Whitehead and Valuation

Whitehead recognizes two categories of Valuation, which can be characterized as 'immediate' and 'mediated'. Immediate Valuation is a simple feeling of like or of dislike. Mediated Valuation evaluates immediate Valuations, via reference to some objective criterion, which, in Whitehead's system is attributable to 'God'. Prominent classical examples of an objective criterion are Aristotle's 'Mean' and Kant's 'Universalizability', while Emotivism reduces any such purportedly 'objective' concept to immediate Valuation. Whitehead's incorporation of 'God' into experience exposes a crucial shortcoming in Hume's Moral theory more effectively than does even Kant. For Hume, Valuation is primarily immediate. However, he further argues that sympathy with another is more worthy than merely private like or dislike, and that universal sympathy is more worthy than localized sympathy. Whitehead's scheme demonstrates that in the absence of some objective criterion, Hume has no grounds for his mediated Valuations.