No Value
Monday, November 8th, 2004My last entry talked about the “value code word” and the relation between value and religion.
I wrote about a woman that seemed disturbed that somebody would say they voted from “moral values” in last week’s election. The issue of values seems always to invite[1] (#fnote1) the question, “Whose values?”
It’s a good question.
This one talks about something that I call A-value-ism. The idea is that there is no such a thing as value outside of human thought.
I propose an idea of A-value-ism. It is the cognate of Atheism. In other words just as Atheism is a simple lack of belief in God, avaluism is a lack of belief that things have innate value—or that value is a fuzzy concept that should be viewed akin to the Logical Positivists, that is a meaningless cipher.
Some of you are convinced already. You’re on your own from here. Skim down or stop reading as you please; almost all of the rest of this is a challenge to valuism.
No God Either
The case proceeds by assuming that the common conclusions of Atheists are correct and will make a parallel case based on the soundness of the following principles.
- It is a lack of belief, not a belief, and so therefore does not need to be supported with argument.
- It makes no specific claims and therefore the burden of proof falls on those who want to prove value. (This itself is not a claim, however much it resembles one.)
- Nobody has ever seen a value—price tags do not count. They are statements of an existing supposition of value.
- Ancients write about values, as well as “the Good” and a bunch of other ideas that express a personal preference for unseen things.
- Humans disagree so much on what has value, if anything did. That we cannot be clear that we are speaking about any one thing.
- Value is a pseudo-objective projection of personal preference. It runs similar to the statement that “Nickelback rules!” from a fan, suggesting that one’s musical tastes are better than those of another.
- The universe is a big, scary place. (Boo!)
- Wishing doesn’t make it so. The number of people who innately believe something doesn’t make it so.
- Any fuzzy notion that can kill a great number of people is dangerous and best abandoned.
- By Ockham’s razor (or the Common Atheist interpretation) the negative claim should be preferred absent positive evidence.
I really rest with points 1 & 2. As long as I maintain ignorance—some would maintain that’s an invincible ignorance—and refuse to put forward a claim. What I’m saying in points 7 and up will become evident below.
But from here, I would guess that I can suggest how many millions of people have been killed for not sharing the same values as others. All deaths of the Church and Crusades can be put in here.
But as well, Marxist revolutions of Russia and China, the atrocities of Pol Pot, and even ethnic cleansing currently around the world, can be put on the shoulders of the notion of one person judging human life according to his or her values. And if we cannot decide whether or not to place Hitler’s dead at the feet of religion (wrong) or scientism (right), we can still put them at the feet of having a value in the “aristocratic principle of nature” and value Hitler placed on tribal culture.
Are we dying for a basic confusion about our natural world? (9)
How many people have died for other people’s values?
But that should only worry us if people had a value.
Modern Construction
Modernists have tried to assemble an idea of the value of a human life because we prefer to live. I think that is a fact whether or not we believe that humans have value, actually. That has to do with the ability to parse sentences, and has nothing to do with whether we actually have value. Much of what humans say, if I am to understand the Logical Positivist urge, is meaningless and emotional. The problem starts when we project our preferences out into the world.
The universe is a big scary place (7), believing that humans have value is attractive in the face of a universe which belies that idea. But it can’t really be established and our preference for our life may be counteracted with the preference of a vast number more for our death. So my value as a human being is at best questionable.
The idea that I have any value outside of someone’s preference would require an objective standard. And again we have no evidence that such is the case. So I think that we should require all subsequent discussions about “innate human value” to start with the assumption that there is none, because via #10, it is preferable, more reasonable, etc.
In fact, arguing that human’s have value is bizarre in the face of all the deaths caused by the unnatural concept of value. Perhaps the expression of objective value is nothing but the intolerance for a different preference, as it appears it has operated such a way in the past. It seems doubtful that we should ever trust the impulse that lead to the Inquisition, Crusades, Stalinist purges, Pol Pot, and the deaths of 9/11.
Modern Construction, v 2.0
Okay, let’s take another run at it. Some want to say that it is a way to mitigate between claims of value. But do we really want to mitigate between claims of imaginary creatures? And if we do, what about those who do not? Mitigating is one preference, fighting it out with bloody weapons is another. Saying that we’re all trying to mitigate is ignoring what many in the world are trying to do. So again, the preference to mitigate seems to accept, at base, an idea of human value, where each person’s claim has as much value as it can hold.
But if we get real and translate value back to preference, then we find that popularity of preference is about all the value that we will ever be able to get a claim to hold. That is, a popular preference is more likely to have people fight for it as an outward expression of value, than an outnumbered value which seems to degrade the more popular preference.
Preference fully explains”value” in an economic setting. I have a preference for the way to spend my time. People have a preference for whose hard work has value to them. The more people who are willing to buy my product as an expression of their preferences, the more products I can buy that indulge my preferences, the more time and capital I might prefer to spend producing that product.
Now, my economic rival may prefer that I not squeeze him out of the market, fairly or unfairly. He may also prefer that I not buy the time of certain skilled workers to kill him. But in a real world any of these three outcomes can help me indulge my preferences. Thus we see how it can be a real competitive advantage, used with discretion, to realize that the value of other people’s lives, when they do not provide an ends to our preferences is entirely a fiction.
People tend to put value on the death of other individuals as well. The dollars paid to a hit man or the military belie the idea that the death of others does not have a preferential value.
But wait! Is there no case that the people who provide the means for us to indulge our preferences have value? Well, I never said they didn’t. People who provide us the means to express our preferences are very valuable to us. We prefer them to live, because replacing them is an unsure thing.
But what is this to the Militant anti-Westerner who sees my very preferences as imperialistic or the height of decadence? He may prefer my death to the challenge to his sainted value. He may find me an infidel or a dupe of capitalists to be removed in the jihad, revolution of the people, or retribution of their slain.
I prefer to live, sure. And that may be something to someone who shares my “values”, but my ability to live depends on what I or others are willing to forgo to keep me alive and what the opposition will forgo to kill me. If we prefer butter, we might not have guns. And if other prefer guns to butter and our death to our life, well (who can doubt that) that’s the way things go.
- not beg see Begging the Question “prompt” might also be a acceptable choice.
