Importance

Importance is a property of entities that make a difference in the world. Or in the field of medicine, Alexander Fleming was an important person because he discovered penicillin and thereby made a difference to the health of many people since then. Things that lack importance, on the other hand, could be removed without affecting any significant change to the world. The difference between these views matters for various issues. For example, it has been argued that human life lacks importance on a cosmic level when judged based on its causal impact but has it in relation to the value difference it makes. For example, Napoleon is seen as an individual of world-historic importance because of how his decisions affected the course of history and changed the lives of many Europeans. Something similar is true for many world-historic figures: they affected how many people lived, perceived them, and responded to them. According to Harry Frankfurt, this can be understood in terms of needs: a thing becomes important because some sentient being needs it. In this context, a person needs something if they will be inevitably harmed unless they have it. A more general definition includes not just negative impacts on well-being, but also positive ones. So a thing may be important either because it harms someone or because it helps someone or is enjoyed by them. The value impact of things is often understood counterfactually: based on how much value would be lost or gained if, hypothetically speaking, the thing had not existed. This value includes both the intrinsic and the instrumental value of the thing. In the former case, some things are important because they are good in themselves, like pleasurable experiences. In the latter case, some things are important because they are useful to other things and help them become more valuable, like medicine or school books. For example, one reason why global pandemics, like COVID-19, are more important than local epidemics, like the Western African Ebola virus epidemic, is due to their increased spatial extension. Another aspect of importance, besides its dependence on a context, is that it is relational. This means that it involves an explicit or implicit comparison with other entities in the corresponding domain. So to say that stoicism is an important school of Hellenistic philosophy implies a comparison to other schools of Hellenistic philosophy, i.e. that it is more noteworthy or influential than an average school of Hellenistic philosophy. For example, a baby whale is small in relation to other whales even though it is not small when compared to other forms of sea life. This comparison can be directly linked to the degree of impact that the entity makes. An entity is important within a domain if it makes a bigger impact than most of the other entities belonging to the domain. == Demarcation from similar terms ==

Importance is a very basic concept and most people have an intuitive familiarity and understanding of it. But it has proven difficult to give a clear and non-circular definition of it. Meaningfulness The terms "importance" and "meaningfulness" are closely related. Especially in discussions of the meaning of life, they are often used in overlapping ways. For example, the desire to lead a meaningful life frequently corresponds to the desire to live an important life. Nonetheless, it has been argued that the two can come apart, i.e. that there are meaningful lives that lack importance and important lives that lack meaning. One motivation for drawing such a distinction is that seeking deeper meaning in life is usually understood as an admirable goal associated with self-transcendence while craving importance is often seen as a less noble and more egocentric undertaking. There are various accounts of what meaning in life is. Some theorists identify three essential features: life is meaningful if (1) it is guided by purposes that are valuable for their own sake, (2) it transcends mere animal nature by connecting to something larger, and (3) it merits certain attitudes, such as taking pride in it or admiration from others. These criteria can be used to distinguish meaningfulness and importance. For meaningfulness, it is central that the event in question is guided by the agent's purpose and intentions. So in this regard, random events that happen by accident may still have tremendous importance due to their causal consequences, as in the case of unintended butterfly effects. But such events do not make life meaningful. In an example due to Thomas Nagel, the pants of a nobleman accidentally drop the moment he is being knighted. This embarrassment would not make his life meaningful even if it was important by somehow causing a brutal war to end. It has also been argued that meaningfulness can be brought about by the mere appreciation of valuable things. This may be the case, for example, by worshipping God. For importance, however, valuable things must be created or defended and not just admired. Value Some theorists treat the terms "important" and "valuable" as synonyms. This way of speaking works in various cases but is not generally accepted. Importance is a more complex concept since it depends not just on the value itself but also on the domain of evaluation and on the counterfactual comparison to what would have been the case otherwise. This machine is similar to the Matrix in the Matrix movies. It provides a permanent simulated reality and can offer its subjects a life filled with joy and well-being. Such a life is full of value but lacks any wider importance, which is why Nozick recommends against entering this fictional device. Usually, a certain primacy is given to objective importance, which is seen as an independent factor. In this view, the subjective attitude of caring should track this objective factor. Nonetheless, some theorists have argued that this may not always be the case. According to Harry Frankfurt, for example, caring about something makes this thing important to the person. The idea behind this view is that, by starting to care about something, this thing becomes important to the person even if it was unimportant to them before. This can be understood in the sense that the caring attitude causes a need and thereby ties the thing to the person's well-being. A similar view is defended by Matthew Smith, who argues from a third-person perspective that a thing becomes important or morally significant if someone cares about it. This caring attitude by one person then acts as a reason for other people to change their behavior towards this thing accordingly. Yitzhak Benbaji agrees that this may happen in some cases but denies that it can be generalized. According to him, this type of case contrasts with other cases of things that lack importance to a person independent of the person's conscious attitude towards them. For example, a person might care about their deeply damaged relationship with their spouse. This caring attitude might be based on wrong beliefs about how negatively a split would affect them, meaning that both partners would be better off without it. In this case, the relationship is not important to the person even though they care about it. A similar case involves a person who, following the health advice of a charlatan, starts caring a lot about avoiding a certain type of food. But as it turns out, this food has no health impact whatsoever in this case and is therefore objectively unimportant to the person. This way, it is possible to distinguish caring from importance: a person may care about something even though this thing is unimportant since it has no impact on the person's well-being. The opposite is also possible: something may have an impact on the person's well-being but they may be unaware of this impact and therefore do not care about the thing. This corresponds to the difference between actually needing something and merely believing that one needs it. Ideally, the two coincide: people care about what is important to them. Others According to Bernard Williams, importance is closely related to so-called deliberative priority but not identical to it. Deliberative priority is a form of practical preference: it determines the weight the agent ascribes to different options in the process of deciding in favor of one of them. This weight depends not just on the value of the different outcomes but also on the agent's ability to affect these outcomes. Finding something important, on the other hand, does not imply that the agent has any power over it. So a traveler may find it important to have good weather during their trip even though this does not carry deliberative priority for them since there is nothing they can do about this fact. == Types ==

Importance is a broad term with various closely related meanings. For this reason, many theorists try to distinguish different types of importance to clarify what they mean and to avoid misunderstandings. A closely related distinction is drawn by Ernst Tugendhat, who talks of importance relative to someone in contrast to importance in an absolute or objective sense. In the first meaning, importance refers to a subjective attitude as a form of caring. In this regard, that a child is important to their mother means that the mother has a certain attitude towards her child. This attitude usually includes the idea that its target is worthy of love and appreciation. The second meaning refers to an objective sense of having value. This type of importance is not restricted to someone's attitude. It is expressed, for example, when stating that Albert Einstein was objectively important due to his scientific discoveries. This is different from the fact that, presumably, Albert Einstein was also important to his mother. == Value of importance and desire to be important ==

Many people desire to be important or to make a difference to the world: they want their existence to matter. This desire is usually paired with the requirement that it is realized through intentional actions that express the values one holds dear. This issue raises the question of the value of importance, i.e. whether it is good for a person to be important or whether this should be desired. This also has a moral dimension since it determines whether the motivation to become important is morally acceptable or misguided. Becoming important is good at least in the sense that it fulfills the desire of these people. However, the deeper question is whether importance has a value independent of such specific desires. Being important can also have various other side effects. Some of them may be beneficial by helping the person achieve something else they desire, like fame or power. But for others, such side effects may hinder them. For example, a spy may find it very difficult to continue in their discreet line of business if they become well known due to their importance. Importance is not automatically a good thing. In some cases, it is even obviously a bad thing. For example, the fact that the black death traveled from Asia to Europe was an important event. But, due to its tragic consequences, it was not a good thing to happen. So a central aspect of the value of importance is whether the difference in question is positive or negative. Being important because one discovers a cure for cancer is a valuable form of importance while being important because one causes a global pandemic is a bad form of importance. This is a key difference since some people may be driven by a desire for importance independent of whether it is positive or negative. In this case, they may cause a lot of havoc to the world around them if they are under the impression that they can only achieve importance through a negative impact. For example, someone may "try to become important by assassinating a political leader or cultural figure" without caring about the negative side effects of this act. On the psychological level, the impression of being important does not always correspond to someone's actual importance. For example, a descendant of a world-historic individual may think themselves important because of this connection even though they have had very little impact on the world. == Related concepts and theories ==

Ethics, morality, and normativity Importance plays various roles in ethics, for example, concerning what reasons we have for an action, how we should act, and what merits attention. In the case of rational choice theory, for example, this is realized by making a cost-benefit analysis to determine the significance of each option. According to Harry Frankfurt, there is a difference between what is important to us and what is morally right. For example, an agent may decide against the course of action demanded by morality since they ascribe more importance to factors outside the moral domain. So people care about many other things besides ethics, such as luxury, friendship, knowledge, and well-being. Whether this outlook is correct may depend on how the concept of "importance" is understood. If "important" means "having a causal impact on a large scale" then human life seems to be cosmically unimportant. Such a view is held by David Benatar, who defends this claim by arguing that "[n]othing we do on Earth has any effect beyond it". However, various theorists have opposed this pessimistic view. Their arguments usually focus on the unique qualities of human life. Nihilism, absurdism, and existential crisis A negative response to the question of the cosmic importance of human life may lead to a form of nihilism or absurdism. On the moral or ethical level, nihilism can be expressed as the view that nothing really matters or that nothing has any importance. This view is closely related to absurdism. Absurdists accept this basic outlook and use it to argue for the thesis that life, or the world as a whole, is absurd. That means that there is a conflict between the internal human desire for things to matter that is frustrated by the external lack of significance belonging to the nature of the world. Accepting the absurdist or nihilist perspective on the world may trigger an existential crisis. An existential crisis is an inner conflict in which the perceived lack of any importance causes various negative experiences, such as stress, anxiety, despair, and depression, which can disturb the individual's normal functioning in everyday life. Usually, nihilism, absurdism, and existential crises are defined, not in terms of importance, but in terms of meaning: they are concerned with the impression that life is meaningless. However, many theorists hold that this also implies a lack of importance and a few theorists even define these phenomena in terms of a lack of importance or significance. Power, wealth, and fame People often ascribe high importance to power, material wealth, and fame. Power may be defined as the ability to affect outcomes or to carry out one's own will despite resistance. These causal effects establish an intimate relation to importance, especially if importance is defined in terms of having a big causal impact. Fame and importance are closely associated with each other: famous people are usually important and important people are usually famous. However, the meanings of these terms are not identical. The fame of a person depends on various factors. These include how many people know about this person, how much they know about them, and how positively they evaluate them. This evaluative aspect can be used to distinguish famous persons from celebrities: celebrities are well known in their domain but this does not imply that they are seen in a positive light or have a good reputation. People may become famous because they do important things. The attention they get due to being famous may, in turn, help them do further important things. So ideally, the more important someone is the more famous they should be. Power is often closely related to fame or how other people perceive and react to the individual since many types of power arise from people responding to the powerful individual, for example, by following their command. == References ==