Conflation of Value and Identity

[Easy Truth]

For years, I have heard the same people attacking objective reality. First I thought they were arguing in bad faith.
That they were lying. But last week in a discussion a problem became visible.
What was brought up was that the table in front of us was a table, but the value of the table was in the eyes of the valuer.
And as far as they were concerned, the value of the table is part of its identity.
If so, part of its identity is based on the observer, as in subjective. Without the subject, the value does not exist, and therefore nothing is independent of the valuer, the particular consciousness that gives value. Giving rise to the argument for the primacy of consciousness.
They conclude that everything has this element of subjectivity.

There is also the issue of objective value and subjective value which confuses. In a market, the value or price is determined by buyers and sellers.
The deals they make determine the latest price.
But that is not an objective value and yet the value of something is not "inherent", independent of consciousnesses making the deals. 

I was about to delve into it but was wondering about the reaction of others to:

• Is price in this analogy equivalent to the value of something?
• My understanding is that the process of identification is the identification of its objective identity, rather than its subjective identity.
• With all this in mind, how does one make the case for "objective reality", an existence, not dependent on the subject, when they consider (an entity's)value as part of its identity?

[Boydstun]

ET, 

In the case of the table (and other objects), I'd think part of the value of the table for anyone would be its facilities for human actions such as providing a way to keep things off the floor (not stepping on things or tripping on them) and a feasible way to support a book while reading or supporting a plate one is eating from. Those facts about the entry of a table into human actions are objective. They are relative to human actors, but the mechanics of these actors and the facilities the table can fulfill for those actors (there are some such facilities and not others) are matters of objective fact. Even if one went big-generalization, such as in Dewey, and took objects' identities in our identifications to be all reducible to the possible facilities they can provide for us, it would not make those facilities and identities subjective in the sense of being basically dependent on caprice. The facilities are objective relations between objects and minded actors, minded subjects.

The subject-relations in whether something is good for one as maintained by Protagoras in Plato's dialogue of that name was squeezed into a case for the idea that right values are intrinsic in things, independent of subjects, by Socrates/Plato/Catholicism by casting the relativity of the utility of things for man as a matter of human variations decried as inconstancy and caprice. They try to press the conception of objective valuations such as talked of in the preceding paragraph (Rand's view), which is the correct view, into caprice-subjectivism as in a false dichotomy with intrincism.

(Part of the identities, for my part, would be objective relations among objects that are not our bodies.)

Esthetic experiences occasioned by design of tables also seem independent of caprice, yet, as with the facilitations, relative to constitutions of persons having the experiences.

Excellent issues, the market value issues also.

[necrovore]

A table is a concrete, but "value" is a high level abstraction, and a function of many variables.

The fact that something is a function of many variables -- and that a person is one of the variables -- does not make it less objective. It does mean that you have to define the variables.

The price of something in a capitalist system is where the highest bidder meets the lowest asker, and can vary over time as supply and demand appear and disappear and strengthen and weaken. The fact that it's variable doesn't make it non-objective.

Even allowing that an object may have different values to different people in different situations, the value of a specific item to a specific person is objective, depending on that person's situation.

This is an example of how "selfishness" requires determining whether something is actually in your self-interest, which is a question of fact.

There is no room for primacy of consciousness to enter into the actual value of an object to a person, because the actual value may be different from what the person wants it to be or thinks it is (or what other people want it to be). This is why people sometimes have "buyer's remorse" (the object had less actual value than they thought it would) and also why people sometimes pass up really good deals (because they don't recognize the value it would have to them, and this includes new inventions which are famously rejected at first because the old way seems fine). This is also why someone else may think an object would have high value to you when it really wouldn't (which is why you have to really know a person in order to buy them a good gift).

If people refuse to recognize the value of an item, that will reduce demand and cause it to sell at a lower price, but this is still a recognition of objective facts, in this case, the facts of whether people are actually buying or not, regardless of why. If people do something for a wrong reason, the fact that they did do it is still objective.

[tadmjones]

I think in discussions like these semantics or meaning become confused. 

In English value is both a noun and a verb. Value as a verb is the act of a conscious agent differentiating between alternatives. And as a noun it is the abstraction that identifies a concrete attribute that satisfies the utility of the valuer’s valuing.

There is no ‘value’ ‘in’ the table qua relative level raised surface, though the utility provided by the concrete attributes can be discovered by a discriminating agent.

[StrictlyLogical]

Excellent responses by all, not much to add. 

My one observation is that the main problem is not so much a conflation of identity and value... sure, these concepts are not to be conflated, but if such an error were made, it should be easily remedied by one familiar enough with each concept, and secondly, such a conflation, even if believed, cannot form the foundation for the "primacy of consciousness view".  Even if value can be created in things by sheer subjectivity, the things themselves to which this magical value attaches cannot be created ex nihilo.  Neither do we observe the magical consciousnesses (ghosts?) at work absent the physical brains/bodies by which they are manifested.  With the conflation they can perhaps get to things "enchanted" or "haunted" by consciousness... but they cannot get to primacy of consciousness.

I think you will find that rather than some small conflation enabling or leading to such a conclusion (which is far out of reach), in fact the "conclusion" is an existing presumption, an entrenched pre-existing premise which motivates the person to try to find evidence or reasons (perhaps even the conflation ... not knowing that it is erroneous) which can be used to support that presumption.  Here they are starting at the end (primacy of consciousness) which is not rationally justified by the means to arrive there (no pun intended).

 

Edited January 9 by StrictlyLogical

[DavidOdden]

9 hours ago, Easy Truth said:

the value of the table is part of its identity.
If so, part of its identity is based on the observer, as in subjective.

The value of a table is not part of its identity. The properties of an existent define its identity, and a property is a fact of the existent that explains what it does. A table can be made of metal or of wood, it can be red or white (you can add other properties of tables, and consider the relationship between what the thing does and that property). You can even reduce high level properties (like “red”) to more elementary, indirectly discernable properties (insert list of molecules and textbook information about light).

The act of valuing (by a particular individual) as a property of that individual is likewise reducible to a complex fact, viz. an existing hierarchy of values and knowledge of self and the world around you that an individual has. I don’t value that brick-red metal table compared to this amberish wooden table for various functional and aesthetic reasons, whereas my brother values the red metal table more (we don’t need to inquire deeply into why we have different interests, but he needs tables that won’t catch fire). My valuing is not subjective, it is objective and well thought out, but it isn’t universal to all humans because not all humans live my life and have my nature.

I hereby challenge the distinction between objective and subjective value as useless therefore invalid, instead I would distinguish rational and irrational value systems or applications of systems to facts. One value held by many people is “accumulation of wealth”, another is “expansion of knowledge”. In the world that actually exists, these and other values are independent values. One might value money more than knowledge, or the opposite, and from that difference could follow a career difference. Galt was not irrational in taking a low-paying janitorial job, given the disvalue of the alternative. You can reason to the hierarchy “money over knowledge”, or to the hierarchy “knowledge over money”, in fact to some extent you must reason to one of these when evaluating job options. With my knowledge of my own nature, I end up reasoning to one ranking, which is rational (the product of non-contradictory identification). Perhaps you can expand my knowledge and show me that the opposite ranking is actually better suited to my nature, but that hasn’t been done.

“Market value” is useful only as a crude predictor of the future, it has little relation to an actual cognitive object, a hierarchy of values. It is at best a standard by which you can compare your cognitive system to that of a large selection of society. The seller might want to unload the devalued item quickly, or they may want more money and can wait for a customer who is willing to pay more (different seller demands). The customer might want to spend less money, or they might have a strong desire for the particular item or an immediate need for an item of that type (different buyer demands). If you and I know each other’s respective values and other relevant circumstances, we can probably arrive at a price, aided with the law of supply and demand. Most sales are conducted in a knowledge vacuum, and you can only know “average price”, not a value system.

“Subjective value” is distinguished under the law from “market value” because the legal system needs a definite way to address knowledge lacunae, i.e. the situation where a person is held liable for damage to another person’s property and the other person declared that the goldfish is worth $10,000,000 to him. Market value is also useful in setting the price attached to an offer, especially in real estate, so that you know whether the house will stay on the market unloved for years. Price is not the same as value, but it is a result of different value hierarchies, especially the difference between the value system of the seller and the value system of the buyer.

[whYNOT]

1 hour ago, DavidOdden said:

 

The act of valuing (by a particular individual) as a property of that individual is likewise reducible to a complex fact, viz. an existing hierarchy of values and knowledge of self and the world around you that an individual has. I don’t value that brick-red metal table compared to this amberish wooden table for various functional and aesthetic reasons, whereas my brother values the red metal table more (we don’t need to inquire deeply into why we have different interests, but he needs tables that won’t catch fire). My valuing is not subjective, it is objective and well thought out, but it isn’t universal to all humans because not all humans live my life and have my nature.

 

If I may add, the (objective) value of specific items, persons and activities (etc.) is, also, not static.

Corresponding with one's reasoning process, those concrete values - 'evolve' - and expand, hierarchically. 

A childhood toy, a sport, a pastime, one's tastes ... one's love partner. Some put aside, some consciously accomodated lower/higher into one's value hierarchy, some subconciously through less attention given them.

What IS timeless and "universal" is the objective value OF value, inseparable from and presupposed by "man's life".

["Values cannot exist (cannot be valued) outside the full context of a man’s life, needs, goals, and knowledge". AR]

It took me a while to get to grips with Rand's "Indestructible, immortal robot" analogy.

Yes - something that lives forever, feels no pain and pleasure, has no needs, no concepts, no goals, no virtues and is endangered by nothing - is incapable of valuing.

Edited January 9 by whYNOT

[Easy Truth]

There is the perspective of "value" as being that which is good for you. But I would argue that is a "moral value" rather than just a value. There are things we like that we regret, or that we know are bad for us. I love bacon. It is the worst food for me.
Value has to mean simply what you consider valuable and it can be an immediate experience, as in the entity "delicious pizza". They emphasize that a delicious pizza is not just a pizza, but a "delicious pizza". To find it valuable, you don't go through a thought process of how it will nourish you. It is an immediate judgment of its identity. So at the core of their thinking is that the entity is "delicious pizza" or "valuable pizza" rather than "pizza". So, they argue that any concrete depends on you (or us). Without you, that particular table is not the (complete concrete entity) "beautiful table". That makes everything subjective. The beautiful table, the ugly cat, etc.

Again, this is without any regard to its utility. It is purely an immediate, perhaps aesthetic experience. Maybe one could modify what they said as being a conflation of "aesthetic" with the "objective". As in, It's the emotional aesthetic judgment, which is subjectively fluid, is part of "what it is" i.e. it's identity. In some ways, it is a reasonable assertion if you see a beautiful cat as a single concrete (rather than the way we see it: abstract (beauty) + concrete (cat)). Ironically, they object that when I call it the table, I am abstracting, not looking at it concretely. That I can abstract "cat" out of the full concrete experience of "beautiful cat". I need to make the case that "cat" is complete, real, and stable. That "beautiful" is not a necessary part of its identity.

The way they think of reality, an amalgamation of emotion+aesthetic+sensory, provides an eternally and completely "unstable" (wobbly) reality that means there is no reality, i.e. nothing is real. They conclude it's all in "your" mind and emotions ... and changing all the time. Especially since the experience of that kind of value, even without anyone else present, can change. Food is valuable when hungry but valueless after a full meal. Sleep is valuable when tired but not after you are done sleeping. In this way, value is not stable (but fluid), and if immediate value is a necessary part of the identity of all entities, "everything" has an element of instability.

To them, this means that nothing is stable, or absolute. Valuableness changes, so everything is subject to change.
Finally, they conclude, that stability of what is real simply is an "assumption" something to the effect of "Reality is an assumption, after all, you have to start with something".

[DavidOdden]

I guess I would not deny that such a perspective exists, but it is confused (maybe just “average confused”, not “hopelessly confused”). If you want tasty bacon, it (the experience) is a value to you. Perhaps it is the worst food for you for some reason, so you gotta give us some rational hook here. I’ll make something up: tasty bacon triggers an uncontrollable 2 lb. 5,000 calorie feeding frenzy, which may have negative health effects, thus bacon is also a disvalue (unless you value death). We have two values, and they both are slotted in the hierarchy according to a single goal, living qua man.

The things under discussion – the experience of bacon, remaining physically healthy – just is. It’s when you use some logic to integrate these abstracted facts into a system of choices that value becomes by definition “moral”, a code for guiding choices of action. The thing that you value is not the moral rule derived by some logical process, the value is either the experience of bacon or the benefits of abstaining from bacon. “Eat bacon no more than once every two weeks” is a moral rule, derivable from a hierarchy of values, “Eat bacon whenever you desire” is a different rule, not rationally derivable from the facts that gave you the preceding moral rule.

The idea of “hierarchy” seems to be too confusing for most people to handle, especially when speaking of rules like “Stay healthy” or “Enjoy life”. Instead, (too) many people devise absolute rules like “never eat bacon”, as though there is an equivalence between bacon and plutonium (I have an absolute rule against eating plutonium, the ultimate death metal). In some cases, a thing can be abused to the point that it contradicts the reasoning that justifies placing it in a certain position in your cognitive hierarchy.

The pure selfish-utilitarian theory of value has a particular central purpose in life: slab-avoidance, which is a mis-identification. The eudaimonist theory of value posits a different purpose: living, as an active process. There is a third more widespread view that I have ignored, the cult-of-death theory that says that you should not exist but you must exist until you inevitably die as a sacrificial animal.

[Grames]

On 1/9/2024 at 8:58 PM, Easy Truth said:

There is the perspective of "value" as being that which is good for you. But I would argue that is a "moral value" rather than just a value. There are things we like that we regret, or that we know are bad for us. I love bacon. It is the worst food for me.
Value has to mean simply what you consider valuable and it can be an immediate experience, as in the entity "delicious pizza". 

The "Principle of Two Definitions" applies here.  See Notes on "Unity in Ethics and Epistemology" Lecture 3

Rand stated that there three theories of the good: the intrinsic, the subjective and the objective.   It looks to me you are just now realizing what "intrinsic" value actually means in practice.  An object's intrinsic value has its value as part of its identity because there is nothing to distinguish intrinsic value from any of its other attributes.  Mass, volume, color, flammability, holiness ... its just another entry in a list of attributes.

 

[necrovore]

On 1/10/2024 at 10:37 AM, DavidOdden said:

If you want tasty bacon, it (the experience) is a value to you.

I'd say this is another place where you need to observe the distinction between whether something is actually a value for you or whether it just feels (or tastes) like one.

Another example is that life-saving surgery hurts because your body's pain mechanism (which hopefully can be dulled with anesthesia) has no way of knowing that what is happening is surgery or that it's life-saving.

The body's pleasure-pain mechanism is a sense, just like sight or hearing, and so it has to be interpreted in order to be useful. (The physical pain mechanism goes a little further because it can trigger reflexes which cannot be consciously overridden, and in fact some reflexes may occur even if you are not conscious at all; this is why anesthesia is necessary sometimes.)

I think it's a mistake to say that something is a value to you merely because you want it or merely because it brings you pleasure.

9 hours ago, Grames said:

Rand stated that there three theories of the good: the intrinsic, the subjective and the objective.   It looks to me you are just now realizing what "intrinsic" value actually means in practice.  An object's intrinsic value has its value as part of its identity because there is nothing to distinguish intrinsic value from any of its other attributes.  Mass, volume, color, flammability, holiness ... its just another entry in a list of attributes.

The way I think of it is:

• Intrinsicism holds that abstractions (including "value") are functions of the object only, and not the person.
• Subjectivism holds that abstractions are functions of the person only, and not the object.
• Objectivity holds that the abstraction is a function of both.

Or, as I put it before, you have to identify all the variables.

[tadmjones]

Aren’t abstractions only ever functions of a person or more specifically a product of an action only possible by consciousness.

[necrovore]

19 minutes ago, tadmjones said:

Aren’t abstractions only ever functions of a person or more specifically a product of an action only possible by consciousness.

The act of abstraction can only be performed by a consciousness. However, the content of an abstraction -- if it is well formed -- is a product both of the objects being abstracted over and of the consciousness making the abstraction.

Concepts are like maps. Maps don't draw themselves, we have to draw them, but they have to be accurate (about the important stuff) or they're useless.

(I suppose when I said "function" I was thinking more like a math function, which is a relationship.)

Edited January 12 by necrovore

[Grames]

6 hours ago, necrovore said:

The way I think of it is:

• Intrinsicism holds that abstractions (including "value") are functions of the object only, and not the person.
• Subjectivism holds that abstractions are functions of the person only, and not the object.
• Objectivity holds that the abstraction is a function of both.

Intrincism holds that value is not an abstraction, but a concrete.  Perhaps an ethereal or spiritual concrete rather than a tangible one, but concrete in that it is not a function of any person's valuing or abstracting.

[EC]

18 hours ago, Grames said:

The "Principle of Two Definitions" applies here.  See Notes on "Unity in Ethics and Epistemology" Lecture 3

Rand stated that there three theories of the good: the intrinsic, the subjective and the objective.   It looks to me you are just now realizing what "intrinsic" value actually means in practice.  An object's intrinsic value has its value as part of its identity because there is nothing to distinguish intrinsic value from any of its other attributes.  Mass, volume, color, flammability, holiness ... its just another entry in a list of attributes.

 

And, also, value implies a valuer, or an individual capable of valuing. Which implies an individual with a conscious volitional mind capable of determining value, which again in turn implies objectivity of thought of both material and spiritual values. Value cannot exist without both the interaction of a rational thought process with physical reality. In other words value is by definition and via demonstration in action objective if it is an actual value, or for the life of a rational entity.

[EC]

7 hours ago, tadmjones said:

Aren’t abstractions only ever functions of a person or more specifically a product of an action only possible by consciousness.

Abstractions are higher hierarchical concepts of concepts that can and must be traced back to physical reality conceptually, regardless of how complex this analysis actually is, to be valid. Otherwise, they are simply imagination, rationalistic fantasy, floating abstractions, or completely invalid and ignorable arbitrary assertions.

[tadmjones]

On 1/12/2024 at 4:26 PM, EC said:

Abstractions are higher hierarchical concepts of concepts that can and must be traced back to physical reality conceptually, regardless of how complex this analysis actually is, to be valid. Otherwise, they are simply imagination, rationalistic fantasy, floating abstractions, or completely invalid and ignorable arbitrary assertions.

I didn’t realize that comment was posted , I thought I removed the whole comment. That was an initial thought in regards to a broader comment on intrinsic value or on what a ‘correct intrinsic value would be based. 

Edited January 13 by tadmjones