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Knowledge and Evaluation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Stanley Malinovich
Stanley Malinovich*
Affiliation:
Brooklyn College
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Extract

According to an accepted view of the nature of evaluation, which many trace to Hume, knowledge does not provide us with the criteria for judging whether something is good. For this, it is said, we need something like a pro-attitude such as C. L. Stevenson argues for, or a decision such as R. M. Hare argues for. Some act of the will is required to create the criteria for evaluation. I shall argue against this view. I shall argue that the criteria for evaluating something are identical with the criteria for classifying it and that, therefore, the knowledge which provides us with the criteria for classification provides us with the criteria for evaluation.

In Section I, I give a brief account of the way in which knowledge provides the criteria for a classification and the significance of borderline cases and degree differences in classification. In Section II, I develop the idea of degree differences in classification and tie it to the idea of evaluation. In Section III, I defend my account of evaluative criteria by contrasting it with R. M. Hare's account, and I argue that the criteria for the class concept of man are at the basis of moral evaluation. I end with a brief illustration of my thesis from Kant's Metaphysics of Morals.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 4 , Issue 1 , September 1974 , pp. 79 - 95
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1974

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References

1 Hampshire, Stuart Thought and Action (New York: The Viking Press, 1959), p. 225.Google Scholar

2 He uses ‘grounds’ where I would use ‘criteria', but nothing turns on the difference between these terms in my exposition.

3 Ibid., p. 228.

4 Ibid.

5 Ibid., p. 225.

6 Cf. ibid., pp. 225–226.

7 Margolis, Joseph Values and Conduct (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971), pp. 104–105.Google Scholar

8 Hare, R. M. Language and Morals (New York: Oxford University Press, 1964), p. 133.Google Scholar

9 Ibid., pp. 99–103.

10 Ibid., p. 134.

11 Ibid., p. 128.

12 Ibid., pp. 127–128.

13 This is not the same sort of case that we have above in Hare's example. There it was a case of wanting bait and finding wireworms suitable. Here it is a case of wanting wireworms, but wanting them with certain characteristics. Compare, for example, wanting a weapon and finding a rock suitable with wanting only a rock as a weapon.

14 In her paper, “Goodness and Choice” (Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume XXXV [ 1961]), Philippa Foot has also argued against letting one's choices determine evaluative criteria. Her argument, however, is very different from mine. Evaluative criteria, for her, are determined by what people generally want in the things called good or by the meanings of the terms used to name such things. In a recent symposium with Woods, Michael “Reasons for Action and Desires“ (Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume XLVI [1972]), p. 206Google Scholar, she has maintained essentially the same position. One would generally choose good x's, she contends, because good making qualities are determined by standard interests and desires that people have regarding such x's. Rawls, John in A Theory of Justice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971), p. 399Google Scholar, takes a similar position in his analysis of good. A good x, for Rawls, has those properties it is rational to want in an x, given the sort of thing x is. One's choice of a good x would, therefore, be a consequence of this fact. My analysis differs from both in accounting for one's choice of a good x only because of one's interest and/or desire for an x.

15 The difference between appropriate and inappropriate behaviour here is simply the difference between the behaviour a thing exhibits because it has certain properties and the behaviour it exhibits when those properties are interfered with. This difference requires us to distinguish, as obviously we must, between the conditions under which a thing would manifest the behaviour peculiar to the properties it has from those in which it would not. And if we make this latter distinction then we must allow for the possibility of conditions which may prevent or somehow distort such behaviour.

16 Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents, trans. Strachey, James (W. W. Norton and Co., 1962), pp. 58–59.Google Scholar

17 Ibid., pp. 70–77.

18 Ibid., p. 90. It is interesting to note here that Freud is urging us to give aggression a place in our lives. Of course he is also concerned with controlling its destructive effects. Otherwise we shall only avoid destroying ourselves at the cost of destroying each other. But a complete denial of aggression will not do. Contrary to a lot of popular and philosophical opinions regarding the nature of morality a discovery like Freud's may show us that a morality which systematically excludes aggression as a legitimate form of behaviour is fundamentally mistaken.

19 Hare, R. M. Freedom and Reason (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965), pp. 166–167.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

20 Ibid.

21 Kant, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. Beck, Lewis W. (Library of Liberal Arts, 1959), p. 5.Google Scholar

22 Ibid., p. 77.

23 Ibid., pp. 67–68.

24 Ibid., p. 80. The italics are mine.

25 Ibid., p. 72.

26 Ibid., p, 70.