On Intrinsic Value


MichaelPhilip

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Tara Smith in her book viable values says that:

"Value is a function of the interaction between the thing called valuable and the person to whom it is valuable. Value is neither a static, pre-existing quality awaiting human discovery nor an arbitrary invention erected by the mere fact of one's desire or belief that a given object is valuable"

Biologists regularly speak of the "survival value" of plant activities; thorns for example have survival value. These survival traits, though picked out by natural selection, are innate in the organism, that is, stored in its genes and expressed in structure and behavior.

Doesn't this imply some sort of intrinsic value?

On second thoughts, I am starting to think that intrinsic value is just another variant of essentialism

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On second thoughts, I am starting to think that intrinsic value is just another variant of essentialism

Right on the mark.

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Michael, wouldn’t you say that the functions of the various organelles in a cell and the various functions of the organs and processes in our bodies are facts preexisting their discovery? I certainly do. Likewise for the causal necessities of the various elements composing an organism or other biota, such as my need to breathe in order to live. Moreover, as you indicate, that systems in an organism contribute to its survival and propagation and that organisms have developmental and evolutionary histories by which they were brought about are also facts preexisting their discovery. I doubt the soundness of any theory that makes value radically dependent on an element of consciousness or that would make objective conscious values radically independent of more elementary biological value structures. Those are structures in intrinsic value, and the ultimate intrinsic value is life itself.

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We can call intrinsic value value to one's genes. That's non-variable. Of value to an organism qua organism is variable across a life dynamic that fluctuates such as the value of water before and after satiation. Add the free-willed human organism and the variable expands to the point of some value to a lot of value to no value taken as a conglomerated whole. People can also create values such as might be created by this knowledgeable discussion such as greater lucidity and less confusion through better categorizations (am I being helpful?), for those who care, the reasons not so important for that but some may wish to go there--for something of value.

--Brant (I'm not smart enough to understand when I've been refuted, but go ahead and try, I dare you)

(desperately fighting off dementia--hanging on with my fingernails--is all I'm doing here on OL--a value to me--thank you, everybody!)

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I don't quite see the value (pardon the pun) in trying to discern whether the "value" of organisms' traits is "innate" or merely exists as a means to a greater end (e.g., survival).

If you have a look at this paper: https://www.dropbox.com/s/x7n17lxa8o9gqg1/Lammerts-OrganicPlantBreed-CropSci-2003.pdf?dl=0

you will notice that the author seems to use the concept of integrity in the sense that Rand attributed to Aristotle the concept of essence as a metaphysical formative principle. The creationists, when they talk about the impossibility of evolution, refer to "kinds," by which they mean something quite similar. It's all a variant of essentialism.

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The problem is the alternative meanings of "value" in their contexts. It is an easy claim that in economics (human action) no such thing as an intrinsic value exists. Back when we had pay phones, my economics professor pointed out that you might well trade a paper dollar for a 25-cent coin to make a call. In numismatics, we know that "worthless" paper money sells for more than nothing, and sometimes for many times more than its original market value. We know the phrase, "Not worth a Continental" but try to buy one now… The same is true of stock certificates, merchant tokens, many other examples.

Today's Reuters has a story about an up-coming auction with an 1822 Half Eagle and an 1804 Dollar on the block, each expected to bring about $10 million. Clearly, those objects paradigmatically stand for the fact that in economics (which is human action), intrinsic value does not exist.

As for the "survival value" of claws or marrying your cousin, the word "value" has a different meaning. There, it refers to enablement or empowerment or facilitation. The meaning is contextually different than the economic intention.

Stephen: "… and the ultimate intrinsic value is life itself." How then do you explain suicide? Yes, we can admit that at that point, life "lost all value", but how is that possible if life is an intrinsic value? What about soldiers who throw themselves on grenades when they could just as easily throw themselves in another direction. (It is said that the safest place to be - if any place is "safe" - is right next to the grenade. … or so they say…) Soldiers otherwise are awarded medals for successfully engaging in life-threatening behaviors. If life were an intrinsic value, "flight or fight" would be just flight. No one would go to war -- perhaps the best of all outcomes, but not the human condition. Millions believe that their lives are worth less than the honor of the nation-state. If that were not true then war would look more like Alphonse and Gaston.

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Michael Marotta,

I meant only that life itself is the ultimate source of any value in the world. It is also the ultimate source of any problems, questions, solutions, and communications. All those things on the earth arise only in the context of the existence of some life on the planet. This is not a claim about right norms to embrace, only a statement of fact about a condition for the existence of any norms. Life is the intrinsic value that is the source of any other values, whether they also bear the structure of intrinsic value or of instrumental value, whether they are vegetative, sensitive, or conceptual. The campaign I make for this fact is not to bolster some idiotic model in which humans do always or should always choose to minimize risk to their own life. It is part of the usual campaign against models of value floating free of the context of physical life, likewise mind floating free of the context of physical life.

Also, about fight, sometimes it will succeed where flight will fail. Success, of course, of any sort, is only a meaningful concept in the context of a living world.

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MichaelPhillips writes:

The creationists, when they talk about the impossibility of evolution, refer to "kinds," by which they mean something quite similar.

There are Creationists who would never say that... and I'm one of them.

It would be impossible for the process of evolution to exist without the creation of a brilliantly logical, superbly well-ordered system of physical laws governing everything from the behavior of sub atomic particles to the proliferation of biological life forms.

Without the absolute order of those ubiquitous laws to which everything is subject, we could not exist...

...which makes them ~very~ valuable.

Greg

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Greg replaces ignorance with ignorance. The ignorance replaced is ignorance of how inorganic became organic--that is, the massive complexity of DNA in the simplest one-celled life form. Evolution off that base is easy enough to understand and explain. Getting onto that base is not. So what Greg has is God but, logically, it has to be God of Gods all the way up into infinite, unknowable complexity, as each has created the God below Him. Unfortunately, what God is there here in this now to create below this existence? Are we living in the cellar of existence?

--Brant

something like that

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Tara Smith in her book viable values says that:

"Value is a function of the interaction between the thing called valuable and the person to whom it is valuable. Value is neither a static, pre-existing quality awaiting human discovery nor an arbitrary invention erected by the mere fact of one's desire or belief that a given object is valuable"

Biologists regularly speak of the "survival value" of plant activities; thorns for example have survival value. These survival traits, though picked out by natural selection, are innate in the organism, that is, stored in its genes and expressed in structure and behavior.

Doesn't this imply some sort of intrinsic value?

On second thoughts, I am starting to think that intrinsic value is just another variant of essentialism

Something is valuable as a means to an end, which means something is valuable as a means to someone's end.

If I say X is valuable I am saying X is valuable to Y for purpose/end Z where Y determines Z.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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I'd surmize essentialism to be the metaphysical precursor of the epistemology of intrinsicism, both (neo-?) Platonic. So they'd over-lap. But not sure.

'Essence', as metaphysical, was Aristotle's error according to Rand.

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Tara Smith in her book viable values says that:

"Value is a function of the interaction between the thing called valuable and the person to whom it is valuable. Value is neither a static, pre-existing quality awaiting human discovery nor an arbitrary invention erected by the mere fact of one's desire or belief that a given object is valuable"

Biologists regularly speak of the "survival value" of plant activities; thorns for example have survival value. These survival traits, though picked out by natural selection, are innate in the organism, that is, stored in its genes and expressed in structure and behavior.

Doesn't this imply some sort of intrinsic value?

On second thoughts, I am starting to think that intrinsic value is just another variant of essentialism

Something is valuable as a means to an end, which means something is valuable as a means to someone's end.

If I say X is valuable I am saying X is valuable to Y for purpose/end Z where Y determines Z.

Ba'al Chatzaf

"Valuable" is to "of value" as Mae West is to Greta Garbo.

--Brant

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Bob writes:

Something is valuable as a means to an end, which means something is valuable as a means to someone's end.

Being mundane, I think of value in that way.

Value is what I can put to use.

Greg

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Brant writes:

So what Greg has is God...

I don't have God.

God has me. :smile:

And no matter how things came to be...

...they have to follow a pre existing fixed logical universal order of physical LAWS uniformly governing everything from quark to human.

Greg

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