Indeed, no, there are alternatives. McDowell's seminal paper started a tradition that sees values as response-dependent properties. Such properties are objective in an important sense but require a valuing subject. Think of the property of a 'good smell'. You cannot know what smells good, unless you smell it or have experience with it. But it are the objective properties of the object that give it its smell, even thought the smell is a secondary, response-dependent property.

Alternatively, you could go "minimal" in your theory of meaning of moral terms and then objectivity of values is unproblematical, regardless of the moral epistemology.

Alexander Miller's little book on contemporary metaethics could be of help here...

Philadelphia, PA

Dear Hueber,

I think this is an interesting question, though I am not exactly sure that I understand the details of the perspective from which you approach it. I tend toward the Aristotelian when explaining my related views.

Let me address moral values, briefly. Basically, we are each socialized and grow up in some particular society and subgroups. So we come equipped with values when we start to think about them. We already have values and that's how we know about them. But values are not purely social or conventional, insofar as the values we acquire are the product of historical selection, evolution and refinement. In a sense, this is to distinguish strongly the "context of discovery," if you will, from the "context of justification" --or words to that effect. It matters less how we come by the values which we have --every living person has values--  than what we do with them subsequently. This is like saying it matters less how we come by our value-"hypotheses" than how we might "test" them.

Values of any given society are means of organizing social relations and human behavior. The chief question is whether there are better and worse ways of doing so. This is judged, basically, by reference to the continuation and well-being of the peoples and peoples living in such organizational patterns. Reform of values is then to be judged by reference to the pre-existing values of particular societies as they look for solutions in the face of problems encountered.  Innovations in values must meet the chief agreed problems while preserving the pre-existing values insofar as this is consistent with the innovations. It is worth remarking that human beings strongly tend to be much more conservative about values than people tend to be when considering more theoretical alternatives. So it is with "matters of the heart."

This may be an approach quite distinct from that which motivates your question, but I hope you will find it of some interest.

H.G. Callaway

I think I get your point. (If not, please help me). What I'd like to say is that besides error theory, one could also take seriously into account the very contingency of the human existence - and hence of values and principles.

Contingency is a fancy word for naming chance and randomness. Culture, when normalised, wants us to want to be necessary and everlasting. Big mistake.

I would please ask you form a further understanding of: "If values are indefinable...". Then I shall continue with my comment/reply.

I think that this is a good question, to which the sort answer is "no"; and the long answer requires much more space than we have here.  William james adn Nietzsche have much to say that bears on the question.

Indeed, no, there are alternatives. McDowell's seminal paper started a tradition that sees values as response-dependent properties. Such properties are objective in an important sense but require a valuing subject. Think of the property of a 'good smell'. You cannot know what smells good, unless you smell it or have experience with it. But it are the objective properties of the object that give it its smell, even thought the smell is a secondary, response-dependent property.

Alternatively, you could go "minimal" in your theory of meaning of moral terms and then objectivity of values is unproblematical, regardless of the moral epistemology.

Alexander Miller's little book on contemporary metaethics could be of help here...

Philadelphia, PA

Dear Migotti,

I wonder if you would say more. How does William James help with this question? I'd be interested to know your view.

H.G. Callaway

I was thinking of his essay "The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life" in which, a propos "the metaphysical question of what we mean by the words "obligation", "good" and "ill"", James begins by contending that "such words can have no application or relevancy in a world in which no sentient life exists", but goes on to sketch a position which is far from error theoretic.

Maybe my question is naive but, are all values equivalent and therefore examinable under the same principles and parameters or measurable in the same way with the same philosophical tools? Is the aesthetic value like the moral value? What James says about moral values applies to aesthetic values? 

Best regards, Lilliana

To Lilliana's question, I'd say "not necessarily", though I'd not want to exclude the possibility that thee are some things that are common to values of all types.

To Carlos - by 'indefinable' I mean to say that values simpliciter (this itself an answer to Lilliana's very perceptive question) have no existence independent of  human sensibility. Yet that doesn't mean they are subjective. As Bruno points out, the world still 'answers to' the evaluative schemes we apply to it...and those answers are, in this sense then, objective.

With respect to moral versus aesthetic and other values, it is an interesting observation that both moral and what we might call aesthetic 'intuition' appear in consciousness without any apparent cognitive effort.

Dear Mark, your phrase "not necessarily" questions the very premise of Jim's question, which is my point, actually. Thank you!

Dear Jim, if the premise of your question is frail at best and thus does not play out, there can be more than one alternative, and not just "error theory". Values are flighty, epochal, too soft to be submitted to a single rule or theory. They are probably changing right now while we speak here: both a change of values and a change of what the very concept of value stands for. Besides, I have no idea what the phrase "human sensibility" means in this context. In my view, it is almost a catch-all phrase not amenable to the idea of "error".

Best regards, Lilliana

Philadelphia, PA

Dear Verbeek & readers,

I was wondering what exactly was involved in the "error theory," and I found the following passage which seems to explain it:

Stanford Encyclopedia, "Moral Anti-realism," subsection, "The error theory":

Understanding the nature of an error theory is best done initially by example: It is the attitude that sensible people take toward phlogiston, that levelheaded people take toward astrology, that reasonable people take toward the Loch Ness monster, and that atheists take toward the existence of gods. An error theorist doesn't believe in such things; she takes talk of such things to be a load of bunk. The moral error theorist doesn't believe in such things as moral obligation, moral value, moral desert, moral virtue, and moral permission; she takes talk of such things to be bunk. This much allows one to get a fairly good intuitive grasp on the error theoretic position, though the details of how the stance should best be made precise are unresolved.

---End quotation

If this is the "error theory" in question, then what we are trying to establish or answer is whether this "error theory" is the only alternative to the claim that "values are indefinable except in terms of human sensibility" and the claim that values are "response dependent properties." Is that how you understand the question here?

I'm just trying to clarify the question a bit and make the issues more explicit. 

H.G. Callaway

Apparently, dear H.G., there are too many vague terms in this question to be able to figure an answer.

Best regards, Lilliana

I can, perhaps, help disambiguate what I mean by "error theory" by noting that I am referring to the second-order moral doctrine that purports to explain what one does in making a first-order claim (of some thing's being 'wrong', 'unjust', or whatever). According to Mackie, if there's no such thing as 'objective values', then all such claims that commonsensically make reference to them, are necessarily false since what they aim at are a chimera.

Philadelphia, PA

Dear Hueber,

Thanks for you reply. I take it that that your answer is a "yes." Right?

I'm also wondering about the paper by John McDowell, mentioned by Verbeek above. Would that be, the following:

“Values and Secondary Qualities”, in Ted Honderich, ed., Morality and Objectivity (Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1985), pp. 110-29

Is Verbeek in tune with your question here? Or otherwise, put, so as not to ask you to speak for him, would you be inclined to elucidate the alternative to the "error theory," by reference to McDowell's paper (this one or another) and the idea that the world does or may "objectively 'answer' to the evaluative predicates we apply to it?" Is this another way of talking about values as "response-dependent properties"?

H.G. Callaway

After reading all your comments, I had the feeling that Mr. Huebner is onto something BIG... meta-currency trading with derivative swaps and options ...  many convoluted concepts, wrapped around and around...  but human sensibility, since when philosophers care about THAT ?  

Philadelphia, PA

Dear all,

Let's see if we can challenge the thesis of values as "response dependent properties," so as to effectively get at the meaning of this phrase as relevant on this thread. We can always come back to McDowell, if this would be helpful.

I was reminded of a quotation from Montesquieu, near the opening of. The Spirit of the Law (1750/1949):

Particular intelligent beings may have laws of their own making, but they have some likewise which they never made. Before there were intelligent beings, they were possible; they had therefore possible relations, and consequently possible laws. Before laws were made, there were relations of possible justice. To say there is nothing just or unjust but what is commanded or forbidden by positive laws, is the same as saying that before the describing of a circle all the radii were not equal.

---End quotation.

I see this as an attempt to place the basis of judgment regarding justice and injustice above the positive (i.e., the actual, accepted or written) law. That is to say that there are some abstract feature of nature which determine possible relations of intelligent beings and the justice or injustice of the relations of such intelligent beings. These features of nature (Montesquieu, I take it, advances a version of "natural law") do not depend on our response to them, though actual laws which stand in conflict with them will be unjust. This seems to be a realist theory of values. How does it differ from the conception of values as "response dependent properties" in nature and society?

H.G. Callaway 

Re Susan Laird: "but human sensibility, since when philosophers care about THAT ? " 

Well, at least since the 17th C. See John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690),

Dear H.G., obscurity tends to be obscure, especially in the context of "human sensibility" and "human (natural) law". Please let's keep this at the Montesquieu level for a while so I can remember that those possible laws probably were discovered after laws became positive, though we acted naturally according to some laws that were given us by nature and, thus, we may say that nature can be intelligent enough to legislate through the "possible" and "positive" periods of human (not natural) law to save us from chaos. If "natural law" is that which emanates from "human nature" (which I believe has something in common with "human sensibility"), there is in our human nature something that is maybe "unnatural", which could be called "positive law", the possible law being a sort of incomplete, mid-term positive law. If the premise of this question is that values can only be defined by "human sensibility", or by an error theory as an alternative, in order to find "bunk", well, human nature's law —being just as human as human sensibility— might run the same risk of indefinability save for recurring to an error theory as an alternative, that is, a theory that seeks "bunk". Wow! I am really exhausted...I think I got it! But I still feel chaos closing in.

Should we escape this before becoming "it", I mean, "bunk"?

Warmest regards, Lilliana

human understanding of what? why you like this wine and I don't? It seems to me this is what we are discussing here? and on that error 'theory'  hangs the whole wellbeing of coca cola industry...

Philadelphia, PA

Dear Ramos-Collado,

It seems to me that the quotation from Montesquieu has some historical interest for this thread. I used it in a discussion of the concept of law at one point --a discussion of the "law of freedom" in particular.  I take it that given the American tradition of respect for freedom, the claim from Jefferson in particular that "all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights," then the XIII amendment, abolishing slavery in the U.S. was an objectively better position, a vast improvement, in contrast with the compromise with slavery in the constitution of 1789. 

I suppose that this position of mine stands in stark contrast with the "error theory," according to which all talk of moral obligation and the better and worse of values must be nonsense. That is a reason for thinking that alternatives to the "error theory" are of interest for this thread and more generally.

Perhaps the best evidence for the "error theory" arises directly from the conflictual character of debate and discussion on questions of values. Some people are inclined to give up on such discussions simply because they seem, at times, to generate only conflict, "heat" and no "light." I regard this as a very unfortunate conclusion tending to withdraw intellectual standing from our legitimate moral-intellectual concerns--in effect, turning them over to pure contests of power. 

I'd be interested in knowing your own stand on the viability of value inquiry. Can you briefly say what is wrong with the "error theory?" McDowell's article, mentioned above, seems to do just that. 

H.G. Callaway

There is an awful lot of work already done on these questions by metaethicists. I recommend not to muddle the waters by quoting Montesquieu and other 17th century philosophers who did not sufficiently distinguish response-dependence from straightforward subjectivism and who did not know of error theory at all, but look at more contemporary authors.

Alexander Miller's 2004 textbook "Contemporary Metaethics" has a good chapter on error theory (we have progressed since Mackie's 1977 book) and on response dependence theory (indeed Miller defends a version of the latter).

Philadelphia, PA

Dear Verbeek,

Thanks for your response. However, I tend to think that we need to understand the idea of "response-dependence" of values not merely in contrast with the "error theory," but also in possible contrast with older conceptions, functioning to resist subjectivism.

H.G. Callaway

I agree with you, dear H.G. and that is why I was just pushing the question to the limit of absurdity by writing a sort of satyrical answer. I read Montesquieu a long time ago, and I consider it a great addition to the discussion, precisely because how the French philosopher constructed his proposal. What I did was to merge the question on values with that of laws from the question's side, not from that of Montesquieu. I always have the temptation to poke my finger into the heart of the absurd.

I do not think that this question generates conflict: it is too vague and that makes it hard, even impossible, to understand the very terms in which it is expressed. That would be an example of the how the viability of value inquiry is stunted by the very expression of the question. I personally believe that a question, if well posed, may change the map of any province of knowledge, but you have to create a platform for such a discussion and be careful in giving your audience the tools needed for an eventful collective inquiry. I find, dear H.G. that you are one of the most generous persons I've met. You have been spending time in trying to make sense of this question, trying to second-guess what is it about, so now the question is yours. I congratulate you for trying to make sense of this question. I do not have your patience, but I envy it. You are a valiant man. And I have to sit down to study so I can venture an opinion on the possibility of value inquiry from your own question.

My intuition is that value inquiry cannot occur in a vacuum, not even the very abstract idea of "value inquiry". That too may be historical. I think that historicity and the materiality of context are too heavy on values, and on the very definition of "value" in so different synchronic and diachronic pursuits or disciplines regarding values. I do not know if the very intent of addressing the issue from an abstract point of view would be helpful to understanding why values are so flighty. This is a first attempt. I have to begin from your question now. Besides, I think the idea of "human sensibility" cannot be thrown into the discussion without comment, if it is to be he ground for defining values.

Warm regards, Lilliana

Philadelphia, PA

Dear Ramos-Collado,

Many thanks for your kind words. Very generous of you!

However, I am simply trying to understand the present question and make it more explicit. As you know, I have been long interested in the "better and worse" of values and value judgments; and the various participants seem to be circling in on that topic.

Montesquieu's work, was, of course, very highly esteemed in his times and long afterward. There is a considerable literature devoted to Montesquieu on law. So it does seem reasonable to consider his related writings in relation to the present topic, in view of the fact that he holds that there are criteria for the evaluation of law outside the confines of the positive law itself. The law itself may be better or worse, even just or unjust. But on what basis could we make such judgments?

The suggestion seems to be that McDowell and related work hold out this prospect in contemporary writings. It remains unclear exactly what the author of the present question might say on that. 

H.G. Callaway

No

Values of all kinds are a matter of consensus. Stones would probably exist without any conscious beings; values would not. A values is a relationship between an entity (object, act, situation) and a subject (individual or collective).

In my book Grounded Ethics and article A Behavioral Analysis of Morality and Value, I define the good as (roughly) what has the power to reinforce preference for it and the right as what we generally want to reinforce.  Thus, good tasting food is food you want to taste again, and morally correct behavior is behavior people generally want to promote. Since what reinforces X's desire for it will not reinforce Y's, goodness is relative to preferences; but since one can be mistaken about what one will want again, it is not subjective.  Instead, the power to reinforce a particular person's desire for it is an objective property measured by a response to it.  Similarly, since behavior that is wanted and reinforced in society A might not be wanted and reinforced in society B, what correctly counts as morally right is relative to a society.  Thus, we generally want to promote charitable behavior and discourage lying.  Once again, however, since one can easily be mistaken about what behavior will be reinforced in a society, morality does not end up being subjective.  Instead, it belongs to objectively existing social practices, norms, and rules.  There is, of course, more to the story, but this is the gist of it.

Max says: "...  I define the good as (roughly) what has the power to reinforce preference for it ..."

This seems rather dangerous to me. Many bad things (addictions, etc.) satisfy such descriptions.

My  rough definition of good could run like this: that which most benevolent people appreciate and wish to do. However, we than have the problem what benevolence is, and who is entitled to judge about these things. Anyway, my basic ethical principle is the Golden Rule. I try to derive (deduce) most things from it, because other principles are usually rather risky.

A thing can be good in one respect, bad in another.  Addictive drugs obviously have their attractions or they wouldn't be used; also their greater detriments or they wouldn't be avoided.  Hence, they are both desired and better avoided; good in the momentary pleasures they yield but bad all things considered, or as a way of life.  Not just by my personal definition but in workaday speech, which my definition was meant to capture. Rough is rough; it does not include subtleties.

Philadelphia, PA

Dear Hocutt,

I notice that your short statement says nothing about the "better and worse," and I wonder what room your definition and approach may make for rational reform, as contrasted with simple change of preferences. That different people have different preferences seems a point of fact. Again, that certain things have "the power to reinforce preference" for them (different things for different people and different things in different societies) seems a matter of fact. So, my impression so far is that your approach provides a kind of factual snapshot of values and may leave out the distinctively normative character of values. 

It seems clearly a meaningful normative claim to say, "G is something that ought to reinforce preference for it, but in fact it doesn't have this effect." That means that something could be correctly judged to be normatively good, though it fails to meet the requirements of your definition. Again, it is possible to argue from  examples, such as, G = "All out efforts for world peace." Or, G = "Worldwide efforts to colonize Mars."   Supposing it factually true that these things don't reinforce preference for them, it would not follow that they are not good.

I sense a problem here. Has the distinctively normative character of the good been left out in favor of a behavioral approximation or simulation?

H.G. Callaway

What are values? They are just the constructs of mind regarding a single object, situation or happening or an event in which the observer (Life form) may directly involved or indirectly involved. As these are highly subjective and depends on the intensity of involvement, its mathematical expression is highly difficult. It is infact a higher mental functions that determines a object, situation or event as good and bad. Infact there is nothing named as good or evil. Every situation is good to some while evil to other. But it is the mass of people who determine it to be so. Even in the Bhagavad Gita Lord Krishna suggests on a certain question of Arjuna as why he is designated to kill his own brothers? Accordingly, Lord Krishna explains that everyone is designated to do a job based on the merits and demerits of the action performed by him. Hence irrespective of the consequence whether good or bad he is supposed to do the actions.

Here it is a clear example of the fact that no action is good or evil. In general killing of kiln is evil, but in the epic of Mahabharata it is fight between brothers of the same family which is depicted as good.

Thus the assessment of values is always subjective and depends on the benefits that a particular action will produce to the masses. The more the benefits it gives, the action, object, situation or event is considered as good while its opposite is bad or evil even though the action, object, situation or event is the same.

Philadelphia, PA

Dear Mahesh,

Among other themes, you appear to appeal to scientific values, saying in regard to values generally, that "mathematical expression is highly difficult." Consider, then an appeal to the values of scientific research. If someone claims, e.g., "a theory for which we can not figure out empirical tests should be considered more doubtful than one for which plausible empirical tests can be developed," then this seems a normative claim and an example of the expression of values. The claim seems to be true. Many similar claims could be produced based on firm scientific methods. 

Thus this, and similar examples seem to be a counter-example to your claim, above that "the assessment of values is always subjective." If my example is "subjective," then the subjective seems too broad to be of much use for scientific purposes.

H.G. Callaway