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An Outline for Ambivalence of Value Judgment••••

Hili Razinsky

1 Ambivalence of Value Judgment

Ambivalence, in the central cases to be discussed here, can be formulated as the

holding of opposed mental attitudes – and in particular opposed value judgments –

towards the same object. Many philosophers believe that ambivalence is strictly

impossible. Others allow ambivalence, but only as a subjective attitude that does not

reveal anything about the logic of the propositions judged, whereas in so far as these

propositions themselves are concerned, any conflict is resolvable. On other accounts,

ambivalence is said if not to destroy ethics all together, then at least to mark the limits

of the applicability of a value.1

However, a consideration of our life and language with value judgments

should lead us to reject such accounts. Ambivalence that involves conflict about the

application of a value is commonplace, and central to the logic of value. One can

judge ambivalently that one ought to do something and that one ought not to, or that a

certain person is nice and that she is not. Such patterns often serve to attribute genuine

ambivalence, in whose attribution the value term must be regarded as bearing roughly

• The Journal of Value Inquiry Vol. 48 (2014), pp. 469-88. The Final publication is

available at http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10790-014-9412-6 .

1 In their introduction, Betzler and Baumann set out the field of current philosophical

research on practical conflicts using a similar framework. See Peter Baumann and

Monika Betzler. “Introduction,” in P. Baumann and M. Betzler, eds., Practical

Conflicts: New Philosophical Essays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

2004), pp. 1-26.

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the same sense when affirmed and denied. At the same time, genuine ambivalence is

not tantamount to vacuous desperation or embarrassment: rather than being mutually

annihilated, the opposed judgments together constitute a meaningful and value-

focused attitude to their object. Moreover, in many cases, we ambivalently judge one

tension-fraught, yet meaningful, thing.

Let “v” be a value term, or a term which clearly has an evaluative dimension

(e.g. “nice,” “something I ought to do”) and “w” an opposite counterpart of “v” (e.g.

“nasty,” “something I ought not to do.”) A first point, then, is that ambivalence can

often be attributed and expressed in the form “One judges (or I judge) that A is v and

that A is not v” or “One judges A to be v and judges it not to be so;” or similarly “One

judges that A is v and that it is w.” Now, such attributions could be accounted for by

interpreting ambivalence in terms of prima facie opposition: Bob judges A prima facie

good and prima facie bad, when the idea is that different lines of consideration lend

initial support both to A being good and to A being bad. Alternatively, ambivalence

can also allegedly be interpreted in terms of apparent opposition: Bob judges A good-

in-this-respect and bad-in-another-respect. Mill’s treatment of opposed judgments

regarding the justice of certain practices makes recourse to both elements. First, in

judging that A is just and yet A is unjust, one only accepts that A is just-in-a-certain-

respect and A is unjust-in-another-respect, and, second, this apparent opposition is a

prima facie opposition as regards a common question. One judges by the same token

that it is prima facie best and prima facie not best to adopt A:

Who shall decide between these appeals to conflicting principles of

justice? Justice has in this case two sides to it, which it is impossible to

bring into harmony, and the two disputants have chosen opposite sides;

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the one looks to what it is just that the individual should receive, the

other to what it is just that the community should give. Each, from his

own point of view, is unanswerable; and any choice between them, on

grounds of justice, must be perfectly arbitrary. Social utility alone can

decide the preference. (298)2

Certainly some judgments that A is v and A is not v are only apparently or

prima facie opposed; I shall argue, however, that there can be genuine ambivalence

between a judgment that A is v and a judgment that A is not v. Such ambivalence may,

moreover, be precisely of the kind that appears to be either impossible or destructive

for ethics. Objectivist ambivalence, as we shall call it, is neither an accidental nor

peripheral feature of our value discourse. At the same time it is not destructive to

ethics or to value judgments in general, but only to certain received philosophical

conceptions of ethics and value. Once the phenomenon of objectivist ambivalence of

value judgment is identified, it can be analyzed, and in conducting that analysis I shall

set out three aspects that are involved in it. The analysis of the mental attitude of

ambivalence will have consequences for the logic of values. We shall see that this

logic allows and invites tensions in a non-mysterious way.

2 Objectivist Judgments

Let us begin with an introductory analysis of value judgments. Ambivalence of value

judgment would pose less difficulty regarding values if value judgments did not

involve a claim for objectivity, i.e.: if, perhaps like desires and emotions, they did not

2 J. S. Mill, Utilitarianism, in M. Cowling, ed., Selected Writings of John Stuart Mill

(New York, Toronto, London: Mentor Books, 1968), pp. 243-304.

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judge anything.3 However, in the central cases they do.

4 Thus, in deeming a job offer

unfair one aspires to reach beyond the attitude itself, and actually to judge that the

offer is unfair. The judging agent might say: “It is not merely that I don’t like this

offer: it really is unfair.” Accordingly, we shall here adopt the view that value

judgments are typically directed towards objectivity. The locus of objectivity may be

thought of in terms of the value that is supposed to apply. We can alternatively speak

of the objectivity or the truth of the proposition judged. In any case, we should not

presuppose that the logic of value (or of truth in regard to value) is identical to the

logic of (ideally) factual truth. We should also not presuppose, at the level of

attitudes, that the logic of value judgments is identical to the logic of (ideally) factual

belief.

I am thus going to analyze a specific and central form of ambivalence

between value judgments in so far as they make claims to objectivity. We shall

consider a case of such ambivalence in regard to the fairness of a certain offer. At the

3 This was emphasised by Bernard Williams: “Ethical Consistency” (1965), and

especially “Inconsistency and Realism” (1966), in his Problems of the Self:

Philosophical Papers 1956-1972 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973),

pp. 166-206, see esp. p. 205. Yet, as I elsewhere show, “Ethical Consistency” covertly

assumes an objectivist dimension to ambivalence.

4 Of course, philosophically speaking, this is a contentious claim. The analysis to be

proposed cannot leave out the question of the cognitivist and non-cognitivist status of

value judgments. In the following paragraphs I argue that value judgments are both

like beliefs and like desires and emotions, and that these aspects are mutually

constitutive. This prepares us to abandon the expectation that the logic of judgments

in their cognitivist capacity would be parallel to the logic of factual belief.

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same time, judging an offer unfair involves (in ordinary cases) a disliking of a sort. I

shall briefly argue that such a disliking is involved, in a certain strong sense, in the

judgment. In accordance with this, we will be able to speak of two dimensions of a

value judgment: The Objectivist (or cognitive or truth-aiming) dimension of a value

judgment marks the judgment’s claim for objectivity, namely that a value applies to

the matter of concern. Complementarily, in order to focus on the non-cognitive

dimension of a value judgment, we shall term it “a judgmental engagement.”

Some judgments are solely judgmental engagements – consider the one

Hannah expresses by the utterance “This offer is very important to me.” In this case,

Hannah, so to speak, imposes a value on the offer, rather than finds that a certain

value applies to it. She refers to the offer positively in such a way that the offer is

constituted as important (to her), but the form of objectivity is misleading. For

example, there is no question of responding to her words by wondering: Is it really

important? (It can be asked: is it really important to you, but this is a different

question). However, such expressions and attributions make use of a primary and

partly objectivist sense of value (and in these primary cases, when a person says that

something is important, it is one thing to respond that it is not as important as she

takes it be, and another to say that it is not as important to her as she takes it to be).5

On the other hand we may say that no value judgment is entirely objectivist.

This is because of the kind of objectivity primarily involved in value judgments. We

5 Also compare the objectivist response (where the value applied may be understood

as agent-relative) “It is not really important for you” with “it is not really important to

you.”

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are preoccupied with judgment of value.6 Thus, a value judgment in its objectivist

capacity may be described both as aiming at an evaluative truth and as aiming at truth

in an evaluative way, while the latter formulation takes us beyond truth-aiming. In

other words, the objectivist aspect of a value judgment is not analytically independent

of the aspect of judgmental engagement. Thus, in finding an offer made to her fair, for

example, a person does not merely manifest her mastery of a concept of fairness and

of concrete facts that call for applying it to the offer. Ordinarily, the objectivity

claimed is that the offer is really fair, rather than called “fair” or considered fair. Now,

under this articulation of the judgment’s objectivist dimension, we have by the same

token already introduced the judgmental engagement. Indeed, one is supposed to treat

a fair offer differently from an unfair one, or from one that fairness does not concern.

One is supposed, in one way or another, to treat it – to engage judgmentally with it –

as a fair offer.

We may think of the objectivist dimension of value judgments in terms of

finding (or believing to find) a value in the object of judgment and of the judgmental

engagement as imposing a value on the object. In these terms, the former point is that

one cannot find, or believe oneself to find, a value without imposing it. We also saw

that there are judgments, like those of personal importance, that merely impose a

value. On the other hand, so far as a judgment has an objectivist dimension, the

dependence is two-sided. The dimension of judgmental engagement is also dependent

on the objectivist dimension. The judging person imposes on the object a value which

is supposed already to be there. Consider again a person who judges an offer made to

her as fair. It is not merely that she is happy about the offer, that she considers it

6 Value judgments are closely connected with factual beliefs as well, but it is part of

the present account that they cannot be reduced to it.

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seriously, appreciates the honesty of the offering party, and calls the offer “fair”;

rather, she judges it fair. For her, the fairness of the offer justifies being happy about

it, considering it seriously and so on.

We may now turn first to identify and then to analyze a certain kind of

ambivalence – one which is defined in terms of the objectivist aspect of value

judgments and is fundamental to the logic of value judgment and of value in general.

At the same time, the account to be presented should elucidate the objectivist

dimension of value judgment as one that is constituted mutually with the aspect of

judgmental engagement.

3 Two Objections to Ambivalence

Let us first retrace the philosophical distress that is bound up with ambivalence.

Ambivalence belongs to our lives and, in particular, it is possible to judge

ambivalently – for example that an offer is fair and that it is unfair. We commonly

express such attitudes and recognize them in each other, and these do not render the

agent merely confused; nor, in general, do they amount to paralysis or vacillation. Yet

such ambivalence is thought to be impossible or irrational in more than one way.

First, in light of the objectivity claimed, it seems that if a person judges that p, she

does not, or would be radically irrational to, judge that not-p. Second, ambivalence is

supposed to be problematic even when it has nothing to do with objectivity. In

particular, the opposed attitudes are bound up with opposed conduct.7 Allegedly, if

attitudes are defined by behavior, ambivalence is impossible; and otherwise it is

dysfunctional. The idea is that opposed attitudes respectively entail and exclude one

7 Better to say: with opposed conduct and consciousness. I ignore the further

complexity introduced by consciousness.

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and the same behavior. For example, judging that an offer is fair requires that one

does not rush to reject it, and judging that it is unfair entails that one immediately

rejects it. Thus either the ambivalent person is paralyzed, or it is not clear what it

means to have opposed attitudes. The presumed problem is clearest for desires and

parallel value judgments. If one wants to ϕ and wants not to ϕ, it seems that whatever

one actually does will not do much good. The same seems to hold for “One judges

that one ought and judges that one ought not to ϕ”; this purported problem also seems

to stretch over to other cases. For example, so far as someone’s contrary judgments

regarding the fairness of a job offer draw her both to take and not to take the job, we

seem to be back in the earlier situation.

As I see it, both the view from behavior and the view from objectivity are

misconceived. While my aim in this paper is to establish objectivist ambivalence, and,

by the same token, dissolve the problem from objectivity, the behavior problem is

attacked as well. Indeed, the following examples already suggest that actual behavior

in ambivalence of value judgment expresses both value judgments at once. They

suggest, moreover, that ambivalent behavior sometimes constitutes the ambivalence

as an integrative attitude. In some such cases, one’s behavior expresses a judgment

that a tension-fraught value, v-and-not-v, applies.

4 Identifying Objectivist Ambivalence of Value Judgment

Focusing our concerns on the problem from objectivity, it could be thought that there

is an easy way out: for could it not be the case that while each of the opposed

judgments is directed to some objectivity, ambivalence always pertains merely to their

dimension of judgmental engagement, i.e. that the opposed judgments are opposed

only qua judgmental engagements? Under such an interpretation, the ambivalence

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between one’s judgments would be similar to ambivalence between desires or

between emotions, while, on the other hand, the judgments would affirm perfectly

consistent propositions. For example, a person may judge an apartment he is

considering renting to be good, and at the same time judge that it is not good; and

although his attitudes conflict as judgmental engagements, the adjective ‘good’ may

here be taking two different senses that may both comfortably apply – for instance,

that the apartment is good in the sense of being cozy, and not good in the sense that it

is too expensive. While it still remains to be understood how even this sort of

ambivalence is possible, here one simply is not ambivalent about objectivity.

In fact, such a description is justified for some cases of ambivalence of value

judgment. However, this kind of explication could not generally hold, and very often

it indeed does not hold. Let us consider a case of ambivalence between judgments of

an offer’s fairness. Our protagonist, let’s call her Anna, is ambivalent in an ordinary

way as to whether an offer made to her is fair. As such, her conduct, further attitudes,

etc., express the two opposed courses which suggest themselves to her, as well as the

character of their opposition in her life. In the current example the opposition of

judgmental engagements may take the form of considering the offer seriously and

respecting the offerer, while coming to hate oneself for doing so; or of rejecting the

offer with a two-faced cynical/sincere “no thank you”; of rejecting it as unfair, but

soon after accepting a lesser offer, etc. In other cases, the judgmental engagement’s

dimension may amount to a desire that p, in the sense of an attitude in favor of

enhancing a state of affairs. For example, a person may ambivalently judge that she

ought to apologize, and that she ought not to do so (or only that it is not something

she ought to do). In such a case the person’s conduct, thoughts, and attitudes express

more particularly the courses of fulfillment of p and of not-p competing for her. A

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person who is ambivalent about whether she ought to apologize may, for example, say

some words to the hurt party more by way of an excuse, or apologize a bit too

dramatically, or say nothing in words but manifest her apology in deeds, etc.

At the same time, ambivalently judging an offer fair and unfair, or that one

ought and that one ought not to apologize, would often involve ambivalence between

contrary claims to objectivity. To ignore the objectivist dimension that ambivalence of

value judgment often involves is to ignore the difference between an ordinary

ambivalent judgment of an offer as fair and as unfair and an ordinary ambivalent

judgment that an offer is unfair but better than nothing. In the second case, one is

ambivalent about the offer, but not about its fairness or being better than nothing. The

offer being judged better than nothing does not undermine the judgment that it is

unfair, nor does it raise questions as to what the fairness consists in. At the same time,

the person’s engagement may be ambivalent here, i.e. guided by opposed

engagements, just as in being ambivalent whether the offer is fair. Similarly, holding

ambivalently that I ought to apologize and that I ought not to apologize involves that I

want and I don’t want to apologize (in the sense of “desire” or “want” given above).

Yet there is more to such ambivalence, as can be seen by comparing it with

ambivalence in which the person wholeheartedly judges that she ought to apologize,

while at the same time, she hates that unpleasant prospect. In the former case, but not

in the latter, the application of a value is itself at issue. The agent finds that the value

applies, and that it does not, and these judgments challenge one another as to where

the objectivity lies.

Let us use the phrase objectivist ambivalence to refer to such ambivalence of

value judgment, in which the attitudes are opposed as claims to objectivity, and let us

use the same expression also to refer particularly to the objectivist dimension of

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objectivist ambivalence. In her objectivist ambivalence as to whether a job offer is

unfair, Anna might think: how little money and how much work. So unfair! But is it?

(“Should the concept of fairness be inflected like this?” she may wonder). This

workplace is a new venture, and they promise to pay more once they have properly

established themselves. Fair enough. But she also sees that this is her (potential)

livelihood: it is neither a hobby, nor does it present her with a prospect of getting rich.

They have to pay her a plausible salary; and so on.

5 The Objectivist Ambivalence of Value Judgment: An Analysis

What then does objectivist ambivalence consist in? I shall answer by drawing

attention to three aspects. The first aspect, mutual undermining, is sufficient to

distinguish ambivalence from confusion; it is also because of this aspect that

objectivist ambivalence is not reducible to opposition between a judgment that prima

facie A is v and a judgment that prima facie A is not v – i.e., it is not reducible to cases

in which the person merely acknowledges reasons for, as well as against, A being v. In

contrast both to confusion and to prima facie opposition, in cases such as Anna’s

ambivalence the agent holds both objectivist attitudes. Moreover, she holds them as

her opposed attitudes. Accordingly, objectivist ambivalence is also irreducible to

apparent objectivist oppositions of judgments in which one judges that A is v and (that

it) is not v. In apparently opposed judgments A is judged v-in-some-aspect and not v-

in-another-aspect, while these aspects are supposed to constitute innocently separate

values: this stands in contrast with the second element of objectivist ambivalence of

value judgment.8

8 For accounts of ambivalence in terms of confusion, reasons for judgment, and

composite judgment that involves apparent opposition, see, respectively, Ruth Barcan

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6 Aspects of Objectivist Ambivalence of Value Judgment: (1) Mutual

Undermining

In ambivalence of value judgment a person may judge that p and also that not p. In

both poles of her ambivalence, the person accepts some objectivity – the same one

that is denied at the other pole. It thus appears that the concept of judgment excludes

the possibility of objectivist ambivalence. This, however, only follows if we assume

that the opposed judgments are held by the person as partial judgments of a wider

objectivity. We may not assume this: after all, the person is ambivalent between these

judgments.9

By the notion of mutual undermining I intend to formulate the rationality of

objectivist ambivalence as such, i.e. in so far as the particular character of objectivity

– the application of value, is ignored. Though I discuss objectivist ambivalence of

value judgment, the first point is relevant also to ambivalence in questions of fact, a

phenomenon which is even less acceptable to philosophers.10

We will consider

Marcus, “Moral Dilemmas and Consistency,” The Journal of Philosophy Vol. 77

(1980), pp. 121-36; Donald Davidson, “How is Weakness of the Will Possible,” in D.

Davidson, Essays on Actions & Events (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), pp. 21-42;

and Philippa Foot, “Moral Realism and Moral Dilemma,” The Journal of Philosophy,

Vol. 80 (1983): pp. 379–398, section I.

9 At least, not simply. In typical objectivist ambivalence of value judgment, as we

shall see, the judgments undermine one another, but also, in a certain sense, combine.

10 One finds some acknowledgement of the possibility of opposed beliefs in the work

on self-deception (Gardner, Fingarette, Davidson, Pears, and more ambiguously Audi

and Bach) and irrationality of belief (Gertler, and more ambiguously Gendler and

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ambivalence, in which the agent applies and denies one and the same value to the

Schwitzgebel); see also Sommers. However, with the exception of the accounts of

Gardner and Fingarette, ambivalence between the poles is excluded. Either the

opposed states cannot, for some reason or other, take account of each other (as in

Davidson’s and Pears’ split theories, or in Gendler’s automatic alief); or the opposed

cognitive states do not undermine each other, because they comprise, rationally or

irrationally, states of distinct kinds (Audi, Bach, Gendler, Gertler, Schwitzgebel,

Sommers).

Robert Audi, “Self-Deception, Action and Will,” Erkenntis Vol. 18 (1982), pp. 133-

158; Kent Bach, “An Analysis of Self-Deception,” Philosophy and Phenomenological

Research, Vol. 41 (1981), pp. 351-370; Donald Davidson, “Deception and Division,”

in J. Elster (ed.), The Multiple Self: Studies in Rationality and Social Change

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 79-92; Herbert Fingarette, “Self-

Deception and the ‘Splitting of the Ego’,” in R. Wollheim and J. Hopkins, eds.,

Philosophical Essays on Freud (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), pp.

212-227; Sebastian Gardner, Irrationality and the Philosophy of Psychoanalysis

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), esp. ch. 1; T. S. Gendler, “Alief and

Belief,” Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 105 (2008), pp. 634-663; Brie Gertler, “Self-

Knowledge and the Transparency of Belief,” in A. Hatzimoysis ed., Self-Knowledge

(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 125-45; David Pears, “Paradoxes and

Systems,” in D. Pears, Motivated Irrationality (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), pp.

67-106; Eric Schwitzgebel, “Acting Contrary to our Professed Beliefs, or the Gulf

between Occurrent Judgment and Dispositional Belief,” Pacific Philosophical

Quarterly Vol. 91 (2010): pp. 531–553; Fred Sommers, “Dissonant Beliefs,” Analysis

Vol. 69 (2009), pp. 267–74.

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object.11

We have already seen that objectivist ambivalence of value judgment implies

that the agent’s judgments refer to one another, by way of opposition, in their

evaluation of the object. In order to analyze this relation further, it should be

distinguished from mutual reference by opposition in general. For mutual reference by

opposition characterizes the poles of any ambivalence. Otherwise the poles were not

related for the agent and she would not be ambivalent in holding both of them.

We are concerned, more specifically, with opposed judgments, which refer to

each other, as judgments in objectivist conflict.12

It could seem, however, that the

poles of objectivist ambivalence do not refer to each other at all. Rather, the thought

may be that objectivist ambivalence may be regarded as tantamount to entanglement

in self-contradiction, for there too one both judges that p and judges that not-p. Yet

this is not the same phenomenon: mutual undermining distinguishes the one from the

other. Consider two cases of non-ambivalent entanglement in contradiction. In one

case, our protagonist has learned car mechanics and is presently worried that his car is

going to explode. However, his more theoretical beliefs in fact exclude this

possibility. While his beliefs mutually contradict, this person is clearly not ambivalent

in so far as he is not aware of the contradiction. His belief that the car might explode

does not take account of the other beliefs as beliefs that are opposed to it. Similarly, a

person may, without ambivalence, have value judgments that are opposed in the sense

11 In a related form of objectivist ambivalence, instead of two opposed judgments that

cast doubt on each other, one such pole combines with a pole of doubt. Thus, one can

be ambivalent between judging that Jane is brave and not judging that she is brave,

without one’s judging that Jane is not brave.

12 In what follows I use “belief” and “judgment” to emphasise judgments of fact and

value judgments respectively.

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that he accepts in them opposed propositions. This may be due to ignorance of facts

(the person judges that a certain job offer is revolting and the people who have made

it are bad people; he also judges that Bob is a good man, unaware that Bob is

responsible for the offer). Unlike such entanglements in contradiction, Anna’s

judgment that the offer is fair, discussed above, refers to her antithetical attitude that

this offer is unfair. The nature of their mutual reference is of molding and

undermining.

Let us explicate the account of mutual undermining further through a

somewhat different example. Sarah is ambivalent regarding Sam’s generosity. For

although Sam donated some money, Sal claims that certain promises of reward

underlie Sam’s action, and Sarah ambivalently believes this explanation. Conceiving

of generosity on the part of Sam as implying the absence of this kind of interest, she

judges him generous, and yet also judges him not so. In each of these attitudes she

denies the truth of the other. This example indeed captures a part of the structure of

objectivist ambivalence of value judgment. In objectivist ambivalence the person

holds both poles, while these poles may be said to contend with one another. In each

of her opposed attitudes, the person makes a claim that a value holds, and this claim is

opposed, or disclaimed, by the other attitude. In thinking Sam generous, Sarah

portrays the judgment that he is not generous as wrong. Her believing that he has been

counting on rewards in his donation involves thinking the contrary belief wrong. At

one pole of her ambivalence, Sarah judges that Sam didn’t make his donation with an

eye to repayment, even though Sal says otherwise – perhaps Sal puts too much stock

in rumors. Yet, Sal’s explanation does make sense, Sarah thinks, and Sam must have

given the donation counting on a reward; but then again perhaps not, since he is

normally a straightforward person. And so on.

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Seen as an internal monologue, and on condition that everything else known

about Sarah’s judgmental engagements is ignored, this passage may suggest that

Sarah does not judge one way or the other.13

The passage is proposed here, however,

as a condensed depiction of the mutual constitution of the judgments, which belongs

to objectivist ambivalence. As such, it depicts a structure, which is sufficiently

durable for the attribution of judgments, but also precarious in principle. In actual

fact, the ambivalence and the attitudes may be rather stable. For example, imagine a

case in which Sarah needs help but would not ask for it if she did not believe that she

would be helped out of generosity: Sarah’s ambivalence here may induce her actually

to ask for Sam’s help, strongly emphasizing, however, that she will not be able to pay

back. Or, in a different version of the story of Sarah’s ambivalence, Sarah, who tries

to be a generous woman, may treat Sam as someone to look up to, but then, in those

moments that she personally feels more cynical, may be struck by strong suspicions

against him.

The point is that when we identify objectivist ambivalence, the structure

presented here is implied. In the case of Sarah, her judgment that Sam is generous

undermines and molds her judgment to the contrary, and vice versa. By contrast, the

example has been chosen in order to depict mutual undermining in which the contents

of the judgments – the propositions judged and the concepts involved – are ideally not

molded as part of the ambivalence. The proposition entertained by Sarah’s judgment

13

I show in “Ambivalence of Value Judgment Cannot Be Deliberated Away” (The

Philosophical Forum, Vol. 44 (2013), pp. 395-412) that we cannot generally explicate

objectivist ambivalence of value judgment in terms of uncertainty and of deliberation

that is directed towards settling it. This paper also explores the positive relations

between objectivist ambivalence, deliberation and action.

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that Sam is generous does not acquire a meaning together with the proposition

entertained by her judgment that he is ungenerous. Compare with a case in which

someone (without ambivalence) judges that Sam counted on repayment in giving the

money, and also judges that Sam didn’t count on repayment, where repayment is

supposed to be political in the first case and financial in the second. Sarah’s case does

not manifest anything similar to this re-characterization of the concept of repayment.

Her ambivalence has nothing to do with how the concepts concerned are to be

understood. Relatedly, Sarah does not judge that the conjunction of the contents of her

judgments holds. She does not think that Sam both did and did not give the money

counting on certain rewards. Accordingly, while Sarah thinks that Sam is generous

and while she also thinks that he is not, Sarah does not think that Sam both is and is

not generous, nor that Sam’s action is generous and ungenerous.

Sarah’s ambivalence provides an ideal example with which to explicate the

notion of mutual undermining. However, the example is less than ideal for

illuminating the mutual undermining by opposed value judgments of the kind that is

our main concern. For Sarah’s ambivalence is not the ordinary – and more telling –

case of objectivist ambivalence of value judgment. While manifesting mutual

undermining, her ambivalence does not manifest the characteristic subject matter of

such undermining in ambivalence about value, and in this respect, is, in fact,

negatively instructive. For in analyzing Sarah’s ambivalence, we wish to say that

Sarah is completely assured about the value of generosity, with which she

ambivalently characterizes Sam. She has no worries about how generosity should be

understood in this context. Her trouble lies entirely in ambivalence about the facts,

which she takes to be all that is needed to determine whether the value applies. It is as

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if Sarah presupposes what generosity would have to be, and is ambivalent only as to

the application to the object of the pre-given value concept.

7 Value Judgments and Their Typical Objectivist Ambivalence

While Sarah is ambivalent about the application of the value, this does not reflect an

ambivalence as to the character of this value. Sarah’s ambivalence is about Sam’s

generosity without being in any way about generosity. She is not preoccupied with

how one should understand the concept of generosity in the context of the judgment.14

Values, however, are bound up with raising such questions. This may be

contrasted with the concepts that are connected with factual beliefs. Here an important

role is played by an ideal of an objectivity which is not about the concepts. Much has

been said against the hypostasis of this ideal.15

In some sense, however, to believe that

there is a desk in this room is to pursue a truth about the desk and the room, rather

than about such concepts as desk, room, or presence. What sense is that? Suppose that

Charles’s judgment that there is a desk in the room refers to a room that contains only

14

Or in more general contexts, whereas it may be part of the question what the

relevant generalisations are.

15 Against fixed concepts, against the understanding of beliefs in terms of pregiven

concepts, and against the suppositions that our epistemic projects divide between

conceptual and empirical pursuits. Names start with the later Wittgenstein for the first

point (despite interpretations according to which Wittgensteinian concepts are fixed

by context. See my “A Live Language: Concreteness, Openness, Ambivalence,”

under review), with Quine and Davidson for the second point, and with Quine and

Kuhn for the third.

19

a box serving as desk.16

In such a case we may believe that a concern with the

concepts characterizes Charles’s judgment and in view of this we can regard his

attitude as different from factual belief. The point is that the notion of a value

judgment could not make use of any analogous ideal: It is possible that Sarah

proceeds to judge that Sam is generous only after, so to speak, having settled her mind

about the concept of generosity, but this feature would be accidental to her attitude

being a judgment that Sam is generous. As we saw, the objectivist dimension of a

value judgment collapses unless that other dimension in which the person imposes a

value on the object of judgment is evoked. In the attribution of a value judgment, we,

by the same token, attribute a concern with value concepts. This is never seen more

clearly than in cases of objectivist ambivalence of value judgment.

In the first part of this paper, we identified the phenomenon of objectivist

ambivalence of value judgment. We there identified ambivalence as to what or how

the value ought to be in the case to be judged. We are now in position to name this

kind of ambivalence typical objectivist ambivalence of value judgment (typical

ambivalence, for brevity). After identifying typical ambivalence, we turned to

analysis, whose first feature is essential to any objectivist ambivalence. The two

following features aim at explicating (2) the meaning of an ambivalent concern with

values and (3) its implications for the logic of value. Now, if value judgments in

principle include a concern with values, then typical ambivalence reveals something

central to non-ambivalent value judgments in general. Up to now, we have seen the

mutual dependency between the objectivist dimension of judgment and the dimension

16 I borrow this example from Charles Travis’s introduction to his Unshadowed

Thought: Representation in Thought and Language (Cambridge, MA: Harvard

University Press, 2000).

20

of judgmental engagement, but what we need yet to see is how a concern with values

appears from the objectivist perspective: how it is expressed in the logic of value

judgments and in the logic of value. I will argue that value judgments in general

require typical ambivalence, with its aspect of (2) conceptual ambivalence, and that

conceptual ambivalence entails that (3) value concepts are subjected to molding by

judgments, and capable of internal tensions.17

The analysis to follow can be said to

posit at the heart of the logic of value and of value judgment an extension of Moore’s

open question. Moore writes “[W]hatever definition may be offered, it may always be

asked, with significance, of the complex so defined, whether it is itself good.”18

This

is true not only for attempts at descriptive definitions of values, as Moore’s use of the

question suggests. Nor is the question limited to attempts at general definitions of

values or to explicit definitions.

8 Aspects of Objectivist Ambivalence of Value Judgment: (2) Conceptual

Ambivalence

What distinguishes Anna’s opposed judgments as to a job’s fairness from Sarah’s

ambivalence as to Sam’s generosity is the fact that Anna’s judgments are in conflict

over what fairness would be in such a case. We can understand this further by appeal

to a notion of conceptual ambivalence. In the case of objectivist ambivalence of value

judgment, conceptual ambivalence combines with the aspect of mutual undermining.

17

See Amelie Rorty, “A Plea for Ambivalence,” in P. Goldie (ed.), The Oxford

Handbook of Philosophy of Emotion (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), ch.

19, for a related investigation.

18 G. E. Moore, Principia Ethica (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1903), ch.

I, § 13.

21

Rather than being independent of it, the additional aspect ought to give that relation

its particular shape as well as complement it. Each of the opposed judgments in a

typical ambivalence undermines an opposed view regarding the value’s-possible-

applying to the object. The italics and dashes are intended to emphasize that the

application of the value to the object constitutes a partial view of the value (fairness)

and that the contentions between the opposed judgments are contentions between

views of the value. In her opposed judgments that the job offer is fair and that it is not

so, the person takes up two contrary views on fairness, or at least on what ought

fairness be for her present concern.

What we see here is that typical judgmental ambivalence involves

ambivalence in regard to the concept, i.e. conceptual ambivalence. Let us think of

concepts as notions that capture certain threads in our life together. For example,

under this general and fundamental meaning of “a concept,” the concept of justice

captures judgments regarding justice, efforts to act justly, insincere politics in the

name of justice, etc. This Wittgensteinian conception of concepts does not mean that

the character of concepts as functions from objects to truth values is abandoned. Thus,

it is part of the concept of justice that we can, in various ways and domains, ask what

is just and what is not. On the other hand, the proposed understanding of “concept”

implies that concepts are not fixed. Of course, concepts as threads in human life allow

for domains that require determinacy. For example, the concept of addition includes a

mathematical domain of natural numbers in which it is fixed that adding 3 to 2 gives 5

and that it does not give 6. It is not by accident, however, that our example here is

external to the field of value. While value judgments are objectivist, i.e. we ask rather

than decide if something is just or fair, it will be a conclusion of this paper that values

22

are not determinate, neither universally nor contextually, in the way that the concept

of addition is.19

Once concepts are thought as threads in our joint human life, it can be said that

concepts are inflected through life. I wish to coin this expression first in a broader and

then in a narrower sense. In the broader sense of inflection, to say that concepts are

inflected means no more than that they take some character in accordance with the

judgments, actions, institutions, etc., that manifest them. Thus, other things are

important, true, etc. about justice when one tries to remedy an injustice one has

perpetrated, as compared to when an oppressed group fights for justice, or when

justice is analyzed as the law of the powerful. This should not be taken to imply,

however, that in inflecting a concept the person finds himself with a reduced concept:

When justice guides a plan, justice guides it as that concept that may also underlie

demands, be abused in so many ways, etc.20

People do not have to inflect concepts intentionally, not even when the

inflection belongs in particular to something that an individual does or thinks. Indeed,

it is necessary for the inflection of concepts under attitudes and actions, that,

generally, the inflection is not itself an attitude.21

However, sometimes inflecting a

concept comprises a mental attitude. Such inflection is, moreover, itself a value

19 I also suggested in the former section that the openness of values reflects the

character of objectivist value judgments as judgmental engagements, but I don’t make

use of this in what follows.

20 Neither can we suppose that there is in general a right answer to the question

whether a concept is inflected in certain way under this or that engagement.

21 I discuss concept inflection, inflections versus attitudes and conceptual ambivalence

in “A Live Language: Concreteness, Openness, Ambivalence,” (under review).

23

judgment, that is to say, the person judges that the relevant concept should in this case

be inflected thus.22

In this narrower sense of “concept inflection,” inflection is

intentional. For example, it can be someone’s political position that justice, in the

context of fighting for justice, is not something that can be asked for or given.

Again, sometimes such an attitude to justice stands in conflict with another:

they are poles of a conceptual ambivalence. The fight for justice of a person (or a

group) may express their ambivalence as to how justice ought to be inflected, whether

as something to be asked for, or as a guide for action. (When they constitute

ambivalence, by definition the contending inflections have become attitudes.) While

conceptual ambivalence may intermingle with uncertainty or with ambivalence about

facts in the formation of objectivist ambivalence of value judgment, we will ignore

such possibilities. Here is a simple case of typical objectivist ambivalence: Sarah can

think that Sam is generous and that he is ungenerous, not merely because of factual

questions, but by way of ambivalence about what generosity should be in such a case.

He is generous: he gives so much. But this is not generosity: he expects to be paid

someday. Well, this is generosity: giving without calculations, not without hopes or

interests. And so on.

9 Conceptual Ambivalence between Plural Values

The explication of objectivist ambivalence in terms of mutually undermining

judgments that manifest or constitute a conceptual ambivalence stands in contrast to a

central conception of ambivalence. Many of those who acknowledge ambivalence of

value judgment base this on the plurality of separate very different values, which are

22 Accordingly, attitudes of concept inflection can be thought as attitudinal versions of

the concepts, but also as second-order attitudes towards the concepts.

24

not jointly negotiable. Thus, this is the heart of section II of Foot’s “Moral Realism

and Moral Dilemma” and of Michael Zimmerman’s “A Plea for Ambivalence.”23

This

conception may wrongly suggest that ambivalence cannot be objectivist.

Could this be right? Let us approach this by considering ambivalence between

judgments that do not affirm and deny the same value. This will also allow us to

extend the notion of objectivist ambivalence beyond ambivalence between a judgment

that A is v and a judgment that A is not v. Suppose, first, that Rob judges ambivalently

that Bob is always ready to help anyone in need, but also that he is an unpleasant

person. Here Rob’s ambivalence need not be objectivist. While his judgmental

engagements towards Bob stand in conflict, their objectivist aspects can perfectly

cohere. Now, if they cohere in the sense that we see how it is that they are both true,

this in fact suggests that we do not think of the values as foreign. The values may,

however, be foreign in a narrower sense, according to which unpleasantness does not

suggest (at least in the particular case) that one does not like to provide help, and

23

Foot 1983, op. cit. M. J. Zimmerman, “A Plea for Ambivalence,” Metaphilosophy,

Vol. 24 (1993), pp. 382-389. See also Michael Stocker, Plural and Conflicting Values

(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), chs. 6 & 8. In the context of virtue ethics, see M. C.

Nussbaum, Love’s Knowledge: Essays of Philosophy and Literature (New York &

Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990, ch. 2, e.g. pp. 65-6). More recent Aristotelian

accounts also base ambivalence on the plurality of virtues or values, while giving

some role to the mediation of practical reason perhaps undermines the isolation of the

opposed judgments from each other. See Kristján Kristjánsson, “The Trouble with

Ambivalent Emotions,” Philosophy, Vol. 85 (2010), pp. 485-510 and David Carr,

“Virtue, Mixed Emotions and Moral Ambivalence,” Philosophy, Vol. 84 (2009), pp.

31-46.

25

readiness to help does not suggest unpleasantness. One way or the other, to take the

case to involve foreign values is to understand it as a case of non-objectivist

ambivalence.

However, change Rob’s second judgment to one deeming Bob a violent

person and we encounter what would in characteristic cases be objectivist

ambivalence. The judgment that Bob is violent undermines the judgment that he is

such a helping angel. Yet, an account of ambivalence of value judgment in terms of

separate values must deny this. If Rob is ambivalent, then the values are to be foreign,

or, in other words, the evaluative concepts that one judgment denies of Bob are

supposedly not those that the other applies.

How can such a denial be understood? One possibility is that the values are

understood as entailing contradictory facts, and Rob ambivalently believes some such

fact. Such cases may exist, and maybe Rob’s example can be understood in these

lines. However, ambivalence due to alien values is generally not thought of as fact-

based. In any case, there is a natural reading of the example, according to which

Rob’s ambivalence cannot be settled by learning the facts. All the relevant facts are

more or less known to him. Some of them make him judge Bob violent, and this

judgment makes him ask what kind of helping angel Bob could be, even though much

stands for that judgment as well. This would bring us back to point one, attributing to

Rob objectivist ambivalence, in which the values contend with each other. However,

this move is too quick, for it is possible that Rob’s value judgments do not directly

challenge each other and yet constitute ambivalence as to where the objectivity lies:

The judgments may contend in regard to a more fundamental value. This construction

26

allows Foot and Zimmerman to describe their forms of ambivalence as moral.24

While

some cases can be described in this way, the problem for such accounts of moral

ambivalence is that they are empty unless the fundamental moral value is understood

as establishing typical objectivist ambivalence – yet this understanding would

undermine the presupposition that moral ambivalence is a matter of plural values. Let

us, in any case, focus on the different values applied by the poles of the judgmental

ambivalence and see that the values must challenge each other, either directly or

indirectly. We now assume that the judgments applying the foreign values to the

object constitute objectivist ambivalence in light of some other value they thus

respectively apply and deny. For instance, Rob judges Bob as good and also as not

good (or as bad). It may be appropriate to regard the two values of violence and

helpfulness as foreign, but the point is that their place in the value of goodness cannot

be thus regarded. Perhaps Bob may be judged good for helping people in need and

bad since he is violent; and perhaps violence does not cast doubt on the application of

a concept of helping people; but its badness does cast doubt on the goodness of his

helping people. Describing the conceptual ambivalence involved in Rob’s

ambivalence of value judgment regarding Bob in terms of goodness qua help in need

and badness qua violence hides how the goodness judged takes account of the violent

badness that undermines it.

While the issue of partially foreign values cannot be further developed here, I

have shown that ambivalence whose concern is with objectivity cannot depend on

foreign values. Rather the contrary: it presupposes the unity of a value denied and a

24 See Foot 1983, op. cit., p. 396: ought; Zimmerman 1993, op. cit., p. 384:

virtuousness.

27

value applied.25

Now it is often presupposed that value judgments are either alien or

commeasurable on a joint scale. It is as if to judge Bob both good and not good

according to the same value is to assign to him a certain amount of goodness and

negate from him a certain amount of it. Then, the smaller amount can be subtracted

from the larger amount, and the result would exhibit Bob as good, or as bad, or, if the

quantities are identical, as neither good nor bad.26

It is important to see that our

analysis of objectivist ambivalence of value judgment stands as far as is possible from

suggesting such a view: the unity of value is not required for the sake of measurement

according to a pre-defined scale. On the contrary, the opposed judgments contend in

regard to the character that the value is to have; and the judgments apply the same

value precisely to the extent that the different inflections of goodness contend with

each other to be the suitable inflection.

We can thus return to cases of objectivist ambivalence between judgments that

directly challenge each other’s objectivity, and, by the same token, express or

constitute conceptual ambivalence about the value concerned. We have seen that

conceptual ambivalence can be thought of both as an ambivalent holding of the

concept and as an ambivalent attitude towards it. Under the second formulation, a

typical ambivalence involves a judgment as to how the value should be inflected in

the case discussed. In addition, the first aspect of objectivist ambivalence has been

that the held judgments, A1 and A2, undermine each other. Each of these opposed

claims is disclaimed by the other in a concrete way. The two aspects combine and in

typical ambivalence, A1 takes the character of judging against the way A2 inflects the

25

When typical ambivalence involves two values, each of them can be said to be both

applied and denied.

26 This view is nicely depicted and criticised by Stocker (e.g. ch. 8) and Nussbaum.

28

value, and vice versa. We may also say that the ambivalent person maintains two

opposed judgments, B1 and B2, that the value ought and that it ought not to be

inflected as in A1 (or as in A2). Again, according to the first aspect, the B1 claim is

disclaimed in a concrete way and vice versa.

This partial description must be complemented. Were the description

exhaustive, it would make typical objectivist ambivalence completely analogous with

fact-based objectivist ambivalence. Yet, typically, contending value judgments do not,

generally, merely undermine one another. While deeming Bob violent-and-bad

undermines for Rob the judgment that Bob is kind-hearted-and-good, Rob may also

accept the two evaluations together. In judging Bob violent-and-bad he criticizes his

judgment that Bob is kind-hearted-and-good and the understanding of kindness as

applicable to people who are violent-and-bad. Yet, by the same token, Rob may well

also acknowledge that Bob is both violent-and-bad and kind-hearted-and-good. In the

same way Anna’s judgments that the job offer is fair and that it is unfair can

undermine each other while forming together a joint judgment of the job offer. Thus

Rob, Anna, as well as Sarah in the typical ambivalence version, do not share the

situation of Sarah’s entirely fact-based ambivalence regarding Sam. Sarah, to the

extent that her ambivalence is based on a factual question,27

is ambivalent regarding

Sam’s generosity and whether he gave the money for a reward, while she knows

perfectly well that either Sam was, or he was not, expecting a reward. By contrast, as

Williams says, if somewhat too strongly, in “Ethical consistency,” ambivalence of

value judgment can have the character that “both ‘ought’s do apply.”28

While the

27 That is, to the extent that that she is not concerned, in her ambivalence, about what

would be a reward, or what would be expecting a reward.

28 Williams 1973, op. cit., p. 177, see also pp. 183-4.

29

quoted claim may seem mysterious, Williams’s formulation suggests that the opposed

propositions that are accepted together are understood independently of one another,

and this suggestion may be responsible for the mystery. Our contrary account of

typical objectivist ambivalence of value judgment should indeed allow us to articulate

this central possibility of value judgment.

10 Aspects of Objectivist Ambivalence of Value Judgment: (3) Objectivist

Ambivalence and the Logic of Value

How is it possible that mutually undermining judgments, which are in tension as to

the character of a value, may together constitute a unitary judgment on the part of the

agent? In order to answer this we should take note of the fact that we are confronting

not only the logic of objectivist judgments and ambivalence but also that of the

meaning and objectivity of judged propositions. If people judge ambivalently that A is

v and not-v, then such judged propositions are meaningful. Furthermore, if ambivalent

judgments that A is v and not-v are part of our ordinary life and language with

judgments, it appears to be required that that they may indeed be right.29

Thus, what

stands more generally at the heart of the matter is the logic of value. My reply to the

“how possible” question is that if such judgments seem to be impossible, this is

because of logical misconceptions regards this domain. Indeed, a further examination

of what typical ambivalence involves may establish an alternative view as to the logic

of values and their objective application.

29 I cannot here argue directly against global forms of scepticism, including moral

scepticism. For our needs, however, it is enough that a unitary ambivalent judgment

that A is v and not v may in principle be right if other judgments may be.

30

It is part of the aspect of typical ambivalence to be explicated in this final

section that ambivalent value judgments mold the values concerned. This is true in

regard to any case of typical ambivalence, regardless of whether one’s opposed

judgments combine into a unitary judgment according to which “both ‘oughts’ do

apply.” To keep in mind that objectivist ambivalence can be typical without

conforming to Williams’s insight, consider the following ambivalence of Hannah

regarding an apology. She judges that she ought to apologize for having treated Sam

harshly. Yet (Hannah thinks) she precisely had to be harsh to make him

see.” She definitely ought not to spoil this. Indeed, ought she to apologize for being in

the right? But was she? (She must doubt.) She had no right to speak to him that way.

She ought to make an apology. Still (she pulls back) – this is ridiculous and she may

as well urge him to go on with his misdeeds. And so on.

We are by now familiar with the conceptual ambivalence bound up with such

molding undermining, i.e. with the fact that Hannah’s opposed judgments contend

regarding how the value of “ought” ought to be inflected, whereas the two inflections

compete on one concept of “ought.” In fact, speaking of conceptual ambivalence, our

inquiry has not remained solely in the domain of mental attitudes, but has extended to

values. We can extricate from the account of objectivist ambivalence that typical

objectivist ambivalence molds and undermines the very values concerned, and it may

in particular find in the object tension-fraught values, such as “good and bad.”

What we need to see is that we cannot reconstruct typical objectivist

ambivalence as referring to objectivity of a univocal kind. Note first that the notion of

inflection (in the narrow sense in which it constitutes an attitude) has to do with what

happens to the concepts. For inflections are not merely attitudes about concepts, but

rather a contribution to the conceptual thread. In particular, in inflecting generosity or

31

fairness in her judgment, the person, by definition, shapes these concepts. Generosity,

for example, is shaped as requiring (in order to be judged to apply in relevant

contexts) some sacrifice or renunciation on the part of the generous person.

Of course we are not interested in any aspect of the conceptual thread of a

value, but rather at the concept as establishing the character and objectivity of value

judgments. With this in mind, what kind of objectivity is bound up with our discourse

of value judgment? Call “univocal objectivity” the idea that something about the

value determines (in addition to innocuous further factors such as the special facts of

the situation) whether it should or should not be inflected in those ways that make it

true, at least in the right circumstances, of some objects. If value judgments are bound

up with inflections of the value, and if such inflections shape the values as regards the

values’ applicability to objects30

then values do not obey the logic of univocal

objectivity. Now, typical objectivist ambivalence grants us the conditionals; the only

point that still requires to be explicitly extricated is that values are shaped in typical

ambivalence especially as regards their applicability to objects. This we shall see in

two forms. Below we shall see it directly, but first let us consider what it would mean

to construe typical objectivist ambivalence in terms of a completely predetermined

and unambiguous objectivity. Under such a construal, the conceptual concerns bound

up with ambivalence of value judgment and with value judgment in general become

quasi-factual. There would have to be facts – in language, in evolution, in the abode

of Plato’s gods? – as to what the value of ought is, or how ought should be inflected

in the context of Hannah’s possible apology. Or does it belong to the relevant context

for the inflection of ought that Hannah herself judges in the issue? Or perhaps a

certain larger description must determine the inflection, such as “apology after harsh

30 In suitable contexts.

32

treatment” or maybe “apology after partly justified harsh treatment”? If the objectivist

concern with value imitates the concern with facts, the facts that could be known and

settle a typical objectivist ambivalence must settle these problems of identifying the

right facts as well.

If it is central to the logic of value that it is not quasi-factual, typical

ambivalence establishes this through a still stronger characterization of the logic of

value: It reveals us that values tolerate un-univocal objectivity. What would that be?

Let us reconsider typical ambivalence. We have seen that the inflections bound up

with the opposed judgments shape the value. Now add to this a characteristic of

ambivalence discussed above, namely that opposed attitudes partaking in ambivalence

are not independent attitudes, but rather they are held as mutually opposed. As such,

the poles mold each other. In the case of objectivist attitudes they mold each other by

undermining, as in the descriptions of Sarah. However, since judging shapes a value,

the contention between attitudes molds the shaping of value. It is not only that the

judgment – the judging attitude – that Sam is generous takes account of the opposed

judgment. Rather, the inflection of the value proposed by the judgment that Sam is

generous takes account of the opposed judgment.

This also implies that if we ask how Sarah, for example, inflects generosity

under one of the poles of her ambivalence, any answer is unstable or simplifying,

since her inflection takes into account the contention, and remains undermined in any

form it might be said to take. Thus, the understanding of objectivist ambivalence of

value judgment in terms of different aspects of the value is both right and wrong. On

the one hand, typical objectivist ambivalence entails that the value is understood or

inflected in different ways. On the other hand, any separate identity of one of the

inflections is denied, since to say that a concept is inflected at one pole of the

33

objectivist ambivalence means that its inflection is challenged by the opposite

inflection.

In the example in which Sarah’s value judgment about Sam was seen to be

based on her beliefs regarding his expectations of a reward, I outlined an ambivalence

with an even worse reputation than that of ambivalence of value judgment – namely,

ambivalence of factual belief. Yet ambivalence of value judgment is in a sense more

philosophically perplexing than ambivalence of belief, concerning not only the

attitudes but also their content. For the ambivalent agent does not oppose a claim

solely by disclaiming it. By the same token that Hannah’s judgment that the ought

value applies to her apology is undermined, “ought” is inflected as bound up with an

ought not. We thus get, so to speak, an ought-but-ought-not at the one pole of the

ambivalence, and it is coupled with an ought-not-though-I-ought-to at the other pole.

In such cases, in which the combined values at the poles do not converge, it might,

however, be relatively easy to ignore the tensions the values contain. Yet in other

cases they do converge, constituting these phenomena of typical ambivalence that

make explicit the un-univocal logic of value. These are the cases already presented, in

which the person judges – alas, ambivalently – that both judgments hold together.

So do people believe contradictions when it comes to value? I don’t think

there is a good answer to give here. While a negative cannot do, to answer in the

affirmative drives us into one of two unsatisfactory horns of a dilemma. Either we

ignore the meaningfulness of judgment that A is v and not v or we think of

contradictions as completely legitimate according to their own logic, assimilating

contradiction into the domain of meaningfulness and losing the tension that is bound

up with ambivalent judgment. It is better to say that it is not clear how we should

inflect the concept of contradiction when judgments are concerned with how to inflect

34

concepts. For typical objectivist ambivalence of value reveals that the logic of the

objectivity of value is not the same as the logic of (factual) truth. Thus we get joint

objectivist ambivalence, in which we can attribute to the agent a judgment that makes

a joint claim to objectivity, creating a kind of tension-fraught value, only ambivalently

held, of the form “v and not-v”: Sarah judges Sam generous and ungenerous.

11 Further Suggestions

If the proposals in this paper are not entirely wide of the mark, then ambivalence is

central to the logic of value and of value judgment. Value judgments have an

objectivist dimension, and this dimension invites cases of appropriate ambivalence in

regard to the application of a value to a person, action, or thing. In typical cases, such

ambivalence includes the mutual undermining of the opposed judgments as well as

conceptual ambivalence, and entails that tension-fraught inflections are inherent to

values. While accepting objectivist ambivalence thus runs against entrenched

philosophical conceptions of subjectivity and objectivity, value and judgment, taking

typical objectivist ambivalence into account should at the same time be rewarded

with respect to various related debates. Let me mention three directions here that

extend beyond the suggestions in the body of the text.

First, I believe that any investigation that concerns mental attitudes (from the

study of emotion or desire to that of personhood or interpersonal relations) should

take ambivalence seriously. In contrast to the tendencies, manifest in the growing

debate on ambivalence, to reduce ambivalence to one-sided choice with some residue,

irrational confusion, or two separate circles in the person’s life, we have seen an

objectivist form of the substantial tension, which, by the same token, comprises a

rational and unitary interlinkage between attitudes, central to ambivalence in general.

35

Secondly, if values are importantly open to ambivalent inflection, this

challenges the quick move from theories of the unity of value to theories of separate

plural values in the context of relativism and of conflicts between people and groups.

To acknowledge instead the inherent rationality of objectivist and partly objectivist

tensions is also to be able to think into various possibilities of happier and less happy

dialogues.

Thirdly, I believe that the work on concrete ethical and aesthetical issues will

be deepened and sharpened, once we admit into it the openness of value to

meaningful tensions and its anchor in typical ambivalence. This character of value

also calls for substantial changes in the major normative ethical systems. For one, we

should join pluralists in denying the adequacy of any one system to constitute the

system of morality: A univocal truth for such a principle as, for instance, ‘goodness is

the utility of the society’, would not leave us with some particular version of the

values of goodness or of utility, but would in fact leave us bereft of any such values.

In addition to this implication, however, it is as important that typical ambivalence is

assimilated into deontological, utilitarian, and virtue-ethicist thinking. Kant rejected

objectivist ambivalence, utilitarianism is all but defined around a similar rejection,

and neo-Aristotelian philosophy joins them in a more mild fashion; nevertheless, to

accept ambivalence is not to annul but rather, we may hope, to significantly enhance

the understanding of obligation, utility, and virtue, as well as their relations. 31

31

I wish to thank Charles Blattberg, Eran Dorfman, David Enoch, Ben Young and

two anonymous referees for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper.