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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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