Value theory
In
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
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
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
Dewey's empiricist approach evinces
Another contribution of pragmatism to value theory is the idea of contributory goods with a
Kant: hypothetical and categorical goods
The thinking of
An influential result of Kant's search was the idea of a good will being the only
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 (
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[why?]. 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
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]
See also
- Aesthetics
- Anthropological theories of value
- Axiological ethics
- Baden School
- Cultural Institutions Studies
- Graded absolutism
- Illegalism
- Intuitionism
- Labor theory of value
- Law of value
- Logic
- Morality
- Friedrich Nietzsche
- Normative science
- Practical philosophy
- Pirsig's Metaphysics of Quality
- Rationality
- Rationality and power
- Social contract
- Summum bonum
- Thick concept
- Ultimate importance
- Value-added theory
- Value engineering
References
- ISBN 978-0812690835.
- H. T. Odum, Environmental Accounting: Emergy and Environmental Decision-making, 1996.
- ISBN 978-0226575940.
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- ^ Kant, Immanuel. Groundlaying toward the Metaphysics of Morals.
- 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.
Further reading
- Nicholas Rescher. 2010. Axiogenesis: An Essay in Metaphysical Optimalism. Lexington Books.