Hello everyone,
I am confused. What does it mean to say that value is agent-relative, yet the principles on which the values are based are not?
If you need a valuer to give value to something, how is this different from moral relativism when it comes to ethics?
Thank you very much for any input.
What does it mean to say that value is agent-relative,
That means that value is a relationship between a person and something, which is determined by the person (on the basis of the thing and the person’s (knowledge of his) nature). So penicillin might be valuable to you, but valueless to me.
yet the principles on which the values are based are not?
Because the difference lies in facts about me versus you. The abstract principle is that life-saving drugs are valuable, but because I’m allergic to penicillin, penicillin is a death-inducing drug, not a life-saving one.
If you need a valuer to give value to something, how is this different from moral relativism when it comes to ethics?
Moral relativism basically detaches the second fact of reality (that about the object) from the equation. The Objectivist view is that the facts of me and the facts of penicillin equate to “bad”, and that’s an objective fact, not a whim-based belief. The constant is our ultimate moral standard, namely the choice to exist. The moral relativist view says that there simply is no possible absolute standard, and anyone can make up their own moral standard. Thus to say that murder is immoral, you have to make that be a moral axiom; but it’s an arbitrary one, and as easily replaced by the stipulation “reason is immoral”. So for moral relativism, you just say “Here is my list of moral rules; they can’t be discussed since there is no standard for evaluation”.