A value judgment (or value judgement) is a
judgment
Judgement (or US spelling judgment) is also known as ''adjudication'', which means the evaluation of evidence to decision-making, make a decision. Judgement is also the ability to make considered decisions. The term has at least five distinct u ...
of the
rightness or
wrong
A wrong (from Old English – 'crooked') is an act that is illegal or immoral. Legal wrongs are usually quite clearly defined in the law of a state and/or jurisdiction. They can be divided into civil wrongs and crimes (or ''criminal offenses'') ...
ness of something or someone, or of the
usefulness
As a topic of economics, utility is used to model worth or value. Its usage has evolved significantly over time. The term was introduced initially as a measure of pleasure or happiness as part of the theory of utilitarianism by moral philosopher ...
of something or someone, based on a comparison or other relativity. As a generalization, a value judgment can refer to a judgment based upon a particular set of
values
In ethics and social sciences, value denotes the degree of importance of something or action, with the aim of determining which actions are best to do or what way is best to live (normative ethics in ethics), or to describe the significance of dif ...
or on a particular
value system
In ethics and social sciences, value denotes the degree of importance of something or action, with the aim of determining which actions are best to do or what way is best to live (normative ethics in ethics), or to describe the significance of dif ...
. A related meaning of value judgment is an expedient evaluation based upon limited information at hand, where said evaluation was undertaken because a decision had to be made on short notice.
Explanation
A ''value judgment'' is a thought about something based on what it “ought” or “should” be given an opinion about what counts as “good” or “bad” — contrast from a thought based on what the facts are. E.g. “The government should improve access to education” is a value judgement (that education is good). “People will buy less of our products if our price goes up” is not a value judgement because it is based on the fact that people tend to buy less of a more expensive product. It can be used either in a positive sense, signifying that a judgment must be made taking a value system into account, or in a disparaging sense, signifying a judgment made by personal whim rather than
objective
Objective may refer to:
* Objective (optics), an element in a camera or microscope
* ''The Objective'', a 2008 science fiction horror film
* Objective pronoun, a personal pronoun that is used as a grammatical object
* Objective Productions, a Brit ...
thought or evidence.
In its positive sense, a recommendation to make a value judgment is an admonition to consider carefully, to avoid whim and impetuousness, and search for consonance with one's deeper convictions, and to search for an objective,
verifiable
Verify or verification may refer to:
General
* Verification and validation, in engineering or quality management systems, is the act of reviewing, inspecting or testing, in order to establish and document that a product, service or system meets ...
, public, and consensual set of evidence for the
opinion
An opinion is a judgment, viewpoint, or statement that is not conclusive, rather than facts, which are true statements.
Definition
A given opinion may deal with subjective matters in which there is no conclusive finding, or it may deal with f ...
.
In its disparaging sense the term ''value judgment'' implies a conclusion is insular, one-sided, and not objective — contrasting with judgments based upon deliberation, balance and public evidence.
''Value judgment'' also can refer to a tentative judgment based on a considered appraisal of the information at hand, taken to be incomplete and evolving—for example, a ''value judgment'' on whether to launch a military attack or as to procedure in a medical emergency.
In this case the quality of judgment suffers because the information available is incomplete as a result of exigency, rather than as a result of cultural or personal limitations.
Most commonly the term ''value judgment'' refers to an individual's
opinion
An opinion is a judgment, viewpoint, or statement that is not conclusive, rather than facts, which are true statements.
Definition
A given opinion may deal with subjective matters in which there is no conclusive finding, or it may deal with f ...
. Of course, the individual's opinion is formed to a degree by their belief system and the culture to which they belong. So a natural extension of the term ''value judgment'' is to include declarations seen one way from one value system but may be seen differently from another. Conceptually this extension of the definition is related both to the
anthropological
Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including past human species. Social anthropology studies patterns of behavi ...
axiom "
cultural relativism
Cultural relativism is the idea that a person's beliefs and practices should be understood based on that person's own culture. Proponents of cultural relativism also tend to argue that the norms and values of one culture should not be evaluated ...
" (that is, that cultural meaning derives from a context) and to the term "
moral relativism
Moral relativism or ethical relativism (often reformulated as relativist ethics or relativist morality) is used to describe several philosophical positions concerned with the differences in moral judgments across different peoples and cultures. ...
" (that is, that moral and ethical propositions are not universal truths, but stem from cultural context). A value judgment formed within a specific value system may be parochial and may be subject to dispute in a wider audience.
Value-neutral
''Value-neutral'' is a related adjective suggesting independence from a value system. The object itself is considered value-neutral when it is neither good nor bad, neither useful nor useless, neither significant nor trite until placed in some social context. For example, the classification of an object sometimes depends upon context: Whether or not an object is a tool or a weapon, or if human remains are an
artifact or an
ancestor
An ancestor, also known as a forefather, fore-elder or a forebear, is a parent or (recursively) the parent of an antecedent (i.e., a grandparent, great-grandparent, great-great-grandparent and so forth). ''Ancestor'' is "any person from whom ...
.
Max Weber put forward one of the first concepts of value-neutrality.
A famous quote from mathematician
G.H. Hardy
Godfrey Harold Hardy (7 February 1877 – 1 December 1947) was an English mathematician, known for his achievements in number theory and mathematical analysis. In biology, he is known for the Hardy–Weinberg principle, a basic principle of pop ...
indicates how he places the "value-neutral" subject of mathematics into a particular social context: "A science is said to be useful if its development tends to accentuate the existing inequalities of wealth, or more directly promotes the destruction of human life".
For a discussion of whether technology is value neutral, see Martin and Schinzinger,
and Wallace.
An item may have value and be value-neutral ''regardless'' of social context if its utility or importance is more-or-less self-evident, for example, oxygen supports life in all societies.
Value judgments and their context
Some argue that true objectivity is impossible, that even the most rigorous rational analysis is founded on the set of values accepted in the course of analysis.
[
]
Consequently, all conclusions are necessarily value judgments (and therefore may be parochial). Of course, putting all conclusions in one category does nothing to distinguish between them, and is, therefore, a useless descriptor. Categorizing a conclusion as a value judgment takes substance when the context framing the judgment is specified.
[
]
As an example, scientific "truths" are considered objective but are held tentatively, with the understanding that more careful evidence and/or wider experience might change matters. Further, a scientific view (in the sense of a conclusion based upon a value system) is a ''value judgment'' that is
socially constructed
Social constructionism is a theory in sociology, social ontology, and communication theory which proposes that certain ideas about physical reality arise from collaborative consensus, instead of pure observation of said reality. The theory ...
based upon rigorous evaluation and wide consensus. With this example in mind, characterizing a view as a ''value judgment'' is vague without a description of the context surrounding it.
However, as noted in the first segment of this article, in common usage the term ''value judgment'' has a much simpler meaning with context simply implied, not specified.
See also
*
Aesthetic judgment
Aesthetics, or esthetics, is a branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of beauty and taste, as well as the philosophy of art (its own area of philosophy that comes out of aesthetics). It examines aesthetic values, often expressed th ...
*
Critic
A critic is a person who communicates an assessment and an opinion of various forms of creative works such as art, literature, music, cinema, theater, fashion, architecture, and food. Critics may also take as their subject social or governmen ...
*
Cultural relativism
Cultural relativism is the idea that a person's beliefs and practices should be understood based on that person's own culture. Proponents of cultural relativism also tend to argue that the norms and values of one culture should not be evaluated ...
*
Fact–value distinction
The fact–value distinction is a fundamental epistemological distinction described between:
#'Statements of fact' ( 'positive' or 'descriptive statements'), based upon reason and physical observation, and which are examined via the empirical ...
*
Immanent evaluation
Immanent evaluation is a philosophical concept used by Gilles Deleuze in his essay "Qu'est-ce qu'un dispositif ?" (1989), where it is seen as the opposite of transcendent judgment
Judgement (or US spelling judgment) is also known as ''adjudi ...
*
Moral relativism
Moral relativism or ethical relativism (often reformulated as relativist ethics or relativist morality) is used to describe several philosophical positions concerned with the differences in moral judgments across different peoples and cultures. ...
Notes and references
Further reading
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Value Judgment
Axiology
Concepts in ethics
Political concepts
Social concepts
Social constructionism
Continental philosophy
20th-century philosophy
Judgment
Judgement (or US spelling judgment) is also known as ''adjudication'', which means the evaluation of evidence to decision-making, make a decision. Judgement is also the ability to make considered decisions. The term has at least five distinct u ...