Are values features of the world? Is this a meaningful Q?

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
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I have been doing some reading about Mackie and whether or not we can apply it to the real world (apply the pragmatic test to the question). I think I have a vaild answer to his question.

Yes Mackie’s question regarding values as features of the world, like natural features is a meaningful question. The world initiates values from within and are then applied to the world by humans. What we accept to be true contributes to the most human good over the longest period of time. Values are created by nature as an internal mechanism to protect nature and sustain it. We protect nature as a means of self preservation. Therefore it is meaningful to talk about values as features of the world.

Am I making no sense?

Thanks! haha

Szpak

2

But are the values we so naturally create the right ones? For instance, there have been many values that were once accepted and are not anymore. So though I agree values are natural in that they are created by natural things, humans, but this is no reason to accept those values.

3

of course they are right…

unless they are left and then they are not right…

-Imp

4

But tank,

Pragmatism holds that not just anything that is useful or practical is true, only those things that contribute to the most human good in the longest course, as I said before. These values need to have use in the real world and need to be able to Predict outcomes and be testable.

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But like I said, values have changed over time. So how are we to know which set of values is truth. And can you give me an example of a value? The ones I am thinking of are like honesty, or forgivness, what kind of values do you mean? You said :

“What we accept to be true contributes to the most human good over the longest period of time.”

Do you really believe this is so? Seeing as how what we believe is true has changed so much and so often, how can this be so?

6

A pragmatist would say that forgiveness is a true value since it has been tested and it has created the greatest human good.

7

he who turns the other cheek gets slapped again…

-Imp

8

that, i believe, would be an utilitarian, not a pragmatist.

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sorry guys im workin on an essay here realting to this topic. I will give it a post and it would be great to hear your rebuttles! Sorry may be what I have learned is incorrect but that was my defintion of pragmatism. From what I understand that pragmatism steams from utilitarianism. James actually says in his dedication in his book on pragmatism “To the Memory of John Stuart Mill from whom I first learned the pragmatic openness of mind and whom my fancy likes to picture as our leader were he alive to-day”. I havent completely comprehended pragmatism, so this is my only evidence… (ill try and find more) as a whole as of yet but hopefully by 4:30 today I will have!

Szpak

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and sorry Imp I don’t mean to turn a cheek. I probably dont have as much experience as you. I’m fresh out of highschool and all I wish to do is learn and enjoy in the workings of philosophical discussion!

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no worries, it was only in regard to forgiveness being a “true value”…

-Imp

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Hey guys I posted my essay under the essays and thesis forum. Its called “Values in Nature”. Please read it! It may defend my point better than I can in little responses.

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What kind of thing do you think that value is?

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There’s nothing saying a pragmatist cannot also be a utilitarian. However, the two are different. One could attempt a derivation of utilitarianism from pragmatism; on the other hand, one could try to attack utilitarianism without abandoning a pragmatic perspective. Furthermore, there are various flavors of utilitarianism as well as various different flavors of pragmatism.

In any case, not all utilitarians claim that forgiveness is a necessary good. Utilitarianism doesn’t necessarily establish the value of any particular acts. Rather, it provides a method for judging the value of a particular act.

Anyway, the question here is about value.

The number 2 is no more present in a pair of apples than the word “good” is present in an ice cream cone. Yet, a rational person can count two apples, and enjoy the ice cream.

If “good” is a value, is it a different kind of value, or is it just like the number 2? The number 2 is a mathematical value. Good is an ethical value. Both are useful types of values because they allow us to measure things.

These terms and others like them are vital for our ability to describe and interact rationally with the world. They do not refer to specific objects, though. Rather, they are perhaps metaconcepts. They refer to a category of concepts. In other words, value terms can refer to anything, and therefore refer to nothing in particular.

Of course, some might say that all concepts are values. The term “car” describes the things we evaluate as “cars.” If values aren’t present in objects, then cars aren’t present in cars, right?

What I suggest is that value terms (numbers, “good,” etc.) are unlike general facts, in that they are purely abstract. Facts are descriptions of experience. Specific values, then, can be used to refer to experience. However, the values themselves are not empirical objects.

How do we get from the value to the fact? That is, if a value term is not an empirical object, then how could something like “car” be used to refer to a real thing? The solution: you can’t be sure that you are talking about a real thing. All you can do is what makes the most sense to you. Clearly you cannot maintain the radical skepticism of “nothing is real.” So, once you realize that some things are real, it’s just a matter of finding reasons to think something is or isn’t real.

I consider value terms organizational aspects of rational thought. They are no doubt the result of evolutionary pressures. Evolution explains why we have rational thought. It also means that values can be studied scientifically. Furthermore, brains would be horribly inefficient if they didn’t provide a functional method for distinguishing between what is real and what is illusion. So, the fact that our brains have evolved to this level of complexity is a strong indication that we are endowed with a remarkable tool for learning about nature.

So, while we may not have a clear and distinct line separating facts and values, we can treat certain concepts as abstractions and others as empirical descriptions. The marginal cases may occasionally prove interesting, but they don’t provide a sufficient cause for abandoning the whole process.

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James, head on over to my essay on “Values in Nature” in the Essays and Theses forum. there you should find your answer!

Thank you pragmatist! Someone on my side! P.S. could you read my essay and comment on it as well!

Szpak

16

Yes, you are making sense. Like you said, this is an objection to positivists’ claim that values, like ethics, cannot be assigned truth-values (T or F), hence “meaningless”. This is what I would call “shrinking” the reality, or narrowing down reality to fit only certain things that could be asserted, and assigned the value of true. This is in accord with the definition of what it means for something to be meaningful—for something to be meaningful, according to the positivists, et al., we should have a way of knowing it, and therefore, a way of asserting it (assigning it a value of true). Their problem with dealing with “values” is just like the problem of dealing with ethics—it is just a matter of taste. Anyone could argue one way or the other way, and both could be right or both could be wrong. Contradictory views could, and they do exist, when it comes to values.

One way I would argue is similar to the way I would argue, say, the reality of “diversity”: To assert that there is diversity in the natural world we should have a theory of truth that could ground it (maybe the coherence approach—there is nothing in the world that would match up with our notion of diversity empirically). “Diversity” is manifested in the natural world, but only when we recognize that different things make up our natural world—that our world is clearly heterogeneous, not homogenous under our usual observation—that we recognize there is such a reality as “diversity”. I could prove that diversity is part of our reality not directly by pointing to it (it is not a thing), but, indirectly, by pointing to its obvious manifestation.

If this example doesn’t sound good enough—I can think of another way.

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[quote=“Szpak”]
I have been doing some reading about Mackie and whether or not we can apply it to the real world (apply the pragmatic test to the question). I think I have a vaild answer to his question.

Yes Mackie’s question regarding values as features of the world, like natural features is a meaningful question. The world initiates values from within and are then applied to the world by humans. What we accept to be true contributes to the most human good over the longest period of time. Values are created by nature as an internal mechanism to protect nature and sustain it. We protect nature as a means of self preservation. Therefore it is meaningful to talk about values as features of the world.

Am I making no sense?

Thanks! haha

It seems to me that values are

interactive properties of the world. They are a product of an interaction between the human mind and the external world. Think of it on the model of color properties like red or blue. The color properties we ascribe to objects are, in fact, the product of the interaction between light rays bouncing off the object and the peculiar faculties for sensing these light rays with which human beings are equipped. If people did not have those color faculties they would not ascribe the properties they do ascribe to objects. The same model seems to me to apply to our ascriptions of value properties. Human beings tend to respond in certain ways to events or things in the world. We seem to have a kind of “sympathetic sense” by which certain kinds of events affect us in various ways. So that moral properties, too, are a product of the peculiar ways in which human beings respond to the world, and certain “objective” properties of the world itself.

Now there are, of course, differences between color properties which we ascribe to the world, and the moral properties we ascribe to the world. For example, our moral sense is not nearly so uniform as our color sense. This seems partly because our moral senses are much more shaped by education and experience than are our color senses. More of this parallel needs exploration. (By the way, this view is essentially Hume’s)