Abstract
How does valuing something for its own sake differ from valuing an entity for the sake of other things? Although numerous answers come to mind, many of them rule out substantive views about what is valuable for its own sake. I therefore seek to provide a more neutral way to distinguish the two valuing attitudes. Drawing from existing accounts of valuing, I argue that the two can be distinguished in terms of a conative-volitional feature. Focusing first on “non-final valuing”—i.e. valuing x for the sake of something else—I argue that it involves adopting certain reasons on account of a desire for x to contribute to other things. I then show how this contrasts final valuing. The result, I argue, is a plausible account of how the two modes of valuing differ that leaves open substantive views about what all can be valued for its own sake. This is helpful because it develops a popular methodology used to explore the value of a wide range of things, including natural entities, family heirlooms, and artworks, as well as, more broadly, entities that might have “extrinsic final value.”
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Notes
And of course, one can value the same thing in both ways.
There is a different way to specify conditionality that I consider below.
The methodology is consonant with a fitting-attitude analysis of value—roughly, the view that something is valuable just in case it is fitting to value it—but the methodology is still different from this view. A fitting-attitude analysis analyzes what value is, whereas the methodology in question just describes one way to determine whether something has (a particular kind of) value. There is a large literature on fitting-attitude analyses of value and the “wrong kind of reason” problem, which I briefly discuss later. For examples of the methodology in use, see: Anderson 1993; Fletcher 2009; Kagan 1998: 285; Korsgaard 1996b: 263; McShane 2007; Rabinowicz and Rønnow-Rasmussen 2000, p. 41 and pp. 46–7; and Tenen 2020. Contrasting the approach is a Moorean isolation test, which involves seeing whether an object would have value were it to exist “in absolute isolation,” alone in a universe (Moore 1922 [1903]: 53, 119, 125).
Robert Audi (2015: 46) speaks of “constitutive means” to describe this sort of thing.
This is an example of what Zimmerman (2001: 257) calls “signatory value.”
It makes less sense, by contrast, to speak in terms of “intrinsic valuing” given that this connotes that one values the entity on account of its intrinsic properties.
Rae Langton (2007: 163–4 n.10) also links the notion of “final value” and “final valuing” to the notion of valuing something for its own sake.
I leave open whether they always do. Supporting such a claim would require an analysis of these particular attitudes, as well as a full analysis of what final valuing in general involves. Both are beyond the scope of my discussion here, and it is sufficient for my purposes that I group the particular attitudes only loosely under the final heading. Thank you to an anonymous referee for helping me to see this.
Clarifying the notion of “purely,” Gaus says “A pure attitude (or valuing) occurs when a person has either a purely positive or a purely negative affective response to an object” as opposed to ambivalent responses in which one responds both positively and negatively (Gaus 1990: 115). For my purposes, this distinction is not crucial because I am trying to distinguish two valuing attitudes rather than valuing attitudes from non-valuing (or dis-valuing) attitudes. Everything I say below could be put in terms of “pure final” and “pure non-final” valuing. Also, note that he speaks in terms of “intrinsic valuing” but seems to have in mind what I do when I talk of final valuing.
Michael Cholbi’s (2019) account of grief sheds light on why this might be the case. On his view, the object of grief is “the loss of the relationship with the deceased as it was…” (2019: 497). Although Cholbi focuses on the grief experienced when losing a loved one, we can extend this idea to other things: arguably, grief is occasioned by the loss of things that figured prominently in one’s life such that one had a sort of relationship with them. The idea in the main text, then, is that not everything one values for its own sake figures prominently within one’s life in this sense.
Some aestheticians might identify the artwork with the musical score and not the particular instances of it being played. Even so, certain instances of it being played are replaceable and perhaps still valued for their own sakes. This point seems to apply widely to repeatable artworks.
This is a case of what Rønnow-Rasmussen would call instrumental personal value (2011: 58). I discuss his view and so-called final personal value below.
I am also skeptical that a disjunctive approach developed from the above will provide an adequate way of doing this. I do not have space to consider different permutations of this, however.
In addition, Scheffler (2010: 29) holds that non-instrumental valuing involves “a belief that X is good or valuable or worthy,” “a susceptibility to experience a range of context-dependent emotions regarding X,” and "a disposition to experience these emotions as being merited or appropriate.”
Indeed, with the exception of Scheffler, they seem to hold that valuing just is to have a certain desire or to take there to be certain reasons. For my purposes, however, I seek only to focus on the more minimal claim that valuing involves, as a necessary but not sufficient component, some sort of conative or volitional element.
What if, due to some sort of irrationality, one does not desire or take there to be a reason for pursuing the means to their desired or reasoned ends? Then my view implies that they do not value such things for the sake of pursuing that end. That seems right.
I follow Scanlon (1998: 39) in holding that desires are “unreflective elements in our practical thinking,” whereas adopted reasons are reflective and under greater control by the agent. Scanlon further distinguishes “directed-attention desires” from “urges.” As Scanlon (1998: 39) puts it, one has a directed-attention desire for something if the thought of that thing will keep appearing to oneself in a “favorable light.” By contrast, urges do not stem from an evaluation (i.e. the sort of evaluation implicit in something appearing to oneself in a favorable light). In what follows, I think of desires more as directed-attention desires than as urges.
One detail worth pointing out is that value-characteristic responses can include both actions and attitudes—an idea I take from Scanlon (1998: 95). This is important because it avoids a potential counterexample: let us say that I value my grandmother’s wisdom for the sake of deciding what I should do regarding a life decision. She is long dead, however. Do I take there to be a reason to call her up and ask what to do? No. Adopting such a reason would be in vain, and this is something I know. Yet I do value my grandmother’s wisdom partly for the sake of making life decisions such as this, even if I do not know what her advice would be. On the view I develop, this can be true because I take there to be a reason to be sad that I cannot call her, and I adopt this reason on account of a desire for her advice to guide my decision. Thank you to an anonymous referee for prompting me to consider this sort of case.
I echo Christine Korsgaard’s (1996a) notion of “reflective endorsement.”
For similar reasons, I do not think that we should distinguish the two modes of valuing simply in terms of dispositions to act or respond. Infants and animals are all prone to act and respond, but I am reluctant to say that they thereby value things non-finally. Thank you to Kirk Ludwig for discussion of this point.
Scanlon (1998: 47) does not think that adopting a reason, or even having an intention, requires a “conscious process.” So, depending on how the details of his view get filled out, it may render what I discuss next in the main text unnecessary.
The content of the adopted reason—to respond in value-related ways on account of the desire—can be filled in only once the content of the desire is. Moreover, describing the value-related responses seems to be a substantive issue best left for other work.
But see note 30, below, for complications.
Is the “for the sake of” attitude transitive? If one values x for the sake of y, and y for the sake of z, does one also value x for the sake of z? Tentatively, I think not necessarily. One values x for the sake of z only if one is prone to desire that x contribute to z. Even if one is prone to desire that x contribute to y and, separately, that y contribute to z, it may not follow that one is thereby prone to desire that x contribute to z. A full discussion of this, however, will require getting clearer on the conditions under which one counts as being prone to desire that x contribute to something.
Those who wish to resist the possibility of such loops might say that the farmer values themselves at one time for the sake of themselves at a later time, where the two are not identical.
One might insist that the valuer wants a certain state of affairs regarding the cake or material object to obtain. I believe my account can allow for this reframing. I discuss the relation between obtaining states and other entities below.
There is a technical worry about how my view makes sense of the idea that a whole, such as an obtaining state, might be valued for the sake of one of its parts: Something, x, existing at T1 cannot cause or constitute something required for x to exist at T1. Yet a constituent of x at T1 does seem necessary for x to exist as it was at T1. So, on my view, one cannot value x at T1 for the sake of one of its parts at T1. My thought, then, is that when we say that we value a whole for the sake of a part, we really value the whole for the sake of something related, but not identical, to the given part. For instance: If I value Sammy being pleased for the sake of Sammy, then ‘Sammy’ refers to two different things: in the first use of the name, it refers to a timeslice of the person at T1; in the second use, ‘Sammy’ would refer to something else, such as a part of his life extending beyond just that very moment, or a conception of Sammy that is different in some other way from Sammy qua the entity being pleased at T1.
My view could even, with modification, accommodate the so-called “no reasons” view of love (Kolodny 2003: 142). A no-reasons advocate could hold that final valuing involves being prone to respond in value-related ways on account of no reasons at all. They could contrast this to non-final valuing, which does involve taking there to be certain desire-based reasons for responding in value-related ways. I will continue with my earlier negative claim about final valuing, however, because I think that final valuing involves a reflective component just as non-final valuing does (see Sect. 4 above).
Thank you to an anonymous referee for raising this worry.
Thank you to an anonymous referee for prompting me to consider this debate.
In my (2020), I seek to show how there can be such a reason, and therefore show how objects can have extrinsic final value.
I am grateful to many others for their help on this project. In addition to anonymous referees, I thank, in particular, Marcia Baron, Kirk Ludwig, Sandra Shapshay, Allen Wood, Kevin Mills, Wade Munroe, Daniel Buckley, David Fisher, and Ivan Verano.
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Tenen, L. How Final and Non-Final Valuing Differ. J Ethics 26, 683–704 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10892-022-09410-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10892-022-09410-9