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A Teleologigal Theory of Value

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 June 2010

Peter Miller
Peter Miller
Affiliation:
University of Winnipeg
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Extract

We can approach the nature of value from a number of starting points. Immersed in the realm of art, we may wonder what differentiates the beautiful from the ugly, the excellent from the mediocre. Our search might lead us to ultimate standards of value or canons of beauty. Engaged in social or cultural analysis, we can note the variegated and often shifting values in terms of which classes of people identify themselves or are identifiable to others. Reflecting on these can yield characteristic values. Looking at the dynamics of individual lives, we can ask after the values that motivate a person, his personal values. But perhaps most commonly in philosophical circles, it is ethics which forces us to take stock of the nature of value as we search for the nature of ethical values. Yet values, although presupposed by each of these areas of enquiry, are not restricted to any of them. A general theory of value can, and therefore ought, to go beyond these more specific domains.

Type
Articles
Information
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 12 , Issue 4 , December 1973 , pp. 629 - 645
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1973

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References

1 Rescher, Nicholas, Introduction to Value Theory (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1969), p. 9Google Scholar.

2 “The most important sense of ‘definition’ is that in which a definition states what are the parts which invariably compose a certain whole; and in this sense ‘good’ has no definition because it is simple and has no parts.” Moore, G. E., Principia Ethica (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1959). P. 9Google Scholar.

3 These are basic in the writings of Robert S. Hartman.

4 An earlier version of this paper was read to the Canadian Philosophical Association meeting at McGill University in June, 1972. I am grateful to a number of commentators and my colleagues, Elliot Levine, Brenton Stearns, and John Badertscher, who have forced me to clarify and rethink my views in several places.