Realism and anti-realism Value
realism is the view that values have mind-independent existence. This means that
objective facts determine what has value, irrespective of subjective beliefs and preferences. According to this view, the evaluative statement "That act is bad" is as objectively true or false as the empirical statement "That act causes distress". Realists often analyze values as
properties of valuable things. For example, stating that kindness is good asserts that kindness possesses the property of goodness. Value realists disagree about what type of property is involved.
Naturalists say that value is a natural property. Natural properties, like size and shape, can be known through
empirical observation and are studied by the natural sciences.
Non-naturalists reject this view but agree that values are real. They say that values differ significantly from empirical properties and belong to another domain of reality. According to one view, they are known through rational or emotional intuition rather than empirical observation. Another disagreement among realists is about whether the entity carrying the value is a concrete
individual or a
state of affairs. For instance, the name "Bill" refers to an individual while the sentence "Bill is pleased" refers to a state of affairs, which combines the individual "Bill" with the property "pleased". Some value theorists hold that the value is a property directly of Bill while others contend that it is a property of the state of affairs that Bill is pleased. This distinction affects various disputes in value theory. In some cases, a value is intrinsic according to one view and extrinsic according to the other. Value realism contrasts with
anti-realism, which comes in various forms. In its strongest version, anti-realism rejects the existence of values in any form, claiming that value statements are meaningless. There are various intermediate views between this position and realism. Some anti-realists accept that value claims have meaning but deny that they have a
truth value, a position known as
non-cognitivism. For example,
emotivists say that value claims express emotional attitudes, similar to how exclamations like "Yay!" or "Boo!" express emotions rather than stating facts.
Cognitivists contend that value statements have a truth value, meaning that sentences like "knowledge is intrinsically good" are either true or false. Following this view,
error theorists defend anti-realism by stating that all value statements are false because there are no values. Another view accepts the existence of values but denies that they are mind-independent. According to this view, the
mental states of individuals determine whether an object has value, for instance, because individuals desire it. A similar view is defended by
existentialists like
Jean-Paul Sartre, who argued that values are human creations that endow the world with meaning. Subjectivist theories say that values are relative to each subject, whereas more objectivist outlooks hold that values depend on
mind in general rather than on the individual mind. A different position accepts that values are mind-independent but holds that they are reducible to other facts, meaning that they are not a fundamental part of reality. One form of
reductionism maintains that a thing is good if it is fitting to favor this thing, regardless of whether people actually favor it, a position known as the
fitting-attitude theory of value. The buck-passing account, a closely related reductive view, argues that a thing is valuable if people have reasons to treat the thing in certain ways. These reasons come from other features of the valuable thing. According to some views, reductionism is a form of realism, but the strongest form of realism says that value is a fundamental part of reality and cannot be reduced to other aspects.
Sources of value Various theories about the sources of value have been proposed. They aim to clarify what kinds of things are intrinsically good. The historically influential theory of
hedonism states that how people feel is the only source of value. More specifically, it says that
pleasure is the only intrinsic good and
pain is the only intrinsic evil. According to this view, everything else only has instrumental value to the extent that it leads to pleasure or pain, including knowledge, health, and justice. Hedonists usually understand the term
pleasure in a broad sense that covers all kinds of enjoyable experiences, including bodily pleasures of food and sex as well as more intellectual or abstract pleasures, like the joy of reading a book or happiness about a friend's promotion. Pleasurable experiences come in degrees, and hedonists usually associate their intensity and duration with the magnitude of value they have. Many hedonists identify pleasure and pain as symmetric opposites, meaning that the value of pleasure balances out the disvalue of pain if they have the same intensity. However, some hedonists reject this symmetry and give more weight to avoiding pain than to experiencing pleasure. Although it is widely accepted that pleasure is valuable, the hedonist claim that it is the only source of value is controversial.
Welfarism, a closely related theory, understands
well-being as the only source of value. Well-being is what is ultimately good for a person, which can include other aspects besides pleasure, such as health,
personal growth, meaningful
relationships, and a sense of purpose in life. Desire theories offer a slightly different account, stating that desire satisfaction is the only source of value. This theory overlaps with hedonism because many people desire pleasure and because desire satisfaction is often accompanied by pleasure. Nonetheless, there are important differences: people desire a variety of other things as well, like knowledge, achievement, and respect; additionally, desire satisfaction may not always result in pleasure. Some desire theorists hold that value is a property of desire satisfaction itself, while others say that it is a property of the objects that satisfy a desire. One debate in desire theory concerns whether every desire is a source of value. For example, if a person has a false belief that money makes them happy, it is questionable whether the satisfaction of their desire for money is a source of value. To address this consideration, some desire theorists say that a desire can only provide value if a fully informed and rational person would have it, thereby excluding misguided desires from being a source of value.
Perfectionism identifies the realization of
human nature and the cultivation of characteristic human abilities as the source of intrinsic goodness. It covers capacities and character traits belonging to the bodily, emotional, volitional, cognitive, social, artistic, and religious fields. Perfectionists disagree about which human excellences are the most important. Many are pluralistic in recognizing a diverse array of human excellences, such as knowledge, creativity, health, beauty, free agency, and moral virtues like benevolence and courage. According to one suggestion, there are two main fields of human goods: theoretical abilities responsible for understanding the world and practical abilities responsible for interacting with it. Some perfectionists provide an ideal characterization of human nature as the goal of human flourishing, holding that human excellences are those aspects that promote the realization of this goal. This view is exemplified in
Aristotle's focus on
rationality as the nature and ideal state of human beings. Non-humanistic versions extend perfectionism to the natural world in general, arguing that excellence as a source of intrinsic value is not limited to the human realm.
Monism and pluralism Monist theories of value assert that there is only a single source of intrinsic value. They agree that various things have value but maintain that all fundamentally good things belong to the same type. For example, hedonists hold that nothing but pleasure has intrinsic value, while desire theorists argue that desire satisfaction is the only source of fundamental goodness.
Pluralists reject this view, contending that a simple single-value system is too crude to capture the complexity of the sphere of values. They say that diverse sources of value exist independently of one another, each contributing to the overall value of the world. One motivation for value pluralism is the observation that people value diverse types of things, including happiness, friendship, success, and knowledge. This diversity becomes particularly prominent when people face difficult decisions between competing values, such as choosing between friendship and career success. In such cases, value pluralists can argue that the different items have different types of values. Since monists accept only one source of intrinsic value, they may provide a different explanation by proposing that some of the valuable items only have instrumental value but lack intrinsic value. argued that conflicts between different types of values, like
liberty and
equality, cannot always be resolved. Pluralists have proposed various accounts of how their view affects practical decisions. Rational decisions often rely on value comparisons to determine which course of action should be pursued. Some pluralists discuss a hierarchy of values reflecting the relative importance and weight of different value types to help people promote higher values when faced with difficult choices. For example, philosopher
Max Scheler ranks values based on how enduring and fulfilling they are into the levels of pleasure, utility, vitality, culture, and holiness. He asserts that people should not promote lower values, like pleasure, if this comes at the expense of higher values. Radical pluralists reject this approach, putting more emphasis on diversity by holding that different types of values are not comparable with each other. This means that each value type is unique, making it impossible to determine which one is superior. Some value theorists use radical pluralism to argue that value conflicts are inevitable, that the gain of one value cannot always compensate for the loss of another, and that some
ethical dilemmas are irresolvable. For example, philosopher
Isaiah Berlin applied this idea to the values of
liberty and
equality, arguing that a gain in one cannot make up for a loss in the other. Similarly, philosopher
Joseph Raz said that it is often impossible to compare the values of career paths, like when choosing between becoming a
lawyer or a
clarinetist. The terms
incomparability and
incommensurability are often used as synonyms in this context. However, philosophers like
Ruth Chang distinguish them. According to this view, incommensurability means that there is no common measure to quantify values of different types. Incommensurable values may or may not be comparable. If they are, it is possible to say that one value is better than another, but it is not possible to quantify how much better it is.
Others Several controversies surround the question of how the intrinsic value of a
whole is determined by the intrinsic values of its parts. According to the additivity principle, the intrinsic value of a whole is simply the sum of the intrinsic values of its parts. For example, if a virtuous person becomes happy then the intrinsic value of the happiness is simply added to the intrinsic value of the virtue, thereby increasing the overall value. introduced the idea of organic unities to describe entities whose total intrinsic value is not the sum of the intrinsic values of their parts. Various counterexamples to the additivity principle have been proposed, suggesting that the relation between parts and wholes is more complex. For instance,
Immanuel Kant argued that if a vicious person becomes happy, this happiness, though good in itself, does not increase the overall value. On the contrary, it makes things worse, according to Kant, since viciousness should not be rewarded with happiness. This situation is known as an
organic unitya whole whose intrinsic value differs from the sum of the intrinsic values of its parts. Another perspective, called
holism about value, asserts that the intrinsic value of a thing depends on its context. Holists can argue that happiness has positive intrinsic value in the context of virtue and negative intrinsic value in the context of vice. Atomists reject this view, saying that intrinsic value is context-independent. Theories of value aggregation provide concrete principles for calculating the overall value of an outcome based on how positively or negatively each individual is affected by it. For example, if a government implements a new policy that affects some people positively and others negatively, theories of value aggregation can be used to determine whether the overall value of the policy is positive or negative. Axiological
utilitarianism accepts the additivity principle, saying that the total value is simply the sum of all individual values. Axiological
egalitarians are not only interested in the sum total of value but also in how the values are distributed. They argue that an outcome with a balanced advantage distribution is better than an outcome where some benefit a lot while others benefit little, even if the two outcomes have the same sum total. Axiological
prioritarians are particularly concerned with the benefits of individuals who are worse off. They say that providing advantages to people in need has more value than providing the same advantages to others.
Naturalist views argue that the meaning of life is found within the physical world, either as objective values that are true for everyone or as subjective values that vary according to individual preferences. Suggested fields where humans find meaning include exercising
freedom, committing oneself to a cause, practicing
altruism, engaging in positive
social relationships, or pursuing personal
happiness.
Supernaturalists, by contrast, propose that meaning lies beyond the natural world. For example, various religions teach that
God created the world for a higher purpose, imbuing existence with meaning. A related outlook argues that immortal
souls serve as sources of meaning by being connected to a
transcendent reality and evolving
spiritually.
Existential nihilists reject both naturalist and supernaturalist explanations by asserting that there is no higher purpose. They suggest that life is meaningless, with the consequence that there is no higher reason to continue living and that all efforts, achievements, happiness, and suffering are ultimately pointless. Formal axiology is a theory of value initially developed by philosopher
Robert S. Hartman. This approach treats axiology as a
formal science, akin to
logic and
mathematics. It uses
axioms to give an abstract definition of value, understanding it not as a property of things but as a property of concepts. Value measures the extent to which an entity fulfills its concept. For example, a good car has all the desirable qualities of cars, like a reliable engine and effective brakes, whereas a bad car lacks many. Formal axiology distinguishes between three fundamental value types: intrinsic values apply to people; extrinsic values apply to things, actions, and social roles; systemic values apply to conceptual constructs. Formal axiology examines how these value types form a hierarchy and how they can be measured. == Methods ==