Fifty years ago in etc.

The word "value" is an ambiguous term. There is the use of the word in mathematics, where it means practically the same thing as quantity. There is the meaning of an objective standard for judging the worth of anything, as for example, in the phrase "survival value." Then there is the sense of demand or cost, where value is usually stated in terms of money. Then there is the phrase "spiritual values," the sense of which is seldom made clear. While there has been a great deal written and spoken on the subject of value, primarily by philosophers, it is sometimes held not to be an appropriate subject for science. This opinion, of course, is being seriously questioned at the present day.

As long as values are treated, as they commonly are, as things separate from human beings who have them, they are not likely to become the subject of scientific inquiry. However, an attempted operational definition of value clearly points to the fact that they are human reactions, and cannot be sensibly discussed as something separate. For the purpose of the present presentation, value will be operationally defined as a symbolic utterance or act expressing choice or preference. Examples are: "A is good; B is bad; I prefer X to Y." "A B C is my order of preference for these three things."

It is worth pointing out that value statements are expressed in the form of a proposition, in which the predicate term implies a dichotomous classification, the subject term symbolizes a class of objects. The dichotomous classification is expressed as "good" or "not good," "pleasant" or "unpleasant," or any of their cognates. The subject term, for example "apple," always involves some degree of abstraction and thus some degree of class extension.

The behavioral theory to be discussed is an attempt to explain how these judgments come about. The theory may be briefly outlined as follows. Value judgments are correlated with approach and avoidance reaction tendencies.

When an individual says, "This is pleasant," he is expressing the fact that he tends to seek or prolong the experience. And of course the opposite holds for things he judges unpleasant. While some few of these reaction tendencies may be produced by instinct or inherited structure, the vast majority are conditioned by experience. That is, in the course of the business of adapting to the environment, the individual has to approach some things and avoid others, and these reactions leave traces in the form of corresponding tendencies.

There are several things worth noticing in the beginning about this theory. For one thing it involves an apparent reversal of a common-sense sequence of events. Ordinarily it is thought that one seeks a thing because it is good; this theory in contrast commits us to the belief that a thing is good because one seeks it. Actually the common-sense view does not necessarily contradict the theory. Given that an individual has the values (that is, he makes the judgments and has the reaction tendencies), he will plan his behavior accordingly. Thus the values operate as causal agents on the abstract planning level. At the same time, on the level of overt reaction to particular events, the reactions made to objects cause the tendencies, which in turn cause the judgments.

It is important to note the self-reflexiveness which this theory involves. This is a concept familiar in general semantics. The value judgments are in reality reactions of the individual to his reactions. In some way the overt reactions of the individual are classed on the level of reaction tendencies, and when the individual makes his judgments he is further classifying.

HENRY N. PETERS, "TOWARDS A BEHAVIORAL THEORY OF VALUE"

General semanticists have been gravely concerned with these matters. They have been impressed with the idea that both man's greatness and his madness rest on his preoccupation with symbols. A symphony and a ritual of human sacrifice, the Gettysburg Address and the diatribes of a Joe McCarthy, the deductions of a paranoiac and those of the psychiatrist who diagnoses him as a paranoiac, the equations of quantum mechanics and the incantations of a shaman are all instances of symbol manipulation.

As you may have guessed from my choice of words, general semanticists do not confine themselves to the observation that the influence of symbols on human behavior is extraordinarily profound and diverse. Most general semanticists also make value judgments about this influence. They make rather definite distinctions between "good" symbolic behavior (or semantic reactions) and "bad." Furthermore, they maintain that such value judgments are not matters of taste or even necessarily of cultural conditioning (as ethical relativists maintain) but that they are the inevitable results of the general semanticist's analysis of the symbolic process. The general semanticist defines good symbolic behavior as the kind of behavior which is governed by "semantic awareness," an awareness of the distinction between symbol and referent, between inference and observation, between a valid conclusion and a factually true statement; an awareness of the distortions which verbalization necessarily brings into our perceptions; an appreciation of the role of communication in human affairs and of time binding as the unique survival mechanism peculiar to our species.

Most general semanticists believe that the construction of a universal supra-cultural ethics is possible in the light of these criteria. They sometimes call this proposed supra-cultural ethics a scientific ethics, because the one area of human activity where semantic awareness is most pronounced is the area of scientific investigation.

ANATOL RAPOPORT, "THE ROLE OF SYMBOLS IN HUMAN BEHAVIOR"

The scientific method itself consists of seeking knowledge on the basis of three assumptions. The scientist does not say that no data gathered outside this framework can be true or useful; he does claim that only knowledge gained in this manner is scientific. To proceed scientifically, he assumes that:

1. The most reliable method of gaining knowledge is through the human senses: sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch. When a person "just has the feeling, deep inside him" that the Cleveland Indians will win the World Series in 1959, he does not have scientific knowledge. When Aristotle assumed that a horse had a certain number of teeth because that seemed a reasonable number of teeth for a horse to have, he did not add to scientific knowledge. Had he looked inside the mouths of some horses to find out how many teeth were there, or reached inside to touch and count them, he would have had a scientific datum, straight from the horse's mouth. It is true that scientists often use instruments in their data-gathering, but these are nothing more than devices to aid them in their sense perceptions. The most refined of gauges must be read by a human eye if it is to contribute to the storehouse of human knowledge. The thermometer does not feel a temperature; the ruler does not measure a distance; the stethoscope does not hear a heartbeat. Each is an auxiliary to the human senses, but it is the eye and ear of the person using them which makes of their sensitive indications a scientific observation.

2. The most reliable method of organizing knowledge is through the use of human logic. There is a widespread belief that scientists are persons who "let the facts speak for themselves." Facts never speak for themselves, if by this it is meant that a datum has meaning without interpretation. Facts have no meaning unless they are presented as statements of relationship to other facts. During our lives, each of us has acquired a considerable store of knowledge which he is accustomed to bring to bear upon each new fact he acquires. It is easy, therefore, to be unaware on many occasions that our human brains are cataloging the newly presented information with reference to other information which we already possess. If, for example, a friend informs us that the temperature outside today is 74[degrees], we are inclined to think that this fact is meaningful all by itself. Actually, it would take pages to list all the facts to which we relate this one. First, obviously, each word in his sentence has a meaning to us because we were socialized in a culture where English is the standard language. Then, too, we are familiar with a Fahrenheit scale for measuring temperatures, and are aware that it is customary in ordinary conversation to refer to this scale rather than to a Centigrade one. We know that water boils at 212[degrees], that it freezes at 32[degrees], that normal room temperature in our society is about 68[degrees]. Our reaction that it is unseasonably warm today, or unseasonably cool, or about what one would have expected, indicates a knowledge of the time of year, the geographic location, and some information about temperatures in this area at this season in previous years. This simple illustration points up what we mean when we refer to a science as a body of knowledge: it is a body because it consists of facts which have been organized in relation to one another by human reason.

3. The most reliable method of checking knowledge involves the independent conclusions of other competent observers. The reason we sometimes have to wait so long to gain access to the startling medical discovery announced in the Reader's Digest or some other well-known medical journal is that a relationship between facts seems apparent in the experience of one competent observer, but it has not been validated by others, and hence is not yet accepted by scientists as part of a body of scientific knowledge. It is not unknown in human experience for one observer to see small winged beings descending from the clouds, to hear them speak to him, and even to touch them. But because other competent observers cannot see or hear or touch them, their existence cannot be accepted as a scientific datum.

In summary, then, when 1) an observer gains knowledge through one or more of his senses and 2) he uses his human reason to interpret his observation (i.e., relates it to other facts), and 3) other persons sufficiently well trained in the area being studied see or hear or touch or smell or taste the same things as the first scientist and, using their human logic, organize the knowledge they have gained in the same way as the first observer (i.e., reach the same conclusions), we have a scientific fact.

RAYMOND W. MACK, "HOW SCIENTIFIC IS SOCIAL SCIENCE?"

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WILLIAM H. SCHNEIDER, "DANGER: MEN TALKING" (IV)

EDITOR: NORA MILLER