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The Verifiability of Different Kinds of Facts and Values

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

Ray Lepley
Ray Lepley*
Affiliation:
Bradley Polytechnic Institute, Peoria, Ill.
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Extract

A common dictum or assumption in contemporary scientific and philosophical circles is that, if values are at all verifiable in any significant sense, they are less verified and less verifiable than facts. Esthetic and moral values in particular are regarded as less verifiable than scientific facts. It is frequently said that esthetic and moral “facts” and values are essentially and finally a matter of private preference or arbitrary social agreement whereas scientific facts are in the last analysis determined and underwritten by the actual nature of events and relations themselves. Yet in opposition to what may thus appear to be the chief current of contemporary opinion, some thinkers follow mainly in the tradition of Kant, Lotze, and Ritschel. They claim for values, including moral and esthetic values, a unique objectivity and validity.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 7 , Issue 4 , October 1940 , pp. 464 - 475
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association 1940

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References

1 E.g., H. Osborne, Foundations of the Philosophy of Value, 1933; H. Rickert, Der Gegenstand der Erkenntnis, 1892, and System der Philosophie, 1921; W. D. Ross, The Right and the Good, 1930; and W. M. Urban, Valuation: Its Nature and Laws, 1909.

2 The word “referents” is here used in the usual logical sense as “that to which a term or symbol refers”. “Formulations” is intended to include not only “statements”, but also “symbols” as in mathematics and logic, and “embodiments”, “expressions”, and “arrangements” as in art and social affairs.

3 “The Dawn of Value Theory”, Jour. Philosophy, Vol. XXXIV (1937), pp. 365-373; “The Verifiability of Facts and Values”, Philosophy of Science, Vol. 5, No. 3 (1938), pp. 310-320; and “The Transposability of Facts and Values”, Jour. Philosophy, Vol. XXXVI (1939), pp. 290-299.

4 The term “semeiotic” (or “semiotic”) as here used is equivalent to “sign-using”. A semeiotic event or relation is one of, or involving, the use or functioning of signs. Thus employed the term includes, but is broader than, events and relations of verbal symbolization and of conscious meaning. Cf. C. W. Morris, “Foundations of the Theory of Signs”, International Encyclopedia of Unified Science, Vol. I, No. 2, 1938.

5 For instance an apple may be experienced both as something which exists (an “existent”) and as something in which some degree of interest is taken (an “interest”). Consequently both more factual and more valuative statements may be made concerning the object, such as “This is an apple” and “This is a good apple”. Indeed any act of perceiving the object as an apple involves some degree of interest, and any interest expressed with reference to an apple is in relation to an actual or imagined object.

6 For example the factual statement “This is an apple” (see footnote 5) can be transposed or translated into valuative form as “For the present purpose and system of denotation, a good way of designating this object is to say that it is an apple”; and the valuative statement “This is a good apple” can be transposed, depending upon the actual meaning intended, into such factual forms as “This apple is not decayed or diseased” or “This or these persons like the taste (or other properties) of this apple”.

7 With respect to their ultimate nature or ontological status, facts and values evidently may be conceived either as statements—whether or not these are thought of as transposable—which refer to the events or relations which they predicate, or as being identical with, resident in, or associated with those events or relations. As each of the various kinds of events and relations (such as the physical, biological, psychological, social, and semeiotic) vary from the relatively simple, accessible, and controllable to the extremely complex, inaccessible, and uncontrollable, facts and values will, in either sense, vary from the very definitely verifiable to the probably unverifiable. In the present discussion facts and values are conceived as being at least statements, but particularly statements in so far as they are verified. (Cf. conclusion 1 in the text.) For purpose of the present discussion, the ultimate ontological status of values as compared with facts may be left an open question, although their mutual transposability implies an identical status however this status may be conceived. (Cf. “The Transposability of Facts and Values”, op. cit.)

8 That is, when factual statements are grouped together irrespective of kind and compared as a group (“en masse”) with valuative statements similarly grouped. Since the two forms of statement (factual and valuative) are mutually transposable, it follows that the variation in verifiability among all possible statements is the same regardless of form.

9 For consideration of the relation of the qualitative and the quantitative in dealing with what are commonly called “valuative” problems, see “Quality and Quality in Valuation,” Philosophical Review, Vol. XLVIII (1939), pp. 31-45.

10 That is, subsequent studies or adjustments help in varying degrees to test previous or present formulations of fact or value.