Four FORMAL AXIOLOGY AND ITS CRITICS Robert S. Hartman Before his death in 1973, Robert S. Hartman was working on a reply to his many critics and left behind a manuscript titled "Fonnal Axiology and Its Critics. " Although unfinished, this manuscript contained many instructions for completion, including details on how to integrate specific sections of Hartman's unpublished letters into the existing gaps. In a letter to James Wilbur, (then Editor of The Journal of Value Inquiry) dated 30 April 1972, Hartman wrote: I propose a paper which is a kind of "Reply to My Critics" although this will probably not be the title. There have been quite a few papers on Jonna/ axiology, especially in your Journal, but also in other journals, as well as in books, in the U. S., Asia, and Europe, especially Russia, etc., all of which demand a reply. In a letter to Rem B. Edwards dated 6 June 1972, Hartman wrote that "Jim Wilbur ... has accepted my article 'Axiology and its Critics' sight unseen. " Unfortunately, Hartman did not live to complete this manuscript and get it to this publisher. In completing "Fonnal Axiology and Its Critics, " the editor tried to follow Hartman 's instructions as best he could; but occasionally he had to go beyond them. In many unpublished letters and papers, Hartman responded to critics and questioners other than those who were designated in this essay to receive a response-like John W Davis, Paul Weiss, Charles Hartshorne, William Eckhardt, Robert S. Brumbaugh, Marvin Katz, Robert E. Carter, and Stephen Byrum. Only four of these-Robert E. Carter who reviewed The Structure of Value, Charles Hartshorne, William Eckhardt, and Robert S. Brumbaugh-are included below. This essay, Hartman's letters, and his posthumously published essay titled "Reply to Eckhardt and Brumbaugh," are the primary sources for the contents of "Fonnal Axiology and Its Critics." Hartman never considered himself above the battle; he delighted in Robert S. Hartman - 9789004495968 Downloaded from Brill.com10/10/2021 10:42:40AM via free access 52 ROBERT S. HARTMAN philosophical polemics; and he constantly urged his colleagues and students to make improvements on his foundations for Jonna[ value theory. To Marvin Katz's objection that axiology will some day be obsolete, made at the meeting of The Society for Philosophy of Creativity in St. Louis in 1972, Hartman retorted: "What Professor Katz says is certainly true-that axiology will be obsolete-] hope the earlier the better-because if this system has any dynamic in it, it should be overcome within at least a generation, or, at most a generaton." In completing Hartman's "Fonnal Axiology and Its Critics," the editor followed the strategy, where possible, ofpresenting Hartman's replies in the order in which the critiques were originally published or made public, even though this was not Hartman's own order (the plan of which was never discerned). Formal axiology as I understand it is the science which plays with respect to the social and humanistic disciplines the role that mathematics plays with regards to the natural sciences. It orders them, quantifies them, makes them predictable. It is, in modern terms, the analogue these disciplines follow, or in Kantian terms, the a priori which rules the value disciplines, universally and necessarily. In this sense it is the essence of these disciplines; it is the pure science of value or the science of pure value, of the variable "value" rather than value, or the science of the concept "value" rather than of any phenomenon of value. It follows a strict logic which I call intensional rather than extensional, for it is based on the set­ interpretation of intensions or meanings. It deals with sets of predicates rather than sets of properties-which latter are of doubtful nature-but it orders the latter, the sets of properties, and, moreover, constructs them as primary value properties. In doing so it brings about the sciences of value, as mathematics does those of nature. [I do not say that] value is the degree in which a thing possesses a set of properties corresponding to the set of attributes in the intension of its concept. [Instead], value is the degree in which a thing possesses the set of properties corresponding to the set of predicates in the intension of its concept. The difference between properties and predicates is that the predicates are the names of the properties. Thus, we have the property red and the name of this property, "red," which is a predicate. lntensions consist of predicates. If I should use the word "attributes" I mean it the same as "predicates." But I always try to steer clear of words which have Robert S. Hartman - 9789004495968 Downloaded from Brill.com10/10/2021 10:42:40AM via free access Critical Reception of the Theory 53 an ontological or metaphysical connotation, as does the word "attribute." It is possible that in The Structure of Value I do not make the distinction between predicates and properties clear enough, but in other writings I think I do. 1 Every set of predicates is defined to be one particular value concept or "value." The definition of "value," in other words, is "a set of predicates." Any set of predicates is a "value." Any set of properties is a value. This definition and treatment of the value realm has appeared to me so simple, natural, and fruitful-not only in my life but in the lives of all those who have been touched by it, a subject a following discussion will deal with -that I have dedicated the past three decades to it. I have found a satisfactory echo throughout the international philosophic community, of which the festschrift: Value and Valuation: Essays in Honor of Robert S. Hartman2 is a tangible expression. 1. Critical Reception of the Theory3 [My work is being well received] in applied fields such as psychology, aesthetics, anthropology, etc. Among philosophers, in spite of its framework, which hinders philosophy, the reception was astonishingly good. I say in The Structure of Value: The transition from moral philosophy to moral science ... has much of the excitement today that the corresponding transition had in natural philosophy-strenuous opposition of philosophers and laymen to the adventurous spirit of new scientists and laymen. 4 On the other hand: The difference between moral philosophy and the new moral science is very much less radical than was the rupture between natural philosophy and natural science. While this has practical advantages-a modem axiologist is in no danger of being burned alive-it has certain intellectual disadvantages. Since the differences in question (namely between/act and value) are so subtle, and merely on the logical and perhaps the phenomenological but not on the sensory plane, there is a danger that these differences may be underestimated and looked upon as irrelevant hairsplitting. But the differences between moral philosophy and moral science are logically of the same importance as Robert S. Hartman - 9789004495968 Downloaded from Brill.com10/10/2021 10:42:40AM via free access 54 ROBERT S. HARTMAN those between natural philosophy and natural science. This logical character is what determines the nature and efficiency of the new moral science, as it does that of any science. 5 My [point of] departure then has been often misunderstood; in particular, there has not been a single criticism of the system as such, namely, the identification of sets of properties as values, or of the system [as a whole]; but the criticisms have either been against the application of the system, as Robert W. Mueller's, or against the system in terms of applications of it, as Hector Neri Castaneda's, or mere name calling, as G. R. Grice's or the Soviet reviewers. The system as such has not been criticized; on the contrary, even by its greatest critics, the system as such has been called truly beautiful. In general, the spectrum of reviews reaches from "fantastically ingenious and challenging" (Charles Hartshome),6 and "one of the most constructive and revolutionary undertakings suggested in modem time" (Henry N. Wieman), 7 to "absurd" (G. R. Grice), and a "fetishistic apology for capitalism, "8 with the vast majority of reviews positive and complimentary. In a way, the emphasis of critics on the applicability of the theory is justifiably legitimate in view of what is said in The Structure of Value in the last section, "The Value of a Value Theory. "9 Value seems to touch people deeply, and hence a value theory involves them greatly either in delight or disgust. This accounts, on the one hand, for the raving reviews the book has received, but also for the expressions of disgust that have come its way. "There are philosophers," says Brand Blanshard, "whose philosophy has become a sort of fanaticism, making them to head like a bad onion .. ," 10 and who therefore only react [emotionally] against a new value theory, especially one that is as incisive as formal axiology. It has been experienced with the [Hartman Value Profile-hereafter "HVP"] test that people, on just seeing the words, begin to vomit, to shout, to crumple it in their hands, to stamp on it with their feet, and by the simple view of it to become completely enraged, especially where it is used in hospitals. Curiously enough, a similar reaction has occasionally been observed with philosophers who read, or read about, formal axiology. In one case, in Canada, a doctoral candidate who had a chapter on formal axiology was denied the doctorate by one member of his [dissertation committee] unless he extirpated "this nonsense" from his dissertation. He dismissed the testimony on formal axiology by men such as Paul Weiss, Charles Hartshorne, and Henry Wieman by saying that these were not philosophers but theologians.