The present question, "What is value?" is one whose nature and whose terms available for its resolution are quite generally misunderstood. Thus, the purpose of this article is to clarify the nature of the question and to consider the further question of the terms of its resolution. The outcome of the article is largely negative, in that it is addressed to the removal of certain misunderstandings in the regards mentioned above.

With respect, first of all, to the nature of the question, the question, "What is value?" is a categorial question rather than a particular question. That is, the question concerns the meaning of the category of value qua value in distinction to the particular things which may or may not be valuable. The question, then, "What is value?" is distinct from, must not be confused with, the question, "What things are valuable?"

The distinction between the two questions may be clarified. We recognize, for example, that a state of affairs, say an intelligent state of the mind, is a value, or is good. We make the value judgment, "x is good." The recognition and judgment involve at least two moments: the attribution of a property, value, to a subject; the deeper-lying awareness of the value property itself. We must know what value itself is, must have a criterion of value, before we can affirm or deny of things that they are valuable. From the point of view of our experience-our valuations and valuational judgments-the awareness of value is required a priori. This general principle, that we must entertain the idea of value a priori to the recognition and attribution of value as qualifying instances, is, at least, remarked by Plato in the observation:

of absolute beauty …, that beautiful things are

When it is seen that the question, "What is value?" is a categorial question concerning value itself and is therefore distinct from any particular question as to what things possess values, it becomes possible to consider with profit the further question as to whether values are absolute or relative. If one were to assert that values are fixed and universally valid for all times, persons, and situations, he would subscribe to absolutism. If he were to assert that values have no existence except as psychological and sociological facts, altering as individuals and societies undergo change, he would subscribe to relativism.

The psychological basis of the established social norms, such as stereotypes, fashions, conventions, customs and values, is the formation of common frames of reference as a product of the contact of individuals. Once such frames of reference are established and incorporated in the individual they enter as important factors to determine or modify his reactions to the situations he will face later–social and even non-social at times, especially if the stimulus field is not well structured.²

However, the proponent of value relativism may not close his case. He may assert further that values are created, or instituted, in the psychological determinants themselves. As dependent upon these determinants they are therefore relative. Now, this assertion concerns the categorial question of value qua value. The question is not "What things are valuable?" but "What is value itself?" And the question is approached on the presupposition that certain natural facts constitute the terms in which it may be answered. It is to this presupposition that attention must now be directed.

x is valuable = interest is taken in x. Value is thus a specific relation into which things possessing any ontological status whatsoever, whether real or imaginary, may enter with interested subjects. ³

Impulse makes value possible; and the value becomes actual when the impulse issues in processes that give it satisfaction and have conscious worth. ⁴

In the first place, the interest theory is inconsistent with the experience of values. From the point of view of our experiencing values, it is not true that values require the condition of interest on the part of the subject. There are "gratuitous values," values which come to us unsought for, which are experienced apart from any pre-existing interest. These cannot be created by interest. And there are "recognized values," values which we recognize as pre-existing to our interest in them, which, to be sure, is one factor involved in our espousal of them. The experience of guilt, in which we stand condemned in our unconcern for and rejection of values, is perhaps our deepest recognition of values - their integrity and power - as independent of the conditions of interest. For the values which call us into question, which pronounce against us and which we may eventually reject from incorporation into our moral personality, are certainly not those in which any pre-existing interest is taken. They cannot, therefore, be created in an interest attitude. In short, the experience of values discloses values as obtruding and given within the field of awareness apart from any pre-existing interest. Thus there is this evidence, drawn from experience, against the thesis of the interest theory that values are instituted in, dependent upon, an interest relation.

The interest theory could, of course, be rescued at this point by an appeal to a doctrine of "unconscious interests." It could be said that there are unconscious interests, or instincts, which constitute the determinants of value. But this suggestion cannot be taken seriously. It is patently ad hoc, and any theory can be saved ad hoc. It introduces the concept of instinct as a scientific concept, thereby creating difficulties coming from the side of science. It also requires a telic structure of the universe in order to account for instinct. These consequences, however, are devastating to naturalism and cannot be admitted by the interest theory, which is a form of naturalism.⁵

If this be the case, then what is really asserted in the statement, "Value is any object of any interest," is the statement, "Any object of any interest is any object of any interest." That is, the attempt to offer such a factual definition of value involves a redundancy. Further, on the supposition that value may be defined in terms of the fact of interest, the denial that value is any object of any interest is impossible. For the negative statement "Value is not any object of any interest" becomes "Any object of any interest is not any object of any interest." But this is a self-contradiction.

Another example may be taken. Assume that value means pleasure. Thus, in the sentence, "Pleasure is value," there are not two distinct ideas, "pleasure" and "value," but only one idea, namely "pleasure." The idea of value is, from the point of view of its signification, only the idea of pleasure in verbal disguise. The sentence, then, does not assert of one idea, "pleasure," another and distinct idea, "value." On the contrary, since there is only one idea, that of pleasure, involved in the sentence, it asserts the redundancy, "Pleasure is pleasure." And the sentence registering the denial that pleasure is value asserts a self-contradiction, "Pleasure is not pleasure." Since redundancies are uninformative and self-contradictions irrational, the cogency of a factual definition of value is quite dubious, to say the least.

The only way to eliminate these difficulties attending a naturalistic definition of value is to admit that the idea of value is a distinct, sui generis idea which is, therefore, irreducible to and untranslatable into terms of natural fact. And there is further evidence substantiating the thesis of the indefinability of value in terms of natural fact. The evidence is supplied from what is called the "open question." Given any naturalistic definition of value, it remains a significant open question whether the fact allegedly definitive of value is itself valuable, or good. To the definition of value as pleasure the question can significantly be asked, "Is pleasure good?" This, however, should be impossible, on the assumption that the value idea is precisely the factual idea. But the point is, the question is not an impossible one; it may be, and indeed is, significantly asked. That the idea of value can be significantly employed in a consideration of fact, into whose terms it is supposed to be definitively reduced, is evidence that it has a meaning which is not caught in those terms and that it therefore refers to that which is extra-factual. Thus, the idea of value remains intact, resisting any factual, or naturalistic, definition, and therefore signifies - if it signifies anything at all, i.e., is not non-sense - that which transcends matters of natural fact. ⁶

Now, there are certain assumptions upon which, in the main, contemporary empirical science rests. The ultimate assumption is what is called "the empirical, or verifiability, criterion of meaning." This criterion requires that meaning be sense-meaning. A contemporary naturalist, Professor C. I. Lewis, states the criterion as follows:

…it is demanded that any concept put forward or any proposition asserted shall have a definite denotation; that it shall be intelligible not only verbally and logically but in the further sense that one can specify those empirical items which would determine the applicability of the concept or constitute the verification of the proposition. Whatever cannot satisfy this demand is to be regarded as meaningless.⁷

Plainly, the empiricist criterion of meaning, formulated in the proposition "Meaning is sense-meaning," cannot itself be meaningful in terms of sense. For it cannot be subjected to any test routine in terms of sense so as to be either confirmed or disconfirmed. Thus, it cannot be certified as true or false, and, accordingly, cannot be an item of knowledge. On the other hand, the criterion cannot be regarded as a definition, or proposal, of meaning. For it would then have a measure of arbitrariness which cannot be reconciled with the accepted import of the criterion as governing the conditions of scientific inquiry and knowledge.

Nevertheless, no consistent or adequate interpretation of ends and purposes as these are implicated in the pursuit of science has here been given from within the context provided by the empiricist principle. This can be easily demonstrated. The instant specification of value as factual in character, consisting in an interest relation, is at bottom dependent upon and reflective of the demands of the empirical meaning-criterion. The concept of man as but a complex natural organism sustaining dynamic relations with its environing world, from which relations values emerge, is a naturalistic view of man and the universe. It is structured upon the empirical concept of meaning as stipulating that reality, in value as well as in fact, be that which is in principle brought to view by the methods and procedures of empirical science. Since, then, value as thus defined is premised upon the concept of empirical meaning, it follows that the determination of scientific knowledge as a value is likewise premised upon that idea of meaning. It thus cannot be consistently maintained that scientific knowledge is a value which accounts for and justifies the empirical concept of meaning, because that concept of meaning is responsible for the factual determination of value as such and of scientific knowledge as a specific value. Hence, it is true that given the restrictions imposed by the principle of empiricism no consistent or adequate interpretation has been, or can be, offered concerning the nature and status of man’s ends and purposes in existence, in particular as these are bound up with the institution and pursuit of scientific knowledge. If one addresses the instant question from within the context of these restrictions, he commits the petitio principii. If he addresses the question from without the context of these restrictions, he employs a metaphysics of meaning different from that which supports the scientific process and which cannot be accounted for in the terms indigenous to that process. As either an empirical scientist or a scientific naturalist he is, accordingly, forced to remain silent on this most profound and important issue.

This article, then, has indicated certain reasons why an answer to the categorial question, "What is value?" cannot be given in the terms of natural fact. To be sure, no positive answer to this question has been offered. None has been intended. One cannot say everything at once. It is, however, important that we be apprized of those terms, perhaps quite widely held today, which are inappropriate to the question.