Priority among necessary values

[Dufresne]

Which value, food or knowledge, is more important to someone who pursues his life as his ultimate goal? And why? Without knowledge one can't obtain food. Without food one can't obtain knowledge - at some point. Can this question be answered in general or does it always depend on the context? Is food more important when one is hungry and otherwise knowledge is more important?

[BurgessLau]

Which value, food or knowledge, is more important to someone who pursues his life as his ultimate goal? And why? Without knowledge one can't obtain food. Without food one can't obtain knowledge - at some point.

Perhaps your questions will be clearer if you concretize. How has this problem arisen in your own life?

Can this question be answered in general or does it always depend on the context?

Do you see a conflict between context and generality? Can't the answer be general and contextual?

[JMeganSnow]

Which value, food or knowledge, is more important to someone who pursues his life as his ultimate goal? And why? Without knowledge one can't obtain food. Without food one can't obtain knowledge - at some point. Can this question be answered in general or does it always depend on the context? Is food more important when one is hungry and otherwise knowledge is more important?

It always depends on the context. You're treating value intrinsically, as though it is inherent in the object. Value presupposes a specific person (the valuer) and a specific purpose (the sustainence and improvement of one's life).

Neither are values subjective; they are objective, formed by humans and based on a particular relationship with reality.

To an overweight person, food may actually constitute a threat to his or her life. To a devoted gourmet chef knowledge of anything outside his specialty may have little or no value.

The fact that different objects may have different values to different people at different times is what makes the trader principle possible: voluntary exchange to mutual benefit. If food was inherently more valuable than knowledge or vice versa anyone seeking to trade either would always come up short somehow.

[Dufresne]

Perhaps your questions will be clearer if you concretize. How has this problem arisen in your own life?

Do you see a conflict between context and generality? Can't the answer be general and contextual?

I have chosen my own life as my ultimate goal but I am stuck figuring out the relative importance of values in general. Where do knowledge and food fit into the hierarchy of values? This is just one of many examples where I can't use a quantitative approach (e.g. $1 is a higher value than $100 but how do you measure food and knowledge quantitatively and how do you compare the value of one pizza to the value of one philosophical principle?). I could also have chosen a combination such as money and knowledge.

You asked whether I saw a conflict between context and generality. I'm not sure, yet. But suppose food is a higher value than philosophical knowledge if you're hungry but otherwise philosophical knowledge is a higher value. Then, over time, the relative importance of both values changes but wouldn't a general evaluation mean that the relative importance has to stay the same over time?

[Dufresne]

It always depends on the context.  You're treating value intrinsically, as though it is inherent in the object.  Value presupposes a specific person (the valuer) and a specific purpose (the sustainence and improvement of one's life).

Does that mean, then, that one's hierarchy of values should be ever-changing to reflect one's current needs such as hunger and thirst and that there is no way to determine, in general, a relative importance of food and knowledge, for example?

[RationalBiker]

Does that mean, then, that one's hierarchy of values should be ever-changing to reflect one's current needs such as hunger and thirst and that there is no way to determine, in general, a relative importance of food and knowledge, for example?

Yes. I second what Burgess said. Break your dilemna down to concretes. Imagine several different scenarios in which you weighing the value of food and knowledge. I would suggest that in general, the more time becomes a factor (in terms of an increasing duration), the more important food will be simply to stay alive so that one can learn.

Can you survive a month without food? (And if you could, would you even be able to learn anything after that length of time?)

Can you survive a month without new knowledge?

[Dufresne]

Thank you Burgess, Megan and RationalCop!

I was aware of the objective nature of values but I assumed that a hierarchy of values had to be something static, something that doesn't change over time. Now I also understand why some parts of the hierarchy do not change, such as the value of reason, purpose and self-esteem and why some parts have to change due to changing needs (and goals).

This has been the first time I wrote on this forum. What a start!

[MisterSwig]

Which value, food or knowledge, is more important to someone who pursues his life as his ultimate goal? And why? Without knowledge one can't obtain food. Without food one can't obtain knowledge - at some point. Can this question be answered in general or does it always depend on the context? Is food more important when one is hungry and otherwise knowledge is more important

Reason is the primary value. It is knowledge of objective reality. Without this you cannot obtain food on your own. If you do obtain food without thinking and acquiring knowledge for yourself, it means that someone else did, and you are surviving because of that person's knowledge and charity.

Also, it is not true that you can't obtain knowledge without food. You can--until you eventually starve to death. At which point, the question of obtaining values has no meaning or significance to you. You're dead.

Reason (knowledge of reality) is the most important objective value. That will not change under any context of a living human being.

[JMeganSnow]

Reason is the primary value. It is knowledge of objective reality. Without this you cannot obtain food on your own. If you do obtain food without thinking and acquiring knowledge for yourself, it means that someone else did, and you are surviving because of that person's knowledge and charity.

Also, it is not true that you can't obtain knowledge without food. You can--until you eventually starve to death. At which point, the question of obtaining values has no meaning or significance to you. You're dead.

Reason (knowledge of reality) is the most important objective value. That will not change under any context of a living human being.

MisterSwig, your life is the primary value. Rationality is the primary Virtue; virtues are the means by which you gain/keep values; values are that which one acts to gain/keep. How does one gain "reason"? How do you keep it? The capacity to reason is innate in humans; you need to learn how to use it, but the capacity is always there and, short of brain defects or damage, always will be.

Virtue is method, value is goal. One cannot replace the other.

[MisterSwig]

MisterSwig, your life is the primary value ...

My life is the standard of my values. Ayn Rand calls it the "ultimate value ... that final goal or end to which all lesser goals are the means." In saying that reason is the primary value, I mean that reason is the most fundamental value necessary to achieve and maintain my life.

How does one gain "reason"? How do you keep it?

It is important to recognize how reason is the primary value--in the sense that Ayn Rand calls it "one's only source of knowledge, one's only judge of values and one's only guide to action."

Reason is not automatic. Yes, our minds do come equiped with a faculty of reason. But that faculty does not work on its own. You must choose to use reason. You must choose to accept reality and to think. You must consciously engage your own mind in a process of reason. It takes a focused mental effort on your part to start thinking, to use reason, to gain knowledge of reality.

In this way, you may gain/keep reason by constantly choosing to observe and recognize reality and choosing to think and increase your knowledge, and by also following the other virtues that Ayn Rand described.

[JMeganSnow]

In this way, you may gain/keep reason by constantly choosing to observe and recognize reality and choosing to think and increase your knowledge, and by also following the other virtues that Ayn Rand described.

Reason is a process by which you acquire knowledge. Knowledge is a goal, it is a value. Rationality is a means to acquiring correct knowledge.

Virtue is NOT it's own reward.

[MisterSwig]

Reason is a process by which you acquire knowledge.  Knowledge is a goal, it is a value.  Rationality is a means to acquiring correct knowledge.

Virtue is NOT it's own reward.

I'm not clear on your point. I'm not arguing that virtue is its own reward.

I'm arguing that reason is the primary value. Reason is the reward. Rationality is the virtue by which one gains the reward of reason.

If you disagree with me, please address my previous point about having to choose reason and tell me why reason is either not a value or not the primary value, as I've described it. It would also help if you provided your understanding of this Ayn Rand quote, which comes from "The Objectivist Ethics" in The Virtue of Selfishness:

The three cardinal values of the Objectivist ethics--the three values which, together, are the means to and the realization of one's ultimate value, one's own life--are: Reason, Purpose, Self-Esteem, with their three corresponding virtues: Rationality, Productiveness, Pride.

According to Ayn Rand, rationality is the virtue by which one gains/keeps the value of reason.

[JMeganSnow]

If you disagree with me, please address my previous point about having to choose reason and tell me why reason is either not a value or not the primary value, as I've described it. It would also help if you provided your understanding of this Ayn Rand quote, which comes from "The Objectivist Ethics" in The Virtue of Selfishness:

I'm actually referring to OPAR on this;

"Reason," in Ayn Rand's definition, is 'the faculty that identifies and integrates the material provided by man's senses."  Or, as we may now expand it: reason is the faculty that enables man to discover the nature of existents--by virtue of its power to condense sensory information in accordance with the requirements of an objective mode of cognition.  Or: reason is the faculty that organizes perceptual units in conceputal terms by following the principles of logic.

. . .

Is reason, so defined, a valid means of cognition? Does it bring man knowledge of reality? . . .

Pages 220 and 221 also have elaborations and expansions on that quote you gave above.

I think that a more accurate statement is that reason isn't an external goal you pursue, like food etc, it is something you already possess and proceed to cherish and esteem . . . acting morally requires not that you go out and search for reason, but that you (paraphrasing) "recognize and accept reason as one's only source of knowledge, one's only judge of values and one's only guide to action."

The faculty itself is not the reward, it is the only means of gaining the rewards, but an orientation to reality demands that you love and preserve the means of your survival as much as the survival itself, because you can't have the one without the other; there is no such thing as survival without means.

My contention was with your point that reason is knowledge of objective reality . . . it is not, it is a means of comprehending objective reality. I don't disagree that you must choose to use it, must choose rationality, must choose morality.

The moral, after all, IS the chosen.

This thread in general is an exercise in context-dropping . . . before you can even get to a stage where you need to worry about whether food or knowledge is more important you have to grow up, which you cannot do by yourself. You don't just spring into existence as a fully competent adult and think, hmm, should I get some food, or some knowledge?

Even to think the question you have to have some knowledge.

[MisterSwig]

My contention was with your point that reason is knowledge of objective reality . . .

Okay. I'll retract that statement for the time being. I think it is confusing, and it doesn't accurately represent my current thinking. I have since tried to clarify my position in subsequent posts.

However, if I'm reading you correctly, you still don't accept that reason is the primary value. Is this, in fact, your position?

You have pointed me to a section in OPAR, which I have read (again). On page 220 Dr. Peikoff argues that reason is "[t]he greatest of [the three cardinal values] ... which makes the others possible." This is what I meant when I said that reason is the primary value.

I think that a more accurate statement is that reason isn't an external goal you pursue, like food etc, it is something you already possess and proceed to cherish and esteem . . . .

But you have to use your faculty of reason in order for it to be beneficial to you, just like you actually have to eat the apple for it to sustain your life. Yes, I agree, you already possess the faculty of reason, similar to how you already possess a closet-full of clothing. But neither reason nor your existing clothing benefit you unless you use them in some way.

For something to be a value to you, it is not required that it exist in the external or physical realm, nor is it required that the thing be something new that you have to work to gain. It can be something that is located in the internal or mental realm, and it can be something that you already possess and work to keep or use.

[JMeganSnow]

However, if I'm reading you correctly, you still don't accept that reason is the primary value. Is this, in fact, your position?

No, I did some re-reading, I was just trying to make the point that the nature of reason AS a value is different from, say, the end-products of reason (i.e. everything man-made).

The value I place on my faculty of reason is similar to the value I place on my car(similar, not identical). I love my car because it gets me to and from work and other places I want to go. I know there are people out there that love cars all out of proportion with their use . . . love cars as an end in themselves, and I can sort of understand that. Personally, though, I'm not that devoted to my car . . . it can be a pain in the rear when it breaks down, it's expensive, and if I didn't have one I'd just walk to work or take the bus.

With reason, however, you can't do that, because there is no alternative way to gain knowledge of reality. This is why reason is the primary value and exercising it in full accordance with reality is the primary virtue; that I understand.

As I alluded to earlier, the whole disagreement arose when you said reason = knowledge (plus some errors I added myself). . . now that that confusion is cleared up I don't see any room for argument here. As I also said, whether knowledge or food is more immediately important is based entirely on context, and you can't really place them in a hierarchy of values without said context.