Everett Hall
Everett W. Hall Everett W. Hall (1901-1960) was an American philosopher, known for his advocacy of common-sense realism and his notion of what he called the "categorial" primacy of certain assertions. Hall received his A.B. and M.A. degrees from Appleton College, and his Ph.D. from Cornell University (1n 1929). Between 1929 and his death in 1960, he taught at the following universities: Ohio State, Stanford, Iowa State, and North Carolina (he was Department Chairman at the last two schools). He also held visiting appointments at Northwestern University, the University of Southern California, and Kyoto (Japan) University. Hall was the author of four books as well as numerous papers. The books are _What is Value_ (1952), _Modern Science and Human Values_(1956), _Philosophical Systems_(1960), and _Our Knowledge of Fact and Value_(1961). After his death a number of his papers were collected by his colleague, E.M. Adams and published as _Categorial Analysis_(1964).
Hall's philosophy was a linguistic variant of naive realism according to which values as well as physical objects and properties are much as generally understood by common sense. In this he was in the tradition of 18th Century Scottish realist, Thomas Reid. In spite of his claimed adherence to common sense and the "grammar" of ordinary language, he was an advocate of mind-body identity theory, claiming that some neurological events simply have a "mental dimension." In the theory of perception, he argued that perceptual errors and hallucinations can be explained by various properties being present in a manner other than exemplification. Such "ascriptions" of sensuous properties give evidence, but never certainty that the represented properties are also exemplified. This "intentional realism" in his view, made the sense-data theory unnecessary. His views on perception are akin to later "color realists" such as Michael Tye.
His ethical views were similarly characterized by the belief that emotions provide evidence (though not incorrigible evidence) of the presence of various values in the world. However, Hall did not agree with G.E. Moore that values were non-epistemic properties. In his view, values were neither properties nor relations: they are "ought-to-be-exemplifieds." A's being F is good just in case "it were good" that A be F. He held values are in this way akin to semantic dimensions, like truth. That is, just as "Snow is white" is true just in case snow is white, Jones being saved is called for, just in case "it were good that Jones be saved."
In metaphilosophy, Hall held that there could be no empirical or deductive proofs of the superiority of one basic philosophy over another (say, of realism over phenomenalism), because he took "preference" of one or the other to be a function of acceptance of the view's basic categories or of "categorial commitment," We are all, he claimed, trapped within a "categorial predicament" since we cannot step outside of all categorial frameworks and determine which is best from some outside footing. All we can do is try to determine which is most consonant with both common sense and modern science (which he denied were in irresolvable conflict). We do this, in his view, by examining the grammar of common sense, since any philosophical position that conflicts too deeply or frequently with common sense will not be plausible to anyone.
In 1966, The Southern Journal of Philosophy published a festschrift in Hall's honor which contained papers by, among others (former colleague) Wilfrid Sellars and (former student) Romane Clark.