THE SIX GREAT IDEAS

MORTIMER ADLER

CHAPTER TEN

IS and OUGHT

The judgment that something is good or bad . . . is one we make every day. It is implicit in every choice we make. It is expressed every time we appraise anything or estimate its value for us. . . .That is why judgments that attribute goodness . . . to things have come to be called "value judgments."

We see at once a fundamental difference between truth and goodness. We do not usually speak of things as being true or false. True and false are words most properly applied to the verbal statements we make, (truth or falsehood of speech), or the judgments of our mind (truth of falsehood of thought).

"Good" and "bad," on the other hand are terms we normally apply to the things, . . .but not to our thoughts or statements about things. Included among the items we appraise as good or bad are human beings themselves, as well as their intentions and actions, their institutions and productions, and the lives they lead. In every case, it is the object we are considering, not our thought about it, that we call good or bad.

Traditional wisdom places the difference between truth and goodness in the different relationships they involve. Truth resides in the relation between the thinking mind and the objects it thinks about. Our thoughts are true when they stand in a relation of agreement with the state of the objects we are thinking about. Goodness resides in the relation between objects of every sort and the state of our desires. Objects are good when they satisfy our desires.

Now let us . . . ask whether there is any truth in our value judgments - our judgments about things as good or bad. When such judgments are challenged, most people find it difficult to defend them by giving reasons calculated to persuade others to agree with them. Since individuals obviously differ from one another in their desires, what one person regards as good may not be so regarded by another.

My statement that I regard something as good (which is tantamount to saying that I desire it) is a true statement about me, but that would seem to be as far as it goes. The judgment that something in question is good would not appear to be true in a sense that commands universal assent - good not just for me but for everyone else as well.

We are thus brought face to face with the much disputed question about the objectivity or subjectivity of value judgments. In the contemporary world, skepticism about value judgments prevails on all sides. Value judgment, it is generally thought, express nothing more than individual likes or dislikes, desires or aversions. They are entirely subjective and relative to the individual who makes them. If they have any truth at all, it is only the truth that is contained in a statement about the individual who is making the judgment - the truth that he regards a certain object as good because he, in fact, desires it.

Only if there could be truth in judgments that asserted that certain (actions) are good for all human beings, not just for this individual or that, would value judgments have objectivity. They would then cease to be entirely relative to individual idiosyncrasies. At least some value judgments would then belong in the sphere of truth and be subject to argument. Others might remain in the sphere of taste and be beyond the reach of argument. We might expect men to try to achieve agreement about the former, but not about the latter. Instead of saying that good and bad are entirely subjective values, we would then be maintaining that they are partly objective and partly subjective.

However, this is precisely what is denied by skepticism concerning value judgments, at least those that appraise objects as good and bad, which is just another way of saying desireable and undesirable. In the skeptic's view, the identification of the good with the desirable makes it impossible to avoid the subjectivity of judgments about what is good and bad, relative as they must be to the differing desires of different individuals.

We can note a certain duplicity in the meaning of "desireable." When we speak of something as desireable, we may mean, on the one hand, that it is in fact desired, and on the other hand, that it ought to be desired, whether or not it is. Certainly, when we say that something is admirable, we can either be reporting the fact that it is admired or by laying down the injunction that it ought to be admired, whether or not it is. The same duplicity would seem to be present in the meaning of desirable.

With this duplicity in mind, we can ask the following critical question: Do we regard something as good simply because we in fact desire it, or ought we to desire something because it is in fact good? In both cases, the good remains the desirable, but in one case the goodness is attributed to the object only because it is desired, while in the other the object ought to be desired only because it is good.

The skeptical view of value judgments holds that they are all of the same sort. All consist in an individual's calling an object good on the basis of his actual desires. That which he in fact desires appears good to him insfaras he desires it. The object that appears good to him may not appear good to someone else whose desires are different. One man's meat is another man's poison.

Against the skeptic, are we able to defend the opposite view that, while some actions appear good to an individual simply because he or she in fact desires them, there are other actions that he or she ought to desire because they are good - really good, not just apparently good? (This introduces the material of chapter eleven.)

To do this, we must manage to get across another hurdle. The obstacle that now stands in our way is a difficulty that has been raised about prescriptive as opposed to descriptive statements.

A prescriptive judgment is one that asserts what ought or ought not to be done. A statement about what ought or ought not to be desired imposes a prescription that may or may not be obeyed. In contradistinction, a descriptive judgment is one that asserts the way things are, not how they ought to be. A statement about what is desired by a given individual simply describes his condition as a matter of fact.

How, it is asked, can prescriptive injunctions be true or false? Have we not adopted the view that the truth of statements or judgments consists in their conformity with the ways things are - with the facts that they try to describe? If a statement is true when it asserts that that which is, is, and false when it asserts that which is, is not, how then can there be truth or falsity in a statement that asserts what ought or ought not to be?

To refute the skeptical view, which makes all value judgments subjective and relative to individual desires, we must be able to show how prescriptive statements can be objectively true. An understanding of truth as including more than the kind of truth that can be found in descriptive statements, (e.g. mathematics, or the physical sciences), thus becomes the turning point in our attempt to establish a certain measure of objectivity in our judgments about what is good and bad.