Back to the Drawing Board : Economics, Intrinsic Value

On Subjective Valuation and Intrinsic Value

Donny with an A — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 17:00:00 GMT

Some more on this never-ending debate...

In ascribing value to certain things, we acknowledge that they matter to us -- they have weight in our calculations about what we should do. But it seems to me that there are two (not mutually exclusive) ways in which we do this. The first is the way that we mean when we talk about matters of "taste." When we evaluate things in this way, the account of why we value them is autobiographical. For example, I like coffee because it tastes good to me; it makes me feel cheerful and alert; it helps me focus on tasks that I want to perform.

In order to dispute my evaluation, someone would need to similarly couch their objections in features about me. For example, I might announce that I want to eat a cheeseburger, because I like the way they taste. In order to argue with my choice, someone would need to alert me to some feature about my tastes that they believed I was failing to acknowledge. For example, they might point out that the last time I ate a cheeseburger, I felt sick, and told everyone how I never wanted to eat a cheeseburger again (this is, of course, a fictional story; cheeseburgers are delicious). The point is that with regard to discussing matters involving my own tastes, the entire focus is on me, the valuer.

The other way that people often ascribe value to things is to claim (or implicitly claim) that they are the appropriate objects of valuation, and to ascribe to them the value -- the weight in our moral calculations -- that we believe is fitting of their nature or properties. Not only are these things valued, but they are seen as valuable: to "fail" to value these things would be, in some sense, inappropriate, unbecoming, or wrong. The reason given here for an evaluation is no longer autobiographical, but cites some quality inherent in the valued object as if it were the explanation for the evaluation. For example, a parent feeds his child "because" she is hungry, and her health and wellbeing depends on being fed. The implication here is that the parent thinks that to fail to feed the child would demonstrate insufficient consideration of the fact of the child's hunger. Clearly, this sort of valuation is inherently normative: it is understood as involving an acknowledgment of how we ought to act.

When I talk about actions that are "self-interested," I refer to those actions where the account of why the action was undertaken makes reference to the first kind of valuation (the one which identifies the tastes, wants, and desires of the valuer as the explanation for the valuation). When I call an action "non-self-interested," I refer to actions taken for reasons understood in terms of the second sort of valuation (where objective features of a set of circumstances are cited to explain the valuation). As I suggested before, these sorts of valuations need not be mutually exclusive. But there is a sense in which they are taken as being separate from each other. For example, we might find someone saying "He's a really nice guy, and he's never done anything bad to me, but I just don't like hanging out with him." The implication here is that niceness and blamelessness are being seen as somehow worthy or demanding of consideration and positive valuation, but that the negative valuation conveyed by the person's "tastes" is acting as a counterweight. Now, if the person who made the above statement decided to hang out with the guy who she discussed, we might imagine her saying, "He was just so nice; when he asked, I had to say yes." Her action here would be non-self-interested. If, on the other hand, she decided not to hang out with the guy, we might imagine her saying, "As nice as he was, I just couldn't bring myself to put myself through spending another minute with him." Here, her action would be self-interested.

When I talk about something having "intrinsic value," I'm making reference to qualities or objects identified by the normative kind of valuation as providing justification for a choice. Most ethical theories (those with a "realist" component) rely on this sort of valuation to provide a basis for their claims: ethics involves the acknowledgment or recognition of the appropriate responses to certain features of things or situations. (I should mention, in passing, that one need not claim that there actually are appropriate responses or anything like that; see, for example, quasi-realism.)

It's important to distinguish here between intrinsic value and what might be called "objective value" or the "objective component" of value. When we talk about objective values, we mean that a thing can be valuable independently of anyone valuing it. This does not seem possible to me, as value seems to be, by nature, a relationship between an evaluating mind and some object (I don't mean physical object, just a "something" which is being valued). If I'm correct about this, there could be no such thing as objective value. But the concept of an objective component of value is different. This idea relies on the possibility that certain features of objects (especially where objects can be taken to also refer to concepts in our minds) cause a reaction in us which leads us to value those objects. For example, a guy might meet a beautiful, intelligent, and entertaining woman at a bar, and come to want certain things not because he chose to want them, or something more mysterious, but rather because it was natural for him to want those things upon acknowledging certain features of the woman. Her objective features caused a reaction in the man, whose value judgments would thereby be affected (though, of course, the valuation still only exists in the man's mind; it is still subjective).

It might be immediately clear that a parallel exists between the concept of an objective component of value and the concept of intrinsic value, as I alluded to in identifying the realist component of many ethical theories. But the two concepts are not necessarily identical. The man in the bar might desire a particular beer, for example, because he wants a drink and because it strikes him as satisfying the criteria of being a drink. But it would be slightly odd for him to attribute any intrinsic value to the idea of him having a drink: He would need to say, "I want that beer, and therefore it would be immoral of me to not go get it." Certainly there are people who would be comfortable saying this (anyone who would call themselves an "egoist" or a "hedonist" would immediately come to mind). But I take it that most people don't think that way. There is a difference between what we want (what is a matter of our tastes) and what we ought to want (what is a result of our attributions of intrinsic value).

There's clearly a lot more to say on this, but I figure this will do for now.

The Subjectivity of Value

Donny with an A — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 21:47:00 GMT

[Cross-posted on the parent blog]

For some reason, the past few weeks have found me embroiled in more debates about value theory than I can remember in the past year. Accordingly, I figured I'd post something on the subject as a starting point for those debates, so that I don't have to repeat my entire view in every conversation.

The problems people seem to be wrestling with are twofold. First, people have been arguing that because value is subjective, we can't say anything about how much value something has except by saying how much someone values it. Second, people have been claiming that because there is no acceptable way to objectively measure utility, it is impossible to coherently make claims about utility which compare utility between one individual and another. I want to address both issues, but this post will only discuss the former; I'll deal with the latter another time.

To begin, I want to make clear that I don't deny that utility is subjective. But what does it mean to say this? One uncontroversial, but relatively weak, way of interpreting this is to say that without people (or other valuers) to value things, nothing would have value. While this shouldn't offend anyone, it also doesn't tell us very much. It only means that value must be value to someone; the cake is not valuable, it is valuable to people. If there were a cake on a planet with nothing else on it, so that no sentient being would ever come across the cake or even know that it existed, it would seem odd to attribute any value to the cake.

But it's clear that this isn't what people mean when they say that value is subjective. It seems like what people are saying is that something becomes valuable because someone values it. George Reisman might seem to have embodied this sort of view when he said, "...the starting point both of goods-character and of the value of goods is within us--within human beings--and radiates outward from us to external things, establishing...goods-character and value..." It also might seem to have been present in Mises' thought, when he said, "Judgments of value are voluntaristic. They express feelings, tastes, or preferences of the individual who utters them. With regard to them there cannot be any question of truth and falsity. They are ultimate and not subject to any proof or evidence."

Mises continued, "What the theorem of the subjectivity of valuation means is that there is no standard available which would enable us to reject any ultimate judgment of value as wrong, false, or erroneous in the way we can reject an existential proposition as manifestly false. It is vain to argue about ultimate judgments of value as we argue about the truth or falsity of an existential proposition." It is on the back of statements like these that people argue that we are unable to posit value in anything apart from the value placed on it by some individual.

But this immediately leads to some problematic conclusions. For one, it means that if we cannot say that it would be good for the alcoholic to avoid taking another drink, or that the person in an abusive relationship would be better off leaving his partner, unless they believed that to be the case. If it is the nature of value that it does not exist except as it is placed on certain things by people, then it would be impossible to be mistaken about the value of something. Clearly the alcoholic values the drink, and the abused partner values his relationship, but there seems to be a sense in which we want to say that the alcoholic shouldn't value the drink, and the abused partner should leave.

The problem arises from the fact that we can talk about something's being "valuable" in two ways. One is positive: "I value X; X is valuable." The other is normative: "X would help me to achieve my ends; X is valuable." When my opponents talk about the subjectivity of value, they slip into the former kind of thinking. That is, they take the view that what is desired is the same as what is desirable. But it is my contention that what is desirable, in discussing the value of some object, is what ought to be desired, given the ends of the agent in question. So while I agree that ultimate ends can't be disputed (if you want to be a devout Christian, I can't tell you that you're wrong), I can dispute the means you choose for obtaining your ultimate ends.

This is played out in Mises' discussion when he says, "The characteristic mark of ultimate ends is that they depend entirely on each individual's personal and subjective judgment, which cannot be examined, measured, still less corrected by any other person. Each individual is the only and final arbiter in matters concerning his own satisfaction and happiness." He continues, "Means are judged and appreciated according to their ability to produce definite effects. While judgments of value are personal, subjective, and final, judgments about means are essentially inferences drawn from factual propositions concerning the power of the means in question to produce definite effects. About the power of a means to produce a definite effect there can be dissension and dispute between men. For the evaluation of ultimate ends there is no interpersonal standard available." Accepting this view of value, it seems clear that we can indeed make claims about how valuable something is as a means for achieving some end, even though we can't actually say that the end in question is valuable.

In passing, I want to preempt an obvious objection. In practice, I (and I think most people) do tend to assume that individuals have certain ultimate ends, and that under this assumption, I can largely ignore the issue of the subjectivity of ends. For example, I don't tell the alcoholic, "If you desire the sort of life I find that most people do, you shouldn't have that drink." I simply say, "You shouldn't have that drink." If I were to discover that the alcoholic actually thought that his purpose on the Earth was to explore the effects of alcoholism, producing knowledge for himself and the rest of humanity in the process, then I couldn't criticize his choice of drinking in the same way. But recognizing this possibility doesn't preclude me from assuming that they alcoholic is making a poor decision (in the absence of evidence to the contrary). That I could be wrong because of a faulty assumption, doesn't prove that the position outlined here is wrong.

One thing that I should address, but I won't, is the issue of justice as it relates to value. It's fully possible that someone could do something which would actually produce the effect of promoting her ends, but we would still want to say that there's something wrong with it. Mises seemed to think that justice could be completely explained in utilitarian, contractarian terms, saying, "The ultimate yardstick of justice is conduciveness to the preservation of social cooperation. Conduct suited to preserve social cooperation is just, conduct detrimental to the preservation of society is unjust. There cannot be any question of organizing society according to the postulates of an arbitrary preconceived idea of justice. The problem is to organize society for the best possible realization of those ends which men want to attain social cooperation. Social utility is the only standard of justice. It is the sole guide of legislation." I completely disagree with this assertion, and I am supported in this by a considerable tradition in philosophy. But how this relates to the discussion of value is beyond the scope of this post. I think that what I've said so far is good enough for my purposes.