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Confronting Foster's wildest claim: "only the instrumental theory of value can be applied!".

Article Excerpt
Many of John Fagg Foster's students and colleagues considered him to have been a world-class teacher and scholar. Those who didn't know him can scarcely judge how accurate such praise of his teaching was. But the current availability of some of his writings and lectures on a CD entitled "John Fagg Foster's Contribution to Scientific Inquiry" (2007) now permits new judgments of his scholarship.

To illustrate the quality of his scholarship, I propose confronting what I believe was his wildest claim: that only the instrumental theory of value can be applied. It appeared in his lectures on value theory, in which he defined value as the criterion of judgment. Here are three variations of this assertion in his own words (Foster 2007):

I shall take the position that there is no escape from, there has never been any application of, and there cannot be any application of, anything but what is in fact the criterion [of judgment] (94). ... there is no criterion of judgment in fact applied which is different than the correct theory of value ... (92). It is impossible to apply an erroneous criterion. The question of value is a question of fact: what is the criterion of judgment (93).

To assist you in evaluating this claim, I shall propose answers to four questions: 1) What does it mean? 2) On what evidence is it based? 3) How accurate is it? 4) How useful is it?

What Does Foster's Claim Mean?

The meaning of this assertion hinges on the nature of the criterion of judgment and what it means to apply it. Foster saw the criterion of judgment as a tool applied (used) in every conscious human choice. (1)

Every choice may be said to originate with a chooser's observation that an existing state of affairs is unsatisfactory or doubtful. One notes a gap between "what is" and "what ought to be." One needs a criterion as an instrument for connecting the present with the future by pointing toward actions likely to achieve every ought-to-be end-in-view. The criterion is applied by developing a proposition, "I should do this next," in order to sustain the life activity of which this end-in-view is a single phase.

The relation between the run of the facts and the ought-to-be-ness involved is difficult but not complicated. The criterion is a fact, and what ought to be is a fact. At any instant in anyone's experience, the present existence of the fact of judgment is a present fact, even though that judgment be about a future attainment. The rational faculty in human behavior connects the present and the future. We know for certain that the future will become the present, and our judgments now are questions of fact about a particular operation of choosing among alternatives the functioning of which are...

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