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Value and Fact
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2022
Extract
There can be no possible quarrel with the assertion that the phenomena of value are amenable to scientific treatment if the statement is taken in an obvious sense, for the act of valuation is a fact of human experience, empirically observable in the same way as any other fact. There is therefore no reason why we should not deal with certain aspects of the phenomena of value as we deal with other empirical phenomena. To deny this would be to deny scientific status to sociology, anthropology, and psychology. Sometimes one encounters such denials, but they need not be taken seriously, for they are obviously grounded on a very arbitrary and narrow definition of science.
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Notes
1 In his brilliant contribution to the organismic approach, The Study of Man (D. Appleton Century Co., 1936), Ralph Linton, while rejecting the marxist hypothesis, is himself frankly unable to account for the factors leading to the particular orientations of cultures, and their specific choice of value systems. It is studies which attempt to give us answers to questions like those Linton was led by his theory to ask but left unanswered, that are here suggested.
2 This can not give any comfort to those who believe that statements of fact and statements of value are transposable. (Cf. “The Transposability of Fact and Value,” by Ray Peplcy, The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. XXXVI, No. II.) A statement about an aspect of a complex has for its referent the aspect to which it refers, and not all the other aspects of the complex to which the referent may be interrelated, however intimately. Aspects of a complex are in fact interrelated to other aspects, else they would be simples or atoms and not aspects of a complex. A statement about any one aspect may therefore have the relationship of material implication or entailment to statements about other aspects of the same complex. But it is difficult to see how two statements about different referents are transposable into one another because the referents are interrelated aspects of the same complex. As if statements about Peter were transposable into those about Paul, because they arc twin brothers, and hence members of the same family: Even if they were identical twins we should have to keep our referents clear and distinct, or we might find ourselves with a libel suit on our hands.
3 With the conception of objectivity I have dealt more extensively in a paper entitled “A Note on the Question of ‘Class Science’,” published in Vol. 1, No. 3, of The Marxist Quarterly.