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Originally posted by LoopHooligan:
<strong>Are values part of reality?</strong>
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Excellent question. May I suggest, nefore attempting to answer that question, we first tackle the question, "What is a value?"
I've been reading Joel J. Kupperman's
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0195123484/internetinfidelsA/" target="_blank">Value... And What Follows</a>. Kupperman defines a "value" in the following way.
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Axiology is the study of value int he following narrow sense. Throughout this book, the words "value" and "values" will refer to what is worth having or being, taken purely for its own sake, or what is such that (taken by itself, apart from anything it causes) it is preferable that it exist rather than not exist. ...
... By value I will mean goodness as an end: what is worthwhile or desirable for its own sake. ...
... In short, values int he sense used here are good that by their nature would enhance a life or a world or negatively are things that by their nature would make a life or a world less desirable. (p. 3)
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So that is one professional philosopher's approach to defining "value." I will interpret the remainer of your post with his definition in mind.
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<strong>My question, on which I would be very interested to hear your comments, comes in two parts.
1. If the beauty of a sunset is in the eye of the beholder, not in the object perceived then are theses projected value judgements merely our imagination or are they part of reality?</strong>
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This is another excellent question. Kupperman devotes entire chapters of his book to questions like this. Kupperman seems to reject the view that value can be reduced to experiences:
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Thus far we have examined and rejected two appealing lowest-common-denominator views of what has value: hedonism and the view that happiness is the good. A third, which claims much less, is that anything that has value is an experience (or an aspect of an experience) of a sentient being. Some philosophers have found this modest claim plausible, although G.E. Moore rejected it. Robert Nozick has proposed a clever thought experiment that undermines it in much the same way as Plato's thought experiment in the Philebus undermines hedonism. He imagines an experience machine: one can choose to enter the machine and have highly desirable experiences for the rest of one's life while, in effect, never doing anything again. If all value resides in experience, this should be very appealing. Our unease suggests that there are things in life that we value that cannot be reduced to experiences. (p. 12)
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<strong>2. If they are part of reality then what distinguishes them from other flights of the imagination, namely religion?</strong>
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Here is what Kupperman has to say:
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Are there value facts? This is a less clear question than it might seem, in the absence of a clear and precise formulation of what counts as a fact. Until such a formulation appears, there seems to be no harm in speaking of value facts, as long as we bear in mind that to speak of the fact that X has high value is equivalent to saying that it is the case that X has high value, and that this is equivalent to saying that X really does have high value.
Are there values? Again, much depends on what we mean. We need to reject any images of spectral furniture of the universe. ... (p. 81)
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I hope this helps. Kupperman's books is one of the few books in print that I have been able to find that addresses the concept of value in detail. Based on the questions you are asking, you will probably find his book of great interest.
Jeffery Jay Lowder
11-08-2002, 07:30 PM
