Theory of Value

Classes and Standards of Value.

It is generally admitted that distinct species of value exist, although there is no complete agreement as to what they are or how they are to be classified. It is clear, however, that there are sciences which deal with values and special sciences have been developed to deal with special classes of value. Thus economic value has long been recognized as a fundamental notion of political economy, which ever since Adam Smith divided it into value in use and value in exchange has been defined thus : the former as the utility of objects for human purposes and the latter the power to induce or compel people to pay other valuables for the use of them. That ethics also deals with values is generally agreed, although there is dispute as to just what these values are and how they are related. It is now gener ally recognized that ethical value is not identical with pleasure or happiness, although pleasure is one of the values. Aesthetic values are also generally, although not universally, admitted, many prag matists holding that, since valuation is always judgmental, and the aesthetic "has no logical f unction, it must be denied the name of value." From the philosophical standpoint, the most important group of values distinguished is perhaps the logical or theoretical values. Several schools of thought hold that logic is the science of cognitive values and that truth is a positive and error a negative value. Indeed this view is quite generally implied although it is not always explicitly avowed. "Religious values" are quite com monly talked about, although whether they constitute a special group or represent rather a fusion of, or a reaction to, the other values is a matter of dispute. It may be argued that they do not constitute a distinct class, because there is no specific biological tendency or instinct to which they correspond, or that they repre sent merely the reaction on the fate of the other values in the universe. But the tendency to recognize the value of the "holy" as a distinct type, as developed by the Neo-Kantians, is very strong, and has recently found expression in a much read book, The Holy, by Rudolf Otto. Some writers speak of distinct classes of social and political values, but the general tendency, perhaps, is to view these as sub-forms of the ethical.

Despite such differences of opinion, incidental to any develop ing theory, there is substantial agreement as to the existence of these f our outstanding classes of values. There is, unfortunately, not the same consensus of opinion regarding their relations, i.e., the ordering of these values in a system or in a scale of relative value and importance. There are in general three accepted ways of classifying them. There is the psychological which, assuming values to be the functions of interests or desire, divides them according to modes of this interest and tends to become ultimately biological and genetic, the outstanding classes being connected with some fundamental "instinct" or tendency. A more historical mode of classification accepts as units those values, or groups of values, which have acquired an institutional form, such as eco nomic, moral, cognitive, political, aesthetic, religious. A third, which has been called the axiological, accepts in the main the trinity or tetrad of the good, the beautiful and the true, to which it adds the higher unity of God. Such classifications or systems of value all have their uses, but it is generally felt that the first two are not sufficient. A large body of opinion, accepting the "axiolog ical" classification, holds that while the economic values are clearly instrumental and relative to the others, the other groups are in trinsic and absolute, and as such ultimately co-ordinate. Others

hold that they may be put in relations of subordination in a comprehensive scale of values. There are, however, some things that may be said with a certain degree of assurance. The ethical, aesthetic and logical values are self-sufficient and co-ordinate in the sense that they are irreducible the one to the other. All at tempts at such reduction, whether, for instance, of the aesthetic to the ethical, of the ethical to the logical or the logical to the ethical, have proved unsatisfactory. On the other hand, it seems clear that they are all intimately related. No intrinsic value can stand alone. This is equally true whether we consider the question from the standpoint of the realization of values in the individual life or from the more objective point of view of their logical relations.

It is impossible to define any one type of value alone or apart from the others The ancient view that values are subsumable under the heads of goodness, beauty and truth, "a threefold cord, not lightly broken," is in general strengthened rather than weakened by modern value theory.

The idea that these ultimate values are co-ordinate in the sense described does not, however, as might at first appear, exclude the notion of an ultimate standard of value in the light of which some hierarchical principle or scale of value might be developed, and the classes of values be subordinated to each other. On the gen eral question of the commensurability of value as such, there is a large measure of agreement. For the opinion, held by a few, that they are incommensurable, there is indeed something to be said. It may be objected that an economic satisfaction and an aesthetic experience are of such different inner qualitative content that it is absurd to compare them with each other. The fact remains that we do actually compare them constantly. We compare values not only within the same class, as when we choose one economic good rather than another; we also choose between types and classes. The standpoint of the incommensurability of values can be ad mitted only in the sense that the different values cannot be expressed in quantitative units and measured in this sense. But there are few that hold this idea at the present day. For the merely psychological or biological theories, the standard of value is found in such conceptions as intensity of feeling, the strength of the desire, or ultimately in the importance for life of the biological tendencies presupposed. For the more philosophical theories, on the other hand, that recognize the limitations of these notions of value, a different conception of the ultimate standard is also neces sary. In general such a standard is found in the notion of inclu siveness, in some functional conception such as the totality of life or experience, that value being highest which contributes most to the coherent functioning and organization of experience as a whole. Such a standard may be formulated in terms that seem to avoid metaphysical implications, but in general it may be said that the highness or lowness of an experience of value is held to be determined by its metaphysical content. From this point of view a very common table or scale of values is that which puts the economic values as the lowest and the religious (in the broadest sense) as the highest, the ethical, the logical and the aesthetic being arranged in various ways in between. The standard here employed is, in the last analysis, some form of the principle of inclusiveness, the different values being arranged either in accord with the degree of integration of our interests or tendencies, or in accord with the range of the metaphysical content to which they correspond.