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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 February 2009
1. (a) Conceptions of the nature of value are of two main types: they are either objective, or realistic, or else subjective, that is, psychological. The immediately following pages are devoted to the critical consideration of the first of these, the realistic conception of value as “an indefinable quality which attaches to things independently of consciousness.” According to this view, things have value as they have form or colour or volume. A rose, for example, has the qualities of redness, of fragrance, and also of beauty; a book has the qualities of rectangularity, of twelve-ounce weight, and also of truth; a negro has the qualities of erectness, of brownness, and also of moral goodness or badness. Beauty, truth, and moral goodness, grouped together as ‘values,’ or ‘worths,’ or ‘goods,’ are from this point of view as indefinable and ‘absolute’ as the primary and secondary qualities: indeed, they are together known as “tertiary qualities.’ In G. E. Moore's words, a value or “ ‘good’ is a simple notion, just as ‘yellow’ is a simple notion”; and “just as you cannot, by any manner of means, explain to anyone who does not already know it what yellow is, so you cannot explain what good is.”
page 413 Note 1 Delivered, substantially as here printed, as second in a series of two lectures on “Conceptions of Meaning and of Value,” at the University of London, Bedford College, December 9, 1927. The first lecture on “The Ambiguous Concept of Meaning,” appeared in the American Journal of Psychology, Washburn Commemorative Volume, xxxix.Google Scholar
page 413 Note 2 Perry, R. B. , Present Philosophical Tendencies, p. 3314.Google Scholar
page 413 Note 3 Principia Ethica, p. 72.
page 414 Note 1 A Study in Realism, p. 129.
page 414 Note 2 General Theory of Value, p. 30.
page 415 Note 1 For another difficulty, involved in the valuation of objects no longer existing, cf. Von Ehrenfels, C. , System der Werttheorie, 1897, Bd. I., p. 64.Google Scholar
page 415 Note 2 Ethics, Part III, Prop. IX, Schol. Constat. nos propterea aliquid bonum esse judicare, quia id conamur, volumus, appetimus, atque cupimus.
page 415 Note 3 Op. cit., p. 2.
page 415 Note 4 Space, Time, and Deity, vol. ii., p. 2432.Google Scholar Cf. “The Basis of Realism,” Proceedings of the British Academy, 1914, vol. vi., pp. 222f.Google Scholar
page 415 Note 5 Valuation: Its Nature and Laws, 1909, p. 252. (Cf. pp. 532, 562.) It should be noted that Urban's doctrine has become more realistic and that the clause last quoted probably misrepresents his present position. In a paper published in 1916 he says that he has always held the view that value is metaphysically, that is, “ultimately indefinable,” whereas “there is. no science of values except that built on psychological analysis.” (“Value and Existence,” Journal of Philosophy, 1916, vol. xiii., p. 455, footnote.Google Scholar)
page 415 Note 6 A Realistic Universe, p. 1383;. Cf. p. 1371.
page 416 Note 1 Scepticism and Animal Faith, p. 1293.
page 416 Note 2 Stern, William , Wertphilosophie, p. 342.Google Scholar
page 416 Note 3 Quoted from an unpublished paper on “Value, Quantity, and Quality.”
page 416 Note 4 General Theory of Value, pp. 115 et al.
page 416 Note 5 Present Philosophical Tendencies, p. 331. Cf. General Theory of Value, passim.
page 416 Note 6 Space, Time, and Deity, pp. 243 et supra.
page 416 Note 7 Op. cit., vol. ii., p. 3023 Cf. Urban, op. cit., p. 252: “Worth-judgments express. functions of the relation of subject to object.”
page 417 Note 1 Op. cit., Bd. I., § 21, p. 632.
page 417 Note 2 D. W. Prall, op. cit.
page 418 Note 1 Op. cit., p. 414: “Eine Definition des Wertbegriffs ist nicht möglich.”
page 418 Note 2 Psychology and Life, 1899, vol. vi., p. 1982.Google Scholar
page 418 Note 3 Op. cit.
page 418 Note 4 General Theory of Value, p. 27. Cf. p. 115.
page 418 Note 5 Cf. Dewey, , who (without in this passage using the word ‘value') contrasts with knowing, “volition, action, emotion, and desire.” Reconstruction in Philosophy, p. 84Google Scholar
page 418 Note 6 Op. cit., p. 2462.
page 418 Note 7 Op. cit., p. 1492.
page 418 Note 8 Op. cit., p. 2174. Cf. p. 532. It may be noted that the term ‘desire’ is roughly a synonym for temporal will.
page 419 Note 1 Über Annahmen 1902, p. 2512. In the posthumous volume, Zur Grundlegung der allgemeinen Wert-theorie, 1923, Meinong substitutes the term Seinsgefühle for Existensgefühle in his analysis of Werten.
page 419 Note 2 Psychological Principles, pp. 3862 f. (The writer of this paper question the position that desire necessarily presupposes feeling.)
page 419 Note 3 Cf. op. cit., pp. 262 ff., 352.
page 419 Note 4 Op. cit., p. 35.
page 419 Note 5 Op. cit., p. 262.
page 419 Note 6 Op. cit., p. 903.
page 419 Note 7 Op. cit., p. 892.
page 420 Note 1 For a completer discussion, cf. the writer's A First Book in Psychology, Chapters XI-XIII.
page 420 Note 2 Urban's explicit denial of the passivity of emotion seems to be based in large part on the mere assumption of the possibility of arranging in serial order the emotions and types of desire and on the difficulty of discovering a break in the series. (Op. cit., pp. 91 ff.)
page 420 Note 3 H. B.English, A Student's Dictionary of Psychological Terms (unpublished).
page 420 Note 4 At this point another distinction emerges, that between wishing and willing. The difference is this: in wishing I am indeed actively related to a future object or event, but am uncertain of achieving it or bringing it about; willing, on the other hand, lacks this feeling of uncertainty, and sometimes includes a positive feeling of the future reality of the desired occurrence. Thus, I wish that the fog would lift, but I will, or intend, to visit my dentist, fog or no fog.
page 421 Note 1 Bosanquet must have in mind non-temporal will of this type when he says (Principles of Individuality and Value, pp. 1353 f.): “Teleology is an unlucky term. In the sense of aiming at the unfulfilled it gives an unreal importance to time.… Of the two implications of the term ‘end'—completeness and conclusion—the latter, which is an accessory, usurps precedence over the former which is fundamental.”
page 424 Note 1 This lecture, as delivered, briefly discussed these types of value, specially stressing Stern's distinction between instrumental and expressive forms of extrinsic value. (Dienstwerte and Strahlwerte.)
page 424 Note 2 A Beginner's Psychology, p. I. Cf. p. 3252.
page 424 Note 3 It is only fair to add that Münsterberg limits metaphysics to over-individual values.
page 425 Note 1 Op. cit., p. 252.
page 426 Note 1 Op. cit., pp. 42, 53.