Value according to who?
this post was submitted on 18 Dec 2023
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Philosophy
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A good question. Does value exist without an entity to experience and quantify it? Is there value in a universe without humans - assuming such a universe could exist?
How would you define value, objectively?
Say, existence = value maybe? Or, energy = value?
Then your question becomes "Does intrinsic energy exist?" or "Does intrinsic existence exist?"
Could be. Interesting tactic. Energy does indeed seem to intrinsically exist. Existence does seem to exist. Scarcity does seem to exist. Even shared feelings of value for things that are hard to make a logical case for them seem to intrinsically exist. Yet, I feel unsatisfied that intrinsic value exists. Maybe I mean something harder to define.
I'm just an amateur, but I'll bite. I apologize in advance for answering with more questions.
My initial thought was that any intrinsic value is going to be purely in relation to human consideration, and thus arbitrary, but on further consideration, I came to question the validity of that. Even without an understanding of the concept, could other living things not have a vague sense of value as well?
If so, I think we could possibly tease out some sort of basic intrinsic value that is at least common to most animals: companionship, comfort, sensory experience, escaping violence etc. That seems like a good starting place to me.
That would seem to fit into a fairly hedonistic world view, however, which seems to raise the question, are higher order conceptions of intrinsic value uniquely human? If so, does that make them any "less real"? I think this line of thought leads to your idea that intrinsic value is an illusion. I think this would fall under nihilistic or at least skeptical schools of thought.
But now what if you go the other way? Are our most basic hedonistic intrinsic values not just a consequence of our nature as progenitors of evolution? This seems to also lead to intrinsic value being illusory.
I like this idea of life in general defining inherent value. What if we encountered an alien race that developed completely separate from us and we happened to view certain common things as having intrinsic value? Could we make a case that these concepts of intrinsic value truly exist?
Yet, if life itself were high on that list we might be a bit bias.
I think this is related, but the term evidence-based gets used quite a bit in the media these days. I find that phrase has no intrinsic value, if thats right, because I've never studied philosophy. So, if that is an example, I say it because I think the word evidence doesn't have a value, it needs valuation as to whether it is good evidence or some other description.
Edit: I guess, therefore not an illusion.
After some thought, my new inclination:
Whether intrinsic value exists or not is unknowable to us, specifically because we did not create our own universe. I can’t say for certain there is value in truth, justice, love, etc. beyond what we humans assign to these things. Yet, I can’t say for certain that there is not. Intrinsic value by its very nature and definition is a mystery.