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In
ethics Ethics or moral philosophy is a branch of philosophy that "involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behavior".''Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' The field of ethics, along with aesthetics, concer ...
and the
social sciences Social science is one of the branches of science, devoted to the study of societies and the relationships among individuals within those societies. The term was formerly used to refer to the field of sociology, the original "science of so ...
,
value Value or values may refer to: Ethics and social * Value (ethics) wherein said concept may be construed as treating actions themselves as abstract objects, associating value to them ** Values (Western philosophy) expands the notion of value beyo ...
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 Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. ...
, it is also known as
ethics Ethics or moral philosophy is a branch of philosophy that "involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behavior".''Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' The field of ethics, along with aesthetics, concer ...
or
axiology Axiology (from Greek , ''axia'': "value, worth"; and , '' -logia'': "study of") 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 ...
. Traditionally, philosophical investigations in value theory have sought to understand the concept of "
the good In most contexts, the concept of good denotes the conduct that should be preferred when posed with a choice between possible actions. Good is generally considered to be the opposite of evil and is of interest in the study of ethics, morality, ph ...
". 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 Psychology is the science, scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of consciousness, conscious and Unconscious mind, unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immens ...
,
sociology Sociology is a social science that focuses on society, human social behavior, patterns of social relationships, social interaction, and aspects of culture associated with everyday life. It uses various methods of empirical investigation an ...
, and
economics Economics () is the social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. Economics focuses on the behaviour and interactions of economic agents and how economies work. Microeconomics anal ...
. 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 ( H. T. Odum, ''Environmental Accounting: Emergy and environmental decision-making'', 1996). In other fields, theories posit the importance of values as an analytical independent variable (including those put forward by
Max Weber Maximilian Karl Emil Weber (; ; 21 April 186414 June 1920) was a German sociologist, historian, jurist and political economist, who is regarded as among the most important theorists of the development of modern Western society. His ideas p ...
,
Émile Durkheim David Émile Durkheim ( or ; 15 April 1858 – 15 November 1917) was a French sociologist. Durkheim formally established the academic discipline of sociology and is commonly cited as one of the principal architects of modern social science, al ...
, Talcott Parsons, and Jürgen Habermas). Classical examples of sociological traditions which deny or downplay the question of values are institutionalism,
historical materialism Historical materialism is the term used to describe Karl Marx's theory of history. Marx locates historical change in the rise of class societies and the way humans labor together to make their livelihoods. For Marx and his lifetime collaborat ...
(including
Marxism Marxism is a Left-wing politics, left-wing to Far-left politics, far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a Materialism, materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand S ...
),
behaviorism Behaviorism is a systematic approach to understanding the behavior of humans and animals. It assumes that behavior is either a reflex evoked by the pairing of certain antecedent stimuli in the environment, or a consequence of that individual ...
,
pragmatic Pragmatism is a philosophical movement. Pragmatism or pragmatic may also refer to: *Pragmaticism, Charles Sanders Peirce's post-1905 branch of philosophy * Pragmatics, a subfield of linguistics and semiotics *'' Pragmatics'', an academic journal i ...
-oriented theories,
postmodern philosophy Brian Duignan writes on the ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' that Postmodern philosophy is a philosophical movement that arose in the second half of the 20th century as a critical response to assumptions allegedly present in modernist philosophical ...
and various
Objectivist Objectivism is a philosophical system developed by Russian-American writer and philosopher Ayn Rand. She described it as "the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievemen ...
-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 An instrumental is a recording normally without any vocals, although it might include some inarticulate vocals, such as shouted backup vocals in a big band setting. Through semantic widening, a broader sense of the word song may refer to inst ...
and intrinsic values. This distinction is based on the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic properties. First introduced by
Plato Plato ( ; grc-gre, Πλάτων ; 428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) was a Greek philosopher born in Athens during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. He founded the Platonist school of thought and the Academy, the first institution ...
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 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 resour ...
, made by writers like
Aldo Leopold Aldo Leopold (January 11, 1887 – April 21, 1948) was an American writer, philosopher, naturalist, scientist, ecologist, forester, conservationist, and environmentalist. He was a professor at the University of Wisconsin and is best known for his ...
and
Holmes Rolston III Holmes Rolston III (born November 19, 1932) is a philosopher who is University Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Colorado State University. He is best known for his contributions to environmental ethics and the relationship between science ...
, 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 The Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems (EOLSS) is an integrated compendium of twenty one encyclopedias. The first Earth Summit of 1992, held in Rio de Janeiro, issued a document that is now famous as Agenda 21. This document refers to the Earth' ...
'' published by
UNESCO The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a List of specialized agencies of the United Nations, specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) aimed at promoting world peace and security through international coope ...
.


Pragmatism and contributory goodness

John Dewey John Dewey (; October 20, 1859 – June 1, 1952) was an American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer whose ideas have been influential in education and social reform. He was one of the most prominent American scholars in the fi ...
(1859-1952) in his book ''Theory of Valuation'', 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 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 ...
; 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 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 ...
. 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 Immanuel Kant (, , ; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German philosopher and one of the central Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and ...
greatly influenced
moral philosophy Ethics or moral philosophy is a branch of philosophy that "involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behavior".''Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' The field of ethics, along with aesthetics, concerns ...
. He thought of moral value as a unique and universally identifiable property, as an
absolute value In mathematics, the absolute value or modulus of a real number x, is the non-negative value without regard to its sign. Namely, , x, =x if is a positive number, and , x, =-x if x is negative (in which case negating x makes -x positive), ...
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." but should not be confused with the Ethic of Reciprocity or Golden Rule, e.g
Mt. 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. This is very important to keep in mind, because Kant's categorical imperative avoids this flaw. From this, and a few other axioms, Kant developed a moral system that would apply to any "praiseworthy person". 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 Revealed preference theory, pioneered by economist Paul Anthony Samuelson in 1938, is a method of analyzing choices made by individuals, mostly used for comparing the influence of policies on consumer behavior. Revealed preference models assume th ...
) 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. 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 In political economy and especially Marxian economics, exchange value (German: ''Tauschwert'') refers to one of the four major attributes of a commodity, i.e., an item or service produced for, and sold on the market, the other three attributes ...
), 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 Addiction is a neuropsychological disorder characterized by a persistent and intense urge to engage in certain behaviors, one of which is the usage of a drug, despite substantial harm and other negative consequences. Repetitive drug use o ...
. The issue of addiction also brings up the distinction between economic and moral goods, where an economic good is whatever stimulates
economic growth Economic growth can be defined as the increase or improvement in the inflation-adjusted market value of the goods and services produced by an economy in a financial year. Statisticians conventionally measure such growth as the percent rate o ...
. For instance, some claim that
cigarette A cigarette is a narrow cylinder containing a combustible material, typically tobacco, that is rolled into thin paper for smoking. The cigarette is ignited at one end, causing it to smolder; the resulting smoke is orally inhaled via the opp ...
s are a "good" in the economic sense, as their production can employ
tobacco Tobacco is the common name of several plants in the genus '' Nicotiana'' of the family Solanaceae, and the general term for any product prepared from the cured leaves of these plants. More than 70 species of tobacco are known, but the ...
growers and doctors who treat
lung cancer Lung cancer, also known as lung carcinoma (since about 98–99% of all lung cancers are carcinomas), is a malignant lung tumor characterized by uncontrolled cell growth in tissues of the lung. Lung carcinomas derive from transformed, mali ...
. 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 Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Mental disorders (including depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, personality disorders, anxiety disorders), physical disorders (such as chronic fatigue syndrome), and ...
). 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 ( H. T. Odum, ''Environmental Accounting: Emergy and environmental decision-making'', 1996). 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 The labor theory of value (LTV) is a theory of value that argues that the economic value of a good or service is determined by the total amount of " socially necessary labor" required to produce it. The LTV is usually associated with Marxian ...
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.S. Gesell (1958). ''The Natural Economic Order'', Part III, Chapter 3.


See also

*
Aesthetics 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 t ...
* Anthropological theories of value * Axiological ethics *
Baden School In late modern continental philosophy, neo-Kantianism (german: Neukantianismus) was a revival of the 18th-century philosophy of Immanuel Kant. The Neo-Kantians sought to develop and clarify Kant's theories, particularly his concept of the "thin ...
*
Cultural Institutions Studies Cultural institutions studies (a translation of the German term ''Kulturbetriebslehre'') is an academic approach ''"which investigates activities in the cultural sector, conceived as historically evolved societal forms of organising the conception, ...
* Graded absolutism * Illegalism *
Intuitionism In the philosophy of mathematics, intuitionism, or neointuitionism (opposed to preintuitionism), is an approach where mathematics is considered to be purely the result of the constructive mental activity of humans rather than the discovery of f ...
* Labor theory of value *
Law of value The law of the value of commodities (German: ''Wertgesetz der Waren''), known simply as the law of value, is a central concept in Karl Marx's critique of political economy first expounded in his polemic '' The Poverty of Philosophy'' (1847) again ...
*
Logic Logic is the study of correct reasoning. It includes both formal and informal logic. Formal logic is the science of deductively valid inferences or of logical truths. It is a formal science investigating how conclusions follow from prem ...
*
Morality Morality () is the differentiation of intentions, decisions and actions between those that are distinguished as proper (right) and those that are improper (wrong). Morality can be a body of standards or principles derived from a code of co ...
*
Friedrich Nietzsche Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (; or ; 15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900) was a German philosopher, prose poet, cultural critic, philologist, and composer whose work has exerted a profound influence on contemporary philosophy. He began his ...
* Normative science * Practical philosophy * Pirsig's Metaphysics of Quality *
Rationality Rationality is the quality of being guided by or based on reasons. In this regard, a person acts rationally if they have a good reason for what they do or a belief is rational if it is based on strong evidence. This quality can apply to an ab ...
*
Rationality and power ''Rationality and Power: Democracy in Practice'' is a 1998 book by Bent Flyvbjerg, published by the University of Chicago Press. The book focuses on "the application of critical theory to urban and community development". Flyvbjerg here deploys ...
*
Social contract In moral and political philosophy, the social contract is a theory or model that originated during the Age of Enlightenment and usually, although not always, concerns the legitimacy of the authority of the state over the individual. Social ...
* Summum bonum *
Thick concept In philosophy, a thick concept (sometimes: ''thick normative concept'', or ''thick evaluative concept'') is a kind of concept that both has a significant degree of descriptive content and is evaluatively loaded. Paradigmatic examples are various vi ...
*
Ultimate importance 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 ...
*
Value-added theory Value-added theory (also known as social strain theory) is a sociological theory, first proposed by Neil Smelser in 1962, which posits that certain conditions are needed for the development of a social movement.Kendall, 2005 Overview Smelser p ...
* Value engineering


References


Further reading

* Nicholas Rescher. 2010. ''Axiogenesis: An Essay in Metaphysical Optimalism''. Lexington Books. {{DEFAULTSORT:Value Theory Value (ethics) Axiological theories it:Teoria dei valori zh:價值觀