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In some writings of mine on judgments of value considered as evaluations, there was no attempt to reach or state any conclusion as to the nature of value itselLl The position taken was virtually this: No matter what value is or is taken to be, certain traits of evaluative judgments as judgments can be formulated. One can assuredly consider the nature of impersonal judgments, such as "it rains," without going into the physical and meteorological constitution of rain. So it seemed possible to consider the nature of value-judgments (as evaluations, not just statements about values already had) without consideration of value, just as, once more, one might discuss deliberation without analysis of things deliberated upon. The outcome soon showed the mistake. There was a tactical error in connection with the present status of the discussion. There was much interest in value, and little in the theory of judgments, and my essay to disentangle the two only gave the impression that I was trying in a roundabout way to insinuate a peculiar theory concerning value itself, or else that because I did not discuss value I thought it of little importance as compared with instrumentalities . But the error was more than one of mode of presentation, as, indeed, might have occurred to me in considering the analogy between evaluation judgments and deliberation . For if deliberation constitutes a distinctive type of judgment, it is because there is a distinctive type of subject-matter; not that it is necessary to go into details about special matters deliberated upon, but that certain generic traits need to be registered. For as Aristotle remarked long ago, we do not deliberate concerning necessary things, or things that have happened, but only about things still contingent . Hence to make out that deliberation is representative of a distinctive logical type, it is necessary to show that genuinely contingent subject-matter exists. And my theory regarding evaluation judgment involved a similar implication regarding value as its subject-matter . The present article is, accordingly, an attempt to supply the deficiency by showing that the nature of value is such as not only to permit of but to require the general type of judgment sketched in the previous writings. Value, Objective Reference, and Criticism (1925) 287 In undertaking this task, it is possible to evade the question of the definability or indefinability of value. Obviously, value is definable in the sense that things possessing it can be identified and marked off and the property which serves as the ground of their demarcation can be indicated. Definition by pointing or denotation is indeed the ultimate recourse in all empirical matters, and that is the only kind of definition required as a preliminary for our purpose. Thus Ogden and Richards in their chapter on the Theory of Definition say that "symbolisation" is the simplest, most fundamental type of definition, and illustrate its nature as follows: "If we are asked to what 'orange' refers, we may take some object which is orange and say 'Orange' is a symbol which stands for This.... But, it will be said, This merely tells us that 'orange' is applicable in one case; what we wish to know is how it is applicable in general. This generalisation may be performed ... by the use of similarity relationships . We may say 'Orange' applies to this and to all things similar in respect to colour."2 As it would be mere affectation to undertake the task of such empirical pointing de novo, discussion may be abbreviated by setting out from the widely held belief that wherever value is found there something called bias, liking, interest is also found, while conversely , wherever these acts, attitudes or feelings are found, there also and only there is value found.3 Such a one to one correspondence leaves us with many questions unsettled, as will shortly appear, but it suffices for the purposes of a prima facie identification. The questions left unsettled cluster about the import of the terms "liking," "bias," "interest ," etc. That these terms are vague and ambiguous I should have supposed to be a notorious fact, were it not that so many writers of this school seem to assume that their meaning is determinate, uniform and agreed upon; so much so that, with the exception of Perry and Santayana, they do nothing more than to mention them. For purposes of controversy, against the theories ofvalue which deny correlation of value with any human or subjective attitude, such a procedure doubtless suffices. But for...

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