WHAT IS LOGICAL EMPIRICISM?
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These
dist~tions
impose limitations not on the critic but on
criticism. He may find it interesting and us_eful to intertwine state–
ments in criticism with statements in the logic or philosophical theory
of criticism. There is no incompatibiiity between these two types of
propositions. Confusion would result, however, through neglect of the
distinctive character of these statements, and through the consequent
failure to refer them to different evidential bases. A statement of crit–
icism must be testable by empirical operations (experiments, observa–
tions) on the subject matter of the criticism. Any alleged criticism
which does not meet this requirement has no cognitive content rele–
vant to that subject matter. It may then be a purely fictive, meta–
physical statement, like some of Clive Bell's statements about "sig–
nificant form," or it may be a statement in the logical analysis of
criticism, in other words, a statement in the philosophy of criticism.
In the latter case it must be confirmable through a logical analysis of
the language and procedure of the criticism in question.
The distinction between criticism and the theory or philosophy
of criticism is not quite adequately expressed through the categories
"formal," "material" and "empirical." Criticism itself may be
con~
cemed with inquiries which are formal in the sense of dealing with the
form or internal structure of a work of art. Some questions concerning
the form of the work may be independent of questions concerning its
psychological or sociological genesis. But statements answering either
kind of question can be confirmed only through studies of the work
itself.
For this reason they are designated as
object sentences
in dis–
tinction from
syntactical sentences
which describe the formal structure
not of the work of art but of the criticism. For example, consider the
statement "Aesthetic value is not a property of a painting, but is a
relation between a painting and a spectator." This sentence, despite
appearances, is not an object sentence and asserts nothing concerning
paintings. It is a metaphorical statement whose cognitive meaning is
given by the following syntactical sentence: "The expression 'aes–
thetic value' is a predicate which takes not one but two terms for its
arguments. One of its arguments is the designation of a painting, the
other is the designation of a spectator." This is a statement not about
fJaintings,
but about the use-within some system of criticism-of
terms
designating paintings.
Value, Science and Method of Social Action
Numerous attempts have been made to distinguish between
natural and social sciences on the ground that social sciences include
value judgments whereas natural sciences do not.
If
these views ap–
peared plausible,
it
was largely because the concept of value and of
