The title of this section is close to that of a book by a great psychologist and a great man, Wolfgang Köhler.306 I found his formulation of the problem in the first chapter of his book not only admirably put but very moving; and I think it will move not merely those who remember the times in which the book was written.307 Yet I was disappointed by Köhler’s own solution of his problem, What is the place of values in the world of facts; and how could they make their entry into this world of facts? I feel unconvinced by his thesis that Gestalt psychology can make an important contribution to the solution of this problem.
Köhler explains very clearly why few scientists, and few philosophers with scientific training, care to write about values. The reason is simply that so much of the talk about values is just hot air. So many of us fear that we too would only produce hot air or, if not that, something not easily distinguished from it. To me these fears seem to be well founded, in spite of Köhler’s efforts to convince us that we should be bold and run the risk. At least in the field of ethical theory (I do not include the Sermon on the Mount) with its almost infinite literature, I cannot recall having read anything good and striking except Plato’s Apology of Socrates (in which ethical theory plays a subsidiary role), some of Kant’s works, especially his Foundations of the Metaphysic of Morals (which is not too successful) and Friedrich Schiller’s elegiac couplets which wittily criticize Kant’s rigorism.308 Perhaps I might add to this list Schopenhauer’s Two Fundamental Problems of Ethics. Except Plato’s Apology, and Schiller’s charming reductio of Kant, none of these come anywhere near to achieving their aim.
I shall therefore say nothing more than that values emerge together with problems; that values could not exist without problems; and that neither values nor problems can be derived or otherwise obtained from facts, though they often pertain to facts or are connected with facts. As far as problems are concerned we may, looking at some person (or some animal or plant), conjecture that he (or it) is trying to solve a certain problem, even though he (or it) may be quite unaware of that problem. Or else, a problem may have been described and discovered, critically or objectively, in its relations, say, to some other problem, or to some attempted solutions. In the first case only our historical conjecture concerning the person’s problem belongs to world 3; in the second case the problem itself may be regarded as one of the inmates of world 3. It is like this with values. A thing, or an idea, or a theory, or an approach, may be conjectured to be objectively valuable in being of help in solving a problem, or as a solution of a problem, whether or not its value is consciously appreciated by those struggling to solve that problem. But if our conjecture is formulated and submitted to discussion, it will belong to world 3. Or else, a value (relative to a certain problem) may be created or discovered, and discussed, in its relations to other values and to other problems; in this quite different case it too may become an inmate of world 3.
Thus if we are right in assuming that once upon a time there was a physical world devoid of life, this world would have been, I think, a world without problems and thus without values. It has often been suggested that values enter the world only with consciousness. This is not my view. I think that values enter the world with life; and if there is life without consciousness (as I think there may well be, even in animals and men, for there appears to be such a thing as dreamless sleep) then, I suggest, there will also be objective values, even without consciousness.
There are thus two sorts of values: values created by life, by unconscious problems, and values created by the human mind, on the basis of previous solutions, in the attempt to solve problems which may be better or less well understood.
This is the place I see for values in a world of facts. It is a place in the world 3 of historically emergent problems and traditions, and this is part of the world of facts—though not of world 1 facts, but of facts partly produced by the human mind. The world of values transcends the valueless world of facts—the world of brute facts, as it were.
The innermost nucleus of world 3, as I see it, is the world of problems, theories, and criticism. Although values do not belong to this nucleus, it is dominated by values: the values of objective truth, and of its growth.309 In a sense we can say that throughout this human intellectual world 3 this value remains the highest value of all, though we must admit other values into our world 3. For with every value proposed arises the problem: is it true that this is a value? And, is it true that it has its proper standing in the hierarchy of values: is it true that kindness is a higher value than justice, or even comparable with justice? (Thus I am utterly opposed to those who fear truth—who think it was a sin to eat from the tree of knowledge.)
We have generalized the idea of a human world 3 so that world 3 in the wider sense comprises not only the products of our intellect, together with the unintended consequences which emerge from them, but also the products of our mind in a much wider sense; for example, the products of our imagination. Even theories, products of our intellect, result from the criticism of myths, which are products of our imagination: they would not be possible without myths; nor would criticism be possible without the discovery of the distinction between fact and fiction, or truth and falsity. This is why myths and fictions should not be excluded from world 3. So we are led to include art and, in fact, all human products into which we have injected some of our ideas, and which incorporate the result of criticism (in a sense wider than merely intellectual criticism). We ourselves may be included, since we absorb and criticize the ideas of our predecessors, and try to form ourselves; and so may our children and pupils, our traditions and institutions, our ways of life, our purposes, and our aims.
It is one of the grave mistakes of contemporary philosophy not to see that these things—our offspring—though they are products of our minds, and though they bear upon our subjective experiences, have also an objective side. One way of life may be incompatible with another way of life in almost the same sense in which a theory may be logically incompatible with another. These incompatibilities are there, objectively, even if we are unaware of them. And so our purposes and our aims, like our theories, may compete, and may be critically compared and discussed.
Yet the subjective approach, especially the subjective theory of knowledge, treats of world 3 objects—even those in the narrower sense, such as problems, theories, and critical arguments—as if they were mere utterances or expressions of the knowing subject. This approach is closely similar to the expressionist theory of art. Generally, it regards a man’s work only or mainly as the expression of his inner state; and it looks upon self-expression as an aim.
I am trying to replace this view of the relation of a man to his work by a very different one. Admitting that world 3 originates with us, I stress its considerable autonomy, and its immeasurable repercussions on us. Our minds, our selves, cannot exist without it; they are anchored in world 3. We owe to the interaction with world 3 our rationality, the practice of critical and self-critical thinking and acting. We owe to it our mental growth. And we owe to it our relation to our task, to our work, and its repercussions upon ourselves.
The expressionist view is that our talents, our gifts, and perhaps our upbringing, and thus “our whole personality”, determine what we do. The result is good or bad, according to whether or not we are gifted and interesting personalities.
In opposition to this I suggest that everything depends upon the give-and-take between ourselves and our task, our work, our problems, our world 3; upon the repercussion upon us of this world; upon feedback, which can be amplified by our criticism of what we have done. It is through the attempt to see objectively the work we have done—that is to see it critically—and to do it better, through the interaction between our actions and their objective results, that we can transcend our talents, and ourselves.
As with our children, so with our theories, and ultimately with all the work we do: our products become largely independent of their makers. We may gain more knowledge from our children or from our theories than we ever imparted to them. This is how we can lift ourselves out of the morass of our ignorance; and how we can all contribute to world 3.
If I am right in my conjecture that we grow, and become ourselves, only in interaction with world 3, then the fact that we can all contribute to this world, if only a little, can give comfort to everyone; and especially to one who feels that in struggling with ideas he has found more happiness than he could ever deserve.