We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
I am addressing you this evening in a somewhat unfamiliar theme: that of “logical values” or “values in speaking.” I do so since the points I want to raise come up very constantly in contemporary discussion, and yet are seldom made the object of explicit reflection. There are, it is plain, a large number of qualities which appeal to us in our utterances, whether in the setting forth of our notions in words, or in the weaving of such words into sentences. And they may be said to appeal to us in a peculiar manner, and to satisfy a special set of interests in us, which we may group together as the “logical side” of our nature. Thus most people would say that clarity, relevance, coherence, solid significance and simplicity were merits in speaking, and that so also was truthful conformity to the facts of experience, whether in their general outline or their concrete detail. And everyone would admit readily that such excellences “belonged together,” that they were somehow akin, and that they differed profoundly from such virtues in speaking as poetic felicity, practical helpfulness, or moral and religious inspiration. And most people would also be willing to say, with a great deal of obscurity and most puzzling conviction, that the appeal of such qualities wasn't “merely momentary and personal,” but had something “solid” and “universal” about it, that a man would be foolish not to value such qualities, and that he couldn't help valuing them if he only thought of them sufficiently. And we should recommend such qualities to the approval of others with an air of earnestness and authority, setting them on a level, in this respect, with those other excellences that are called “ethical” and “aesthetic.” But while we could back our recommendation in the last two types of case with a great deal of systematic doctrine, built up in centuries of reflection, we should have little to bring forward in the former case, since the excellences that I want to call “logical,” though often acknowledged, have seldom been made the objects of systematic reflection. Perhaps this is due to the fact that the “true” has generally been ranged alongside of the “good” and the “beautiful” as a species of “ultimate value.”
page 22 note 1 Many will doubtless be shocked by the “intellectualistic” suggestions of this phrase, but it is my view, which I cannot here defend, that however much “dynamism” we may admit in our actions, or in the objects of our experiences, we must still give a purely cognitive analysis of those experiences themselves. To feel an emotion is, in short, to perceive (whether clearly or marginally) that we are ready to behave in certain ways.
page 24 note 1 In this idea I have been influenced (not perhaps in a way he would approve) by Stevenson's use of “working models” in Ethics and Language.
page 25 note 1 I am influenced here by the great, strangely neglected work of Adam Smith.
page 29 note 1 Such at least is my interpretation of some of the proposals of this treatise, which have not been sufficiently examined by philosophers.
page 29 note 2 See “New Foundations for Logic,” Mind, 1947Google Scholar.
page 30 note 1 See particularly the articles of Hempel, C. G. in Mind, 01 and 04 1945Google Scholar.
page 32 note 1 That introspective talk is analogical is argued in my article “Recommendations regarding the Language of Introspection,” in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 12 1948Google Scholar.
page 33 note 1 To take an illustration from chess, we might successfully turn what seemed a very anomalous game of chess into one that was perfectly orthodox, by postulating the presence of several invisible pawns, bishops, etc., which the players were moving “in their heads” (since the actual pieces had been lost).
page 33 note 2 For this see Price: Hume's Theory of the External World, Chapter V.
