According to Ernst Logren,“Kritiska punkter i värdepsykologien” is a refutation of objectivistic value theories and a demonstration of the impossibility of gaining theoretical knowledge about values as these values truly or really are.54 Once more, the focus of attention is centered on the issue of objective theoretical knowledge, or what one might call scientific knowledge, but this choice of focus, as Jes Bjarup points out, will leave us out on a limb when it comes to Hägerström’s description of the nature of the experience of values.55 According to Bjarup, Hägerström’s experience of values is: “neither a subjective state of mind, nor a presentation (Vorstellung) of the object valued but a peculiar relationship between a subjective attitude towards the object and a presentation of the object” - a relationship that Hägerström fails both to define and describe in any further detail.56 Hägerström’s theory boils down to the observation that the consciousness of existence is an experience that must be kept separate from the consciousness of that which ought to be. Bjarup’s summary of Hägerström’s standpoint in “Kritiska punkter i värdepsykologien” is this: “Knowledge of what ought to be cannot be reduced to what is, or natural objects, which can be touched or seen or felt, but still Hägerström believes in the possibility of knowledge concerning our moral duties.”57This is a proposition that according to Jes Bjarup is a glaring contradiction, because how can we (Hägerström) have knowledge of something that is not directly available to the senses? In such acase,the questions are these:What is the nature of this specific type of moral knowledge (unavailable to our five senses,but yet possible to have)? And what is the nature of the corresponding moral duties? Is moral knowledge a“mere”description of actual morality or is it aquesa ca l l f o r s c i e n t i f i c p u r i t y 259 2 . 3 häge r ström’s re futat ion of obj ect ivi st ic value theory 54 Logren, Huvuddragen, pp. 439-440. 55 Bjarup, Reason, p. 59. 56 Ibid. 57 Ibid.
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