The Subjectivity of Value

Abstract

This book is a sustained attack on the claim that values are objective, in the world independent of people’s attitudes. It evaluates this claim in different value domains: moral, personal or prudential, aesthetic, and general evaluative. The first section greatly expands on J.L. Mackie’s appeal to moral disagreement and the strangeness of moral properties. It argues via examples that fundamental moral disagreements are irresolvable, that the arguments on both sides are a standoff, and that an objectivist has no plausible explanation of why one side would be mistaken. The last chapter of this section argues that objective value properties would be very strange not in being intrinsically motivating (as Mackie claimed), but in giving rise to intransitive orderings and strange variations (from L.S. Temkin). The second section considers objective list accounts of personal well-being, those that list things intrinsically good for all people. It argues that instances of the usual items on such lists, such as knowledge, are not all good for all people, that properly narrowing their descriptions requires appeal to people’s attitudes (prohibited to objectivists), and that other things that are intrinsically good for only some people, such as tennis, cannot fit such lists. Whether only experiences make for a good life again depends on people’s attitudes or desires. The section on aesthetic value argues against there being aesthetic principles that link objective properties of artworks to proper evaluative responses to them. The final section argues that experienced values vary with the times at which they are experienced, as objective values would not.