Happy that a fellow-cat-appreciator is here at the Forum.
Since it is a long story, it is best if you check out that article by Dr. Hartman in order to clearly understand the subtleties of valuation, and the formalization of the process.http://hartmaninstitute.org/Portals/0/html-files/AxiologyAsAScience.html It will explain it, and probably raise some new, deeper questions. One does not need to adopt the Continuum Hypothesis to gain the essential value in this paper. Just note how logical is the argument you will find there. …as logical as the solution to an advanced expert-level Sudoku puzzle. Also, see his bio in Wiki.
So, say you have a wife, and sadly your wife falls sick.and is confined to total bed-rest. … She ceases to be efficient, useful, practical. Your wife in this situation is none of those qualities on your above list, hence you won’t value her any more?
Thus you will not love her …in that situation
Does the cost-factor bring money into your evaluation? Does someone who uses that list above to decide on what is valuable sell his girlfriends? or does he buy them? …Just asking…
In Philosophy the word “anything” applies to anything, to imaginary items and to realities, to universals, to particulars, and to singulars. to categories and classifications, to abstract items and concrete items, to generalities and to specifics, to a group or to an individual.
My wife is singular, specific, and very real. She definitely is an individual
I don’t know what word you would use if you wanted to cover all those entities mentioned above in the first paragraph of this post, if you did not use the word “anything.”??? And why would we be excluding persons when we ask about what makes something valuable. They have value too.
You get an A in being a critic. Do you really believe you are doing philosophy?
Philosophers do act picky, because they are working to clarify and sharpen up concepts. They search for, and find, similarities and differences. They differentiate one concept from another.
I am working for a world where people will use words that heal, not words that harm and abuse.
I asked you - as a fellow philosopher, a searcher for truth - what word you would employ to describe both mental constructs, things, and individuals. Instead of giving us an answer, you engage in name-calling. Does this make you feel like a big-shot because you can put others down, making them into “nobodies” while you are “a somebody”?
There must be a proper premesis to be met before decent philosophy can be done. You offer only a poor enviroment with all youre puerile smilies degrading any oppinion offerd.
When you are offerd the same degrading smilies, you act like an innocent child that is pure of hear and has never spoken a bad word, which you just provoked. Be decent and you recieve decentcy.
Yes, Drusus. I owe you an apology. As I reflect on the example (the illustration) that I offered in a previous post, I now realize that it was insensitive and insulting. I am now aware that I misnamed the thread. It should be titled instead: What makes something or someone valuable?
With that title for the thread much misunderstanding might have been avoided. I ask for your forgiveness. Also, it is possible that English is not your native tongue; if so, this calls for extra tolerance on my part before I give counterexamples. I mistakenly inferred that you were offering an alternative Theory of Value, and that your list constituted a complete account of what it takes for something to be “valuable.” I jumped to too many conclusions. I am sorry to have hurt your feelings.
Fixed Cross’ words have been ignored here, but they raise an important point to this topic: something is valuable because and only because an entity able to value values it. As James also pointed out, something is valuable if one anticipates it will be of value to oneself. This is not circular.
Value emerges from a valuer, from an entity which values. What is a valuing entity? Properly speaking it is any subject/nexus of sensation/form which is able to interpret its incoming stimuli, to differentiate, to select/reject and weigh based on a standard. What is this standard? It can be anything, but only those entities which hold to a standard that reflects their actual needs/goals will tend, over time, to successfully nagivate reality, to survive and procreate/pass along their form (i.e. their particular way of valuing). Thus there is a naturally-selective pressure applied to subjects possessed of the capability for interpretation/differentiation (valuing). This is the basic principle upon which all life, indeed all material form of any kind, has emerged/evolved.
Entities value based on a standard of value, a formula which allows them to distinguish one thing from another, to weigh one thing against another, and to select or reject, to preference accordingly. Usually this standard of value is unconscious, embedded at the level of structure and material form, of process and function and organization. In some life which has attained a sufficiently complex structure of consciousness this capability to value becomes more direct, conscious. At this level we get things like intention, choice, “free will” and morality. But that’s a separate discussion.
Nothing is intrinsically valuable. To be valuable supposes a valuer, an entity possessed of the capacity to value (to interpret/differentiate, to select or reject based on a standard). And this standard need not even be a good one (but if it is not, this standard has less likelihood of continuing to exist in future generations of forms).
Thanks for your support and confirmation of the definition offered. As is obvious to any careful reader, the first words, in line 2, of the original post in this thread read: “To Judge J …something is valuable…”
So we agree on that. What you stress has not been ignored, for I brought the valuer into it at the outset. I gave him or her the name “J.” It is a variable, which can stand for any other entity’s name, if that entity serves as the judge of the value, does the valuing.
Hartman concurred: we cannot leave the valuer out of it.
As I explained in my response to brevel_monkey of Wed May 30, 2012 1:17 am,
the standard is the name, the name one places on the concept under discussion. I wrote: “The name sets the norm.” And then I went on to remind us that a meaning is associated with that word, with the name of the relevant concept. I told how we acquire the meaning of the word, how it is associated with the concept’s name, as we learn the language. We learn, as children, to differentiate concepts: “mirror” is one thing; “reflective pond surface” is another - even though a kid may look at the pond and say “mirror.” His parent corrects him. In this way the child learns to tell things apart, to differentiate them.
And we can (and some do) differentiate ourselves. Ethics directs us to do so. We are to Know ourself, Accept ourself, Create ourself, and then we are - if mentally healthy - likely to Give ourself … to the world, that is, to take on responsibility.
In order to comply with these four imperatives, it is necessary for an individual to differentiate herself from everyone else, find her unique gifts, and make a contribution of them, to give herself. The better I define myself, the better I know what it is I am an artist at, and what I would be best at as my calling in life.
As to the second point, I suspect you may be using the term “intrinsic value” as did John Dewey in his Theory of Value. I agree with you that nothing is an “end in itself.”
I use the term however in Dr. Hartman’s sense, which I explained to Faust. It means a value with an indefinitely-high number of properties …so many, we can’t count them: we have to see it as a gestalt. How do we ever know it? By getting involved. We (and what we value) form a continuum when we are Intrinsically valuing. To I-Value is to identify with, and start to bond with the object being valued. This is a process. It does occur. Such relationships are formed in everyday experience. We cannot gainsay it. People do avidly pursue their projects or their hobbies. People do fall in love. People do wax poetically about some topic. People do get into a state of high over some sounds, and call it: “music.” You know you’re dealing with an Intrinsic value when you give it your full attention, it eventually becomes ‘a part of you,’ you are so into it.
You’re post seems to imply that only pragmatically instrumental things can have value, which I do not think is the case. Let us not forgot that values (particularly moral values) are consentual. Such as the value of human beings. One would not hold that a strangers of no benefit to the individual are valueless. ( I acknowledge that Nietszche and Spinoza claimed this view; but all this does is verify my argument as they were consentual too).
These points which has been listed are just some out of many, why would be forced to name all points there should be named, when a few can contribute to the puzzle.
So, say you have a wife, and sadly your wife falls sick.and is confined to total bed-rest. … She ceases to be efficient, useful, practical. Your wife in this situation is none of those qualities on your above list, hence you won’t value her any more? 
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