judgment assigns to the physical object, as known at the outset, a new
non-physical character. Throughout the judgment-process this character
is gaining in distinctness, and at the end it is accepted as the Value
of the means, as warrant for the diversion of them to the new use which
has been decided on.[121]
We have now to consider whether in the actual ethical and economic
experience of men there is any direct evidence confirming the
conclusions which our logical analysis of the respective situations
would appear to require. Can any phases of the total experience of
working out a satisfactory course of conduct in these typical
emergencies be appealed to as actually showing at least some tacit
recognition that these types of judgment present each one an order of
reality or an aspect of the one reality?
In the first place, then, one must recognize that in the agent's own
apprehension a judgment of value has something more than a purely
subjective meaning. It is never offered, by one who has taken the
trouble to work it out more or less laboriously and then to express it
in terms which are certainly objective, as a mere announcement of _de
facto_ determination or a registration of arbitrary whim and caprice.
One no more means to announce a groundless choice or a choice based upon
pleasure felt in contemplation of the imaged end than in his judgments
concerning the physical universe he means to affirm coexistences and
sequences, agreements and disagreements, of "ideas" as psychical
happenings. That there is an ethical or economic truth to which one can
appeal in doubtful cases is, indeed, the tacit assumption in all
criticism of another's deliberate conduct; the contrary assumption, that
criticism is merely the opposition of one's own private prejudice or
desire to the equally private prejudice or desire of another, would
render all criticism and mutual discussion of ethical problems
meaningless and futile in the plain man's apprehension as in the
philosopher's. For the plain man has a spontaneous confidence in his
knowledge of the material world which makes him look askance at any
alleged analysis of his sense-perceptions and scientific judgments into
"associations of ideas," and the same confidence, or something very like
it, attaches to judgments of these other types. It may perhaps be
easier (though the concession is a very doubtful one) to destroy a naïve
confidence in the objectivity of moral truth than a like confidence in
scientific knowledge, but it must be remembered that the plain man's
sense of the urgency, at least of ethical problems, if not of economic,
is commonly less acute than for the physical. In the plain man's
experience serious moral problems are infrequent--problems of the true
type, that is, which cannot be disposed of as mere cases of temptation;
one must have attained a considerable capacity for sympathy and a
considerable knowledge of social relations before either the recognition
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account