Page:Philosophical Review Volume 23.djvu/602

586 is not an absolute or an a priori necessity, but one derived from the existence of a "dyadic relation." No necessity can be derived from one term alone. Hume failed to find a "necessary connection," because he did not define "necessary connection," did not examine specific cases of causation, and treated a cause as "one" instead of "two."

This article is written for the purpose of opening up the subject for discussion. In it the author does not give any extended treatment of his own views; it is rather a presentation and criticism of the views held by Moore, Russell, Urban, Sheldon, Brentano, Sidgwick and Santayana, together with some stray remarks that indicate the author's own point of view. The way in which to arrive at a true definition of values is to study the particular instances, realizing however, that an instance can be no more than an approximation to the goal. Value is not indefinable nor unanalyzable for this would supplement an indefinable good with an indefinable evil. Then too, these indefinables give so little account of themselves that the phenomenon of the appearance and disappearance, the waxing and waning of values, is left totally unexplained. And finally, this doctrine of indefinability is objectionable, because it is so easy to mistake the simplicity of our own knowledge for a simplicity in the object. Value does not consist in harmony or fitness, for a thing may be 'fit' for the rubbish heap and yet be valueless. Neither can goodness be said to be identical with the formal relationship of a particular to its universal, that is, the realization of a type; for the worst specimen of a man may be the most perfect specimen of inebriety or simplemindedness. The hedonistic view of value is too narrow, for it does not take account of all of our experiences. The present day view is that value, in the generic sense, has to do with a certain constant that we may call bias or interest. The justification of this view lies in the fact that bias or interest, with its manifold varieties, conditions, and relations, affords the best means of systematically describing the region of our world which the value sciences and value vocabulary roughly denote. It is broad enough to contain a host of divergent views. Some maintain that satisfaction of interest as such is value, others deny it utterly, and still others qualify it. To the first class the author belongs. He holds that interest is not an immediate cognition of value qualities in its object, but is a mode of the organism, enacted, sensed, or possibly felt, and qualifying the object through being a response to it. To like or dislike an object is to create that object's value. To be aware that one likes or dislikes an object is to cognize that object's value.

In the past, knowledge which seemed vital to us was called religious. This article proposes to show that only one kind of knowledge is possible, that the