Goodness and value theory

Theories of Value investigate how people positively and negatively value things and concepts, the reasons they use in making their evaluations, and the scope of a legitimate evaluation across the social world. As a related issue, theories of goodness inquire into what sorts of things are good, and what the word "good" really means in the abstract.

Meta-Ethics and Inherent values

Values pluralism and the grading of values

There is a succession of things which can be considered as intrinsically good: from particular events of pleasure, to an individual's happiness, to an individual's eudaimonia, to the flourishing of a society, to the flourishing of an entire ecosystem. So it can be seen that there is a rather difficult problem about the scope of the theory of value.

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As a values pluralist, you might say: every item in this succession of items is intrinsically good. The goodness of a particular experience, of an individual's whole life, of society, and of an ecosystem, are all worth having for their own sake, and not merely as a means to something else. So as a values pluralist one might say: "I don't have to decide which of these things is intrinsically good, because they are all intrinsically good".

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That position does not seem to be amenable to the choices that people face in life. Sometimes we have a choice, for example, to sacrifice our own pleasure, or happiness, or even our own lives, for the sake of many other people. In these cases two things are weighed: your own individual happiness, and the more general happiness of a lot of other people. And if one concludes that one should sacrifice their own happiness, does that mean that the individual's happiness is of less value, or has no intrinsic value?

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An example of a philosophy that faces this problem of scope is existentialism. For an existentialist, being precedes essence, and personal choices are paramount in setting values. It makes little sense to evaluate one action over another: if they are real choices then they are expressions of our being, and of our ultimate freedom. Jean Paul Sartre faced the famous difficulty of being unable to decide whether it was better to stay at home to care for his elderly mother, or to go to war in the defence of his country.

Related Topics:
Existentialism - Jean Paul Sartre

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In addition to the problem of scope, there is also the problem of rank-ordering one's values, and whether or not it can be done.

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W.D. Ross was an ethical philosopher who coined the notion of prime facie duties, or duties that have some weight on the surface of them. For example, "non-maleficience" and "beneficience". Each duty that he listed can be understood as a value, except in the form of a command with relative weight, and which may be balanced against other considerations.

Related Topics:
W.D. Ross - Prime facie duties

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Some philosophers have suggested that values can be graded on a scale from the most important to least important. This has been called the "Constancy Assumption". By contrast, some (like Dewey) have suggested that values are relative to the context, or situation, that the actor is in.

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We are left with unresolved issues: the issue of the relative importance of intrinsic values. If these things are to be ranked in order of importance, how would the ranking go? On what basis should actors choose in cases of conflict? Why is one value better than another?

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Values monism and alternatives to hedonism

Monistic theories of value assert that there is exactly one intrinsic good, from which all other goods are instrumental.

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The intrinsic goods that have been discussed up to now are pleasure, happiness, eudaimonia and the flourishing of a society or an ecosystem. There is a strong similarity among those four goods: for example, a flourishing individual or organism is almost always much happier than a non-flourishing one.

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But any survey of candidates for the intrinsic good would be incomplete without considering goods that are essentially unrelated to pleasure, happiness, etc. The most familiar examples are religious. For example: there is a tradition in Judaism that one should obey God's laws as an end in itself, without fear of punishment or expectation of reward (now or in the afterlife). To obey God's laws might require one to value, e.g., one's neighbor's flourishing, but in that case the neighbor's flourishing is merely an instrumental good.

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There are non-religious examples, too, such as the evolutionary ethic of John David Garcia. Garcia believed that humanity will destroy itself if happiness remains the people's ultimate goal and that the only choice of intrinsic good that can be pursued indefinitely without leading to self-destruction is creativity. This warning is not an offhand remark, but rather the central point of Garcia's thirty-year career as writer and public speaker. (It is made for example in the first paragraph of the preface and again in the first paragraph of the introduction of his first book.)

Related Topics:
Evolutionary ethic - John David Garcia - Creativity

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Note that Garcia does not hold that happiness is bad or wrong, just that when forced by circumstances to choose between happiness and creativity, one should choose creativity. Moreover, Garcia recognizes that a certain minimal level of happiness is a prerequisite to being creative: e.g., if one finds that one never takes pleasure in anything, then one has a big problem that will tend to outweigh all other considerations. In this situation, there is no conflict between the goals of increasing happiness and increasing creativity: both goals are increased by solving the big problem, e.g., by pursuing treatment for depression.

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