What are Values?

[trish]

Values relate to real things, real people and real situations, yes. But the key word is "relate" and not "equate". Values are coded in laws and normative behavior. But the laws and behaviors are not the values but "encode" the values.

I think the example Stavros provides shows how public confusion concerning the distinction between values and the ways in which we attempt to realize those values within our respective cultures can all too easily be exploited to avoid real political issues and to falsely divide us on fundamentals upon which we have no real disagreements. Al Qaeda does not hate us for our freedom. The differences between Christians and Muslims are on a doctrinal level, or at least on a level much higher than the level of human values. At least that is my contention.

[buttslinger]

"Love God"-Jesus
"Hell is other people."-Jean-Paul Sartre

[buttslinger]

Okay Trish, Okay.
Are values part of our DNA?
VALUE is a noun and a transitve verb.
A transitive verb is a verb that requires both a subject and one or more objects. The term is used to contrast intransitive verbs, which do not have objects.
A blade iof grass wants to live. On a cellular level.
Now that I think of it, mankind might be on the verge of engineering our own DNA. I wonder if we'll weed out that pesky "homo gene?"

[trish]

The capacity to experience hunger is part of our DNA. The strategies that we developed to avoid hunger are probably largely culturally transmitted. The ones that work are valued. But I draw back from claiming that the strategies themselves are values. So what is the value of domesticating plants and animals, of farming, of hunting, of animal husbandry etc.? Obviously we engage in these practices to feed us when we're hungry. But hunger isn't a value, nor hunger avoidance. Hunger is evolution's way to if not motivate us to recharge our energy reserves at least to warn us when the reserves are low. Humans know this. Unlike other animals which may be driven to eat entirely out of hunger without ever having intellectualized about the practice of capturing prey and devouring it, humans see that eating is necessary for living. Humans have invented/abstracted the notion of life as a value and hold it up as a teleological explanation for the practices of hunting and food production. We see life as one of our ultimate values, the ultimate goal of our practices. Indeed it is difficult for us to see that life is not nature’s reason for the existence of those practices. But in nature teleology is an epiphenomenon. There are no irreducible teleological explanations of behavior, rather there are differential rates of reproduction and differential rates of cultural transmission as determined by natural and cultural selection.

I still don’t know what values are. But here’s a stab: values are not ideals in the platonic sense, nor are they actual things one can touch and hold. They are the abstracted universal goals of successful and desirable human behaviors. Examples include Life, Love, Liberty, Health etc. Abstract goals all human beings desire. Non-examples include iPhones, the Constitution, Bach’s Goldberg Variations, the Parallel Postulate, Jesus, Mohammad, the Golden Rule, Prayer in School etc.

(Notice I just begged the question by putting my desired conclusion-universality-in the definition. Ouch. That's why I still don't know what a value is exactly. But I hope in these four pages to have outlined enough of the characteristics that I have in mind to communicate the basic idea.)

[Stavros]

Perhaps values have become concepts because they existed in practice before human socieites developed the language to express them. I think values must be real, and that the act came before its description. Thus, what the Germans (Hegel, Heidegger and Jaspers in particular) would call a phenomenological realization of the idea, is the act itself.

It is odd to me that some Christians argue that to think of a sinful act is to commit it; because they don't apply the same rule to graceful thoughts. It is useless for me to see someone starving in the aftermath of an earthquake and think of giving them bread, but deciding that as I thought about it, I therefore don't need to do anything practical to help that person. To think of a good act is not in fact to commit it. I can either find a loaf or bread or give £10 to an emergency fund who will. I think that makes more sense and is a practical example of kindness.

So it may not be in our DNA but the way human societies have evolved over the millenia must mean that we have reached a consensus on what our core values are, even if the expression of them is not always the same from one culture to another, or even consistently applied in our own. Perhaps the greatest challenge in the towns and cities that we live in, where most people are strangers, is to meet the challenge posed by those values we hold dear.

[buttslinger]

I think you can have values and still not know what you WANT.
You know what Buddha said "Destroy Desire"
I thought Trish knew what Values were and was just testing us.
Immanuel Kant died a virgin. Different strokes for different folks.

[hippifried]

What the hell are you people talking about? The universal moral code is THE value. It's the only reason that the rest of this shit exists, because it's what allows us to live in close proximity to each other. Comparatively, we're not fast or strong. We're bereft of fang & claw. Without the creation of the society (even before we metamorphed from scavenger-gatherer), we wouldn't have survived as a species. Personally, I think it's innate. But even if I'm wrong on that, it's universally recognized as the moral code in every society & culture on Earth. Every philosophy talks about it. It's not some made up rule.

"Not a value"? "Values relate to real things"? Like what? Possessions? Money? Relationships? None of that's universal. All those "values" change from culture to culture, sub-culture to sub-culture, place to place, & person to person. It's all artificial. If that's how you're going to define it, then you can't relate anyone's "values" to anyone else's. The term loses its meaning & just becomes overused rhetoric.

[Stavros]

What the hell are you people talking about? The universal moral code is THE value. It's the only reason that the rest of this shit exists, because it's what allows us to live in close proximity to each other. Comparatively, we're not fast or strong. We're bereft of fang & claw. Without the creation of the society (even before we metamorphed from scavenger-gatherer), we wouldn't have survived as a species. Personally, I think it's innate. But even if I'm wrong on that, it's universally recognized as the moral code in every society & culture on Earth. Every philosophy talks about it. It's not some made up rule.

"Not a value"? "Values relate to real things"? Like what? Possessions? Money? Relationships? None of that's universal. All those "values" change from culture to culture, sub-culture to sub-culture, place to place, & person to person. It's all artificial. If that's how you're going to define it, then you can't relate anyone's "values" to anyone else's. The term loses its meaning & just becomes overused rhetoric.

Trish gave a concrete example of the problem in an earlier post when she wrote:

Recently I’ve been listening to people explaining their thinking about the upcoming presidential election. One Hispanic woman loves Dream Act proposal but she’s leaning toward for Romney because his values and the GOP values are closer to hers. When pressed all she can come up with is that Romney’s stand on gay marriage is commensurate with hers. When pressed further she just feels that if the nation returned to Christian values things would get better...

It occurred to me that my values and this woman’s values really can’t be all that divergent. We both probably claim Love, Honesty, Truth, Security etc. as values. We both probably hold that marriage and family are institutions that secure these values for large numbers of people and for ourselves in particular. We seem to differ on the availability of these institutions to gays and lesbians. It seems wrong to say she and I have different values. We have the same values, and we probably even have them prioritized in approximately the same way. I think our disagreement is much less fundamental than O’Reilly and other culture warriors would have you believe.

Although I agree that human societies share core values, the anxiety that the woman cited by Trish feels, is that her 'family values' are under threat from same-sex marriage. On examination, Trish and this woman do not disagree on fundamentals, and it seems that the fear associated with same-sex marriage is therefore irrational. How does one explain to this woman that same-sex marriages [re]-affirm the same values Trish has? I suspect that like many people she believes marriage can only be between people of opposite gender, she cannot see that a same-sex marriage can be legitimate -but that is not a debate about values, but cultural attitudes, these are not the same, and are less stable than either values or morals.

Is there a contradiction between Hippifried's first and second paragraphs? There is said to be a subtle difference between morals and values, that the former are the rules that govern human socities whereas the latter are attributes attached the activities of that society. Someone can be called immoral if they behave in a bad way -murdering their parents to benefit from their wills, for example- but if the same person just refuses to turn up at the family home at Christmas/Thanksgiving and never acknowledges birthdays people may wonder what his 'values' are but he is not described as being immoral.

I am not sure if the distinction is necessary, because in all situations people are making a moral judgement about what is good or bad.

Its when a 'sub-culture' exists that these issues become clearer: in gangs, armies and organized crime syndicates, for example, a unique set of rules exist that conflict with society in general. Honesty in society can become treachery in a gang -one witness to a murder may insist he knows nothing about it to the police, even though he was standing next to the murderer. If a sub-set of society is allowed to subvert the values of society as a whole, then I think we can argue that society has lost its 'moral compass'. Some might try and apply the same thinking to a 'sub-cultural' group, say, homosexuals, and argue that because homosexuals have formed secretive groups (at one time for legal reasons) and have dress codes, honour codes (what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas), even their own language (Polari, if now dead), they are a threat to society at large. But since homosexuality was de-criminalised I don't think so.

A closet 'tranny chaser' may lie to his wife about his weekend in Vegas and what he did, and his attraction may never threaten his marriage. So does his activity undermine his fidelity to family values? Is his behaviour immoral?

[Prospero]

Values in the sense that they're being discussed here are generated from our deepest sense of morality. So we hold to be of the deepest importance those things which accor dwith our sense of how the world and behaviour should be according to a moral code. This can derive from faith or it can derive from other sources - humanistic codes.

Often these are coincident - the teachings of Jesus and the values embodied in humanism are virtually the same leaving aside God.

As I said and Stavros echoed Trish and this woman essentially share the same core values - but have different cultural overlays which lead them to different conclusions. This woman's interpretation of her faith tells her that marriage should only be between people of the opposite sex. Otherwise it is "sinful."

Values are not in the end though fixed things but to some considerable extent culturally determined - and are thus relativistic. In Aztec culture, to give one example, killing was considered good - as in the mass human sacrifice of prisoners. Most Judaeo-Christian societies pay lip service to the idea that killing is bad. (With many exceptions - the US justice system for instance). But this value placed oh human lives is very culturally determined. So at a time when religion held far greater thrall in Europe the killing of heretics, public executions, killing of witches etc were hugely popular when those who were to die became exceptional to the dominant value system of the time..

[trish]

Although I agree that human societies share core values, the anxiety that the woman cited by Trish feels, is that her 'family values' are under threat from same-sex marriage. On examination, Trish and this woman do not disagree on fundamentals, and it seems that the fear associated with same-sex marriage is therefore irrational. How does one explain to this woman that same-sex marriages [re]-affirm the same values Trish has? I suspect that like many people she believes marriage can only be between people of opposite gender, she cannot see that a same-sex marriage can be legitimate -but that is not a debate about values, but cultural attitudes, these are not the same, and are less stable than either values or morals.

Thank you Stavros for the clarity with which you’ve stated my position.

Even individuals within gangs, armies and crime syndicates adhere the core values the rest of us recognized. Truth is valued by syndicate boss to the extent he uses the threat of death and torture to secure the veracity of his minions. On the other hand, the syndicate boss sees nothing wrong with deceiving the authorities. The syndicate and society in general both agree that truth is a value, but they disagree on with whom one should be truthful. The syndicate does not see keeping the truth to themselves as immoral so much as expedient. To the syndicate honesty is a value but also a liability. [This is not so unusual when you think about it. To a prisoner of war, to a corporate scientist, to an undercover police detective complete honesty is a liability. Sometimes complete honesty is called insider trading. Honesty is certainly a universal value, but one that, most of us agree, need not direct our actions at all times.] I would say the syndicate boss numbers truthfullness and honesty among his values but does not subscribe to the usual moral codes which embody those values. It seems to me that one can have all the values shared by humanity in general and still be amoral. Moral codes encourage behaviors that embody our shared values, but moralities themselves are not universally shared and indeed morality itself is not universally recognized.

Subcultures may indeed influence the larger culture to reconsider it’s moral customs and laws. (The gay and lesbian subculture in the U.S., for example, is making headway on the issue of gay marriage. ) People are not so much reconsider their values as reconsider the expediency, fairness and integrity of the moral customs that are meant to uphold our shared values. The subculture is usually protesting that they do not. If the larger culture is eventually agrees that the current moral customs and institutions do not effectively embody the very values they’re meant to enhance, change will be forthcoming. Values large remain fixed and universal (I would contend that even the Aztecs valued life but erroneously thought that to preserve it one has to ritually sacrifice it). The rules, customs, laws and institutions that are meant to support those values change with the advances of the times.