PRINCETON, N.J., Thursday, Dec. 5--After three days of drifting discussion, the 90 world intellectuals meeting at Princeton got down to business yesterday and finished their four day exchange with a lively debate on whether and why their conference was a failure.

During their splurge of self-criticism before the press and TV, the group focused on what had become unintentionally the chief concern of the seminar: the proper role of the intellectual in finding solutions to world problems.

Sponsored by the International Association for Cultural Freedom, a Paris-based group promoting world intellectual dialogue, the seminar brought together scholars, writers, and government figures from all over the world for discussion of "the United States problems, image, and impact in the world."

Lack of Artists

During the morning session Pierre Emmanuel, kicked off the self-searching when he criticized the conference for dealing with world problems only from a scientific and sociological perspective.

The IACF, he said, did not invite enough writers, philosophers, and artists; and he predicted that the major problem confronting the U.S. and the world was finding a place for artistic and human values in an increasingly scientific society.

Later in the day, Sam Brown, a former Harvard Divinity student, called the conference "a tragic failure." He accused the participants of lacking passion in their discussion of world problems and of failing to address crucial moral questions.

Brown criticized the IACF for not representing the New Left, for not discussing the problem of white racism, for not inviting enough American critics of American society, and for not dealing with the problem of how intellectuals should relate to power.

Brown's remarks elicited an angry response from Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. '38, professor of Humanities at the City University of New York.

"I have never believed that passion and reason could be separated," Schlesinger said.

"If we are going to follow the exortations of the young to turn intellectual into emotional problems, the winners will not be the New Left, the winners will be the Right."

Stanley H. Hoffmann, professor of Government at Harvard, seconded the contention that the conference had failed to come to grips with the relationship between power and intellectual activity.

But Carl M. Kaysen, co-chairman of the seminar, replied to Brown's criticism about the representativeness of the conference by saying "this is not a constituent assembly of the intellectual world.