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APPENDIX I
A METHODOLOGICAL NOTE ON
VALUATIONS AND BELIEFS
I. The Mechanism of Rationalization
People have ideas about how reality actually is, or was, and they have ideas about
how it ought to be, or ought to have been. The former we call ^^bdiefs.^^ The latter
we call ^Evaluations,
A person’s beliefs, that is, his knowledge, can be objectively
judged to be true or false and more or less complete. His valuations—that a social
situation or relation is, or was, ‘‘just,” “right,” “fair,” “desirable,” or the opposite,
in some degree of intensity or other—cannot be judged by such objective standards
as science provides. In their people express both their beliefs and their
valuations. Usually people do not distinguish between what they think they know and
what they like or dislike.
There is a close psychological interrelation between the two types of ideas. In our
civilization people want to be rational and objective in their beliefs. We have faith in
science and are, in principle, prepared to change our beliefs according to its results.
People also want to have “reasons” for the valuations they hold, and they usually
express only those valuations for which they think they have “reasons.” To serve
as opinions, specific valuations are selected, are formulated in words and are motivated
by acceptable “reasons.” With the help of certain beliefs about reality, valuations arc
posited as parts of a general value order from which they are taken to be logical
inferences. This value hierarchy has a simple or elaborate architecture, depending
mainly upon the cultural level of a person. But independently of this, most persons
want to present to their fellows—and to themselves—a trimmed and polished sphere
of valuations, where honesty, logic, and consistency rule. For reasons which we shall
discuss, most people’s advertised opinions are, however, actually illogical and contain
conflicting valuations bridged by skewed beliefs about social reality. In addition, they
indicate very inadequately the behavior which can be expected, and they usually
misrepresent its actual motivation.
The basic difficulty in the attempt to present a logical order of valuations is, of
course, that those valuations actually are conflicting. When studying the way in which
the valuations clash, and the personal and social results brought about by the conflicts,
we shall, morover, have to observe that the valuations simply cannot be treated as if
they existed on the same plane. They refer to different levels of the moral person-
ality.*^ The moral precepts contained in the respective valuations correspond to
• This hypothesis is presented more fully in the Introduction to this volume (Sections i
and a).
1027
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