V
Judgments of value are, then, objective in their import in the same sense as are the factual judgments in which the conditions of action are presented. The ideal problematic situation is, in the last resort, ethical, in the sense of requiring for its solution determination of the new end that has arisen with reference to existing standards. In structure and in function the judgment in which the outcome of this process is presented is knowledge, and objective in the only valid acceptation of the term.
But, after all, it may be urged, is it not the essential mark of the objective that it should be accessible to all men, and not in the nature of the case valid for only a single individual? At best the objectivity of content which has been made out for the judgment of value is purely functional, and not such as can be verified by appeal to the consensus of other persons. The agent's assurance of the reality of the economic or ethical subject-matter which he is endeavoring to determine, and his sense of the objectivity of the results which he reaches, need not be denied. These may well enough be illusions of personal prejudice or passion, or even normal illusions of the reflective faculty, like that of interpreting the secondary qualities of bodies as objective in the same sense as are the "bulk, figure, extension, number, and motion of their solid parts."[151] Any man can see the physical object to which I point, and verify with his own eyes the qualities which I ascribe to it, but no man can either understand or verify my judgment that the purpose I have formed is in accord with rational ideals of industry and self-denial, or that this portion of my winter's fuel may be given to a neighbor who has none.
But this line of objection proves too much, for, made consistent with itself, it really amounts to a denial that the very judgment of sense-perception, to which it appeals so confidently as a criterion, has objective import. The first division of this study was intended to show that every object in the experience of each individual is for the individual a unique construction of his own, determined in form and in details by individual interests and purposes, and therefore different from that object in the experience of any other individual which in social intercourse passes current as the same. The real object is for me the object which functions in my experience, presenting problematic aspects for solution, and lending itself more or less serviceably to my purposes; and this object is, we hold, not the object as socially current, but the complete object which, as complete in its determination with reference to my unique purposes, cannot possibly have social currency. The objection as stated cuts away the very ground on which it rests, since the shortcoming which it finds in the judgment of ethical or economic value is present in the particular judgment of sense-perception also. The object about which I can assure myself by an immediate appeal to other persons is the object in its bare "conceptual" aspects—the object as a dictionary might define it, the commodity as it might be described in a trade catalogue, or the ethical act as defined by the criminal code or in the treatise of a moral philosopher. It is an object consisting of a central core or fixed deposit of meaning, which renders it significant in a certain general way to a number of persons, or even to all men, but which is not yet adequately known by me from the standpoint of my present forming purpose. In virtue of these conceptual characters it is adaptable to my purpose, which is as yet general and indeterminate; but in the nature of the case it cannot yet be known to me as applicable to my prospective concrete purpose, as this shall come to be through judgment.
Thus, if the test of objectivity of import is to be that the judgment shall present an object or a fact which, as presented, is socially current among men and not shut away in the individual intelligence apart from the possibility of social verification, then the apparent nominalism of the objection we are considering turns out to be the uttermost extreme of realism. Such a test amounts to a virtual affirmation that the sole objective reality is the conceptual, and that the "accidents" of one's particular object of sense-perception are the arbitrary play of private preference or fancy. At this point, however, the objection may shift its ground and take refuge in some such position as the following: The real object is indeed the object which the individual knows in relation to his particular purpose, and it is indeed impossible that the individual's judgment should be limited in its content to coincidence with the conceptual elements of meaning which are socially current. The building-stone which one has judged precisely fit for a special purpose, the specimen which the mineralogist or the botanist examines under his microscope, the tool whose peculiarity of working one has learned to make allowance for in use—these all are, of course, highly individual objects, possessing for the person in question an indefinite number of objective aspects of which no other person can possibly be conscious at the time. And, more than this, even though the individual may, in his scrutiny of the object, have discovered no conspicuous new qualities in it which were not present in the socially current meaning, the object will still possess an individuality making it genuinely unique merely through its co-ordination with other objects in the mechanical process of working out the purpose in hand. It is at least an object standing here at just this time, a tool cutting this particular piece of stone and striking at this instant with this particular ringing sound, and these perhaps wholly nonessential facts will nevertheless serve to individualize the object (if one chances to think of them) in the sense of making it such a one as no other person knows. All this may be granted, the objection may allow, and yet the vital point remains; for this is not what it was intended, even in the first place, to deny. The vital point at issue is not whether the object which I know is known as I know it by any other person, but whether, in the nature of things, it is one that can be so known.
Herein, then, lies the difference between judgments of fact and judgments of value. The mineralogist can train his pupil to see precisely what he himself sees; and so likewise in any case of sense-perception, the object, however recondite may be the qualities or features which one may see in it, can nevertheless be seen by any other person in precisely the same way on the single, more often not insuperably difficult, condition that the discoverer shall point these out or otherwise prepare the other for seeing them. But with the ton of coal which one may judge economically disposable for a charitable purpose the case stands differently, since it is not in its visible or other physical aspects that the ton of coal is here the subject of the judgment. It is as having been set apart by oneself exclusively for other uses that the ton of coal now functions as an object and now possesses the character which the economic judgment has given it; and the case stands similarly with a contemplated act, of telling the truth in a trying situation. The valuation placed upon the commodity or upon the moral act depends essentially upon psychological conditions of temperament, disposition, mood, or whim into which it would be impossible for another person to enter, and these depend upon conditions of past training and native endowment which can never occur or be combined in future in precisely the same way for any other individual. In short, the physical object is describable and can be made socially current, though doubtless with more or less of difficulty, if other persons will attend to it and learn to see it as I see it; but the value of an economic object or a moral act depends upon my desires and feelings, and therefore must remain a matter of my private appreciation.
In answering this amended form of the objection it is entirely unnecessary to discuss the issue of fact which it has raised as to whether or not complete description of a physical object or event is a practical or theoretical possibility. It need only be pointed out that at best such complete description can only be successful in its purpose on condition that the individual upon whom the experiment is tried be willing to attend and have the requisite "apperceptive background." The accuracy with which another person's knowledge shall copy the knowledge which I endeavor to impart to him must manifestly depend upon these two leading conditions, not to mention also the measure of my own pedagogical and literary skill. Any consideration of such a purely psychological problem as is here suggested would be entirely out of place in a discussion the purpose of which is not that of analyzing the process of judgment, but that of interpreting its meaning aspects. Let us grant the entire psychological possibility of making socially current in the manner here suggested the most highly individual and concrete cognition of an object one may please, and let us grant, moreover, that this possibility has been actually realized. This concurrent testimony of the witness will doubtless confirm one's impression of the accuracy of the process of observation and inference whereby the knowledge which has been imparted was first gained, but we must deny that it can do more than this. For indeed, apart from some independent self-reliant conviction of the objective validity of the knowledge in question, how should another's assent be taken as confirmation and not rather as evidence of one's own mere skill in suggestion and of the other's susceptibility thereto? We must deny that even in the improved form the criterion of social currency is a valid one. In a word, the social currency of knowledge to the extent to which it can exist requires as its condition, and is evidence of, the equal social currency of certain interests, purposes, or points of view for predication; and if it be possible to make socially current an item of concrete knowledge, with all its concrete fulness of detail, then a fortiori it must be possible to make socially current the concrete individual purpose with reference to which this item of knowledge first of all took form. Whether such a thing be psychologically possible at all the reader may decide; but if it be possible in the sphere of knowledge of fact, then it must be possible in the sphere of valuation. In short, judgment in either field, in definition of a certain object or commodity or moral act as, for the agent, an objective fact possessing certain characters, involves the tacit assumption of social verifiability as a matter of course; but it does not rest upon this assumption, nor is this assumption the essence of its meaning. To say that my judgment is socially verifiable, that my concrete object of perception or of valuation would be seen as I see it by any person in precisely my place, is merely a tautological way of formally announcing that I have made the judgment and have now a definite object which to me has a certain definite functional meaning.
Thus, instead of drawing a distinction between the realms of fact and value, as between what is or can be common to all intelligent beings and what must be unique for each individual one, we must hold that the two realms are coextensive. The socially current object answers to a certain general type of conscious purpose or interest active in the individual and so to a general habit of valuation, and the concrete object to a special determination of this type of purpose with reference to others in the recognized working system of life. The agent's final attitude, on the conclusion of the judgment-process, may be expressed in either sort of judgment—in a judgment of the value of commodity or moral purpose, or in a judgment of concrete fact setting forth the "external" conditions which warrant the purpose to the "energetic" self. Throughout the judgment-process there is a correlation between the movement whereby the socially current object develops into the adapted means and that whereby the socially current type of conduct develops into the defined and valued purpose.[152]
At this point, however, a second general objection presents itself. However individual the content of my knowledge of physical fact may be, and however irrelevant, from the logical point of view, to my confidence in its objective validity may be the possibility of sharing it with other persons, nevertheless it refers to an object which is in some sense permanent, and therein differs from my valuations. In economic valuation I reach a definition of a certain commodity and am confirmed in it by all the conditions that enter into my final survey of the situation. But my desire for the new sort of consumption may fail, and so expose my valuation to easy attack from any new desire that may arise; or my supply of the commodity in question may be suddenly increased or diminished, and my valuation of the unit quantity thereby changed. Likewise my ethical valuation may have to be reversed (as Mr. Taylor has insisted) by reason of a change of disposition or particular desire which makes impossible, except in obedience to some other and inclusive valuation, further adherence to it. And these changes take place without any accompanying sense of their doing violence to objective fact or, on the other hand, any judgment of their being in the nature of corrections of previous errors in valuation, and so more closely in accordance with the truth. Moreover, a new valuation, taking the place of an old, does not supplement its predecessor as one set of judgments about a physical object may supplement another, made from a different point of view, but does literally take its place, and this without necessarily condemning it as having been erroneous.
This general objection rests upon a number of fairly obvious misconceptions, and its strength is apparent only. In the first place, the question of the objectivity of any type of judgment must in the end, as we have seen, reduce itself to a question of the judgment's import to the agent. However the agent's valuations may shift from time to time, each several one will be sanctioned to the agent by the changed conditions exhibited in the inventory which the agent takes at the close of judgment which has formed it. The conditions have changed, and the valuation of the earlier purpose has likewise changed; but the new purpose is sanctioned by the new conditions, and the test of the presumed validity of the new valuation can only be in the manner already discussed[153] the test of actual execution of the purpose. In the change, as the agent interprets the situation, there is no violation of the former purpose nor a nearer approach to truth. Each valuation is true for the situation to which it corresponds. We are obviously not here considering the case of error. An error in valuation is evidenced to the agent, not by the need of a new valuation answering to changed conditions, but by the failure of a given valuation to make good its promise, although to all appearance conditions have remained unchanged. If the conditions have changed, then the purpose and the conditions must be redetermined, if the expansion of the "energetic" self is to continue; but the former valuation does not thereby become untrue.
These brief remarks should suffice by way of answer, but it will serve advantageously to illustrate our general position if we pursue the objection somewhat farther. The physical object is, nevertheless, permanent, it will be said, and this surely distinguishes it from the object (now freely acknowledged as such) of the value-judgment. To one man gold may be soluble in aqua regia and to another worth so many pence an ounce, but different and individual as are these judgments and the standpoints they respectively imply, the gold is one, impartially admitting at the same time of both characterizations. On the other hand, one cannot judge an act good and bad at once. The purpose of deception that may be good is one controlled and shaped by ideals quite different from those which permit deception of the evil sort—is, in truth, taken as a total act, altogether different from the purpose of deception which one condemns, and not, like the "parcel of matter" in the two judgments about gold, the subject of both valuations.
A brief consideration of the meaning of this "parcel of matter" will easily expose the weakness of the plea. In the last analysis the "parcel of matter" must for the agent reduce itself, let us say, to certain controllable energies centering about certain closely contiguous points in space and capable, in their exercise, of setting free or checking other energies in the system of nature. Thus, put in aqua regia the gold will dissolve, but in the atmosphere it retains its brilliant color, and in the photographer's solution its energies have still a different mode of manifestation. And thus it would appear that the various predicates which are applied to "gold" imply, each one, a unique set of conditions. Gold is soluble in aqua regia, but not if it is to retain its yellow luster; which predicate is to be true of it depends upon the conditions under which the energies "resident in the gold" are to be set free, just as the moral character of an act depends upon the social conditions obtaining at the time of its performance—that is, upon the ideals with reference to which it has been shaped in judgment. How can one maintain that in a literal and concrete physical sense gold in process of solution is the "same" as gold entering into chemical combination? Surely the energy conditions which constitute the "gold" in the two processes are not the same—and can one nowadays hope to find sameness in unchangeable atoms?[154]
In a word, the permanent substance or "real essence" that admits of various mutually supplementary determinations corresponding to diverse points of view is, strictly speaking, a convenient abstraction, and not an existent fact in time—and we shall maintain that the same species of abstraction has its proper place, and in fact occurs, in the sphere of moral judgment. The type of moral conduct that in every actual case of its occurrence in the moral order is determined in some unique and special way by relation to other standards is precisely analogous to the "substance" that is now dissolved in aqua regia and now made to pass in the form of current coin, but cannot be treated in both ways at once. Both are abstractions. The "gold" is a name for the general possibility of attaining any one of a certain set of particular ends by appropriately co-ordinating certain energies, resident elsewhere in the physical system, with those at present stored in this particular "parcel of matter;" the result to be attained depends not alone upon the "parcel of matter," but also upon the particular energies brought to bear upon it from without. Now let us take a type of conduct which is sometimes judged good and sometimes bad. Deception, for example, is such a type—and as a type it simply stands for the general possibility of furtherance or detriment to the "energetic" self according as it is determined in the concrete instance by ideals of social well-being or by considerations of immediate personal advantage.
For the type-form of conduct—when considered, not as a type of mere physical performance, but as conduct in the technical sense of a possible purpose of the self—is, in the sense we have explained, a symbol for the general possibility of access or dissipation of spiritual energy—energy which must be set free by the bringing to bear of other energies upon it, and which furthers or works counter to the enlargement and development of the self according to the mode of its co-ordination with other energies which the self has already turned to its purposes.[155] But actual conduct is concrete always and never typical; and so likewise, we have sought to show, actual "substance," the objective thing referred to in the factual judgment, is always concrete and never an essence. It is not a fixed thing admitting of a simultaneous variety of conflicting determinations and practical uses, but absolutely unique and already determined to its unique character by the whole assemblage of physical conditions which affect it at the time and which it in turn reacts upon. In the moral as in the physical sphere the fundamental category would, on our present account, appear to be that of energy. The particular physical object given in judgment is a concrete realization, in the form of a particular means or instrument, of that general possibility of attaining ends which the concept of a fixed fund of energy, interpreted as a logical postulate or principle of inference, expresses. The particular moral or economic act is a particular way in which the energy of the self may be increased or diminished. In both spheres the reality presented in the finished judgment is objective as being a stimulus to the setting free of the energies for which it stands. Once more, then, our answer to the objection we have been considering must be that the object as the permanent substrate is merely an abstract symbol standing for the indeterminate means in general set over against the self. Corresponding to it we have, on the other side, the concept of the "energetic" self—the self that is purposive in general, expansive somehow or other.
The function of completed factual judgment in the development of experience is, we have held, that of warranting to the agent the completed purpose which his judgment of value expresses. This view calls for some further comment and illustration in closing the present division. In the first place the statement implies that the conditions which factual judgment presents in the "final survey" as sanctioning the purpose have not determined the purpose, since prior to the determination of the purpose the conditions were not, and could not be, so presented. The question, therefore, naturally arises whether our meaning is that in the formation of our purposes in valuation the recognition of existing conditions plays no part. Our answer can be indicated only in the barest outline as follows:
The agent must, of course, in an economic judgment-process, recognize and take account of such facts as the technical adaptability of the means he is proposing to use to the new purpose that is forming, as also of environing conditions which may affect the success which he may meet with in applying them. He must consider also his own physical strength and qualities of mind with a view to this same technical problem. And similarly in ethical valuation, as we have seen, the psychology of the "empirical ego" must play its part. But the conditions thus recognized are, as we might seek to show more in detail, explainable as the outcome of past factual judgment-processes, and on the occasion of their original definition in the form in which they now are known played the sanctioning part of which we have so often spoken. They therefore correspond to the agent's accepted practical ideals, so that the control which his past experience exercises over his present conduct may be stated equally well in either sort of terms—in terms of his prevailing recognized standards, or in terms of his present knowledge of the conditions which his new purpose must respect. Thus, in general, the concept of a physical order conditioning the conduct of all men and presented in a definite body of socially current knowledge is the logical correlate of the moral law conceived as a categorical imperative prescribing certain types of conduct.
Thus the error of regarding the agent's conduct in a present emergency as an outcome of existing determining conditions is logically identical with the corresponding error of the ethical theory of self-realization. The latter holds the logical possibility of a determinate descriptive ideal (already realized in the unchanging Absolute Self) which is adequate to the solution of all possible ethical problems. The former holds that all conduct must be subject to the determining force of external conditions which, if not at present completely known, are at least in theory knowable. The physical universe in its original nebulous state contained the "promise and potency" of all that has been in the way of human conduct and of all that is to be. Into the fixed mechanical system no new energy can enter and from it none of the original fund of energy can be lost. This mechanical theory of conduct is the essential basis of the hedonistic theory of ethics; and it would not be difficult to show that Green's criticism of this latter and his own affirmative theory of the moral ideal (as also the current conventional criticism of hedonism in the same tenor by the school of Green) are in a logical sense identical with it. For the assumption that conduct is determined by existing objective conditions is precisely the logical correlate of the concept of a contentual and "realizable" ideal moral self.[156]
We may now interpret, in the light of our general view of the function of factual judgment, the concept of the "empirical self" referred to in our discussion of the various types of sanctioning condition which may enter into the "final survey." The "empirical self" of psychological science is a construction gradually put together by psychologist or introspective layman as an interpretation of the way in which accepted concrete modes of conduct, in the determination of which standards have been operative, have worked out in practice to the furtherance or impoverishment of the "energetic" self. We have seen that the ambiguous presented self which functions in the moral attitude of obedience to authority or to conscience gives place in the attitude of conscious valuation to apprehension of the "energetic" self, on the one hand, and descriptive concepts of particular types of conduct, on the other. The "empirical self" at the same time makes its appearance as a constantly expanding inventory of the "spiritual resources" which the "energetic" self has at its disposal. These are the functions of the soul which a functional psychology shows us in operation—powers of attention, strength of memory, fertility in associative recall, and the like—and these are the resources wherewith the "energetic" self may execute, and so exploit to its own furtherance, the purposes which, in particular emergencies, new end and recognized standards may work out in co-operation.[157]