Primal

I think values are of course real, don't know if they are entirely in the minds though. Value for food for example is more then mental, it's physiological. What seperates them from religion is that religious beliefs are entirely conceptual-delving into the epistemic.Religion makes claims about what is real or not, in the outside world regardless of whether a religious believer is present or not. Religious beliefs are claims based on certain epistemic axioms.

Values are more of an emotional/instinctive response, they are not based on epistemic standards. Claims concerning them require an agent be present. These things are not "believed" so much as they are genetically pre-disposed and conditioned.

To make an analogy, suppose a robot has two things programmed into it 1) Pursue/like information. 2) The best way to get information is science.

The first deals with motivations, the second with epistemic standards. Values are motivations and deal with feelings, religion deals with cognitive-existiential beliefs. They each come from different sets of axioms.origins and are thus treated in a different manner.

[ November 01, 2002: Message edited by: Primal ]</p>

hinduwoman

Objective existance of physical objects is one thing, values are another. Values exist only in the mind of the valuer --- someone might think a good meal is more valueable than a sunset.
They are real only in the sense that consciousness of the person is real, but not real in the sense of having an objective existence.
Therefore religious beliefs are like any other values and have no objective existence.

picklepuss

Hi people;

Almost everyone here has reiterated the materialist claim that only physical 'things' have an 'objective reality'. That is, that they exist as actual entities independent of any external observer. Thus ethics and aesthetics and spirituality and mathematics and everything else not possessed by a lump of granite do not possess 'objective existence, reality'.

Well, even in this forum there have been debates in which the 'objective reality' of sticks and stones has been brought into question. I would suggest that both aesthetics and ethics have a determining criterion that is every bit as 'real' as any criterion that may be offered to determine the 'objective' reality of material objects and processes. Eastern philosophies are founded upon this principle, and its thread runs throughout western philosophy. It is the concept of harmony, balance, and integrity in the 'forms' taken by ideas, things, processes, and behaviours, including their mathematical expressions. It is the idea that form is as real as substance. That nothing exists unless and until it has form, and that form has its properties, just as substance has its properties. That without both there is no universe for anyone to observe, no 'objective reality' at all.

Just a thought.

AtlanticCitySlave

Without taking the materialist position, the answer to your question, as others have already pointed out, is that yes, values are a part of reality, whether they are "objective" (whatever it would mean in that sense) or simply subjective, i.e. you value x and i don't. If we were to construct a satisfying account of reality, we would have to take an objective or a subjective view of reality (whichever one it is) into consideration(as well as every aspect of our experience), since our values obviously fall under the rubric of what we call reality, just like love, beauty, ugliness, etc., whether or not things are, in themselves, lovely, beautiful, or ugly.
I wonder how many men would tell their wives/girlfriends they are "simply beautiful, no matter what anyone says", or "you are only beautiful to me subjectively, you have no inherent beauty".

picklepuss

Why does everyone duck the important part of Loop's questions? As I've pointed out, trying to create a dualism of subjective values/objective phenomena, that is, 'subjective' contra 'objective' "reality" just won't fly. It's an evasion. Either aesthetics and ethics and spirituality are objectively real, or they are figments of the human imagination, 'artificial' mental constructs that do not exist apart from human consciousness. That is, non-real, in the Physicalist sense.
But if that is the case then all empirical observation is nothing but 'artificial mental constructs', including colour, shape, velocity, loudness, weight, mass, brightness, time, etc., etc. If all empirical observation, and hence all of science, is only 'subjectively real', then pray tell me what is the use of it?

Yes, it is true that certain values are interpretive. But then, when is 'meaning' ever non-interpretive? All of science is interpretive. Facts, measurements, data, etc., are meaningless until interpreted, just as a sunset or a torture chamber is nothing but raw data until interpreted.
But that does not make their intrinsic beauty or evil a mere matter of 'interpretation', any more or less than mass and velocity are mere matters of interpretation.

Beauty and Evil are not exclusively in the eye of the beholder. The eyes of various beholders vary in their ability to recognize and determine not only beauty/ugliness, good/evil, real/not real, etc., but also in the ability to distinguish music/noise, stench/perfume, rough/smooth, delicious/disgusting, and even more telling, hot/cold, sweet/sour, blue/green, rythmic/arythmic, or perhaps even wave/particle, but does that make such phenomena 'not real'? Are only the measured bits of 'raw data' objectively real?

It seems to me that those who would only grant 'conditional', that is 'subjective' reality to ethics, aesthetics, and spirituality are defining all of 'reality' subjectively, relativistically, anthropomorphically. Including empirically observed, 'natural reality'.

I would maintain that in this light, certain entities cannot be labelled 'subjectively, conditionally, real' simply because we are unable to measure them with rulers, cups, and scales, and so collect their 'data'. Beauty, Truth, Virtue and the rest are objectively real. Just difficult to discern, and extremely difficult to 'measure'. That's what makes them seem subjective. IMHO.

LoopHooligan

Well thank you all for your input. The answer as usual seems to be Yes or No and this is a ridiculous way to ask this question.


If what you say is true then these "values" are nothing more than labels, a short cut to describing the sense of the object to others. This still does not explain why the sense of the object is true for all of us. If we all concieve of it in the same way, then is it not reality?

Keith Russell

Picklepuss:

Very well said, but I think you understand 'objective' differently than I do.

Beauty, evil, etc., are not intrinsic; they are not in external reality apart from consciousness.

Nor are they subjective (as you rightly recognize) in that they require conscious evaluation.

I consider them objective, believing that 'objective' best describes the 'link' between the facts of reality, and the evaluative concepts derived from those facts by an observing, rational consciousness.

Keith.

Jamie_L

Who said we all conceive of these things the same way? I didn't. I think that's an unfounded assumption. A man lost in the artic may not see a sunset as beautiful, since it signifies the coming of frigid-cold night that may kill him. As mentioned previously, some people feel suicidal - they may not value air or food the way we might. I don't know if I could think of anything that I believe all human beings value in the same way.

Jamie

[ November 04, 2002: Message edited by: Jamie_L ]</p>

LoopHooligan

I meant in general, most people would consider a flower beautiful with the exception perhaps of people that are allergic to flowers.

Jamie_L

LoopHooligan:

I was responding to the bit in your previous post where you argue for your position by stating that "the sense of the object is true for all of us."

I was pointing out that this is an erroneous statement.

Now, you could ask, "why is the sense of some objects true for most of us?"

Well, I can think of a number of reasons: social conditioning, similar brains with similar instinctive behaviors. In short, because for the most part we all tend to be programmed in similar ways by our genetics and environment. We're all human beings. We all grow up on planet earth. I don't think we need supernatural explanations for why we have some values in common.

Jamie