Res Cogitans: An Essay in Rational Psychology (review)

Abstract

BOOK REVIEWS 249 (p. 337). Furthermore, Hartmann states: "Given a set of n descriptive properties, a thing.., is good if it has n properties, it is/air if it has more than n/2 properties, it is bad if it has less than n/2 properties..." (p. 345). It seems that the quality of these properties is of no importance to Hartmann. All that counts for him is quantity and his attempts at "measuring values," his "axiometry." To this reviewer it seems that Hartmann confused value with price, those two concepts Kant had separated so wisely. After discussing the axiological conceptions of Bertram Emil Jessup, Stephen Pepper and Everett W. Hall, Werkmeister dedicates the last chapter of his second volume to an analysis of W. D. Lamont's considerations of the value judgment. Lamont makes a basic distinction between value judgment and moral judgment. The former he defines as assertions that "something is good or bad, better or worse than something else" (p. 352), while the moral judgment always carries a reference to the conceptions of right and wrong. To Lamont valuation is always comparative and therefore relative, and the attribution of goodness or badness is the expression of approval or disapproval. As Werkmeister explains, to Lamont the imperative character of duty, being independent of our likes and dislikes, cannot be explained by a theory of values, but only on the basis of a theory of moral judgment. These are only a few glimpses of the colorful spectrum of value theories Werkmeister offers in the second volume of his book on the history of the philosophy of values, One must admire the thoroughness of the author's analyses, the lucidity of his interpretations, the intellectual empathy in his grasp of the different theorists' intentions. As the author emphasizes in a Postscript, he intentionally refrained from critical evaluations, in order to offer a fair and objective picture of the development and present status of valuetheoretical inquiries. Besides, Professor Werkmeister had explained his personal views on the matter in his book Man and His Values (1970). Thus the second volume of his Historical Spectrum o/ Value Theories is a book on values without value judgments. It is, however, a very valuable book. ALFREDSTERN University o/Puerto Rico Res Cogitans: An Essay in Rational Psychology. By Zeno Vendler. (Ithaca; London: Cornell University Press, 1972. Pp. xii + 225) A few years ago at a meeting of the American Philosophical Association, Noam Chomsky read a paper which was partially historical and partially polemical in which he concluded that Descartes had discovered the truth about human nature: Rationalism is correct; there are innate ideas. Afterward, several philosophers joked seriously that had any one of them submitted the paper, the review board would have rejected it. Rejection might have come--if for no other reason--because Chomsky insisted on using the phrase 'innate idea' in an almost literal sense, a usage that from a philosopher would have appeared crude and ignorant, or at least untutored and unanalyzed. Chomsky's say, however, turned out to be abiding, and his usage a form of higher sophistication. The distinguished linguist has established himself as the foremost if not the first Cartesian philosopher of the twentieth century. Now, in the book under review, Zeno Vendler, a philosopher, has raised a crop on the hard ground that Chomsky plowed. Written in English on the isle of Madeira, Res Cogitans has structure, clarity, and stylistic grace equal to that of Jacques Rohault, PierreSylvain R6gis, Louis de la Forge, and other Cartesians of the seventeenth century. If I appear to be charmed by Vendler's words, it is because for one steeped in the literature of the traditional Cartesians, it is a pleasure to lind a twentieth-century Cartesian who not only advances Cartesianism, but says what he has to say so clearly. Chomsky's seeds did not fall on fallow ground. 250 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Vendler begins with a defense of the commonsense, traditional belief that "speech, essentially and by definition [is] the expression of thought" (p. 1). In doing so he allies himself with rationalists against empiricists, particularly against associationist and behaviorist psychologists. It is an open scandal, of course, that empirical...