Hammond is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Portland State University in Oregon. This time Hammond raised questions about Whitehead's view of the priority of aesthetic to moral order. Hammond began by noting the Webster definition of aestheticism as a doctrine that principles of beauty are basic to other and especially moral principles. This theory combines claims about the basic order in the world, about the nature of value, and about the concept of morality.
Aesthetic order is to be differentiated from mechanical, logical, and epistemic types of order.
Hammond was concerned with the implications of aestheticism for morality. He asked how Whitehead's conception of the aim of morality can provide a basis for moral assessment and decision . Viewing Whitehead's aestheticism as entailing a teleological ethical framework in which aim and purpose are fundamental, Hammond asked how the deontological ethical concerns of justice, equity, and reparation are to be accommodated. A third problem, Hammond suggested, was that an aestheticist theory of morals does not readily allow for the equal intrinsic value of persons . The nature of these problems may stem partly from rivalries between the branches of philosophy and partly from neglect of distinctions between types of human-centered experience and their employment to ground theories of order and value at the prehuman levels of the cosmos.