I like your list. Also, brevity. :grin::up:

You take anything and express all the things you think it means or produces and explain whether those things are good or bad. Your reasoning for why you thought that either explained your values or more things you value because of your values. Such as valuing a towel because it allows you to dry yourself and valuing the ability to dry yourself because being wet for too long is uncomfortable, meaning you value comfort.

It's important to understand though that your values will be contradictory, whimsical, variable by a lot of factors and generally hard to understand. Many are not based on your rational thought but are things you value due to nature/nurture factors and so you may not be able to be honest (or honestly know) about why you value things. Values aren't just based on preference and personality but a whole list of things and not all of them are just "true for me" but you can be wrong in your valuing of something due to a false understanding.

As this discussion has developed, I can see it is unrealistic for me to have limited it to such a narrow focus. — T Clark

The fault is not yours; the problem arises from the term itself, one which has been in regular use for a long time: It's loaded with meaning.

Thinking about "values" can produce a turbid mess, opaque with suspended solids.

But still, we know we value some features of life more than others, and there are some differences between Chinese culture and American culture, or between the values of Athabaskan Amerindians and Zulus in South Africans. Probably, though, Americans, Chinese, Athabaskans, and Zulus will all value similar features of life. Everybody values their children, and everyone prefers healthy happy children. Everybody likes a comfortable home, whatever that means locally. If one contented family has a thatched mud/stick house and another contented family lives in a high rise apartment, how much difference in values are there between the two?

One of the values that people value is living among people with convergent values. People who eat beef and live in high rises will probably not be happy with cows wandering around in the crowded streets. We can tolerate some divergence, but too much divergence causes friction, and people generally don't like too much social friction.

Here is what I take to be a very important value: not only having the right values, but being principled enough to stand by them, even if it makes you unpopular. That is a value in its own right. Would a sage care about popularity? About uncritical obedience? About shying away from speaking the truth or doing what he judges to be right?

Socrates was principled. Diogenes was principled.

Talking of values suggests vice. One vice would be holding a grudge against someone or ignoring them or taking other actions against them because they say critical things you don't like to hear, especially in a place that is set up to encourage fearless and open criticism. This I take to be an indication of weakness. The Athenians fell pray to weakness in their judgement of Socrates. The religious authorities and like-minded folk fell pray to weakness in their judgement of Galileo. And certain members of this forum have fallen pray to weakness in judging me.

I have a feeling these are too simplistic and that there's another set of values underneath that drive these. Any ideas? — T Clark

Care and love? Or perhaps I should simply have said 'love', since love obviously involves care.

And certain members of this forum have fallen pray to weakness in judging me. — S

Feeling a bit paranoid today are we?

Not as paranoid as when I was on ecstasy in that pub the other night and thought the bar staff were trying to trick me. Funny 'cause true.

Ah, gotta love the MDMA! I don't usually associate its use with paranoid states, though; did you have it tested to make sure it was pure?

Pfft, nope. And I don't usually get that from it either, but it was partly the setting, I think. The rest of the night was pretty ecstatic though.

I replied to you in PM otherwise we will commit acts which carry the great anti-value of being off-topic.

Am I right in thinking you’re looking at what Nietzsche said? About creating new morals?