Understanding Subjective and Objective Values in Ethics

Values

• A review of ethics you are interested in, such as moral values: justice, honesty, faithfulness, gentleness, etc.
• Axiology is concerned with the study of values, trying to find their meaning or essence.
• All moral rules form opinions or insights that allow us to formulate the concept of what is good or bad.

The Judgments of Value

Judgments of value tell us whether an act is consistent with the standards or rules that govern us in social life.

Example of Value Judgments

“John is right.”

The value involved is the law. Moral judgments can only have a moral implication.

• Values serve as guidelines for human life.
• They give meaning to individual and social life.
• You cannot imagine a life without ideals, without a table of values that support it.
• We live by daily value judgments.
• Only value judgments may have a moral implication.

Problem of the Existence of Value

This problem asks if values are there. What kind of existence do they have? What is their nature?

There is agreement that values exist, but there is a difference in the way of living.

There are two strands to explain the existence of values:

Subjectivist Current of Values

• Affirms that values are the result of individual and collective reactions.
• According to current values, they do not exist in and of themselves but are creations of the human mind.
• What makes a valuable thing is the desire or individual interest.

Subjectivist Theory of Values

• Discrepancy: It is difficult to agree on ethical, religious, and political matters. People often disagree. Example: legalizing abortion or consumption.
• Biological Constitution: What aesthetic value would paint have if we had no eyes? Values are subject to the biological makeup of men.
• Interest: Things have value insofar as they generate interest. Where is the value in stamps?
• Historicity: The relativity of values is due to their historical character. Values are enclosed in the subject.

Objectivist Current of Values

• It is opposed to subjectivism and holds that values depend on the object; all it does is grasp the subject.
• It recognizes that valuation is subjective, but that does not mean that the value is.
• Just as perception is subjective, but not the object perceived.

Objectivist Current of Values

• One of the fundamental theses that supports objectivism is that “there are values in themselves and not for me” (i.e., regardless of the subject).
• According to current values, they are above temporal considerations. They are valid here and there, yesterday, today, and always, extra-territorial and extra-historical.

Objectivism Values