading a book of metaphysical contents....I1 cannot help asking, ‘Has this author indeed advanced metaphysics a single step?’ I have never been able to find either their essays or my own less important ones...to have advanced the science of metaphysics in the least. There is a very obvious reason for this: metaphysics did not then exist as a science....By the analytical treatment of our concepts the understanding gains indeed a great deal; but the science of metaphysics is thereby not in the least advanced because these dissections of concepts are nothing but the materials from which our science has to be fashioned....By all its analyzing nothing is effected, nothing obtained or forwarded; and the science, after all this bustle and noise, still remains as

it was in the days of Aristotle, though there were far better preparations for it than of old if only the clue to synthetical cognitions had been discovered.’

Whether Kant’s science of metaphysics is actually the science of metaphysics need not be discussed here, but it is certain that his procedure was the methodologically correct one. Anyone who wishes to establish a new science has to (1) produce a coherent and consistent system that covers the subject matter completely; (2) produce criteria for distinguishing the new science from the preceding philosophies, criteria which must be part of the new science; and (3) find the distinction of the preceding philosophies and the new science in the analytic procedure of these philosophies and the synthetic procedure of the new science. Construction and critique must go hand in hand; both are two sides of one and the same coin. In the natural sciences, the great master of both construction and critique in this sense was Galileo Galilei. In his Two Great Systems of the World, he founded his “‘two new sciences”; and, even more explicitly and comprehensively, he criticized his Aristotelian predecessors. Galileo elaborated the new science, and thus relieved all his successors in natural science of the task

of critique and set them free to follow the course he had staked out.

The Knowledge of Value

5

The science of value today is in the same position as the science of nature at the time of Galileo and that of metaphysics at the time of Kant. It is not enough to construct a science; it also has to be used in order to criticize the still ruling value philosophy. The construction of the science began in my previous book, The Structure of Value. In the present book the other side of the coin will be presented: the science of value is used as a critique of value philosophies. In this book, I will follow the general procedure of critique, that 1s, criticize preceding philosophies by criteria contained in the new science. 2. The Axiological Fallacies The criteria in question are the axiological fallacies, explained in The Structure of Value.* These fallacies are part of the system of formal axiology. Axiology as a science is distinguished from axiology as philosophy in three ways. First, in axiology as philosophy, the concept of value is a category, while in axiology as a science it is the axiom of a system. A category is a concept abstracted from concrete reality and, according to a fundamental law of logic, its intension diminishes in proportion to its increase in extension. An axiom, by contrast, is a formula constructed by the human mind whose intension, in the form of a system, increases in proportion to its increase in extension. The intension and extension of a category vary in inverse proportion while those of an axiom vary in direct proportion.’ Consequently, a category is not applicable to reality because the range of its meaning does not cover the details of actual situations. A system is applicable to reality because it has a complexity that corresponds to the complexity of actual situations. In natural science, the system corresponding to natural reality is that of mathematics; in moral science, the system corresponding to moral reality is formal axiology. Second, the transition from a philosophy to a science is characterized by the combination of a chaos of phenomena with a formal system. In The Structure of Value the chaos of value phenomena was combined with the system of logic itself by the axiomatic identification of “value” with “similarity of intension.” Third, the analysis of value through the system follows necessary logical laws and not accidental philosophies of individual thinkers. By the same logical necessity, these philosophies appear logically fallacious. That is to say, the system of axiology, using the same procedure by which it positively accounts for the value world, accounts negatively for the accounts of this world by value philosophy. The construction itself contains the criteria of the critique. Perhaps a critique of axiological reason was written previously by G. E. Moore in Principia Ethica, and his book may contain a criterion for the critique of previous value philosophies in the naturalistic fallacy. Moore wrote Principia Ethica after a careful study of Kant. No doubt, Moore’s book was meant as such a critique.’ He used the naturalistic fallacy, which is confusing the property

6

THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOOD

good with other properties such as pleasant, desired, and the like that belong not to ethics but to psychology and other natural sciences, to critique all forms of ethical philosophies. He criticized naturalistic ethics, hedonism, metaphysical ethics, and others—the main trends of pre-Moorean ethics—all those ethics that we would call “classical” today, including that of Kant.* Kant did not follow his own scientific understanding of metaphysics insofar as the metaphysics of morals is concerned, even though he regarded this metaphysics in exactly the same way as he did the science of metaphysics of the first Critique.’ But Moore’s critique lacks the systematic basis that belonged to both Galileo’s critique of Aristotelian natural philosophy and Kant’s critique of metaphysical philosophy: the system, newly constructed, that both accounts for the field in question and the critique of its predecessors. ‘‘Good” for Moore was indefinable; hence, the naturalistic fallacy was not

an organic part of a definition or a system of axiology. Moore did not even know that he was writing axiology but thought he was writing ethics. He did not methodologically penetrate into axiology, as did Kant into metaphysics and Galileo into mechanics. As a result, he only intuitively hit upon certain systematic features of goodness, such as that it is not a descriptive property and that judgments about it must be synthetic; and his naturalistic fallacy was an ad hoc invention. His Principia Ethica is only a fragmentary critique of axiological reason. Yet, it is penetrating enough for any new critique of axiological reason not to have to repeat its critique of pre-Moorean philosophers. The Structure of Value was a logical generalization and elaboration of Moore’s “paradox” of good as a non-descriptive property that yet depends only on the descriptive properties of objects. It defined descriptive properties as sets of intensional properties and applied some aspects of set theory to these sets. It presented a logical generalization and elaboration of the naturalistic fallacy and showed that this fallacy is only one of a cluster of methodological fallacies. The generalization of the naturalistic fallacy revealed that such fallacies inhere in any philosophy when it is seen from the point of view of the subsequent science. This was shown to be particularly striking in the almost simultaneous attempt of Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell on the one hand, and Moore on the other, to transform Mathematics and Ethics, respectively, into sciences. All three hit on the same fallacy without ever recognizing it as such. This proved disastrous for Frege in mathematics and for Russell in ethics. Because of the fundamental importance of this for our subject, let us briefly review it. Moore made it clear in 1903 that the whole of ethics before him rested on a logical mistake. Any attempt, he showed, to define value by specific kinds of value—ontological, teleological, epistemological, theological, psychological, ethical—as perfection, purpose, function, knowledge, God, pleasure, self-realization, preference, and so on, was a confusion not only of specific values with one another but also of value in general with value in particular. The naturalistic fallacy implied both a confusion of generic value with specific values and of

The Knowledge of Value

7

different specific values with each other. But Moore was not clear on these two different confusions contained in the naturalistic fallacy. Neither was he clear about the fact that this fallacy is one not only of ethical reasoning but of ail pre-scientific reasoning. It is contained in the very nature of the category. It inheres in categorial—rather than axiomatic—thinking. It was also found in mathematics as long as number was regarded philosophically rather than scientifically, (or, as Russell says, ‘““mathematically”). As late as 1884, Frege had to make clear that number is “as little an object of psychology or an outcome of psychical processes as the North Sea...” and, as late as 1914, that there is a

difference between number, the numbered symbol, and the thing symbolized, a function and its value.'° Rudolf Carnap remarked that “unfortunately [Frege’s] admonitions go mostly unheeded even today.” According to Bertrand Russell,

The question ‘What is number?’ is one which, until quite recent times, was never considered in the kind of way that 1s capable of yielding a precise answer. Philosophers were content with some vague dictum such as ‘Number is unity in plurality’. A typical definition of the kind that contented philosophers is the following from Sigwart’s Logic (Par. 66, Section 3): ‘Every number is not merely a plurality but a plurality thought as held together and enclosed, and to that extent as a unity.” Now there is in such definitions a very elementary blunder, of the same kind that would be committed if we said ‘yellow is a flower’ because some flowers are yellow. Take, for example, the number 3. The number 3 is something which all collections of three things have in common, but is not itself a collection of three things.” Exactly analogous is the argument of G. E. Moore about Value. To define Value as pleasure or the like would be to define a particular kind of value as Value itself. It would be the same as to hold, when we say “an orange is yellow,” that “orange” means nothing else but “yellow” or that nothing can be yellow but an orange." Such definitions will not do for the science of ethics that Moore had in mind. We should not get very far with our science, if we were bound to hold that everything which was yellow, meant exactly the same thing as ‘yellow.’ We should find we had to hold that an orange was exactly the same thing as a stool, a piece of paper, a lemon, anything you like. We could prove any number of absurdities; but should we be nearer to the truth? Why then should it be different with ‘good’?...There is no meaning in saying that pleasure is good unless good is something different from pleasure."

8

THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOOD

In a science such confusions are not possible because the axiom and the system developed from it clarify the differences between the system itself, the phenomena to which it applies, and the method of application. The relation between the generic and the specific is itself specified. What Russell and Moore have to say applies not merely to the fields of number and value but also to the relation between the generic and the specific in any philosophy. Before there can be a science—of mathematics, of axiology, and so on—confusion between the generic and the specific in the corresponding philosophy must first be eliminated. In natural philosophy, the same fallacy was committed in alchemy, where colors were confused with substances, and it was thought that the color of a thing, A, could be given to a thing, B, by mixing A and B, or when species of disciplines themselves were confused such as religion and chemistry, or when a prayer was needed to transmute an element. The main function of a new science is strictly to delimit the science and its subject matter from the chaos of determinations of preceding philosophies. In this sense, critique is part of anew science. The naturalistic fallacy is the general fallacy of confusing the generic with the specific. In order for this fallacy to be systematically recognized, the generic has to be defined by a system that in turn can determine the specific. As long as there was no such system for Value—and Moore did not present one—it could be denied, and has been denied ever since Moore, that the naturalistic fallacy is a fallacy. Yet, it is impossible to speak of a specific kind of value, say economic value, 1f we do not know what Value in general is. If the genus is unknown, the differentia are senseless. Moore’s naturalistic fallacy is really a fallacy of philosophical method. An analysis of the history of science shows that whenever a philosophical definition of a subject matter is replaced by a scientific one, the philosophical definition appears as a methodological fallacy, such as the naturalistic fallacy. This fallacy, as a confusion of logical types, is a true logical fallacy, and it is only one of a cluster of such fallacies. Moore saw only one fallacy where there are at least four. Also, he did not see the methodological nature of the fallacy as due to a transition from the analytic to the synthetic, the categorical to the axiomatic, in short. the transition from philosophy to science, which he wanted to bring about in ethics. I will now both generalize and differentiate Moore’s naturalistic fallacy and set it within the total field to which it belongs, the cluster of fallacies which appear from the vantage point of any new science. In this particular case, dealing with the new science of axiology, it is appropriate to call them the “axiological fallacies.” I define a “science” as “the combination of a formal frame of reference with a set of objects.” From this definition it follows that each science has its own frame of reference and its own set of objects. That is to say, a datum becomes an object of natural science if the frame of reference of natural science is applied to it; it becomes an object of value science if the frame of reference

The Knowledge of Value

9

of value science is applied to it. The same datum, thus, can appear either as an object of natural science or of axiological science, depending on the frame of reference applied. The world, although ontologically one, may appear in as many aspects as there are frames of reference applied to it, in the same way that one and the same curve may appear as either convex or concave, straight or curved, depending on the view or frame of reference used; in the view of the differential calculus—if it is applicable—it appears as a straight line. Always the same world is viewed, but it 1s viewed differently by each science. Each science, by its own frame of reference, generates its own subject matter. The axiological fallacies follow from this distinction between the sciences. They are confusions between different sciences of, (a) general frames of reference, (b) specific frames of reference, (c) general with specific frames of reference, and (d) specific frames of reference with their subject matter. The first of these fallacies I call the “metaphysical fallacy” because it confuses different world views. The second | call the “naturalistic fallacy” because its most usual form is the confusion of specific natural sciences with specific moral sciences, for example, biology with ethics; it also confuses different natural sciences with each other or different moral sciences with each other,

for example ethics with religion. The third is the “moral fallacy,” for its most usual form is the confusion of axiology with ethics. The fourth is the “fallacy of method,” the confusion of a specific scitence—whether natural or moral— with its subject matter. Subdivisions of this fallacy are the “empirical” and the “normative” fallacies, respectively, both of which predicate of the science itself an attribute belonging to the subject matter of a science—that of being empirical and of being normative, respectively. Using the fallacies in the following discussion will reveal their details. The axiological fallacies may be schematized as: The World of Fact, the World of Value, and the Axiological Fallacies FACT

VALUE Logic

/ Mathematics

Natural

Sciences

Axiology

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Natural Situations

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Moral 000000

Situations

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THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOOD

1. Metaphysical fallacy—Confusion between world of fact and world of value. For example, Sigmund Freud said “Religion has not stood the test of science.” Religion and science each have their separate logic, and the logic of the one must not be applied to the other. 2. Naturalistic fallacy—Confusion between particular kinds of value and/ or fact. “To be moral is to believe in God.” Moral value and religious value are different kinds of value and must not be regarded as identical. “Value is evolution,” “Value is satisfaction,” and so on, are confusions of this type. 3. Moral fallacy—Confusion between value in general and value in particular. For example, “Good is pleasure.” Pleasure is something that is good; it is not Goodness itself. “A murderer cannot be good.” Murderers can be good axiologically—good as murderers, fulfilling the definition of “murderer”—but they cannot be good morally. 4a. Fallacy of method—Confusion between value situation and value analysis. “An irrational situation cannot be analyzed rationally,” “Religion is a matter of ultimate concern and hence beyond rational analysis.” To be religious. is one thing, to analyze being religious is another thing. ‘““Value theory prescribes value.” Value theory is purely formal, like mathematics. It deals with prescriptions, (“ought”) but is not itself prescriptive, (normative fallacy). “Ethics 1S a normative discipline.” Ethics deals with norms. It is not itself a set of norms. G. E. Moore said “It is not the business of the ethical philosopher to give personal advice or exhortation.”'® 4b. Empirical fallacy—Confusion between a natural situation and a natural science. “All science is empirical.” All science is a frame of reference applied to a subject matter. The subject matter may be empirical. The nature of the subject matter of some science—for example “empirical”—does not determine the nature of all science. The fallacies of axiological thought are powerful instruments for the analysis of value theories. They are for me what the laws of thought, in particular the law of contradiction, were for Kant’s critique of pure reason, and the laws of

mathematics were for Galileo’s critique of Aristotle’s mechanics. These critiques were an organic part of the new sciences these pioneers endeavored to establish. Their sciences had to be created organically out of, as well as in definite distinction from, the corresponding philosophies of their age. Galileo’s work was foreshadowed in the works of Robert Grosseteste, Nicholas Oresme, Piero Tartagilia, Alessandro Benedetti, and others. Galileo’s main contribution

was the new form in which the problems appeared in his head, “‘a different kind of thinking-cap, a transposition in the mind of the scientist himself,” as Herbert

Butterfield put it.'’ Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason was “the execution of Hume’s problem in its widest extent,” resulting “in a perfectly new science, of which no one has ever even thought, the very idea of which was unknown,” a formal science which not even Hume suspected."

The Knowledge of Value

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3. The Cognition of Value If a science of ethics, and of valuation in general, is ever to be created, it too

must grow organically out of, and in distinction from, the total field of ethical theories. This field is the matrix out of which the new science must be born, in

the same way that Kant’s science of metaphysics was born out of the matrix of skeptical and dogmatic philosophy and natural science out of the matrix of natural philosophy. In all such cases, the matrices are analytic—in the methodological sense of Kant—while the new science is a synthetic structure, which means that the first consists of either analytic or synthetic judgments, and the second of exclusively synthetic a priori judgments. In today’s axiological philosophy the germs of such a new point of departure are found, in the same way that the germs of their radical departures could be found in pre-Kantian and in pre- Galilean philosophy. For this reason, the critique of contemporary ethical theories is not a merely negative enterprise. It accomplishes, at the same time, three positive tasks: (1) showing the matrix out of which scientific axiology must develop and the points of departure of the new science; (2) presenting the transition from moral philosophy to moral science, (which in The Structure of Value was shown systematically) in the reality of contemporary axiological doctrine; and (3) fulfilling one of the two principal tasks of formal axiology, that of consistently accounting for the variety of axiological theories. The second task of consistently accounting for moral phenomena will be discussed in the third part of this book. As in pre-Kantian metaphysics, axiology today 1s divided between “skeptics” and “dogmatists.” Among the first are the so-called “positivists,” who affirm the intelligibility of fact but deny that of value; among the second are the “ontologists” and “phenomenologists,” who affirm the reality and/or the essentiality of value. Positivistic value theory has led to a situation unique in the history of moral philosophy: “normative” value propositions are regarded as expressions of emotions, without rational meaning. Although this theory was in vogue in only a small part of the philosophical world, originally in Vienna and later in England and North America, it is of special interest in value theory for it provided the absolute zero point in the scale of valuational knowledge. The radical positivists furnished a viewpoint from which philosophically nothing less could be said on value. It was the low point of the philosophical understanding of value and as such came as a shock to morally sensitive people, similar to the one suffered, reportedly, by the onlookers of Diogenes’ manipulations on the agora, designed also to drive home the futility of the philosophy of good. This low point was, at the same time, a starting point: any new development could only be in the direction of valuational knowledge. Value philosophers either had to become psychologists, or else had to find in value judgments at least one feature amenable to logical treatment.

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THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOOD

Indeed, the whole development since 1936 may be regarded as a reaction against positivistic value nihilism. The most recent positivistic schools of ethics are attempts, without leaving the positivistic basis, to find some intellectual method to account for value phenomena. The Wittgensteinian school is an advance against the nihilistic position of radical positivism insofar as it holds that some knowledge of value is possible, a special limited kind—retail rather than wholesale knowledge, as it has been called. So is the emotivist school which tries to find ad hoc logics for the moral judgment positivistically defined as emotive. Higher up on the scale are the naturalists, who believe they know what value is, but are opposed by the Mooreans who hold that what is thus defined is not value but fact. Though the Mooreans hold value to be indefinable, they are still higher up on the scale, for value, although indefinable, is by no means held to be unknowable; they do know what it is by non-discursive intuition; and some of them, who we may call the positive as against the negative Mooreans, even attempt to articulate this intuition by definition. Finally, at the opposite end of the scale from the axiological zero point, we have the dogmatists, those who ontologically or phenomenologically structure the value realm and who are as opposed to the radical positivists as Plato was to Diogenes. Beyond them, finally, at the very edge of the scale, and pointing to a realm of metaethics, are the formal axiologists, opposed to both the nihilism of the skeptics and the hypostatization of the dogmatists, yet in agreement with both—with the strict division of fact and value of the first and the requirement for complete articulation of the second. They are the axiological scientists in the Galilean and Kantian sense of the word. Most of today’s value theoreticians are somewhere in the middle of the scale along the naturalistic and ontological stretch. Few of them share the vision of a moral science, but even fewer accept the value nihilism of the past. More significantly, the trend of axiological thought is in the direction away from value nihilism and toward the rational cognition of value. Contemporary value theory is largely a search for rational tools of axiological cognition. I will now examine the scale of this cognition from a slightly different angle. The main feature of the present situation is that of search. Value theory is in the aporetic stage: the only category by which its apparent chaos can be ordered is that of Problem. “Problem” is a definite cognitive category. By applying it we can bring some order into the welter of theories, which otherwise defies organization. The category of “problem” presupposes that there is an unknown x which is to be known and that there is some knowledge to account for x. In the present case, x is Value. To posit value as a problem means that it is at present unknown, that it is to be known, and that there is some knowledge to account for it. The failure of most of value theory is to concentrate on value rather than on the kind of knowledge appropriate to it. At this point, G. E. Moore made his classic contribution, little understood and neglected as it is. To paraphrase him, the failure of the attempt to define good is chiefly due to want

The Knowledge of Value

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of clearness as to the possible nature of definition.'’ Once the nature of definition is clarified, and analytic and synthetic definitions are distinguished, the nature of value itself becomes clear: it cannot be defined analytically; to do so is precisely Moore’s “naturalistic fallacy”; it must be defined synthetically. The kind of knowledge to account for x = Value is, thus, synthetic a priori knowledge. Once this is recognized the solution of the value problem 1s given: axiological cognition must be synthetic systematization as against analytic implication—value science as against value philosophy. Thus a norm for value knowledge is established. Let us now apply this norm to the present status of ethical theory. We may call this the “‘second post-Moorean period,” the first post-Moorean period being characterized by the positivistic, naturalistic, ontological, deontological, and phenomenological alternatives to Moore, highlighted by the works of A. J. Ayer, Charles L. Stevenson, John Dewey, Ralph Barton Perry, C. I. Lewis, W.

M. Urban, W. D. Ross, Max Scheler, and Nicolai Hartmann. The second post Moorean period is one of catching breath and taking account of these prodigious efforts. It is more sophisticated, more tentative, and for the time being, less monumental. Let us agree, then, that the knowledge of value is the fundamental problem

of axiology. This problem came into being with Kant, which makes it particularly fitting that his logical distinction supplies us with the solution: the distinction between analytic and synthetic definition, which corresponds to that between analytic and synthetic a priori judgment—a distinction persistently neglected in today’s value theory (as it is in today’s logic). Kant never applied his logical distinction to value judgments, just as, for example, Bertrand Russell never applied his logic to ethics. For this reason, as we shall see, Kant’s discussion of practical reason lacks the precision and coherence of his treatment of pure reason. This had its ground in the very ba