Our ends are objectively knowable as are those things that can advance our ends. "Ought," then, refers to objectively effective behavior with respect to the attainment of human ends. — Dfpolis
Following a hint from Plato in the Sophist, I take existence as convertible with the capacity to act. Anything that can act in any way exists, and anything that exists can act in some way. Thus, existence is an unspecified capacity to act. What makes a thing the kind of thing it is how it can act. What can do everything a duck can do and nothing a duck can't do is a duck, So, we can understand essence as the specification of a being's possible acts. — Dfpolis
Physical objects are intelligible because they can act on our senses in specific ways that we can be aware of. In acting on us in the way that they do, they reveal some of their possible modes of action and so inform us about their existence (since they are acting) and essence (since they are acting in this specific way). — Dfpolis
In the same way, physical objects are valuable because they can stand as actually valued objects to a valuing subject. Valued objects have an intrinsic potential to be valued (are intrinsically valuable), for nothing can be actual unless it is possible. In other words, an object is valuable if it is capable of being valued. — Dfpolis
The next question is, if intelligibility is based on the capacity to inform, what is ontological basis of value? Let me suggest that the answer is fundamentally teleological. Things are valuable insofar as they are capable of advancing our ends -- and that is consequent on what they are capable of doing (their essence). To a reasonable approximation, human ends are reflected in Maslow's hierarchy of needs. So, things capable of meeting our needs are objectively valuable, even if they are not actually valued. — Dfpolis
Is the relation a form of projected value from the valuer onto the valued object? — InfiniteZero
the object itself - having the intrinsic disposition to be potentially valued by affecting our senses and perception causally - is what makes itself be valued by the subject it affects? — InfiniteZero
if it is Type 2 valuing you may be after, then value in objects is necessarily dependent on there being subjects that can value them, value them insofar as these objects causally affect them. But, given value is yet again being based from an anthropocentric starting point, without the anthropocene, no object has any value. It will be merely left with the dispositional power to be valued insofar as it can affect a subject valuer, without them, this dispotional power is mute, and again we are devoid of any value in the universe — InfiniteZero
o, both types of valuing here give a relativist type of notion — InfiniteZero
If that is the case, then an ethical system based on this framework of instrumental value clearly makes us hold humans as mere means to an end. — InfiniteZero
What is worse is that if we go further and consider God as a subject and a valuer, then clearly God itself becomes object to our instrumental valuing, and so God itself may be a means to some end. — InfiniteZero
Get involved in philosophical discussions about knowledge, truth, language, consciousness, science, politics, religion, logic and mathematics, art, history, and lots more. No ads, no clutter, and very little agreement — just fascinating conversations.