Tutorial # 3. Value. Some Distinctions

Picture from xkcd


From Value Theory by Mark Schroeder (2008) - SEP

Three senses of "Value Theory"

I. “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.

II. "value theory" 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.

III. “value theory” designates the area of moral philosophy that is concerned with theoretical questions about value and goodness of all varieties — the theory of value.

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[Consider these sentences]

1) Pleasure is good.

2) It is good that you came.

3) She is good for him.

4) That is a good knife.

Sentences like 1, in which “good” is predicated of a mass term… in which philosophers have wanted to know what things (of which there can be more or less) are good.

Sentences like 2 make claims about what I'll (again stipulatively) call goodness simpliciter; this is the kind of goodness appealed to by traditional utilitarianism.

Sentences like 3 are good for sentences, and when the subject following “for” is a person, we usually take them to be claims about welfare or well-being.

And sentences like 4 are what… I'll call attributive uses of “good”, because “good” functions as a predicate modifier, rather than as a predicate in its own right.
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[The Issues]

Traditional axiology seeks to investigate what things are good, how good they are, and how their goodness is related to one another. Whatever we take the “primary bearers” of value to be, one of the central questions of traditional axiology is that of what stuffs are good: what is of value.