Felix Kaufmann, Review of Ray Lepley, Verifiability of Value (November 1944)

Felix Kaufmann’s journal book review examines Ray Lepley’s attempt to establish that value judgments admit verification comparable to that of factual statements. It moves from the problem of disagreement about values, through an account of Lepley’s argumentative structure, to Kaufmann’s own objection. The review’s central tension is between a favorable assessment of Lepley’s defense of verifiable values and a refusal to assimilate value judgments to factual propositions.

Kaufmann introduces the problem through a contrast between scientific and evaluative disagreement. Scientists can generally agree about facts or, failing that, about the criteria for testing factual claims. Disputes over justice appear more intractable: proposals for world organization, proportional representation, capital punishment, and taxation provoke disagreement not only about conclusions but also about the standards by which conclusions should be judged. The difficulty extends beyond justice to other moral values and to aesthetics. Kaufmann distinguishes two explanations:

Either it may be held that value judgments are but linguistically disguised declarations of subjective resolutions and preferences, and therefore not susceptible of objective verification, or it may be maintained that only "technical" difficulties, imputable to various psychological and sociological factors, are responsible for the lack of agreement.

The alternatives concern the status of evaluative disagreement itself. On the first account, the absence of objective verification follows from what value judgments are: expressions of preferences or resolutions. On the second, disagreement reflects obstacles to inquiry rather than an intrinsic limit on verification. Lepley’s book seeks to defend the possibility of testing values through a critical examination of contemporary doctrines:

He makes the point that "values are tested in much the same manner as are facts," and tries to corroborate his thesis by a critical analysis of contemporary doctrines.

Kaufmann’s account of the book’s organization identifies the conceptual work needed to support that claim. Two introductory chapters establish the problem’s significance and nature; nine further chapters develop its principal aspects. Lepley begins with an empirical and logical analysis of verifiability, addressing the lack of clarity that has impaired earlier discussions. He then considers the relation between knowing and valuation and examines the dualisms commonly used to distinguish fact from value: quantitative and qualitative, descriptive and normative, factual and creative, objective and subjective. The inquiry also reaches the relation between existence and value through conflicting idealistic and naturalistic positions.

This progression connects questions about verification to broader philosophical commitments. Its practical implications emerge in the concluding chapter, “Toward the Future,” which considers the social consequences of extending experimental methods to social and political issues. Kaufmann specifically praises Lepley’s restraint in predicting those consequences.

His decisive reservation concerns the logical character of value judgments:

I hold, rather, that they are to be understood as judgments of the correctness of valuations, in terms of presupposed standards of valuation—which implies that they are not synthetic propositions.

Kaufmann thus distinguishes valuations from judgments assessing their correctness under assumed standards. His objection is not merely that agreement about values is difficult to achieve; it concerns what an evaluative judgment asserts. He acknowledges that this difference necessarily affects his appraisal of Lepley’s arguments, yet concludes that Lepley has made a strong case and recommends the book to students of value philosophy. The review’s relevance lies in this precisely located disagreement: whether values are tested like facts, or whether assessing valuations presupposes standards that make value judgments logically different from factual statements.