Value theory

Last updated September 24, 2023

In ethics and the social sciences, value theory involves various approaches that examine how, why, and to what degree humans value things and whether the object or subject of valuing is a person, idea, object, or anything else. Within philosophy, it is also known as ethics or axiology.

Traditionally, philosophical investigations in value theory have sought to understand the concept of "the good". Today, some work in value theory has trended more towards empirical sciences, recording what people do value and attempting to understand why they value it in the context of psychology, sociology, and economics.^[1]

In ecological economics, value theory is separated into two types: donor-type value and receiver-type value. Ecological economists tend to believe that 'real wealth' needs an accrual-determined value as a measure of what things were needed to make an item or generate a service.^[2]

In other fields, theories posit the importance of values as an analytical independent variable (including those put forward by Max Weber, Émile Durkheim, Talcott Parsons, and Jürgen Habermas). Classical examples of sociological traditions which deny or downplay the question of values are institutionalism, historical materialism (including Marxism), behaviorism, pragmatic-oriented theories, postmodern philosophy and various Objectivist-oriented theories.

At the general level, there is a difference between moral and natural goods. Moral goods are those that have to do with the conduct of persons, usually leading to praise or blame. Natural goods, on the other hand, have to do with objects, not persons. For example, the statement "Mary is a good person" uses 'good' very differently than in the statement "That is good food".

Ethics is mainly focused on moral goods rather than natural goods, while economics has a concern in what is economically good for the society but not an individual person and is also interested in natural goods. However, both moral and natural goods are equally relevant to goodness and value theory, which is more general in scope.

Ethics and axiology

Intuitively, theories of value must be important to ethics. A number of useful distinctions have been made by philosophers in the treatment of value.

Intrinsic and instrumental value

It is useful to distinguish between instrumental and intrinsic values. This distinction is based on the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic properties. First introduced by Plato in the "Republic", an instrumental value is worth having as a means for getting something else that is good (e.g., a radio is instrumentally good in order to hear music). An intrinsically valuable thing, by contrast, is worth having for itself, not as a means to something else.

Intrinsic and instrumental goods do not constitute mutually exclusive categories: some things can be found to be both good (in themselves) while simultaneously being good for getting other things that have value.

A prominent argument in environmental ethics, made by writers like Aldo Leopold and Holmes Rolston III, is that wild nature and healthy ecosystems have intrinsic value, prior to and apart from their instrumental value as resources for humans, and should therefore be preserved. This line of argument has been articulated further in recent years by Canadian philosopher John McMurtry within the Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems published by UNESCO.

Pragmatism and contributory goodness

John Dewey (1859–1952) in his book Theory of Valuation,^[3] says goodness is the outcome of ethic valuation and a continuous balancing of "ends in view". An end in view is said to be an objective potentially adopted, which may be refined or rejected based on its consistency with other objectives or as a means to objectives already held.

Dewey's empiricist approach evinces absolute intrinsic value denial; i.e. not accepting intrinsic value as an inherent or enduring property of things. Instead, Dewey sees the appearance of intrinsic value as an illusory product of our continuous valuative activity as purposive beings. In addition to denying categorically that there is anything like intrinsic value, Dewey held the same position with regard to moral values: for Dewey, moral values are also based on a learning process, and are never intrinsic or absolute.

Another contribution of pragmatism to value theory is the idea of contributory goods with a contributory conditionality. These have the same qualities as the good thing, but need some emergent property of a whole state-of-affairs in order to be good. For example, salt is food on its own, but is far better as part of a prepared meal. In other words, such goods are only "good" when certain conditions are met. This is in contrast to other goods, which may be considered "good" in a wider variety of situations.

Kant: hypothetical and categorical goods

The thinking of Immanuel Kant greatly influenced moral philosophy. He thought of moral value as a unique and universally identifiable property, as an absolute value rather than a relative value. He showed that many practical goods are good only in states-of-affairs described by a sentence containing an "if" clause, e.g., in the sentence, "Sunshine is only good if you do not live in the desert." Further, the "if" clause often described the category in which the judgment was made (art, science, etc.). Kant described these as "hypothetical goods", and tried to find a "categorical" good that would operate across all categories of judgment without depending on an "if-then" clause.

An influential result of Kant's search was the idea of a good will being the only intrinsic good. Moreover, Kant saw a good will as acting in accordance with a moral command, the categorical imperative, "Act according to those maxims that you could will to be universal law",^[4] which should not be confused with the ethic of reciprocity or Golden Rule, e.g. Matthew 7:12. Whereas the golden rule states that "One should treat others as one would like others to treat oneself", Kant asks us to analyze whether an act can be performed simultaneously by everyone without exception. For example, murder cannot be performed simultaneously by everyone, one set of people would have to live and the other die. That disparity is an exception. The act cannot be performed without exception, therefore it fails the categorical imperative. Contrast this with the golden rule which is subjective to the individual. Following the logic of the golden rule, if I wanted someone to kill me, then it would be acceptable for me to kill others, because I would be doing to others what I would want done to me. Kant's categorical imperative aims to avoid this flaw. From this, and a few other axioms, Kant developed a moral system that would apply to any "praiseworthy person".^[5]

Kantian philosophers believe that any general definition of goodness must define goods that are categorical in the sense that Kant intended.

Sociology

In sociology, value theory is concerned with personal values which are popularly held by a community, and how those values might change under particular conditions. Different groups of people may hold or prioritize different kinds of values influencing social behavior.

Methods of study range from questionnaire surveys to participant observation. Values can be socially attributed. What the community perceives as of paramount significance to them denotes or decipher their social attributes.

Economics

Economic analysis emphasizes goods sought in a market and tends to use the consumer's choices as evidence (revealed preference) that various products are of economic value. In this view, religious or political struggle over what "goods" are available in the marketplace is inevitable, and consensus on some core questions about body and society and ecosystems affected by the transaction, are outside the market's goods so long as they are unowned.^[6]

However, some natural goods seem to also be moral goods. For example, those things that are owned by a person may be said to be natural goods, but over which a particular individual(s) may have moral claims. So it is necessary to make another distinction: between moral and non-moral goods. A non-moral good is something that is desirable for someone or other; despite the name to the contrary, it may include moral goods. A moral good is anything which an actor is considered to be morally obligated to strive toward.

When discussing non-moral goods, one may make a useful distinction between inherently serviced and material goods in the marketplace (or its exchange value), versus perceived intrinsic and experiential goods to the buyer. A strict service economy model takes pains to distinguish between the goods and service guarantees to the market, and that of the service and experience to the consumer.

Sometimes, moral and natural goods can conflict. The value of natural "goods" is challenged by such issues as addiction. The issue of addiction also brings up the distinction between economic and moral goods, where an economic good is whatever stimulates economic growth. For instance, some claim that cigarettes are a "good" in the economic sense, as their production can employ tobacco growers and doctors who treat lung cancer. Many people would agree that cigarette smoking is not morally "good", nor naturally "good," but still recognize that it is economically good, which means, it has exchange value, even though it may have a negative public good or even be bad for a person's body (not the same as "bad for the person" necessarily – consider the issue of suicide).

In ecological economics value theory is separated into two types: donor-type value and receiver-type value. Ecological economists tend to believe that 'real wealth' needs a donor-determined value as a measure of what things were needed to make an item or generate a service.^[7] An example of receiver-type value is 'market value', or 'willingness to pay', the principal method of accounting used in neo-classical economics. In contrast, both Marx's labour theory of value and the emergy concept are conceived as donor-type value. Emergy theorists believe that this conception of value has relevance to all of philosophy, economics, sociology and psychology as well as environmental science.

Silvio Gesell denied value theory in economics. He thought that value theory is useless and prevents economics from becoming science and that a currency administration guided by value theory is doomed to sterility and inactivity.^[8]

Related Research Articles

Axiology is the philosophical study of value. It includes questions about the nature and classification of values and about what kinds of things have value. It is intimately connected with various other philosophical fields that crucially depend on the notion of value, like ethics, aesthetics or philosophy of religion. It is also closely related to value theory and meta-ethics. The term was first used by Eduard von Hartmann in 1887 and by Paul Lapie in 1902.

Ethics or moral philosophy is a branch of philosophy that "involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behavior". The field of ethics, along with aesthetics, concerns matters of value; these fields comprise the branch of philosophy called axiology.

In metaphilosophy and ethics, metaethics is the study of the nature, scope, and meaning of moral judgment. It is one of the three branches of ethics generally studied by philosophers, the others being normative ethics and applied ethics.

In philosophical ethics, the naturalistic fallacy is the claim that it is possible to give a reductive explanation of good, in terms of natural properties such as pleasant or desirable. The term was introduced by British philosopher G. E. Moore in his 1903 book Principia Ethica.

In environmental philosophy, environmental ethics is an established field of practical philosophy "which reconstructs the essential types of argumentation that can be made for protecting natural entities and the sustainable use of natural resources." The main competing paradigms are anthropocentrism, physiocentrism, and theocentrism. Environmental ethics exerts influence on a large range of disciplines including environmental law, environmental sociology, ecotheology, ecological economics, ecology and environmental geography.

The categorical imperative is the central philosophical concept in the deontological moral philosophy of Immanuel Kant. Introduced in Kant's 1785 Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, it is a way of evaluating motivations for action. It is best known in its original formulation: "Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law."

Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals is the first of Immanuel Kant's mature works on moral philosophy and remains one of the most influential in the field. Kant conceives his investigation as a work of foundational ethics—one that clears the ground for future research by explaining the core concepts and principles of moral theory, and showing that they are normative for rational agents.

In moral philosophy, deontological ethics or deontology is the normative ethical theory that the morality of an action should be based on whether that action itself is right or wrong under a series of rules and principles, rather than based on the consequences of the action. It is sometimes described as duty-, obligation-, or rule-based ethics. Deontological ethics is commonly contrasted to consequentialism, utilitarianism, virtue ethics, and pragmatic ethics. In this terminology, action is more important than the consequences.

In ethics, welfarism is a theory that well-being, what is good for someone or what makes a life worth living, is the only thing that has intrinsic value. In its most general sense, it can be defined as descriptive theory about what has value, but some philosophers also understand welfarism as a moral theory, that what one should do is ultimately determined by considerations of well-being. The right action, policy or rule is the one leading to the maximal amount of well-being. In this sense, it is often seen as a type of consequentialism, and can take the form of utilitarianism.

In moral philosophy, instrumental and intrinsic value are the distinction between what is a means to an end and what is as an end in itself. Things are deemed to have instrumental value if they help one achieve a particular end; intrinsic values, by contrast, are understood to be desirable in and of themselves. A tool or appliance, such as a hammer or washing machine, has instrumental value because it helps you pound in a nail or clean your clothes. Happiness and pleasure are typically considered to have intrinsic value insofar as asking why someone would want them makes little sense: they are desirable for their own sake irrespective of their possible instrumental value. The classic names instrumental and intrinsic were coined by sociologist Max Weber, who spent years studying good meanings people assigned to their actions and beliefs.

Secular ethics is a branch of moral philosophy in which ethics is based solely on human faculties such as logic, empathy, reason or moral intuition, and not derived from belief in supernatural revelation or guidance—a source of ethics in many religions. Secular ethics refers to any ethical system that does not draw on the supernatural, and includes humanism, secularism and freethinking. A classical example of literature on secular ethics is the Kural text, authored by the ancient Indian philosopher Valluvar.

In ethics, intrinsic value is a property of anything that is valuable on its own. Intrinsic value is in contrast to instrumental value, which is a property of anything that derives its value from a relation to another intrinsically valuable thing. Intrinsic value is always something that an object has "in itself" or "for its own sake", and is an intrinsic property. An object with intrinsic value may be regarded as an end, or in Kantian terminology, as an end-in-itself.

In ethics and social sciences, value denotes the degree of importance of some thing or action, with the aim of determining which actions are best to do or what way is best to live, or to describe the significance of different actions. Value systems are prospective and prescriptive beliefs; they affect the ethical behavior of a person or are the basis of their intentional activities. Often primary values are strong and secondary values are suitable for changes. What makes an action valuable may in turn depend on the ethical values of the objects it increases, decreases, or alters. An object with "ethic value" may be termed an "ethic or philosophic good".

Kantian ethics refers to a deontological ethical theory developed by German philosopher Immanuel Kant that is based on the notion that: "It is impossible to think of anything at all in the world, or indeed even beyond it, that could be considered good without limitation except a good will." The theory was developed in the context of Enlightenment rationalism. It states that an action can only be moral if (i) it is motivated by a sense of duty and (ii) its maxim may be rationally willed a universal, objective law.

Ethics or moral philosophy is a branch of philosophy that involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong conduct. The field of ethics, along with aesthetics, concern matters of value, and thus comprise the branch of philosophy called axiology.

Ethics is the branch of philosophy that examines right and wrong moral behavior, moral concepts and moral language. Ethics or moral philosophy is a branch of philosophy that "involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behavior". The field of ethics, along with aesthetics, concerns matters of value, and thus comprises the branch of philosophy called axiology.

In religion, ethics, philosophy, and psychology "good and evil" is a very common dichotomy. In cultures with Manichaean and Abrahamic religious influence, evil is perceived as the dualistic antagonistic opposite of good, in which good should prevail and evil should be defeated. In cultures with Buddhist spiritual influence, both good and evil are perceived as part of an antagonistic duality that itself must be overcome through achieving Śūnyatā meaning emptiness in the sense of recognition of good and evil being two opposing principles but not a reality, emptying the duality of them, and achieving a oneness.

The values that a person holds may be personal or political depending on whether they are considered in relation to the individual or to society. Apart from moral virtue, examples of personal values include friendship, knowledge, beauty etc. and examples of political values, justice, equality and liberty. This article will outline some current ideas relating to the first group – personal values. It will begin by looking at the kinds of thing that have value and finish with a look at some of the theories that attempt to describe what value is. Reference will be made solely to Western sources although it is recognised that many, if not all, of the values discussed may be universal.

In the field of philosophy, Axiological ethics is concerned with the values by which people uphold ethical standards, and the investigation and development of theories of ethical behaviour. Axiological ethics investigates and questions what the intellectual bases for a system of values. Axiologic ethics explore the justifications for value systems, and examine if there exists an objective justification, beyond arbitrary personal preference, for the existence and practise of a given value system. Moreover, although axiological ethics are a subfield of Ethical philosophy, axiological investigation usually includes epistemology and the value theory.

<i>The Right and the Good</i> 1930 book by Scottish philosopher David Ross

The Right and the Good is a 1930 book by the Scottish philosopher David Ross. In it, Ross develops a deontological pluralism based on prima facie duties. Ross defends a realist position about morality and an intuitionist position about moral knowledge. The Right and the Good has been praised as one of the most important works of ethical theory in the twentieth century.

References

↑ David Detmer (1988). Freedom as a Value: A Critique of the Ethical Theory of Jean-Paul Sartre. Open Court Publishing. ISBN 978-0812690835.
↑ H. T. Odum, Environmental Accounting: Emergy and Environmental Decision-making, 1996.
↑ Dewey, J (1939). Theory of Valuation. University of Chicago. ISBN 978-0226575940.
↑ Immanuel Kant & Gary Banham (Authors) plus other contributors (1787–2007). The Critique of Pure Reason. Macmillan. ISBN 978-0230013384.{{cite book}}: |author= has generic name (help)
↑ Kant, Immanuel. Groundlaying toward the Metaphysics of Morals.
↑ Debreu, G (1972). Theory of Value: An Axiomatic Analysis of Economic Equilibrium . Cowles Foundation - Yale University. ISBN 978-0300015591.
↑ H. T. Odum, Environmental Accounting: Emergy and environmental decision-making, 1996.
↑ S. Gesell (1958). The Natural Economic Order, Part III, Chapter 3.