Human Values Print Out

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Neurobiology of human values


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Practice of value by RAZ

2. The Thesis in Brief

A. The Thesis

It is time to put some fiesh on the enigmatic remarks made so far. The

social dependence of values, or at least the aspect of it that concerns me,

can be expressed as the combination of two theses:The special social dependence thesis claims that some values exist only if

there are (or were) social practices sustaining them.

The (general) social dependence thesis claims that, with some exceptions,all values depend on social practices either by being subject to

the special thesis or through their dependence on values that aresubject to the special thesis.

III. CHANGE AND UNDERSTANDING

1. Understanding and ValueTo the extent that it is possible to distinguish them, my emphasis so far


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has been on ontological questions, on the existence of values. It is timeto shift to questions of understanding of values, remembering all along

that the two cannot be entirely separated.Understanding, rather than knowledge, is the term that comes to

mind when thinking of evaluative judgments. Judgment, rather than

mere knowledge, is what the practically wise person possesses. Why?

What is the difference? It is a matter of degree, with understanding and

judgment involving typically, FIrst, knowledge in depth, and secondly,

and as a result, knowledge much of which is implicit. Understanding is

knowledge in depth. It is connected knowledge in two respects. First,

knowledge of what is understood is rich enough to place its object in its

context, to relate it to its location and its neighbourhood, literally and

metaphorically. Second, knowledge of what is understood is also connected

to ones imagination, emotions, feelings, and intentions. What

one understands one can imagine, empathise with, feel for, and be disposed

to act appropriately regarding. Understanding tends to involve a good deal of implicit knowledge precisely

because it is connectedknowledge. Its richness exceeds our powers of articulation.

Understanding is displayed, and put to use, through good judgment.To illustrate the point, think of a simple example of good judgment.

Jane, we may say, is a good judge of wines. Ask her which wine toserve with the meal. John, by way of contrast, has perfect knowledge of

the bus timetable. You should ask him which bus to take, but it wouldbe odd to think of him as being a good judge of bus journeys, or as having

a good judgment of bus journeys, in the way that Jane is clearly a

good judge of wine because of her excellent judgment regarding wines.

The difference is that Johns views, perfect though they are, are based on

one kind of consideration, whereas Jane is judging the bearing of a multitude

of factors on the choice of wine. Moreover, the ways the different

factors bear on each other, and on the ultimate choice, defy comprehensive

articulation. If Jane is articulate and refiective (and to possess good

judgment she need be neither) she may be able to explain every aspect of

every one of her decisions, but she cannot describe exhaustively all aspectsof her decisions, let alone provide a general detailed and contentfull1

procedure for arriving at the choices or opinions she may reach on

different real and hypothetical occasions, as John can.

It is not difFIcult to see why values call for understanding and judgment.The connection is most evident regarding speciFIc values. They

are mixed values, constituted by standards determining ways for idealcombinations of contributing values, and criteria for various relationships

that objects can have to them (simple instantiation, inversion,etc.). Their knowledge requires knowledge of the various values that

combine in their mix, and of the way their presence affects the value ofthe object given the presence of other values. Regarding these matters

whose complexity and dense texture defy complete articulation, knowledgeis connected and implicit, amounting, when it is reasonably refiective

and reasonably complete, to understanding, and its use, in forming

opinions and in taking decisions, calls for judgment.

The case of general values may be less clear. The more general the

value, the more homogeneous and simple it is likely to be. Can one

not have knowledge of it without understanding, and apply it without judgment? The apparent simplicity of

general values is, however, misleading.

To be sure, one can have limited knowledge of them, as one can

of more speciFIc values, without understanding. One can know that freedom

is the value of being allowed to act as one sees FIt. Such one-liners are


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true so far as they go. We FInd them useful because we have the backgroundknowledge that enables us to read them correctly. Relying on abstract

formulations of the content of values, and denyingthat they need tobe understood in context and interpreted in light of other related values,

leads to one of the most pernicious forms of fanaticism.

As I have already mentioned, more general values are explained at

least in part by the way they feed into more speciFIc ones. The point can

be illustrated in various ways, appropriate to various examples. There

could be forms of friendship different, some quite radically so, from

those that exist today. But one cannot pursue friendship (a relatively

general value) except through the speciFIc forms it has (this comment

will be somewhat qualiFIed when we discuss innovation and change below).

Therefore, knowledge of the value of friendship is incomplete

without an understanding of its speciFIc forms, with their speciFIc forms

of excellence.2. Interpretation

Like aspect-seeing, interpretations admit both of FIxity and of fiexibility.

That is, it takes an effort for people to see the sense of rival interpretations,

and the common belief that if I am right the other must be

wrong is no help in this. Even after one sees the merit of a rival interpretation

there may be only one that one feels at home with. Yet some people

can be at home with various ones and feel free to rely on them ondifferent occasions.

The important point to make is that the social dependence of values

enables us to understand better such developments and their general

availability. It enables us to reconcile the objectivity of values with theirfiuidity and sensitivity to social practices, to shared understanding and

shared meanings. It enables us to combine holding to a FIxed point ofreference, which is essential to thinking of values as objective and to our

being able to orient ourselves by them, either by trying to realise them

or through more complex relations to them, and realising that their FIxityis temporary and fragile, which explains how change is often continuous,and no different from their further development in one way rather

than another, which was equally open. None of this is explainable unlesswe take seriously the contingency at the heart of value.

Subjectivity of value

Hume put the view this way:

Take any action allowd to be vicious: Wilful murder, for

instance. Examine it in all its lights, and see if you can find

that matter of fact, or real existence, which you call vice. In

which-ever way you take it, you find only certain passions,

motives, volitions and thoughts. There is no other matter of

fact in the case. The vice entirely escapes you, as long as you

consider the object. You never can find it, till you turn your

reflexion into your own breast, and find a sentiment of disapprobation,

which arises in you, towards this action. . . . So

that when you pronounce any action or character to be vicious,you mean nothing, but that from the constitution of your

nature you have a feeling or sentiment of blame from thecontemplation of it. Vice and virtue, therefore, may be compard


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to sounds, colours, heat and cold, which, according tomodern philosophy, are not qualities in objects, but perceptions

in the mind.l

There are great differences and conflicts among peoples valuings,

and social and political life is a matter of resolving those conflicts

and reconciling opposed interests. But what calls for solution isthe question of which is to prevail. Each opposing interest must

somehow be accommodated.

This seems to require of subjectivism both detachment from

and engagement with the very same experiences, ideas, and beliefs.

We must stand apart from our color beliefs and our evaluationswhile also holding onto them.

Our attributing thoughts or beliefs about nonexistent

things to others therefore does not require that we ourselves

believe the world to be populated with the things those

complex ideas represent. We can see how people come to think

that way without our agreeing that the thoughts they have are true.

Another view holds that what is being said is that the act is suchthat all human beings of certain kinds would get a certain feeling

toward it if they knew of it. Both these views see the so-called

evaluative judgment as a factual assertion about actual or hypothetical

feelings on the part of certain human beings. In that

respect they are like the dispositional analysis of an objects color.

One merit of all theories of this sort is that they preserve one

striking feature of our evaluative thought. They allow that our

reactions to the world do involve genuine beliefs about the goodness

or badness of things. They see us as asserting what we take

to be truths about the world. And there is very good reason forinsisting that we think of our moral judgments as either true or

false. Not only do we seem to believe them and assert them andtry to support them by reasoning. Moral sentences can also be

embedded in other sentences in what certainly looks like a purelytruth-functional way.

The mind, Hume says, hasa great propensity to spread itself on external objects, and to

conjoin with them any internal impressions, which they occasion,

and which always make their appearance at the same time that

these objects discover themselves to the senses.8 In making moral

judgments we think we are ascribing moral characteristics to the

acts we observe; we treat our moral views as if they were, so to

speak, propositional, but in fact they are mere projections. We

gild or stain the facts with our feelings, but all that is strictly

true in what we say is the purely factual, nonevaluative content towhich something in the value-free world could correspond.

If my moral judgment is a report that I have a certain feeling,or that all human beings would get a certain kind of feeling

under certain conditions, the kind of feeling in question must be

identified before we can know what is being said. Not just any

feeling will do. Hume says that the feeling arising from virtue is

agreeable, and the feeling of vice is uneasy or unpleasant,


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but in saying that an act is wrong, even if I am indeed sayingsomething about how people do or would feel, I am not saying

only that they would get unpleasant or disagreeable feelings fromthe act. They might get unpleasant feelings from something they

eat, but that would not make what they eat bad, or vicious, or

wrong. So we still need some explanation of what it is to think

that something is bad, or vicious, and some account of how we canintelligibly attribute such thoughts or attitudes to people.

Knowing that a blue light is shining on a white wall, Iwill know that a person looking at it sees blue and, if he doesntknow about the light, that he also believes that the wall is blue.

I know the belief is false, but I can attribute that belief to him.I can do that because of my own general competence in the language

of color and my knowledge of what colors things are in theenvironment. Similarly, if I do not agree with a persons evaluative

judgment, I can still correctly attribute it to him and understand

what it is for him to hold that view, because of my own

general competence in the language of evaluation and my knowledge

of the evaluative features of the environment - what thingsare good or bad, better or worse than others.

This would have the consequence that the only materials

available to us for understanding what appears to be evaluative

thought and for seeing how it figures in human action and human

social arrangements would be simple, isolated feelings with noevaluative content.

Perhaps

something like that is what finds expression in the popular halfthought

that morality is after all just a matter of what people

want, or what they like or dont like. Or worse still, the thought

that it is just a matter of whose likes and dislikes are going to prevail.

And now there is the view, in the United States at least,

that morality is itself just one among a great many special interests

that have to be accommodated in society. People are

thought to be just pushing their own personal interests or seeking

their own gratifications in one way or another, and the morality

lobby is encouraged to fight it out with the military, the corporations,

the doctors, the judges, and so on.

Morality, for example, is a quite general phenomenon which

seems distinctive of the human species. No other creatures seemmoved by considerations of good and bad, right and wrong.

Descartess

evil demon represented the threat that the way things are independently

of me might be extremely different from the way I take

them to be. If the demon exists, he alone exists beyond me, and

his clever machinations make me think that I live in a world of

earth and water, trees and buildings, and other people with human

bodies like the one I think Ive got. He gives me such thoughts

and beliefs, so they are produced by something objective andindependent of me, but there would be almost nothing in that

world corresponding to any of those thoughts. They would almostall be false. The challenge of skepticism is to show how I know


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that I do not live in such a world. Once we see human knowledgeas a combination of an objective and a subjective factor in

this way, and we acknowledge the possibility of a largely or evenentirely subjective source for most of our beliefs, it seems impossible

to explain how those beliefs could ever amount to knowledgeor reasonable belief.

Any study of human socialization or human development along

these lines would be a study of how a human being or a group of

human beings gets absorbed into a culture whose members alreadyhave some values or other, or how the possession of one set ofvalues gets transformed into possession of another. It would explain

at most the transmission of values, perhaps even the transmissionof the very idea of value, from those who have it to those who do not.

We want to understand the nature of any

evaluative thoughts or attitudes. We ask what their special content

is, what is really being thought. And that first takes the form

of asking what would be so if they were true. In trying to answerthat question, either we merely repeat the thought - Killing a

human being is bad is true if and only if killing a human being

is bad - and so we do not feel we are explaining it, or we try to

express its content in other terms that reveal in some illuminating

way what is really being said. If those further terms are still

evaluative, we will not feel that we have explained what it is for

any evaluative thought or attitude to be true; we will simply have

exchanged one such thought for another.

So if we are going to make any progress in explaining theevaluative as such, we will either say that having what we call an

evaluative attitude or opinion is not really a matter of thinkingsomething to be true - but instead is expressing a feeling or issuing

a prescription or making a recommendation or some such

thing - or we will say that it is a matter of our thinking truesomething that is really nonevaluative and so could hold in theobjective world - perhaps something about nonevaluative feelings

that we and others do or would feel under certain conditions.

I would draw here on the parallel I see with the case of colors.

If we did not make categorical ascriptions of colors to things

around us we could not acknowledge the existence of such thingsas perceptions of colors or beliefs about the colors of things on

the part of human beings. We could not conceive of the worldas containing those very perceptions and beliefs that subjectivism

about colors claims have nothing corresponding to them

in reality and are nothing more than our subjective responses toan objectively colorless world.I want to say more about what this idea amounts to and exactly

what it implies about our understanding of values and colors, and

what it does not. It says in its strongest form that we cannot think

of a world in which people perceive particular colors or believe

that things are colored without ourselves being prepared to ascribe

color categorically to things in the world. We cannot understand

human beings to have evaluative opinions or attitudes to the effect

that such-and-such is good or bad without ourselves sometimesrecognizing the goodness or badness of certain things. And in


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making those ascriptions of color, or of value, we are taking certainthings to be true. We take it to be part of the way things are,

for example, that grass is green, or that the deliberate killing ofa human being is a very bad thing. Our engagement with, or

endorsement of, aspects of the world of those general types is

required for our ascribing to human beings beliefs or attitudes

with those types of contents. What we take to be facts of the

world are implicated in our making sense of thoughts of theworld. The two cannot be pried apart completely.

And this seemsto imply that the truth of the majority of our beliefs is a necessary

condition of our having them - that if we have any beliefs orattitudes at all, the list of sentences which state the contents of

those beliefs or attitudes will contain mostly truths. That wouldconnect our beliefs necessarily with the way the world is.

This is just the position of Kants Critique of Pure Redson,

perhaps the greatest attempt there has ever been to prove that thetruth about the way the world is cannot come apart in general

from our thinking and perceiving in the ways we do. Kant thought

there were necessary conditions of the possibility of all thought

and experience, and that not all those necessary conditions arethemselves just further thoughts or beliefs. They include as well

many nonpsychological truths, so not only must we think a certainway, but the world independent of us must be a certain way, in

general, if we are even able to think of or perceive anything at all.

Kant saw that some philosophical theory was needed to explain

this necessary link between thought and experience and the

world, and his explanation was the theory of transcendental idealism.

It was the only explanation he thought there could be. We

can know that the world in general must conform to our thinking

and perceiving in certain ways because our being able to think and

perceive what we do actually constitutes the world that we perceive

and believe in. The price of showing that our thoughts and

perceptions and the truth of their contents cannot come apart in

general was that the truth of what we believe about the world

somehow consists in our having the kinds of thoughts and perceptions

that we do. The world turns out to be dependent on ourthoughts and perceptions in some way after all. That is a form of

idealism, which is one variety of what I am calling subjectivism.If we ask in a similar vein how our color beliefs, or our evaluative

beliefs, could not fail to be true, a more particular version of

that same idealism or subjectivism will seem like the only possibleanswer. What it is for color judgments to be true, for thereto be a world of colored objects, it would say, is just for human

beings to agree for the most part in their ascription of colors to

things. There might be considerable disagreement in particular

cases, but on the whole there would be nothing more to things

being colored than human perceivers agreeing in general in the

perceptions they have and the judgments they make about the

colors of things. Similarly, for things to have value, and to have

the particular values they have, would simply be for human beings

to agree in general in their ascriptions of value to things. Again,

there is room for wide disagreement and uncertainty, but on the


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whole the truth of value judgments would amount to nothingmore than agreement, or the possibility of agreement, in human

beings evaluative beliefs.

Because

he thought that we cannot conceive of an object without perceiving

it, he thought that we cannot conceive of an object that remainsunperceived. He concluded that an object could not possibly

exist unperceived - it is inconceivable. But that is to start

with the fact that we cannot do something, that we cannot performa certain feat, and to conclude that a certain thing could not

possibly be so.

Value ofValues

How does one define values or a value system?

A value could be defined as a belief or attitude that you hold close; something that you want to keep as a standardfor judging yourself and the rest of the world. It is the basis for your sense of right and wrong, good or bad.

Values can be related to health, cultural awareness, spirituality, religion, preservation of nature, integrity, loyalty,wealth, stability and security, creativity, independence, search for fame or peace, personal growth and education.

Basic Human Values: An OverviewShalom H. SchwartzThe Hebrew University of Jerusalem

The value concept [is] able to unify the apparently diverse interests of all the sciencesconcerned with human behavior.[Rokeach, 1973]

A psychologist wrote these words that proclaim the centrality of the value concept.Sociologists [e.g., Williams, 1968] and anthropologists [e.g., Kluckhohn, 1951] have echoed

similar opinions. These theorists view values as the criteria people use to evaluate actions,people, and events.

This paper presents a theory within this tradition. The theory1 identifies ten motivationally

distinct value orientations that people in all cultures recognize, and it specifies the dynamics

of conflict and congruence among these values. It aims to be a unifying theory for the field of

human motivation, a way of organizing the different needs, motives, and goals proposed by

other theories.

Introduction to the Values TheoryWhen we think of our values, we think of what is important to us in our lives (e.g., security,

independence, wisdom, success, kindness, pleasure). Each of us holds numerous values with

varying degrees of importance. A particular value may be very important to one person, but

unimportant to another. Consensus regarding the most useful way to conceptualize basic

values has emerged gradually since the 1950s. We can summarize the main features of theconception of basic values implicit in the writings of many theorists and researchers2 as

follows:

Values are beliefs. But they are beliefs tied inextricably to emotion, not objective, cold

ideas.

Values are a motivational construct. They refer to the desirable goals people strive to

attain.

Values transcend specific actions and situations. They are abstract goals. The abstract

nature of values distinguishes them from concepts like norms and attitudes, which

usually refer to specific actions, objects, or situations.

Values guide the selection or evaluation of actions, policies, people, and events. That is,


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values serve as standards or criteria.

Values are ordered by importance relative to one another. Peoples values form an

ordered system of value priorities that characterize them as individuals. This hierarchicalfeature of values also distinguishes them from norms and attitudes.

The Values Theory defines values as desirable, trans-situational goals, varying in importance,that serves as guiding principles in peoples lives. The five features above are common to all

values. The crucial content aspect that distinguishes among values is the type of motivational

goal they express. In order to coordinate with others in the pursuit of the goals that are

important to them, groups and individuals represent these requirements cognitively

(linguistically) as specific values about which they communicate. Ten motivationally distinct,

broad and basic values are derived from three universal requirements of the human condition:

needs of individuals as biological organisms, requisites of coordinated social interaction, and

survival and welfare needs of groups.

The ten basic values are intended to include all the core values recognized in cultures around

the world. These ten values cover the distinct content categories found in earlier value

theories, in value questionnaires from different cultures, and in religious and philosophical

discussions of values. It is possible to classify virtually all the items found in lists of specific

values from different cultures, into one of these ten motivationally distinct basic values.

Schwartz [Schwartz, 1992, 2005a] details the derivations of the ten basic values. For

example, a conformity value was derived from the prerequisites of interaction and of groupsurvival. For interaction to proceed smoothly and for groups to maintain themselves,individuals must restrain impulses and inhibit actions that might hurt others. A self-direction

value was derived from organismic needs for mastery and from the interaction requirementsof autonomy and independence.

Each of the ten basic values can be characterized by describing its central motivational goal:1. Self-Direction. Independent thought and action; choosing, creating, exploring.

2. Stimulation. Excitement, novelty, and challenge in life.3. Hedonism. Pleasure and sensuous gratification for oneself.

4. Achievement. Personal success through demonstrating competence according tosocial standards.

5. Power. Social status and prestige, control or dominance over people and resources.3

6. Security. Safety, harmony, and stability of society, of relationships, and of self.7. Conformity. Restraint of actions, inclinations, and impulses likely to upset or harm

others and violate social expectations or norms.8. Tradition. Respect, commitment, and acceptance of the customs and ideas that

traditional culture or religion provide the self.4

9. Benevolence. Preserving and enhancing the welfare of those with whom one is infrequent personal contact (the in-group).5

10. Universalism. Understanding, appreciation, tolerance, and protection for the welfare

of all people and for nature.6The comprehensiveness of any set of value orientations in covering the full range of

motivational goals cannot be tested definitively. However, some evidence is consistent with

the comprehensiveness of the ten basic values. Local researchers in 18 countries added to thesurvey value items of significance in their culture that they thought might be missing. These

were assigned a priori to the existing basic values whose motivational goals they were

expected to express. Analyses including the added value items revealed that these items

correlated as expected with the core, marker items from the basic values to which they wereassigned. They identified no additional basic values.

Sources of Value PrioritiesPeoples life circumstances provide opportunities to pursue or express some values moreeasily than others: For example, wealthy persons can pursue power values more easily, and

people who work in the free professions can express self-direction values more easily. Life


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circumstances also impose constraints against pursuing or expressing values. Havingdependent children constrains parents to limit their pursuit of stimulation values by avoiding

risky activities. And people with strongly ethnocentric peers find it hard to expressuniversalism values. In other words, life circumstances make the pursuit or expression of

different values more or less rewarding or costly. For example, a woman who lives in a

society where common gender stereotypes prevail is likely to be rewarded for pursuingbenevolence values and sanctioned for pursuing power.

Life Circumstances: How Background Variables Influence Value PrioritiesTypically, people adapt their values to their life circumstances. They upgrade the importancethey attribute to values they can readily attain and downgrade the importance of values whose

pursuit is blocked [Schwartz & Bardi, 97]. For example, people in jobs that afford freedom ofchoice increase the importance of self-direction values at the expense of conformity values

[Kohn & Schooler, 1983]. Upgrading attainable values and downgrading thwarted valuesapplies to most, but not to all values. The reverse occurs with values that concern material

well-being (power) and security. When such values are blocked, their importance increases;when they are easily attained their importance drops. For example, people who suffer

economic hardship and social upheaval attribute more importance to power and security

values than those who live in relative comfort and safety [Inglehart, 1997].7

Peoples age, education, gender, and other characteristics largely determine the life

circumstances to which they are exposed. These include their socialization and learningexperiences, the social roles they play, the expectations and sanctions they encounter, and the

abilities they develop. Thus, differences in background characteristics represent differences in

the life circumstances that affect value priorities.

The Pattern of Value Relations with Other Variables: An Integrated System

How age influences valuesIt is common to speak of three systematic sources of value change in adulthood: historical

events that impact on specific age cohorts (e.g., war, depression), physical ageing (e.g., loss of

strength or memory), and life stage (e.g., child rearing, widowhood). Each of these sources

affects value-relevant experiences. They determine the opportunities and constraints people

confront and their resources for coping.

CohortsInglehart [1997] demonstrated that older persons in much of the world give higher priority to

materialist vs. post-materialist values than younger people.9 He interpreted this as a cohort

effect. People form values in adolescence that change little thereafter. The more economic and

physical insecurity the adolescents experience, the more important materialist values are to

them throughout their lives. The lower priority on materialist values in younger cohorts is dueto the increasing prosperity and security many nations have enjoyed during most of the past 50

years.

Physical ageingStrength, energy, cognitive speed, memory, and sharpness of the senses decline with age.Although the onset and speed of decline vary greatly, the decline rarely reverses. This suggests

several hypotheses. With age, security values may be more important because a safe,predictable environment is more critical as capacities to cope with change wane. Stimulation

values may be less important because novelty and risk are more threatening. Conformity andtradition values may also be more important with age because accepted ways of doing things

are less demanding and threatening. In contrast, hedonism values may be less important

because dulling of the senses reduces the capacity to enjoy sensual pleasure. Achievement and,

perhaps, power values may also be less important for older people who are less able to perform

demanding tasks successfully and to obtain social approval.

Life stageOpportunities, demands, and constraints associated with life stages may cause age differences

in values. Gender influences the experience of life stages, but we focus here on the main effects


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