James B. Wilbur - Value Theory in Philosophy and Social Science (RLE Social Theory)

ROUTLEDGE LIBRARY EDITIONS:
SOCIAL THEORY

Volume 90

VALUE THEORY IN PHILOSOPHY AND SOCIAL SCIENCE

VALUE THEORY IN PHILOSOPHY AND SOCIAL SCIENCE

Edited by
ERVIN LASZLO AND JAMES B. WILBUR

First published 1973

This edition first published in 2015
by Routledge
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1973 Gordon and Breach, Science Publishers, Inc.

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ISBN: 978-0-415-72731-0 (Set)
eISBN: 978-1-315-76997-4 (Set)
ISBN: 978-1-138-78743-8 (Volume 90)
eISBN: 978-1-315-76317-0 (Volume 90)

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Value Theory in
Philosophy
and
Social Science

Edited by
ERVIN LASZLO
and
JAMES B. WILBUR

GORDON AND BREACH SCIENCE PUBLISHERS

New York London Paris

Library of Congress catalog card number 7384239. ISBN 0 677 14160 2 (cloth). All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Printed in Great Britain.

The annual Conferences on Value Inquiry bring together philosophers, scientists and humanists to discuss the many facets of the problem of value in the experience of the individual and in contemporary society. The keynote is sounded best perhaps in the opening quotation of the first speaker at the First Conference. Americans currently face a period in which few institutions, beliefs, or values can any longer be taken for granted. All are under strain; all are challenged. Basic transformations of man and society are now underway, and many vital choices of values must be made (p.1, below). Americans, and indeed all peoples of the world, are confronted with the necessity of making vital choices of value; traditional values crumble under the impact of rapid technological and societal change and new ones are not available ready-made. In the face of this challenge philosophers, scientists and humanists must assume their traditional roles and responsibilities and apply themselves to the urgent task of discussing the nature of human values, the dynamics of value change, the available options and choices and the procedures for justifying and verifying assessments of value.

One of the criteria in choosing papers for the Conferences is the ability to stimulate such discussion and clarification among the participants. And it is in the hope and belief that they will serve the wider audience in the same way that the annual publication of the Proceedings is undertaken within this same series.

The papers in the present volume, originally presented at the First and Second Conferences on Value Inquiry (The University of Akron, 1967, 1968), show deep concern with the problems and responsibilities mentioned above. , devoted to the First Conference, centers on the problem of value in philosophy. The papers by Kurt Baier, The Concept of Value, and Nicholas Rescher, The Study of Value Change, are the fruit of a joint project at the University of Pittsburgh. They present penetrating analyses of the nature and varieties of value, and of the modes and expectations of value change. They are followed by Arnold Berleant who, in The Experience and Judgment of Values throws light upon the distinction between valuation, the having of an experience, and evaluation, the making of a judgment upon that experience.

In Formal Axiology and the Measurement of Values, Robert S. Hartmann presents not only a summary of the main points of his much read theory of value but concentrates on the more particular question of how values can be measured. The papers of Robert Herzstein and J. Prescott Johnson are historical in nature, the former, entitled The Phenomenology of Freedom in the German Philosophical Tradition: Kantian Origins, traces the influence of the Kantian ideal of freedom upon selected themes in German intellectual history and the latter, entitled The Fact-Value Question in Early Modern Value Theory discusses the development of this dichotomy in the works of the Post-Kantian German thinkers Lotze, Windelband, Rickert, Brentano, Ehrenfels and Meinong.

The last paper, by Ruth Macklin, Actions, Consequences and Ethical Theory takes issue with a consequentialist theory of ethics by pointing out the difficulties in marking out the line between the description of an action, and the consequences which follow upon that action.

The papers of the Second Conference, contained in , establish the broadly interdisciplinary concern also characteristic of subsequent Conferences. This Conference called upon philosophers and social scientists to discuss the problem of value as encountered in social theory. In the first study, Phenomenology as a General Theory of Social Action, Robert Friedricks considers the relevance of phenomenology in the work of such American social theorists as Peter Berger, Thomas Luckman and Edward Tiryakian. In the second and third articles, John Petras and Larry and Janice Reynolds consider the value dimension of the social theories of Charles Horton Cooley and Claude Levi-Strauss, respectively. Joseph Margolis maintains in his paper The Use and Syntax of Value Judgments that it is a mistake to suppose that there is any single adequate model of uniform usage for value judgments either in general, or within the separate domains; i.e. moral, aesthetic, legal, prudential, or technical. Then, in his article Values, Value Definitions and Symbolic Interaction, Glenn Vernon considers the problem of value within the framework of symbolic interaction theory, of which he is a major spokesman.

The last two papers concern themselves with the value problems of Marxist philosophy. John Somerville, in The Value Problem and Marxist Social Theory distinguishes between the theoretical and practical aspects of what he calls the Fallacies of Misplaced Value Function, holding that Marxist value theory can best be understood as the attempt to avoid these fallacies. In Classical Marxism and the Totalitarian Ethic, A. James Gregor explores the relationship between classical Marxist ethics and the ethics of the social order created by contemporary Communism.