Value Theory

This is Unit Seven of Ethics and Values: Value Theory. Every unit so far has asked what you owe other people. This one asks a different question: what makes a life go well for the person living it. The two questions meet constantly and are not the same. A ruthless operator can prosper, and someone who does the right thing can pay dearly for it. Naming who lived well and who lived rightly takes two vocabularies. There are three serious answers about what makes a life go well, and the unit ends somewhere more practical: what to do when the things you value cannot be converted into one another. By the end you will be able to do five things. One: tell intrinsic value from instrumental, and state why a chain of means has to end somewhere. Two: tell a value from a preference, and the good-life question from the moral-life one. Three: state hedonism about well-being, and the objection from the experience machine. Four: state the desire theory, and the objections that force its repair. Five: rank options where the values at stake share no common currency.

Start with a distinction that sounds obvious and is violated constantly. Some things are good because of what they get you. Some things are good full stop. Confusing the two is a recognisable way to waste a life, and there is an argument that the first kind cannot go all the way down.

The distinction.

Ethics 301 Intrinsic and Instrumental Value

A bus pass is good for the ride. An afternoon with your closest friend needs no further destination to justify it.

The error it protects against.

Ethics 302 The Miser's Mistake

An executive defers every friendship to raise a number that exists to fund a life. The number grew and the life did not.

And why the chain has to stop.

Ethics 303 The Regress Argument

Why the alarm — for work. Why work — for pay. Why pay? Somewhere the answers reach a life, and if they never did, nothing in the chain was worth anything.

Before comparing theories, two things need to be steady: what exactly is being evaluated, and two distinctions that stop the evaluation sliding into other questions.

What is being evaluated.

Ethics 304 Well-Being

Two retirements with equal savings can be unequal lives. Whatever makes that sentence true is what these theories are competing to explain.

The first distinction.

Ethics 305 Values vs. Preferences

A juror prefers to be home by five and values verdicts reached honestly. At ten to five, when the two collide, she knows which is which.

The second keeps two questions apart.

Ethics 306 The Good Life and the Moral Life

A ruthless tycoon may prosper and a whistleblower may pay dearly. Saying who lived well and who lived rightly takes both vocabularies, and neither collapses into the other.

The first answer is the one the utilitarians used, and it comes with a genuinely good honesty test. It also comes with the most famous thought experiment in the field, and a second objection that is less famous and harder to shake.

The theory, and its test.

Ethics 311 Hedonism About Well-Being

Strip any prized good — wealth, fame, even virtue — of all enjoyment, and ask what is left for you. That question is the theory's real strength.

The objection almost everyone has heard.

Ethics 312 The Experience Machine

Offered flawless simulated achievements, most people still want to do things, be someone, and touch the actual world. The refusal is the whole argument.

And the one that is harder to shake.

Ethics 313 The Evil-Pleasures Objection

A fraudster savours every con. The theory has to record those years as going well for him, and many people take that as evidence pleasure was never the whole measure.

The second answer avoids telling anyone what should make them happy: a life goes well when the person gets what they were actually after. Two objections press it hard, and the standard repair works by importing exactly what the theory was trying to avoid.

The theory.

Ethics 319 The Desire Theory

One neighbour wants gardens, another wants marathons, and the theory declines to referee. Each life goes well by reaching what its owner aimed at.

The first objection.

Ethics 320 The Base-Desires Objection

Rawls's case: a brilliant man whose only desire is counting blades of grass. Every desire satisfied, every day — and few would call the life enviable.

The second is stranger.

Ethics 321 The Unknown-Satisfaction Objection

You wish a struggling colleague well; years later, unknown to you, he thrives abroad. The wish came true and your life stayed exactly as it was.

The repair, and what it costs.

Ethics 322 The Informed-Desire Repair

Filter the grass-counter's wish through full information and it fails — but the filter now knows what matters, which is the one move the theory forbade itself.

The third answer gives up the idea that a good must be wanted or enjoyed to count. It is the least tidy of the three, and it handles the cases that defeat the other two.

The third option.

Ethics 323 Objective-List Theories

A reconciliation the dying man never sought and barely felt can still belong among the best things in his life. Knowledge, friendship, achievement, health — the list says why.

The unit's last idea is the most practical. If several different things are valuable in themselves, then some choices are not calculations at all — and that changes what a good decision looks like.

The claim.

Ethics 327 Value Pluralism

A council trading park land for housing is not converting units of one good. The trade crosses two currencies, which is exactly why it hurts.

And what follows for choosing.

Ethics 328 Hard Choices

Two finalists: one brilliant, one who lifts every team she joins. No spreadsheet ranks them, and a chair who names her reasons can still choose well.

Five steps for a decision where the values do not convert. The last step is the one that matters most: when nothing dominates, the answer is judgment with the reasons said out loud, not a number.

Watch it run on a family's decision.

Ethics 329 Ranking Without a Ruler

Name the values, sort intrinsic from instrumental, test each option against each value, take any option that dominates — and where none does, judge with the reasons stated aloud.

The unit closes on a decision most people meet at least once. One offer pays double for work that means little. The other pays modestly for work that matters. Run the theories and advise.

The capstone. Every theory of well-being, applied.

Ethics 335 The Two Offers

Hedonism prices both lives in enjoyment and finds meaningless days taxing every pleasure the salary buys. Then the desire theory, the list, and the ranking method — and they do not all agree.

Five things you can now do. You can tell intrinsic value from instrumental, and say why a chain of "for the sake of" has to end at something valued for itself. You can tell a value from a preference — what you endorse wanting, against what you happen to want — and keep the good-life question apart from the moral-life question. You can state hedonism about well-being and the experience-machine objection: most people refuse the machine, and the refusal is the argument. You can state the desire theory and the two objections that force the informed desire repair — trivial wants, and wants satisfied where you never know. And you can rank options whose values share no currency, ending where the method ends: judgment, with the reasons stated aloud.