Introduction:
Is there a scientific way to work with values? Do we need two systems of science? We’ve always had natural science and technology, but never a science of values and morals…even though natural science is blind to values; we are prisoners of our values; and values define what it means to be human. Given their importance, one would think the science of values should have evolved long ago!
Is this an accident of history? If so, value science was likely beyond our reach for thousands of years. Have we paid a price for this? What about psychology? In the last hundred years psychology modeled itself after natural science and medicine. This gave us a pre-scientific psychology, and crisis psychology without a preventive psychology to match advances in preventive medicine. Neuroscience dominates innovation in psychology with its focus on the “molecular brain.” Value science focuses on the “axiological mind,” and will evolve into axiological psychology in years to come, acknowledging the mind’s origins in values.
Background:
The dead end of Skinner’s behaviorism, Feud’s psychoanalysis and assorted schools of pre-scientific psychology have unfolded in the larger context of the asymmetric evolution of natural science and technology without value science checks and balances. This has distorted the climate-of-opinion or zeitgeist that shapes individual and collective minds and lives. Has this given us a tragically flawed civilization with growing numbers of discontents?
The failure to build psychology on a deeper understanding of values is not for the lack of trying. When the ancients contemplated the laws of the “heavens above,” they wondered about the laws of the “heart within.” However, the laws of human nature proved more complex than those governing the heavens. Centuries passed without progress, until now!
Natural Philosophy Becomes Natural Science:
Following the Renaissance and Age of Reason natural philosophy started evolving into natural science, as seen in the transformation of alchemy into chemistry and astrology into astronomy. During this period moral philosophy remained stuck as moral philosophy. It wasn’t until the British philosopher G. E. Moore made a strong case for the science of values, and challenged the world to come up with a definition of “good,” that things began to change. Moore spent his life looking for an operational definition of “good” that avoids using examples of good which are circular definitions rejected by science. Moore referred to circular definitions as “naturalistic fallacies,” … to be avoided at all costs.
Test Yourself:
Webster’s dictionary defines “good” in terms of examples of good, which doesn’t pass the science test. Can you define “good” without using examples of “good?” Can you define “good” in terms of what all “good things” have in common? If not, you’re not alone. Great minds failed for thousands of years and Moore, a highly respected philosopher in his own right, failed. His attempt didn’t go unnoticed. It inspired American philosopher Robert Hartman who went on to define “good,” and using the tools of reason, logic and mathematics transformed this new frame of reference into a theory of value.
My Involvement:
Hartman’s achievement got my attention as a young psychology professor and clinical intern at the Ellis Institute in Manhattan. My clinical orientation was cognitive psychology and I wanted to learn more about values, thought-styles, meaning, faith, ideologies, belief-systems, preemptory ideation, dissociation, prevention, and clinical practices related to mental health. I remember feeling I had found in philosophy what I was looking for in psychology. I lost no time testing Hartman’s theory with the best tests and measures of my profession, and later summarized my research in the pages of a textbook entitled The New Science of Axiological Psychology (Rodopi Press, 2005).
Valuemetrics:
One of the foremost applications of Hartman’s value theory is valuemetrics. This is a value profiling methodology that evaluates a person’s organization and use of values using the Hartman Value Profile (HVP), developed in collaboration Mario Cardenas, whom I met at Cuernavaca, then again at Mexico City, some twenty-eight years later.
The German scientist Alexander von Humboldt wrote that Cuernavaca is “the city of eternal spring.” It was there that psychoanalyst Eric Fromm and philosopher Robert Hartman lived as neighbors, but not friends. Fromm had little interest in Hartman’s research. Mario Cardenas was a student of Fromm. He was also a student of Hartman at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). Cardenas asked Hartman to teach him about values. Hartman agreed if Cardenas would teach him psychoanalysis. This was the beginning of a close collaboration that resulted in the construction of The Hartman Value Profile (HVP). Cardenas had to keep his association with Hartman a secret from Fromm. In time, psychoanalyst Mario Cardenas, trained by Eric Fromm at Cuernavaca and I, the cognitive psychologist trained by Albert Ellis in Manhattan, became friends as we shared a common interest in Hartman’s research, in spite of our theoretical differences as clinical psychologists.
In Manhattan, I tested new patients with the HVP, and used it to follow the progress of others. As a research psychologist, I travelled the world gathering foreign HVP test data, in addition to domestic data, funded by income from my private practice. I also lectured before the annual meetings of the Robert S. Hartman Institute at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. I seized upon valuemetrics (HVP) as a “merciful empirical handle” to Hartman’s definition of “good,” and his theory of value, which I studied from different empirical, clinical and philosophical perspectives: my goal was to prove or disprove the validity of Hartman’s value theory and its HVP without the proprietary limitations of those marketing the HVP to individuals and corporate clients.
Science = Reason Plus Empiricism:
Hartman was a philosopher who used the tools of reason, logic and mathematics to build his theory. He was not a committed empiricist and never tested the reliability and validity of his theory or the HVP. For this reason I had little interest in Hartman when Albert Ellis brought his work to my attention. Without plans or preparation, seven years later, fate intervened. Hartman,s friend, the Mexican psychiatrist Salvatore Roquet, M.D., demonstrated the HVP and convinced me to take another look at it and the theory behind it.
The mathematical model Hartman used is “set theory.” I accepted it as a first approximation revealing the architecture of “value logic” or “value grammar” implicit in the mind’s native cognitive processing of values and valuations. I appreciated that this approach to values was an exploration of a world where no one had gone before. It was a creative frame of reference that struck me as “ripe” for empirical testing. .
Hartman called his theory “formal axiology.” This retained the old philosophical concept of “axiology.” Although understandable, I found it a bit confusing as a scientist. Because Hartman had developed a “new axiology,” he called his theory “formal" axiology to distinguish it from the philosophy of axiology. This invited more confusion among those who are not philosophers. No matter, the “new axiology” or “formal axiology,” is grounded in mathematics which distances it from the philosopher’s axiology. This precise construction of theory and HVP-testing inspired several Hartman students to become entrepreneurs marketing The Hartman Value Profile (HVP) to individuals and corporate clients. It also inspired them to view the theory in a way I found unacceptable.
__________
I recall an early conversation with one of Hartman’s former students in which he declared, in all seriousness, that the theory and the HVP did not require empirical validation because it was “formal axiology,” which I understood as implying the existence of a “self-evident truth” beyond science. It struck me as a massively naïve misreading of the history and philosophy of science. I ignored the remark, and had no problem dismissing it as the sort of misunderstanding that crops up in interdisciplinary research involving partners from different disciplines. I was the psychologist among philosophers, and I was prepared to work with them. I had completed an interdisciplinary doctoral dissertation at UT Austin that involved collaborating with students and faculty from the departments of psychology, biochemistry, electrical engineering, and computer science. This was necessary given my research involved computer-assisted analysis of brain waves. It was an experience that prepared me for my subsequent collaboration with philosophers. Fortunately, fate was on my side. It turned out that these views were not shared by Hartman’s friend, academic colleague, and chairman of the University of Tennessee philosophy department where Hartman had taught until he died in 1973. Chairman John Davis encouraged my research, showed me to the Special Collections Library that housed Hartman's papers, and made sure I had access to the university's computer and statististical library. Those were the days before personal computers.
As backup, I could rely on my friend Richard Bishop who was Associate Dean and Professor of Biomedical Engineering at the University of New Orleans. Richard wrote the program I used to score the HVP and gave me access to the UNO computer as needed. In a few years I purchased a personal computer with off the shelf statistical programs, and was no longer dependent on those resources that had got me off to a good start. .
Many years passed and one day the Hartman student who had dismissed my validity and reliability research as “unnecessary,” approached me in a hotel restaurant and confessed: “You were right after all, Leon. Reason without empiricism isn’t science!” I haven’t forgotten that moment. We were friends and we remain friends. I suspect my research revealing the explanatory, descriptive and predictive powers of the Hartman Value Profile (HVP) made a favorable impression, as did informed clients raising reliability and validity questions.
The features of valuemetrics that impressed me include the ability to alter its face validity by changing the test items in two lists of eighteen items one ranks from "good" to "bad/." It is also easy to construct parallel forms of the HVP and other derivative intstruments to meet the needs of various situations ranging from clinical to vocational testing. I found The Hartman Value Profile (HVP) to be a “psychological test” “without psychological testing.” This is made possible by the universality of values underlying behavior. It’s safe to say that everything "psychological" is "axiological;" which is to say that all behavior rests on a foundation of structural values and functional valuations. This is especially true of habitual evaluative habits that “come alive within us” through repeated use, and acquire existential meaning.
Conclusion:
This technical information concerning value theory and its HVP metric is mere background to the importance of being able to apply science to values enabling precise values clarification, values appreciation and values measurement. The historical context is important and informative. In Part II I will address the map-to-territory (i.e., map-to-fact) definition of natural science vs. the territory-to-map (i.e., fact-to-map) definition of value science. The point I want to make here is that a scientific approach to values and morals is possible, and that we as individuals and society need to take this seriously as we "sail" in leaky boats onto the rough seas of the 21st century. .
© Dr. Leon Pomeroy, Ph.D.