Does life have a value?

[GrowingSmaller]

Value is a component part of all experience.
We experience life.
Therefore, value is a component part of life.

 

[Eudaimonist]

Value is a component part of all experience.
We experience life.
Therefore, value is a component part of life.

What do you mean by "value"?


eudaimonia,

Mark

 

[GrowingSmaller]

Perhaps in this context value means being of importance or worth. It is a hard concept to reduce to something else, a bit like when we say "thats red" and try and understand redness in a way other than direct experience of it. Perhaps we learn to understand the usage of the term "value" by encountering attachment and loss, pleasure and pain, beauty and ugliness etc.

For me value is not merely an intellectual response to a neutral set of experiences, but rather those experiences are permeated with value in themselves. A little like with chess, there is a game we have to learn the preexistent rules to if we are going to play well and survive or "flourish".

I believe there are different types of value: intrinsic, instrumental, aesthetic, culinary, apparent and real, instinctive and learned, primordial and evolved, 'naturally occuring' or socially constructed. They often relate to different aspects of our life: consumption, emotion, planning and organisation, sensory perception, cultural involvement, evolved or instinctive as opposed to learned awareness.

As far as I know all value is subjective or ideal, or mind dependent, but that does not make it inferior to the physical because mind (and therefore value) may well be a species of physical phenomena. In fact an extraordinary one.

I think that sometimes the experience of value, e.g. in happiness or beauty, is related to biopsychology and neurotransmitters like endorphins. For instance in depression where life seems to loose it's value (or traverse from a eu-value to a dis-value) there may be a treatment utilizing chemicals which alter the serotonin system, namely the antidepressants called SSRI's.

I see life's value as a little like a the sound of a fridge which we can become unaware of through prolonged exposure. But is the "buzzing" stops (as in depression) there is a strong chance that our existential shelf life may be in terminal decline (suicide).

I think that we must acknowledge at least that value is real, unless perhaps we are going to claim that it is a nonsense word that does not relate to experience. But lets asume that a causal theory of knowledge is relevant to our debate. We know value exists, and it is not merley imagined, therefore it is real and has causal power. Not only does life have value, but as seen above it influences our behavior whether that is expressed in writing about it or in edging away from that precarious cliff edge.

 

[juvenissun]

Value is a component part of all experience.
We experience life.
Therefore, value is a component part of life.

When the life ceased, what happened to the value?

If the value ceased too, then why is it a value? We can not say this is a value today, but is no longer a value tomorrow.

If the value lasted longer than a life, then the value many not be a part of life. Does it make sense to say that life is a part of the value? So if the life is not there, the value still is.

 

[Mling]

Life has exactly as much value as the person considering the question attributes to it.

 

[Eudaimonist]

We can not say this is a value today, but is no longer a value tomorrow.

Actually, yes. We can say that.


eudaimonia,

Mark

 

[Eudaimonist]

As far as I know all value is subjective or ideal, or mind dependent, but that does not make it inferior to the physical because mind (and therefore value) may well be a species of physical phenomena. In fact an extraordinary one.

Agreed. This is a promising start. I was worried you'd fall for the mind-body dichotomy, but you seem aware that values can be both mental (subjective) and biological (not subjective) at the same time.

I think that we must acknowledge at least that value is real, unless perhaps we are going to claim that it is a nonsense word that does not relate to experience.

I certainly acknowledge this, but I don't think that the experience of valuing one's life (often a result of "happy" chemicals such as endorphin, dopamine, oxytocin, and serotonin) all by itself means that life has value. It means simply that one values (is attracted to; aims at; loves) one's life in a subjective way, but a nihilist could easy counter: "So you love your life? So what? I love ice cream, but that does not mean that ice cream has value to me in some objective sense."

I think that the saving grace of your argument so far is that you recognize that there is something more going on than merely loving one's life. Love of life serves a biological function. There is an "objective" value -- one's life/existence as a human individual -- that this love is for the sake of.


eudaimonia,

Mark

 

[juvenissun]

Actually, yes. We can say that.


eudaimonia,

Mark

If so, how do we tell value from non-value? If happiness is a value, then why do we even need the term value? Is there anything which is does not have value?

 

[GrowingSmaller]

When the life ceased, what happened to the value?

If the mind is annihilated then so is value.

If the value ceased too, then why is it a value?

If I scrap my car, and the metal is used for something else, does that mean that I never had a car in the first place? That would be wrong.

We can not say this is a value today, but is no longer a value tomorrow.

Why not?

If the value lasted longer than a life, then the value many not be a part of life. Does it make sense to say that life is a part of the value? So if the life is not there, the value still is.

I am supposing that value is a mental phenomenon and is dependent on a living mind for it's being.

 

[GrowingSmaller]

I certainly acknowledge this, but I don't think that the experience of valuing one's life (often a result of "happy" chemicals such as endorphin, dopamine, oxytocin, and serotonin) all by itself means that life has value.

We are approaching something along the lines of the "desired -> desirable" minefield that Mill got caught up in.

It means simply that one values (is attracted to; aims at; loves) one's life in a subjective way, but a nihilist could easy counter: "So you love your life? So what? I love ice cream, but that does not mean that ice cream has value to me in some objective sense."

I would say that he is wrong, for the simple reason that although his taste for ice cream is dependent on his mind, his mind and experience of ice cream are both objective facts.

I think that the saving grace of your argument so far is that you recognize that there is something more going on than merely loving one's life. Love of life serves a biological function. There is an "objective" value -- one's life/existence as a human individual -- that this love is for the sake of.

I would say love is a form of valuing, but that life has no objective value other than the fact that it is experienced as valuable and that experience is an objective fact. Although we may subjectively have purposes, I think that love of life is primarily to be understood from the functionalist perspective i.e. it causes animals to survive and indirectly helps them reproduce. Insofar as it is instinctive or an instinctive response to a certain set of qualititive experiences, it is just like feathers, camouflage, legs, hair or coagulation of blood, ... just another biological feature that nature has selected due to it's causal role in increasing fitness.

 

[GrowingSmaller]

If so, how do we tell value from non-value? If happiness is a value, then why do we even need the term value? Is there anything which is does not have value?

I would say that all things we experience have value. Happiness has a value, sadness has a value, and we experience happiness and sadness in response to experiences because experiences have their 'inherent' values too. For instance a good film may well cause us to be happy. For me "good" can mean "having positive value".

People often think in terms of monetary value, but why would some things be worth more than others if their 'inherent' value or 'value to us' were not greater? Therefore, I think that monetary values are grounded in other values. If something is 'itself' valueless, or as I would say of dis-value or negative value, then we won't pay for it. In fact we might just pay to have it removed, or expend energy avoiding it.

Value is another axis or quantitive aspect of experience alongside (or embedded in experience of) brightness, loudness, solidity, number etc. The problem is it can't be measured in objects themselves with physical apparatus, because as far as we know its not there, but we have to understand mind and the brain to get to the root of it.

I advocate something like a kind of naturalist (unlike G E Moore) cognitivism (as opposed non cogniticvism), although I have respect for Moore because I am not sure if we can reduce experience of value to natural properties, although endorphins seem to be relevant. Also if "this dish is good" is true it is difficult to independently verify because of the difficulty in reducing value to an independently observable phenomenon. But a lack of hard science does not make the phenomenon less than absolutely real, maybe it just makes the methodical discussion of it for the time being a philosophical one.

 

[GrowingSmaller]

BTW I ought to disambiguate. By "life" I do not mean so much the biological organism, but the experience of events we are part of between birth and death.

 

[Eudaimonist]

BTW I ought to disambiguate. By "life" I do not mean so much the biological organism, but the experience of events we are part of between birth and death.

Yes, we do need to be clear about that.


eudaimonia,

Mark

 

[GrowingSmaller]

I think that the biological organism is valued, but experience is the modality in which that phenomenon has being or takes shape.

 

[Eudaimonist]

If so, how do we tell value from non-value?

Context.


eudaimonia,

Mark

 

[Received]

I don't think happiness is merely a value, but rather the essence of value itself. We value what we perceive will bring us happiness, whether positively or negatively (through the negation of unhappiness), directly (in that it leads to a more or less immediate impact on our happiness) or indirectly (in that it relates less immediately, such as finishing a textbook to do well on an exam). To say that life has value is to say that life has perceived happiness.

And it's all a subjective deal, sure. Nietzsche was the guy who really symbolized a shift from objective meaning to personal, subjective value. When the gods pass away, we're only left with our own filters. Post-Nietzschean theistic philosophers have pointed out that we've always had our own filters, and that there's no such thing as a deity who created an absolute value world; rather, a world in which values may be universal in some or many places, but isn't absolute given the diversity of creation.

 

[GrowingSmaller]

There is an "objective" value -- one's life/existence as a human individual -- that this love is for the sake of.


eudaimonia,

Mark

Actually I agree with that now, except I would say a "factual" rather than "objective" value to prevent confusion. Also I add that not all life seems to be worth loving. Although I am not suicidal, I am not permanently enamoured either.

 

[GrowingSmaller]

I don't think happiness is merely a value, but rather the essence of value itself. We value what we perceive will bring us happiness, whether positively or negatively (through the negation of unhappiness), directly (in that it leads to a more or less immediate impact on our happiness) or indirectly (in that it relates less immediately, such as finishing a textbook to do well on an exam). To say that life has value is to say that life has perceived happiness.

You seem to think that the only value is positive value, as if the only numbers were 8, 9 and 10. And also you seem to think that the only "experiential axis" we can encounter value on is the inner-emotional (and in fact only a small subset of that), rather than also the external-physical, as if the outer world we experience were completely neutral and could not glimmer or shine etc. Seems too limited and one dimensional a description or our phenomenology to me.

 

[The Paul]

It's very simple.

Value is a human invention. Or, if that's too hard a pill to swallow, an emergent property of humanity.

Humans assign value to life.

So life has value.

 

[GrowingSmaller]

It's very simple.

Value is a human invention.

Are you saying the all lvalue of life is the result of higher order thought and voluntary cognition?

Or, if that's too hard a pill to swallow, an emergent property of humanity.

Agreed that it is emergent, but I think that animals experience it too.

Humans assign value to life.

True, but humans also thrown into (find themselves in) world of value. Voluntary thought processes come later.