Conditions of Rational Inquiry

D. Pole, whose Later Philosophy of Wittgenstein appeared in 1958, here makes a new attack on the problem of value-judgement by taking it out of its limited ethical context. Beginning with an examination and criticism of current views that base all moral and other principles on personal choice or decision, he finds a point of departure for his own account of the problem in the claim that rational inquiry of any sort rests on the possibility of evaluation. The place of the one process within the other is then worked out in some detail; and an attempt is made to show how inquiry, as a collective undertaking, involves the progressive search for and establishment of new principles.

David Pole is a Lecturer in Philosophy at King's College London.