Value theory, also called axiology, studies the nature, sources, and types of values. It is a branch of philosophy and an interdisciplinary field closely associated with social sciences such as anthropology, economics, psychology, and sociology.
Value is the worth of something, usually understood as covering both positive and negative degrees corresponding to the terms good and bad. Values influence many human endeavors related to emotion, decision-making, and action. Value theorists distinguish various types of values, like the contrast between intrinsic and instrumental value. An entity has intrinsic value if it is good in itself, independent of external factors. An entity has instrumental value if it is useful as a means leading to other good things. Other classifications focus on the type of benefit, including economic, moral, political, aesthetic, and religious values. Further categorizations distinguish absolute values from values that are relative to something else.
Diverse schools of thought debate the nature and origins of values. Value realists state that values exist as objective features of reality. Anti-realists reject this, with some seeing values as subjective human creations and others viewing value statements as meaningless. Regarding the sources of value, hedonists argue that only pleasure has intrinsic value, whereas desire theorists discuss desires as the ultimate source of value. Perfectionism, another approach, emphasizes the cultivation of characteristic human abilities. Value pluralism identifies diverse sources of intrinsic value, raising the issue of whether values belonging to different types are comparable. Value theorists employ various methods of inquiry, ranging from reliance on intuitions and thought experiments to the analysis of language, description of first-person experience, observation of behavior, and surveys.
Value theory is related to various fields. Ethics focuses primarily on normative concepts of right behavior, whereas value theory explores evaluative concepts about what is good. In economics, theories of value are frameworks to assess and explain the economic value of commodities. Sociology and anthropology examine values as aspects of societies and cultures, reflecting dominant preferences and beliefs. In psychology, values are typically understood as abstract motivational goals that shape an individual's personality. The roots of value theory lie in antiquity as reflections on the highest good that humans should pursue. Diverse traditions contributed to this area of thought during the medieval and early modern periods, but it was only established as a distinct discipline in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Definition
thumb|upright=.8|alt=Photo of a marble bust of a bearded man|Even though early contributions to value theory were made in antiquity by philosophers such as [[Socrates, this area of thought was only conceived as a distinct discipline in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.]]Value theory, also known as axiology and theory of values, is the systematic study of values. As a branch of philosophy, it examines which things are good and what it means for something to be good. It distinguishes different types of values and explores how they can be measured and compared. This field also studies whether values are a fundamental aspect of reality and how they influence phenomena such as emotion, desire, decision, and action. Value theory is relevant to many human endeavors because values are guiding principles that underlie the political, economic, scientific, and personal spheres. It analyzes and evaluates phenomena such as well-being, utility, beauty, human life, knowledge, wisdom, freedom, love, and justice.
The precise definition of value theory is debated and some theorists rely on alternative characterizations. In a broad sense, value theory is a catch-all label that encompasses all philosophical disciplines studying evaluative and normative topics. According to this view, value theory is one of the main branches of philosophy and includes ethics, aesthetics, social philosophy, political philosophy, and philosophy of religion. A similar broad characterization sees value theory as a multidisciplinary area of inquiry that integrates research from fields like sociology, anthropology, psychology, and economics alongside philosophy. In a narrow sense, value theory is a subdiscipline of ethics that is particularly relevant to the school of consequentialism since it determines how to assess the value of consequences.
The word axiology has its origin in the ancient Greek terms (, meaning or ) and (, meaning or ). Even though the roots of value theory reach back to the ancient period, this area of thought was only conceived as a distinct discipline in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when the term axiology was coined. The terms value theory and axiology are usually used as synonyms, but some philosophers distinguish between them. According to one characterization, axiology is a subfield of value theory that limits itself to theories about which things are valuable and how valuable they are. The term timology is an older and less common synonym.
Value
Value is the worth, usefulness, or merit of something. Value theorists examine the expressions used to describe and compare values, called evaluative terms. They are further interested in the types or categories of values. The proposed classifications overlap and are based on factors like the source, beneficiary, and function of the value.
Evaluative terms
Values are expressed through evaluative terms. For example, the words good, best, great, and excellent convey positive values, whereas words like bad and terrible indicate negative values. They contrast with thick evaluative terms, like courageous and cruel, which provide more information by expressing other qualities, such as character traits, in addition to the evaluation. Values are often understood as degrees that cover positive and negative magnitudes corresponding to good and bad. The term value is sometimes restricted to positive degrees to contrast with the term disvalue for negative degrees. The words better and worse are used to compare degrees, but it is controversial whether a quantitative comparison is always possible. Evaluation is the assessment or measurement of value, often employed to compare the benefits of different options to find the most advantageous choice.
Evaluative terms are sometimes distinguished from normative or deontic terms. Normative or deontic terms, like right, wrong, and obligation, prescribe actions or other states by expressing what ought to be done or what is required. Evaluative terms have a wider scope because they are not limited to what people can control or are responsible for. For instance, involuntary events like digestion and earthquakes can have a positive or negative value even if they are not right or wrong in a strict sense. Despite the distinction, evaluative and normative concepts are closely related. For example, the value of the consequences of an action may influence its normative statuswhether the action is right or wrong.
Types
Intrinsic and instrumental
thumb|alt=Diagram with a box labelled "instrumental value" and an arrow pointing to a circle labelled "intrinsic value"|An entity has intrinsic value if it is good in itself. An entity has instrumental value if it leads to other good things.
thumb|alt=Diagram with several boxes and arrows labelled "chain of instrumental values", and a circle labelled "intrinsic value"|Instrumental values can form chains with intrinsic values as their endpoints.
A thing has intrinsic or final value if it is good in itself or good for its own sake, independent of external factors or outcomes. A thing has extrinsic or instrumental value if it is useful or leads to other good things, serving as a means to bring about a desirable end. For example, tools like microwaves or money have instrumental value due to the useful functions they perform. According to a common view, pleasure is one of the sources of intrinsic value. Other suggested sources include desire satisfaction, virtue, life, health, beauty, freedom, and knowledge.
thumb|alt=Diagram with a circle inside a box labelled "intrinsic and instrumental value", an arrow, and another circle labelled "intrinsic value"|A thing can have both intrinsic and instrumental value if it is good in itself and leads to other good things.
thumb|alt=Diagram with a box labelled "instrumental value", two arrows, and two circles labelled "positive intrinsic value" and "negative intrinsic value"|A thing can have both positive and negative consequences. Its total instrumental value is the value balance of all its consequences.
Intrinsic and instrumental value are not exclusive categories. As a result, a thing can have both intrinsic and instrumental value if it is both good in itself while also leading to other good things.
Traditionally, value theorists have used the terms intrinsic value and final value interchangeably, just like the terms extrinsic value and instrumental value. This practice has been questioned in the 20th century based on the idea that they are similar but not identical concepts. According to this view, a thing has intrinsic value if the source of its value is an intrinsic property, meaning that the value does not depend on how the thing is related to other objects. Extrinsic value, by contrast, depends on external relations. This view sees instrumental value as one type of extrinsic value based on external causal relations. At the same time, it allows that there are other types of non-instrumental extrinsic value that result from external non-causal relations. Final value is understood as what is valued for its own sake, independent of whether intrinsic or extrinsic properties are responsible.
Absolute and relative
Another distinction relies on the contrast between absolute and relative value. Absolute value, also called value , is a form of unconditional value. A thing has relative value if its value is relative to other things or limited to certain considerations or viewpoints.
One form of relative value is restricted to the type of an entity, expressed in sentences like "That is a good knife" or "Jack is a good thief". This form is known as attributive goodness since the word "good" modifies the meaning of another term. To be attributively good as a certain type means to possess qualities characteristic of that type. For instance, a good knife is sharp and a good thief has the skill of stealing without getting caught. Attributive goodness contrasts with predicative goodness. The sentence "Pleasure is good" is an example since the word good is used as a predicate to talk about the unqualified value of pleasure. Attributive and predicative goodness can accompany each other, but this is not always the case. For instance, being a good thief is not necessarily a good thing.
Another type of relative value restricts goodness to a specific person. Known as personal value, it expresses what benefits a particular person, promotes their welfare, or is in their interest. For example, a poem written by a child may have personal value for the parents even if the poem lacks value for others. Impersonal value, by contrast, is good in general without restriction to any specific person or viewpoint. Some philosophers, like Moore, reject the existence of personal values, holding that all values are impersonal. Others have proposed theories about the relation between personal and impersonal value. The agglomerative theory says that impersonal value is nothing but the sum of all personal values. Another view understands impersonal value as a specific type of personal value taken from the perspective of the universe as a whole.
Agent-relative value is sometimes contrasted with personal value as another person-specific limitation of the evaluative outlook. Agent-relative values affect moral considerations about what a person is responsible for or guilty of. For example, if Mei promises to pick Pedro up from the airport then an agent-relative value obligates Mei to drive to the airport. This obligation is in place even if it does not benefit Mei, in which case there is an agent-relative value without a personal value. In consequentialism, agent-relative values are often discussed in relation to ethical dilemmas. One dilemma revolves around the question of whether an individual should murder an innocent person if this prevents the murder of two innocent people by a different perpetrator. The agent-neutral perspective tends to affirm this idea since one murder is preferable to two. The agent-relative perspective tends to reject this conclusion, arguing that the initial murder should be avoided since it negatively impacts the agent-relative value of the individual committing it.
Traditionally, most value theorists see absolute value as the main topic of value theory and focus their attention on this type. Nonetheless, some philosophers, like Peter Geach and Philippa Foot, have argued that the concept of absolute value by itself is meaningless and should be understood as one form of relative value.
Other distinctions
Other categorizations of values have been proposed following diverse classification principles without a single approach widely accepted by all theorists. Some focus on the types of entities that have value. They include distinct categories for entities like individuals, groups, society, the environment, and inert things. Another subdivision pays attention to the type of benefit involved and encompasses material, economic, moral, social, political, aesthetic, and religious values. Classifications by the beneficiary of the value distinguish between self- and other-oriented values.
A historically influential approach identifies three spheres of value: truth, goodness, and beauty. For example, the neo-Kantian philosopher Wilhelm Windelband characterizes them as the highest goals of consciousness, with thought aiming at truth, will aiming at goodness, and emotion aiming at beauty. A similar view, proposed by the Chinese philosopher Zhang Dainian, says that the value of truth belongs to knowledge, the value of goodness belongs to behavior, and the value of beauty belongs to art. This three-fold distinction also plays a central role in the philosophies of Franz Brentano and Jürgen Habermas. Other suggested types of values include objective, subjective, potential, actual, contingent, necessary, inherent, and constitutive values.
Schools of thought
Realism and anti-realism
Value realism is the view that values have mind-independent existence.