Thank you for this article, I find the subject interesting.
In this article, I am rather surprised by the use of the word ‘value’, also in the comments, so I wondered if it was a language issue on my part. However, the fact that the author wonders whether human values are good is something that fits in with my initial interpretation of the word value, which is as follows: value in the deepest sense, what is most important in life. And my initial interpretation seems to be in line with that of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, for example: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/value-theory/
The term “value theory” is used in at least three different ways in philosophy. In its broadest sense, “value theory” is a catch-all label used to encompass all branches of moral philosophy, social and political philosophy, aesthetics, and sometimes feminist philosophy and the philosophy of religion — whatever areas of philosophy are deemed to encompass some “evaluative” aspect. In its narrowest sense, “value theory” is used for a relatively narrow area of normative ethical theory particularly, but not exclusively, of concern to consequentialists. In this narrow sense, “value theory” is roughly synonymous with “axiology”. Axiology can be thought of as primarily concerned with classifying what things are good, and how good they are. For instance, a traditional question of axiology concerns whether the objects of value are subjective psychological states, or objective states of the world.
So I find it difficult to understand why “value” then takes on the meaning of “what we like,” which seems to me to have nothing (or very little) to do with it.
Nevertheless, despite this potential difference in concept, I find that certain reflections remain valid even when taken in a philosophical sense.
For example, this, with which I agree, even when taking the word in the philosophical sense of “value.”
We don’t really know what human values are, or what shape they are, or even whether they’re A Thing at all. We don’t have trivial introspective access to our own values; sometimes we think we value a thing a lot, but realize in hindsight that we value it only a little. But insofar as the mental picture is pointing to a real thing at all, it does tell us how to go look for our values within our own minds.
I find this difficulty fascinating and believe it necessitates precise thought experiments on this subject in order to realize how poorly we model our own values (in the deepest sense, once again).
There is also the question of how to aggregate individuals’ (moral/deep) values into human (moral/deep) values, which does not seem at all obvious to me (neither the average, nor the sum, nor any other aggregation function seems to behave well a priori?). One idea I am currently imagining is more like creating a new global model from a collection of thought experiments (and concrete decisions to be made, to avoid problems of abstraction) that is very refined in order to distinguish subtleties, and which would be iteratively refined by proposing more and more “twisted” cases to question the foundations, on which a large number of people would express their opinions after a certain (significant) period of internal deliberation.
Thank you for this article, I find the subject interesting.
In this article, I am rather surprised by the use of the word ‘value’, also in the comments, so I wondered if it was a language issue on my part.
However, the fact that the author wonders whether human values are good is something that fits in with my initial interpretation of the word value, which is as follows: value in the deepest sense, what is most important in life.
And my initial interpretation seems to be in line with that of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, for example: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/value-theory/
So I find it difficult to understand why “value” then takes on the meaning of “what we like,” which seems to me to have nothing (or very little) to do with it.
Nevertheless, despite this potential difference in concept, I find that certain reflections remain valid even when taken in a philosophical sense.
For example, this, with which I agree, even when taking the word in the philosophical sense of “value.”
I find this difficulty fascinating and believe it necessitates precise thought experiments on this subject in order to realize how poorly we model our own values (in the deepest sense, once again).
There is also the question of how to aggregate individuals’ (moral/deep) values into human (moral/deep) values, which does not seem at all obvious to me (neither the average, nor the sum, nor any other aggregation function seems to behave well a priori?).
One idea I am currently imagining is more like creating a new global model from a collection of thought experiments (and concrete decisions to be made, to avoid problems of abstraction) that is very refined in order to distinguish subtleties, and which would be iteratively refined by proposing more and more “twisted” cases to question the foundations, on which a large number of people would express their opinions after a certain (significant) period of internal deliberation.