For other uses of goodness and value, see Goodness (disambiguation)

Theories of value investigate how people positively and negatively value things and concepts, the reasons they use in making their evaluations, and the scope of applications of legitimate evaluations across the social world. As a related issue, theories of goodness inquire into what sorts of things are good, and what the word "good" really means in the abstract. The purpose of this article is to explain the two concepts in greater detail, and how philosophers and social scientists have understood the ways in which they are related. This article or section contains information that has not been verified and thus might not be reliable. ... Goodness may refer to: Goodness and value theory Goodness (band) Value may refer to: being ugly Theory of value (economics) This is a disambiguation page: a list of articles associated with the same title. ...

Significance

Value theory has a number of applications. All religions and most philosophical movements have been concerned with establishing their own theory of value. Ideas about value can define "good" and "bad" for a community or society, thus changing the nature of the society and its aims. It affects everyone's life, and maybe all life on Earth, in the way people organize themselves in societies, and even how they think. Indeed, values play an important part in everyday life. Everyone has their own set of beliefs about what is and isn't good or valuable, because people have the ability to make their own preferences. Value theory concerns itself with the worth, utility, trading or economic value, moral value, legal value, quantitative or aesthetic value of people and things - or the combination of all these. ... A philosophical movement is either the appearance or increased popularity of a specific school of philosophy, or a fairly broad but identifiable sea-change in philosophical thought on a particular subject. ... Bad is a word used to describe undesirable circumstances, objects, or events. ... FUCKING BULLSHIT!! The value of life is an economic or moral value assigned to life in general, or to specific living organisms. ... In economics, value of Earth is the ultimate in ecosystem valuation, and important to value of life calculations. ... A society is a group of people living or working together. ... A Phrenological mapping of the brain. ...

Theories of the good affect political economy, which sets relative valuations on factors of production. When governments decide what is good and bad, it affects all manner of policies, such as tax cuts and raises, increased and decreased regulations, the provision and elimination of subsidies, etc. Political economy was the original term for the study of production, the acts of buying and selling, and their relationships to laws, customs and government. ... Factors of production are resources used in the production of goods and services in economics. ...

Descriptive, meta-ethical, and normative fields

This article's goal is to present a treatment of all essential theories of value by the use of a philosophical and academic approach. In properly analyzing theories of value, everyday beliefs are not only carefully catalogued and described, but also rigorously analyzed and judged.

There are at least two basic ways of presenting a theory of value, based on two different kinds of questions which people ask:

• What do people value? (What do people consider to be good?)
• What really is valuable? (What really is good?)

The two questions are subtly different. One may answer the first question by researching the world by use of social science, and examining the preferences that people assert. However, one may answer the second question by use of reasoning, introspection, prescription, and generalization. The former kind of method of analysis is called "descriptive", because it attempts to describe what people actually value; while the latter is called "normative", because it tries to actively establish value norms. These descriptive and normative approaches can be complementary. For example, tracking the decline of the popularity of slavery across cultures is the work of descriptive ethics, while advising that slavery be avoided is normative. In linguistics, prescription is the laying down or prescribing of normative rules for a language. ... In philosophy, normative is usually contrasted with descriptive or explanatory when describing types of theories, beliefs, or statements. ...

Meta-ethics is the study of the fundamental questions concerning the nature and origins of the good and the just, including inquiry into the nature of the good, as well as the meaning of evaluative language. In this project, it is distinct from investigations into how others see the good, or of asserting what is good. In philosophy, meta-ethics is the branch of ethics that seeks to understand the nature of ethical properties (if there are any), and ethical statements, attitudes, and judgments. ...

Fundamental distinctions

What are the different kinds of goodness? A number of useful distinctions have been made by philosophers in the treatment of this question.

Moral and non-moral goods

For more information on theories of the morally good, click here.

There is a difference between moral and natural goods. Moral goods are those that have to do with the conduct of persons, usually leading to praise or blame. Natural goods, on the other hand, have to do with objects, not persons. For example, to say that "Mary is a morally good person" might involve a different sense of "good" than that in the sentence "A banana split is good".

Ethics tends to be more interested in moral goods than natural goods, while economics tends to be more interested in the reverse. However, both moral and natural goods are equally interesting to goodness and value theory, which is more general in scope.

Sometimes, moral and natural goods can conflict. The value of natural "goods" is challenged by such issues as addiction. The issue of addiction also brings up the distinction between economic and moral goods, where an economic good is whatever stimulates economic growth. For instance, some claim that cigarettes are a "good" in the economic sense, as their production can employ tobacco growers and doctors who treat lung cancer. Many people would agree that cigarette smoking is not morally "good", nor naturally "good", but still recognize that it is economically good, which means, it has exchange value, even though it have a negative public good or even be bad for a person's body (not the same as "bad for the person" necessarily - consider the issue of suicide). Addiction is a compulsion to repeat a behaviour regardless of its consequences. ... Accumulated GDP growth for various countries. ... A lit cigarette A full ashtray. ... Species Nicotiana acuminata Nicotiana alata Nicotiana attenuata Nicotiana benthamiana Nicotiana clevelandii Nicotiana excelsior Nicotiana forgetiana Nicotiana glauca Nicotiana glutinosa Nicotiana langsdorffii Nicotiana longiflora Nicotiana obtusifolia Nicotiana paniculata Nicotiana plumbagifolia Nicotiana quadrivalvis Nicotiana repanda Nicotiana rustica Nicotianasuaveolens Nicotiana sylvestris Nicotiana tabacum Nicotiana tomentosa Ref: ITIS 30562 as of August 26, 2005... Lung cancer is a cancer of the lungs characterized by the presence of malignant tumours. ... In Marxian political economy, exchange value refers to one of three major aspects of a commodity, i. ... In economics, a public good is a good that is hard or even impossible to produce for private profit, because the market fails to account for its large beneficial externalities. ... Suicide (from Latin sui caedere, to kill oneself) is the act of willfully ending ones own life. ...

Those who are interested in describing the values people have may often take up an economist's standpoint. Economic analysis emphasizes that what is sought in the marketplace are goods, and tends to use the consumer's choices as evidence that various products are of value. In this view, religious or political struggle over what "goods" are available in the marketplace is inevitable, and consensus on some core questions about body and society and ecosystems affected by the transaction, are outside the market's goods so long as they are unowned. An economist is an individual who studies, develops, and applies theories and concepts from economics, and writes about economic policy. ... Consensus has two common meanings. ...

However, some natural goods seem to also be moral goods. For example, those things that are owned by a person may be said to be natural goods, but over which particular individual(s) may have moral claims. So it is necessary to make another distinction: between moral and non-moral goods. A non-moral good is something that is desirable for someone or other; despite the name to the contrary, it may include moral goods. A moral good is anything which an actor is considered to be morally obligated to strive toward.

When discussing non-moral goods, one may make a useful distinction between inherently serviced and material goods in the marketplace (or its exchange value), versus perceived intrinsic and experiential goods to the buyer. A strict service economy model takes pains to distinguish between the goods and service guarantees to the market, and that of the service and experience to the consumer. In Marxian political economy, exchange value refers to one of three major aspects of a commodity, i. ... Service economy can refer to one or both of two recent economic developments. ...

Intrinsic and instrumental goods

Many people find it useful to distinguish instrumental and intrinsic goods, first discussed by Plato in the "Republic". An instrumental good is worth having as a means towards getting something else that is good (e.g., a radio is instrumentally good in order to hear music). And an intrinsically good thing is worth having for itself, even if it doesn't help one get anything else that's good (e.g., the sound of beautiful music). An intrinsic property is a property that an object or a thing has of itself, independently of other things, including its context. ... Plato ( Greek: Πλάτων, Plátōn, wide, broad-shouldered) (c. ...

But these are not mutually exclusive categories. Some things are both good in themselves, and also good for getting other things that are good. "Understanding science" may be such a good, being both worthwhile in and of itself, and as a means of achieving other goods, such as producing technology.

Since instrumental goods are always tied to other goods, it may be said (for instance, in deontological ethics) that the values by which one lives must ultimately be intrinsic. For example, most people pursue the goal of making money so that they can afford what they call "the finer things in life", and since people dedicate their lives to achieving these things, it might be said they hold some kind of intrinsic value. However, some, including hedonists, claim that there is only one thing that is an "intrinsic good": pleasure. And others, like skeptics and ethical nihilists, doubt whether there are any intrinsic goods at all. Deontological ethics (from the Greek Deon meaning obligation or duty) or Deontology is an ethical theory holding that decisions should be made solely or primarily by considering ones duties and the rights of others. ... Hedonism (Greek: hēdonē pleasure + –ism) describes any way of thinking that gives pleasure a central role. ...

Pragmatism and contributory goodness

For more on this subject, see Pragmatism. Pragmatism is a collection of many different ways of thinking. ...

John Dewey (1859-1952) in his book Theory of Valuation saw goodness as the outcome of "valuation", a continuous balancing of "ends in view". An end in view was said to be an objective potentially adopted, which may be refined or rejected based on its consistency with other objectives or as a means to objectives already held. John Dewey (October 20, 1859 – June 1, 1952) was an American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer, whose thought has been greatly influential in the United States and around the world. ... 1859 (MDCCCLIX) is a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Monday of the Julian calendar). ... 1952 (MCMLII) was a Leap year starting on Tuesday (link will take you to calendar). ...

His empirical approach did not accept intrinsic value as an inherent or enduring property of things. He saw it as an illusory product of our continuous valuing activity as purposive beings. When held across only some contexts, Dewey held that goods are only intrinsic relative to a situation. When across all contexts, goodness is best understood as instrumental, with no contrasting intrinsic goodness. In other words, Dewey claimed that anything can only be of intrinsic value if it is a contributory good.

Another improvement is to distinguish contributory goods. These have the same qualities as the good thing, but need some emergent property of a whole state-of-affairs in order to be good. For example, salt is food on its own, and good as such, but is far better as part of a prepared meal. Providing a good outside this context is not delivery of what is expected. In other words, such goods are only good when certain conditions are met. This is in contrast to other goods, which may be considered "good" in a wider variety of situations.

Those philosophers that think goods have to create desirable mental states also say that goods are experiences of self-aware beings. These philosophers often distinguish the desirable experience, which they call an "intrinsic" good, from the things in the world that seem to cause the experience, which they call "inherent" goods.

Kant: hypothetical and categorical goods

For more information, be sure to see the main article, Immanuel Kant. Immanuel Kant (22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804), was a German philosopher from Königsberg (now Kaliningrad) in East Prussia. ...

The thinking of Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) greatly influenced moral philosophy. He thought of moral value as a unique and universally identifiable property. He showed that many practical goods are good only in states-of-affairs described by a sentence containing an "if" clause. For example, in the sentence, "Sunshine is only good if you do not live in the desert". Further, the "if" clause often described the category in which the judgment was made (art, science, etc.). Kant described these as "hypothetical goods", and tried to find a "categorical" good that would operate across all categories of judgment without depending on an "if-then" clause. Events January 14 - King Philip V of Spain abdicates the throne February 20 - The premiere of Giulio Cesare, an Italian opera by George Frideric Handel, takes place in London June 23 - Treaty of Constantinople signed. ... 1804 was a leap year starting on Sunday (see link for calendar). ... Ethics is a general term for what is often described as the science (study) of morality. In philosophy, ethical behavior is that which is good or right. ...

An influential result of Kant's search was the idea of a good will as being the only good in itself. Moreover, Kant saw a good will as acting in accordance with a moral command, the "Categorical Imperative": "Act according to those maxims that you could will to be universal law." From this, and a few other axioms, Kant developed a moral system that would apply to any "praiseworthy person." (See Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, third section, [446]-[447].) The categorical imperative is the philosophical concept central to the moral philosophy of Immanuel Kant and to modern deontological ethics. ... This article or section may contain original research or unverified claims. ...

Kantian philosophers believe that any general definition of goodness must define goods that are categorical in the sense that Kant intended.

Theories of the intrinsically good

A satisfying formulation of goodness would be valuable because it might allow one to construct a good life or society by reliable processes of deduction, elaboration or prioritisation. One could answer the ancient question, "How then should we live?", among many other important related questions. But it has long been thought that this question can best be answered by examining what it is that necessarily makes a thing valuable, or what the source of value consists in.

Transcendental realism

One attempt to define goodness describes it as a property of the world. According to this perspective, to talk about a good is to talk about something real within the object itself which exists independently of the perception of it. Plato was one advocate of this view, in his expression that there is such a thing as an eternal realm of forms or ideas, and that the greatest of the ideas and the essence of being was goodness. Plato ( Greek: Πλάτων, Plátōn, wide, broad-shouldered) (c. ...

Many people are theists, who support the idea that God(s) created the universe. Such persons may, therefore, claim that the universe has a purpose and value according to the will of such a creator, and which lies beyond human understanding. For instance, Thomas Aquinas was a proponent of this view. Image:Http://www. ... The creator god is the divine being that created the universe, according to various traditions and faiths. ... Saint Thomas Aquinas [Thomas of Aquin, or Aquino] (c. ...

Another spiritual, transcendental viewpoint is that of Taoism, the ancient Chinese philosophy which advocated quietism and conformity to the Way, or Tao: "The Tao is the natural order of things. It is a force that flows through every living or sentient object, as well as through the entire universe". Taoism (sometimes written as Daoism) is the English name for: (a) a philosophical school based on the texts the Dao De Jing (ascribed to Laozi) and the Zhuangzi. ...

Perfectionism

Human perfectionism

It was the belief of Aristotle that virtues consisted in the realization of potentials which were unique to humanity, such as the use of reason. This type of view has been recently defended in a more modern form by Thomas Hurka. Aristotle (Ancient Greek: Aristotélēs 384 – March 7, 322 BCE) was an ancient Greek philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. ...

Transhuman perfectionism

Some techno-optimists, especially transhumanists, avow a form of perfectionism in which the capacity to determine good and trade off fundamental values, is expressed not by humans but by software, genetic engineering of humans, artificial intelligence. Skeptics assert that rather than perfect goodness, it would be only the appearance of perfect goodness, reinforced by persuasion technology and probably brute force of violent technological escalation, which would cause people to accept such rulers or rules authored by them. Transhumanism is an emergent school of speculative philosophy analysing or favouring the use of science and technology, especially neurotechnology, biotechnology, and nanotechnology, to overcome human limitations and improve the human condition. ... An iconic image of genetic engineering; this 1986 autoluminograph of a glowing transgenic tobacco plant bearing the luciferase gene of the firefly strikingly demonstrates the power and potential of genetic manipulation. ... Hondas intelligent humanoid robot AI redirects here. ... Persuasion technology is technology that can be used for presenting or promoting a point of view. ... The term technological escalation describes the fact that whenever two parties are in competition, each side tends to employ continuing technological improvements to defeat the other. ...

Welfarist theories

Welfarist theories of value are those which say that that which is good, and hence valuable, are due to their effects on the wellbeing of persons.

Subjective theories of wellbeing

It is difficult to figure out where an immaterial trait such as "goodness" could reside in the world. A counterproposal is to locate values inside people. Some philosophers go so far as to say that if some state of affairs does not tend to arouse a desirable subjective state in self-aware beings, then it cannot be good. State of affairs has some technical usages in philosophy, as well as being a phrase in everyday speech in English. ...

Most philosophers that think goods have to create desirable mental states also say that goods are experiences of self-aware beings. These philosophers often distinguish the experience, which thay call an intrinsic good, from the things that seem to cause the experience, which they call "inherent" goods. Failing to distinguish the two leads to a subject-object problem in which it is not clear who is evaluating what object. In philosophy, the subject-object problem arises out of the metaphysics of Hegel. ...

Hedonism

In some theories there is no higher collective value than that of maximizing pleasure for the individual. Some have even defined goodness and that which is intrinsically valuable as the experience of pleasure, and the bad as the experience of pain. This view is called Hedonism, a monistic theory of value. It has two main varieties: simple, and Epicurean. Hedonism (Greek: hēdonē pleasure + –ism) describes any way of thinking that gives pleasure a central role. ...

Simple hedonism is the view that physical pleasure is the ultimate good. However, the ancient philosopher Epicurus used the word 'pleasure' in a more general sense which encompassed a range of states from bliss to contentment to relief. Contrary to popular caricature, he valued pleasures of the mind to bodily pleasures, and advocated moderation as the surest path to happiness. Bust of Epicurus Epicurus (Epikouros or Ἐπίκουρος in Greek) (341 BC, Samos – 270 BC, Athens) was an ancient Greek philosopher, the founder of Epicureanism, one of the most popular schools of Hellenistic Philosophy. ...

Jeremy Bentham's book The Principles of Morals and Legislation prioritized goods by considering pleasure, pain and consequences. This theory had a wide effect on public affairs, up to and including the present day. A similar system was later named Utilitarianism by John Stuart Mill. More broadly, utilitarian theories are examples of Consequentialism. All utilitarian theories are based upon the maxim of utility, which states that that which is good is that which provides the greatest happiness for the greatest number. It follows from this principle that that which brings happiness to the greatest number of people, is a good. Jeremy Bentham (IPA: ) (February 15, 1748 – June 6, 1832) was an English gentleman, jurist, philosopher, and legal and social reformer. ... This article or section is missing references or citation of sources. ... John Stuart Mill (May 20, 1806 – May 8, 1873), an English philosopher and political economist, was an influential liberal thinker of the 19th century. ...

One of the benefits of tracing good to pleasure and pain is that both things seem to be easily understandable, both in oneself and to an extent in others. For the hedonist, the explanation for helping behavior may come in the form of empathy—the ability of a being to "feel" another's pain—. People tend to value the lives of gorillas more than those of mosquitos because the gorilla lives and feels, making it easier to empathize with them. This idea is carried forward in the ethical relationship view and has given rise to the animal rights movement and parts of the peace movement. The impact of sympathy on human behavior is compatible with Enlightenment views, including David Hume's stances that the idea of a self with unique identity is illusory, and that morality ultimately comes down to sympathy and fellow feeling for others, or the exercise of approval underlying moral judgements. An ethical relationship, in most theories of ethics that employ the term, is a basic and trustworthy relationship that one has to another human being, that cannot necessarily be characterized in terms of any abstraction other than trust and common protection of each others body. ... The logo of the Great Ape Project, which is campaigning for a Declaration on Great Apes. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... ... David Hume (April 26, 1711 – August 25, 1776)[1] was a Scottish philosopher, economist, and historian who was one of the most important figures of the Scottish Enlightenment. ...

Preferentialism

A view adopted by James Griffin (philosopher) attempts to find a subjective alternative to hedonism as an intrinsic value. He argues that it is the satisfaction of one's informed desires which constitutes wellbeing, and not necessarily whether or not said desires actually cause the agent to experience happiness. Moreover, these preferences must be life-relevant, that is, contributing to the success of a person's life overall.

Desire satisfaction may occur without the agent's awareness of the satisfaction of the desire. For example, if a man wishes for his legal will to be enacted after his death, and it is, then his desire has been satisfied despite the fact that he will never experience or know of it.

Objective theories of wellbeing

The idea that the ultimate good exists and is not orderable but is globally measurable is reflected in various ways in classical economics, green economics, welfare economics and the Gross National Happiness and measuring well-being theories, all of which focus on various ways of assessing progress towards that goal, a so-called Genuine Progress Indicator. Modern economics thus reflects very ancient philosophy, but a calculation or quantitative or other process based on cardinality and statistics replaces the simple ordering of values. Classical economics is a school of economic thought whose major developers include William Petty, Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Thomas Malthus, John Stuart Mill and Johann Heinrich von Thünen. ... Green economics loosely defines a theory of economics by which an economy is considered to be a component of the ecosystem in which it resides. ... Welfare economics is a branch of economics that uses microeconomic techniques to simultaneously determine the allocational efficiency of a macroeconomy and the income distribution consequences associated with it. ... Gross National Happiness (GNH) is an attempt to define a standard of living in more holistic and psychological terms than Gross National Product. ... The well-being or quality of life of a population is an important concern in economics and political science. ... Progress can refer to: The idea of a process in which societies or individuals become better or more modern (technologically and/or socially). ... The Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) is a concept in green economics and welfare economics that has been suggested as a replacement metric for gross domestic product (GDP) as a metric of economic growth. ... A graph of a bell curve in a normal distribution showing statistics used in educational assessment, comparing various grading methods. ...

For example, in both economics and in folk wisdom, the value of a thing seems to rise so long as it is relatively scarce. However, if it becomes too scarce, it leads often to a conflict, and can reduce collective value. See the separate analysis of wealth. Wealth derives from the old English word weal, which meant well-being or welfare. The term was originally an adjective to describe the possession of such qualities. ...

The value of labor. In the classical political economy of Adam Smith and David Ricardo, and in its critique by Karl Marx, human labour is seen as the ultimate source of all new economic value. This is an objective theory of value (see value theory which attributes value to real production-costs, and ultimately expenditures of human labour-time (see also law of value. It contrasts with marginal utility theory, which argues that the value of labor depends on subjective preferences by consumers, which may however also be objectively studied. Political economy was the original term for the study of production, the acts of buying and selling, and their relationships to laws, customs and government. ... Adam Smith, FRSE, (baptised June 5, 1723 – July 17, 1790) was a Scottish political economist and moral philosopher. ... {{Infobox_Biography subject_name = David Ricardo | image_name = David_ricardo. ... Karl Heinrich Marx (May 5, 1818, Trier, Germany – March 14, 1883, London) was an immensely influential German philosopher, political economist, and revolutionary. ... Value theory concerns itself with the worth, utility, trading or economic value, moral value, legal value, quantitative or aesthetic value of people and things - or the combination of all these. ... The law of value is a concept in Karl Marxs critique of political economy. ... In economics, marginal utility is the additional utility (satisfaction or benefit) that a consumer derives from an additional unit of a commodity or service. ...

The economic value of labor may be assessed technically in terms of its use-value or utility or commercially in terms of its exchange-value, price or production cost (see also labour power. But its value may also be socially assessed in terms of its contribution to the wealth and well-being of a society. In Marxs critique of political economy, any labor-product has a value and a use value, and if it is traded as a commodity in markets, it additionally has an exchange value, most often expressed as a money-price. ... In economics, utility is a measure of the happiness or satisfaction gained consuming good and services. ... In political economy and especially Marxian economics, exchange value refers to one of four major attributes of a commodity, i. ... In economics and business, the price is the assigned numerical monetary value of a good, service or asset. ... Labor power (in German: Arbeitskraft, or labor force) is a crucial concept used by Karl Marx in his critique of political economy. ... Wealth derives from the old English word weal, which meant well-being or welfare. The term was originally an adjective to describe the possession of such qualities. ... The well-being or quality of life of a population is an important concern in economics and political science. ...

In non-market societies, labour may be valued primarily in terms of skill, time, and output, as well as moral or social criteria and legal obligations. In market societies, labour is valued economically primarily through the labour market. The price of labour may then be set by supply and demand, by strike action or legislation, or by legal or professional entry-requirements into occupations. Labour economics seeks to understand the functioning of the market for labour. ... The examples and perspective in this article or section may not represent a worldwide view. ...

Mid-range theories

• Conceptual metaphor theorists. Conceptual metaphor theories argue against both subjective and objective conceptions of value and meaning, and focus on the relationships between body and other essential elements of human life. In effect, conceptual metaphor theories treat ethics as an ontology problem and the issue of how to work-out values as a negotiation of these metaphors, not the application of some abstraction or a strict standoff between parties who have no way to understand each other's views.

Conceptual metaphor: In cognitive linguistics, metaphor is defined as understanding one conceptual domain in terms of another conceptual domain; for example, using one persons life experience to understand a different persons experience. ... Template:Wiktionarypar objective Objective may be: Objective lens, an optical element in a camera or microscope. ... In philosophy, ontology (from the Greek , genitive : of being (part. ... This article is about the concept of abstraction in general. ...

Agent-centered theories

Choice optimization theory. One more recent philosophical idea being passed around is defining Good as "That which increases the quality and quantity of choices available overall." This maxim might be countered by the phenomenon of opportunity costs observed by social scientists. Opportunity cost is when people who are confronted with a greater number of choices also experience greater dismay at their choices after the fact, because of the missed opportunities. Opportunity cost is a term used in economics to mean the cost of something in terms of an opportunity forgone (and the benefits that could be received from that opportunity), or the most valuable forgone alternative. ...

In his Development as Freedom, Amartya Sen asserted free time as the most fundamental good and systems of organizing which enabled it as the most fundamental value in civilization. He refuted the common claim that Asian value theorists had devalued freedom and was clear that a marketplace (creating unity via pricing) valuing free time could be created. Marilyn Waring took a similar view from a feminist perspective, arguing womens' time was undervalued and especially the free time they used to raise and teach children. Waring also strongly denied that military hardware or activities were of any value, and attempted to reconcile peace or welfare views of good with the ecological values. Development as Freedom is a book written by Amartya Sen. ... Amartya Sen Amartya Kumar Sen CH (Hon) (born November 3, 1933 in India), is an economist and a winner of the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences (sometimes referred to informally as the Nobel Prize for Economics) for his work on famine, human development theory, welfare economics, the underlying... There is also an album by Blur called Leisure. ... Political freedom is the right, or the capacity, of self-determination as an expression of the individual will. ... Marilyn Waring (born 1952) is a renowned New Zealand feminist, an activist for female human rights, an author and an academic. ... Feminism is a social theory and political movement primarily informed and motivated by the experience of women. ... Widely-recognized peace symbol Peace is commonly understood to mean the Other definitions include freedom from disputes, harmonious relations and the absence of mental stress or anxiety, as the meaning of the word changes with context. ...

Virtue theories

The value of fairness. John Rawls' book A Theory of Justice prioritized social arrangements and goods based on their contribution to justice. Rawls defined justice as fairness, especially in distributing social goods, defined fairness in terms of procedures, and attempted to prove that just institutions and lives are good, if rational individuals' goods are considered fairly. Rawls' crucial invention was the original position, a procedure in which one tries to make objective moral decisions by refusing to let personal facts about oneself enter one's moral calculations. John Rawls (February 21, 1921 – November 24, 2002) was an American philosopher, a professor of political philosophy at Harvard University and author of A Theory of Justice (1971), Political Liberalism, Justice as Fairness: A Restatement, and The Law of Peoples. ... A Theory of Justice is a book of political and moral philosophy by John Rawls. ... Lady Justice - allegory of Justice as woman with sword and with book - statue at court building. ... John Rawls (February 21, 1921 - November 24, 2002) was a philosopher, a professor of political philosophy at Harvard University and author of A Theory of Justice (1971), Political Liberalism, and The Law of Peoples. ... The original position is a hypothetical situation created by American philosopher John Rawls as a thought experiment. ...

One problem with the approaches of Kant and Rawls is that they are overly procedural. Procedurally fair processes of the type used by Kant and Rawls may not leave enough room for judgment, and therefore, reduce the totality of goodness. For example, if two people are found to own an orange, the standard fair procedure is to cut it in two and give half to each. However, if one wants to eat it while the other wants the rind to flavor a cake, cutting it in two is clearly less good than giving the peel to the baker and feeding the core to the eater.

Applying procedural fairness to an entire society therefore seems certain to create recognizable inefficiencies, and therefore be unfair, and (by the equivalence of justice with fairness) unjust.

This strikes at the very foundation of Kantian ethics, because it shows that hypothetical goods can be better than categorical goods, and therefore be more desirable, and even more just.

Agent-external theories

Society, life and ecology

Many Asian views value unity as a good: to go beyond eudaimonia by saying that an individual person's flourishing is valuable only as a means to the flourishing of society as a whole. In other words, a single person's life is, ultimately, not important or worthwhile in itself, but is good only as a means to the success of society as a whole. Some elements of Confucianism are an example of this, encouraging the view that people ought to conform as individuals to demands of a peaceful and ordered society. Eudaimonia (Greek: ) is a classical Greek word commonly translated as happiness. Etymologically, it consists of the word eu (good or well being) and daimōn (a spirit or minor deity) and literally means having a good guardian spirit. Unlike the word happiness, eudaimonia rarely describes a state of mind and... Confucianist temple Thian Hock Keng in Singapore Confucianism (Chinese: 儒学, Pinyin: Rúxué‚ [ ] , literally The School of the Scholars; or, less accurately, 孔教 Kŏng jiào, The Religion of Confucius) is a Chinese ethical and philosophical system originally developed from the teachings of the early Chinese sage Confucius. ...

According to the naturalistic view, the flourishing of society is not, or not the only, intrinsically good thing. Defences of this notion are often formulated by reference to biology, and observations that living things compete more with their own kind than with other kinds. Rather, what is of intrinsic good is the flourishing of all sentient life; extending to those animals which have some level of similar sentience, such as Great Ape personhood. Others go farther, by declaring that life itself is of intrinsic value. Biology is the branch of science dealing with the study of life. ... Advocates of Great Ape personhood consider common chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans (the hominid apes) to be persons. ...

By another approach, one achieves peace and agreement by focusing, not on one's peers (who may be rivals or competitors), but on the common environment. As living beings, it is clearly and objectively good that we are surrounded by an ecosystem that supports life. Indeed, if we weren't, we couldn't even recognize that or discuss it. The anthropic principle in cosmology recognizes this view. Look up life, living in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... In cosmology, the anthropic principle in its most basic form states the truism that any valid theory of the universe must be consistent with our existence as carbon-based human beings at this particular time and place in the universe. ... // Cosmology, from the Greek: κοσμολογία (cosmologia, κόσμος (cosmos) world + λογια (logia) discourse) is the study of the Universe in its totality, and by extension, humanitys place in it. ...

Under materialism or even embodiment values, or in any system that recognizes the validity of ecology as a scientific study of limits and potentials, an ecosystem is a fundamental good. To all who investigative, it seems that goodness, or value, exists within an ecosystem, Earth. Creatures within that ecosystem and wholly dependent on it, evaluate good relative to what else could be achieved there. In other words, good is situated in a particular place and one does not dismiss everything that is not available there (such as very low gravity or absolutely abundant sugar candy) as "not good enough", one works within its constraints. Transcending them and learning to be satisified with them, is thus another sort of value, perhaps called satisfaction, or in Buddhism enlightenment. In philosophy, materialism is that form of physicalism which holds that the only thing that can truly be said to exist is matter; that fundamentally, all things are composed of material and all phenomena are the result of material interactions. ... Embodiment is the way in which human (or any other animals) psychology arises from the brains and bodys physiology. ... The word ecology is often used in common parlance as a synonym for the natural environment or environmentalism. ... Earth (often referred to as The Earth) is the third planet in the solar system in terms of distance from the Sun, and the fifth in order of size. ... In artificial intelligence, the term situated refers to an agent which is embedded in an environment. ... The term satisfaction can refer to: (I Cant Get No) Satisfaction, a Rolling Stones song, which has also been covered by several artists, including: The Residents, released as a single (Satiafaction b/w Loser=Weed) in 1976 and 1978. ... Buddhism is a religion and philosophy focusing on the teachings of the Buddha Śākyamuni (Siddhārtha Gautama), who probably lived in the 5th century BCE. Buddhism spread throughout the ancient Indian sub-continent in the five centuries following the Buddhas death, and propagated into Central, Southeast, and East Asia... Look up Enlightenment in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

Values and the people that hold them seem necessarily subordinate to the ecosystem. If this is so, then what kind of being could validly apply the word "good" to an ecosystem as a whole? Who would have the power to assess and judge an ecosystem as good or bad? By what criteria? And by what criteria would ecosystems be modified, especially larger ones such as the atmosphere (climate change) or oceans (extinction) or forests (deforestation)? For discussion see debates on monoculture and permaculture. Saturns atmosphere is made up of hydorgen, helium and methane ... Variations in CO2, temperature and dust from the Vostok ice core over the last 400 000 years Climate change refers to the variation in the Earths global climate or regional climates over time. ... [[Image:http://www. ... In biology and ecology, extinction is the ceasing of existence of a species or group of taxa. ... A forest is an area with a high density of trees (or, historically, a wooded function as carbon dioxide sinks, animal habitats, hydrologic flow modulators, and soil conservers, constituting one of the most important aspects of the Earths biosphere. ... Deforestation is the conversion of forested areas to non-forested. ... Monoculture describes systems that have very low diversity. ... Permaculture Mandala summarising the ethics and principles of permaculture design. ...

"Remaining on Earth" as the most basic value. While green ethicists have been most forthright about it, and have developed theories of Gaia philosophy, biophilia, bioregionalism that reflect it, the questions are now universally recognized as central in determining value, e.g. the economic "value of Earth" to humans as a whole, or the "value of life" that is neither whole-Earth nor human. Many have come to the conclusion that without assuming ecosystem continuation as a universal good, with attendant virtues like biodiversity and ecological wisdom it is impossible to justify such operational requirements as sustainability of human activity on Earth. Green politics is a body of political ideas informed by environmentalism aimed at developing a sustainable society. ... List of ethicists including religious or political figures recognized by those outside their tradition as having made major contributions to ideas about ethics, or raised major controversies by taking strong positions on previously unexplored problems. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... Biophilia is the love (philia) of Nature (bio). ... Bioregional democracy (or the Bioregional State) is a set of environment concerns, e. ... In economics, value of Earth is the ultimate in ecosystem valuation, and important to value of life calculations. ... FUCKING BULLSHIT!! The value of life is an economic or moral value assigned to life in general, or to specific living organisms. ... Virtue (Greek αρετη; Latin virtus) is moral excellence of a man or a woman. ... Rainforests are the most biodiverse ecosystems on earth Biodiversity or biological diversity is the diversity of life. ... The term ecological wisdom, or ecosophy, is a philosophy of ecological harmony or equilibrium. ... Sustainability is a systemic concept, relating to the continuity of economic, social, institutional and environmental aspects of human society. ...

One response is that humans are not necessarily confined to Earth, and could use it and move on. A counter-argument is that only a tiny fraction of humans could ever do this, and those would be self-selected by ability to do technological escalation on others (for instance, the ability to create large missiles on which to flee the planet and simultaneously threaten others who sought to prevent them). Another counter-argument is that extraterrestrial life would encounter the fleeing humans and be forced to destroy them as a locust species. A third is that if there are no other worlds fit to support life (and thus no extraterrestrials competing with humans to occupy them) it is both futile to flee, and foolish to imagine that it would take less energy and skill to protect the Earth as a habitat, than it would take to construct some new habitat. The term technological escalation describes the fact that whenever two parties are in competition, each side tends to employ continuing technological improvements to defeat the other. ... Extraterrestrial, as an adjective, refers to something that originates, occurs, or is located outside Earth or its atmosphere. ... Look up habitat in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

Accordingly remaining on Earth, as a living being surrounded by a working ecosystem, is a fair statement of the most basic values and goodness to any being we are able to communicate with. A moral system without this axiom seems simply not actionable.

However, all religious systems acknowledge an afterlife and improving this is seen as an even more basic good. In many other moral systems, also, remaining on Earth in a state that lacks honour or power over self is less desirable - consider seppuku in bushido, kamikazes or the role of suicide attacks in Jihadi rhetoric. In all these systems, remaining on Earth is perhaps no higher than a third-place value. The afterlife (or life after death) is a generic term referring to a continuation of existence, typically spiritual and experiential, beyond this world, or after death. ... Honour (CwE) or honor (AmE) comprises the reputation, self-perception or moral identity of an individual or of a group. ... Seppuku with ritual attire and second (staged) Image:Akashi Gidayu writing his death poem before committing Seppuku. ... Bushido (Japanese: 武士道; bushidō, way of the warrior), is a code of conduct and a way of life, analogous to the European concept of chivalry. ... Yokosuka D4Y3 (Type 33) Judy in a final suicide dive against the USS Essex (CV-9) on November 25, 1944. ... A suicide attack is an attack in which the attacker or attackers intend and expect to die (see suicide). ...

Radical values environmentalism can be seen as either a very old or a very new view: that the only intrinsically good thing is a flourishing ecosystem; individuals and societies are merely instrumentally valuable, good only as means to having a flourishing ecosystem. The Gaia philosophy is the most detailed expression of this overall thought but it strongly influenced Deep Ecology and the modern Green Parties. To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... Deep ecology is a recent philosophy or ecosophy based on a shift away from the anthropocentric bias of established environmental and green movements. ... This article is about the green parties around the world. ...

It is often claimed that aboriginal peoples never lost this sort of view - anthropological linguistics studies links between their languages and the ecosystems in which they lived and which gave rise to their knowledge distinctions. Very often, environmental cognition and moral cognition were not distinguished in these languages - offenses to nature were like those to other people, and Animism reinforced this by giving nature "personality" via myth. Anthropological theories of value explore these questions. Indigenous peoples are: Peoples living in an area prior to colonization by a state Peoples living in an area within a nation-state, prior to the formation of a nation-state, but who do not identify with the dominant nation. ... Anthropological linguistics is the study of language through human genetics and human development. ... Knowledge is information of which someone is aware. ... In religion, the term Animism is used in a number of ways. ... // The word mythology (Greek: μυθολογία, from μυθος mythos, a story or legend, and λογος logos, an account or speech) literally means the (oral) retelling of myths – stories that a particular culture believes to be true and that use supernatural events or characters to explain the nature of the universe and humanity. ... Anthropological theories of value attempt to expand on the traditional theories of value used by economists or ethicists. ...

Most people in the world reject older situated ethics and localized religious views. However small-community-based and ecology-centric views have gained some popularity in recent years. In part, this has been attributed to the desire for ethical certainties. Such a deeply-rooted definition of goodness would be valuable because it might allow one to construct a good life or society by reliable processes of deduction, elaboration or prioritisation. Ones that relied only on local referents one could verify for oneself, creating more certainty and therefore less investment in protection, hedging and insuring against consequences of loss of the value. Situated ethics, often confused with situational ethics, is a view of applied ethics in which abstract standards from a culture or theory are considered to be far less important than the ongoing processes in which one is personally and physically involved, e. ...

History and novelty

The value of the old and the new. An event is often seen as being of value simply because of its novelty in fashion and art. By contrast, cultural history and other antiques are sometimes seen as of value in and of themselves. Philosopher-historians Will and Ariel Durant spoke as much with the quote, "As the sanity of the individual lies in the continuity of his memories, so the sanity of the group lies in the continuity of its traditions; in either case a break in the chain invites a neurotic reaction" (The Lessons of History, 72).

Assessment of the value of old or historical artifacts takes into consideration, especially but not exclusively: the value placed on having a detailed knowledge of the past, the desire to have tangible ties to ancestoral history, and/or the increased market value scarce items traditionally hold.

Creativity and innovation and invention are sometimes upheld as fundamentally good especially in Western industrial society - all imply newness, and even opportunity to profit from novelty. Bertrand Russell was notably pessimistic about creativity and thought that knowledge expanding faster than wisdom necessarily was fatal. Creativity (or creativeness) is a mental process involving the generation of new ideas or concepts, or new associations between existing ideas or concepts. ... In general terms, an invention is an object, process or technique which displays an element of novelty. ... Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970), was a British philosopher, logician, and mathematician, working mostly in the 20th century. ... Knowledge is information of which someone is aware. ... Wisdom is the ability to make correct judgments and decisions. ...

See also

• Axiology
• Common good
• Descriptive ethics
• Goodness metric
• Inductive reasoning
• Meta-ethics
• Supreme good
• Value theory

Axiology, from the Greek axia (αξια, value, worth), is the study of value or quality. ... The common good is a term that can refer to several different concepts. ... Descriptive ethics deal with what the population actually believes to be right and wrong, and holds up as ideals or condemns or punishes in law or politics, as contrasted to normative ethics which deals with what the population should believe to be right and wrong, and such concepts as sin... // Induction or inductive reasoning, sometimes called inductive logic, is the process of reasoning in which the premises of an argument support the conclusion but do not ensure it. ... In philosophy, meta-ethics is the branch of ethics that seeks to understand the nature of ethical properties (if there are any), and ethical statements, attitudes, and judgments. ... Summum bonum (greatest or supreme good) is a neoplatonic concept attributed to the Christian God by Saint Augustine in de natura boni (399), in direct opposition to his earlier Manichaean convictions. ... Value theory concerns itself with the worth, utility, trading or economic value, moral value, legal value, quantitative or aesthetic value of people and things - or the combination of all these. ...

References

• Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics. 1998. USA: Oxford University Press. (1177a15)
• Bentham, Jeremy. The Principles of Morals and Legislation. 1988. Prometheus Books.
• Dewey, John. Theory of Valuation. 1948. University of Chicago Press.
• Durant, Ariel and W. Durant. The Lessons of History. 1997. MJF Books. (p72)
• Garcia, John David. The Moral Society - A Rational Alternative to Death. 2005. Whitmore Publishing.
• Griffin, James. Well-Being: Its Meaning, Measurement and Moral Importance. 1986. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Hume, David. A Treastise of Human Nature. 2000. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Hurka, Thomas. Perfectionism. 1993. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Kant, Immanuel. Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals. 1996. Cambridge University Press. Third section, [446]-[447].
• Rawls, John. A Theory of Justice. 1999. Belknap Press.