[Cross-posted on the parent blog]
For some reason, the past few weeks have found me embroiled in more
debates about value theory than I can remember in the past year.
Accordingly, I figured I'd post something on the subject as a starting
point for those debates, so that I don't have to repeat my entire view
in every conversation.
The problems people seem to be wrestling
with are twofold. First, people have been arguing that because value is
subjective, we can't say anything about how much value something has
except by saying how much someone values it. Second, people have been
claiming that because there is no acceptable way to objectively measure
utility, it is impossible to coherently make claims about utility which compare
utility between one individual and another. I want to address both
issues, but this post will only discuss the former; I'll deal with the
latter another time.
To begin, I want to make clear that I don't
deny that utility is subjective. But what does it mean to say this? One
uncontroversial, but relatively weak, way of interpreting this is to
say that without people (or other valuers) to value things, nothing
would have value. While this shouldn't offend anyone, it also doesn't
tell us very much. It only means that value must be value to someone; the cake is not valuable, it is valuable to people.
If there were a cake on a planet with nothing else on it, so that no
sentient being would ever come across the cake or even know that it
existed, it would seem odd to attribute any value to the cake.
But
it's clear that this isn't what people mean when they say that value is
subjective. It seems like what people are saying is that something
becomes valuable because someone values it. George Reisman might seem
to have embodied this sort of view when he said, "...the starting point both of goods-character and of the value of goods is within us--within
human beings--and radiates outward from us to external things,
establishing...goods-character and value..." It also might seem to have
been present in Mises' thought, when he said,
"Judgments of value are voluntaristic. They express feelings, tastes,
or preferences of the individual who utters them. With regard to them
there cannot be any question of truth and falsity. They are ultimate
and not subject to any proof or evidence."
Mises continued,
"What the theorem of the subjectivity of valuation means is that there
is no standard available which would enable us to reject any ultimate
judgment of value as wrong, false, or erroneous in the way we can
reject an existential proposition as manifestly false. It is vain to
argue about ultimate judgments of value as we argue about the truth or
falsity of an existential proposition." It is on the back of statements
like these that people argue that we are unable to posit value in
anything apart from the value placed on it by some individual.
But
this immediately leads to some problematic conclusions. For one, it
means that if we cannot say that it would be good for the alcoholic to
avoid taking another drink, or that the person in an abusive
relationship would be better off leaving his partner, unless they
believed that to be the case. If it is the nature of value that it does
not exist except as it is placed on certain things by people, then it
would be impossible to be mistaken about the value of something.
Clearly the alcoholic values the drink, and the abused partner values his relationship, but there seems to be a sense in which we want to say that the alcoholic shouldn't value the drink, and the abused partner should leave.
The
problem arises from the fact that we can talk about something's being
"valuable" in two ways. One is positive: "I value X; X is valuable."
The other is normative: "X would help me to achieve my ends; X is
valuable." When my opponents talk about the subjectivity of value, they
slip into the former kind of thinking. That is, they take the view that
what is desired is the same as what is desirable. But it is my
contention that what is desirable, in discussing the value of some
object, is what ought to be desired, given the ends of the agent in question. So while I agree that ultimate ends can't be disputed (if you want to be a devout Christian, I can't tell you that you're wrong), I can dispute the means you choose for obtaining your ultimate ends.
This is played out in Mises' discussion when he says,
"The characteristic mark of ultimate ends is that they depend entirely
on each individual's personal and subjective judgment, which cannot be
examined, measured, still less corrected by any other person. Each
individual is the only and final arbiter in matters concerning his own
satisfaction and happiness." He continues, "Means are judged and
appreciated according to their ability to produce definite effects.
While judgments of value are personal, subjective, and final, judgments
about means are essentially inferences drawn from factual propositions
concerning the power of the means in question to produce definite
effects. About the power of a means to produce a definite effect there
can be dissension and dispute between men. For the evaluation of
ultimate ends there is no interpersonal standard available." Accepting this view of value, it seems clear that we can indeed make claims about how valuable something is as a means for achieving some end, even though we can't actually say that the end in question is valuable.
In
passing, I want to preempt an obvious objection. In practice, I (and I
think most people) do tend to assume that individuals have certain
ultimate ends, and that under this assumption, I can largely ignore the
issue of the subjectivity of ends. For example, I don't tell the
alcoholic, "If you desire the sort of life I find that most people do,
you shouldn't have that drink." I simply say, "You shouldn't have that
drink." If I were to discover that the alcoholic actually thought that
his purpose on the Earth was to explore the effects of alcoholism,
producing knowledge for himself and the rest of humanity in the
process, then I couldn't criticize his choice of drinking in the same
way. But recognizing this possibility doesn't preclude me from assuming
that they alcoholic is making a poor decision (in the absence of
evidence to the contrary). That I could be wrong because of a faulty
assumption, doesn't prove that the position outlined here is wrong.
One
thing that I should address, but I won't, is the issue of justice as it
relates to value. It's fully possible that someone could do something
which would actually produce the effect of promoting her ends, but we
would still want to say that there's something wrong with it. Mises
seemed to think that justice could be completely explained in
utilitarian, contractarian terms, saying,
"The ultimate yardstick of justice is conduciveness to the preservation
of social cooperation. Conduct suited to preserve social cooperation is
just, conduct detrimental to the preservation of society is unjust.
There cannot be any question of organizing society according to the
postulates of an arbitrary preconceived idea of justice. The problem is
to organize society for the best possible realization of those ends
which men want to attain social cooperation. Social utility is the only
standard of justice. It is the sole guide of legislation." I completely
disagree with this assertion, and I am supported in this by a
considerable tradition in philosophy. But how this relates to the
discussion of value is beyond the scope of this post. I think that what
I've said so far is good enough for my purposes.