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timbgray t1_izszmrv wrote

Reply to comment by contractualist in Why You Should Be Moral (answering Prichard's dilemma) by contractualist

Ok,I’ll go even farther, value is only relevant at the margin. The vale of something is based on the consequence of having one unit more or one unit less, and this will vary according to circumstances.

Oxygen is of value, but the difference in value from someone who doesn’t have enough, and for someone who has never experienced scarcity is such that you don’t get much traction from asserting, albeit truthfully, that oxygen is valuable.

Once you include my feelings as a source or metric of value, you end up on a very slippery slope.

Which ties back to my finger painting. If I lost it on the street and it was found by a street cleaner, or anyone for that matter, how much value would they attribute to the actual finger painting. I think you conflate the value attributed to the physical object vs the value that some others might, or might not, attribute to my subjective sense of loss.

But I’m curious, if the quote I referenced is false, does the argument fall?

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xRafafa00 t1_izua87u wrote

>> Once you include my feelings as a source or metric of value, you end up on a very slippery slope.

What about the trolley problem? If subjectivity has no place in moral philosophy, why even ask the trolley question? If we're throwing feelings out the window and measuring by objective value, then we're valuing human life by how many people are alive. In that case, if 3 people died instead of 1, which creates 2 excess deaths in a "value pool" of 8 billion people, that's a .00000000025% loss of value. That is so negligible that it renders the trolley problem silly and not worth thinking about.

Even if you upped the stakes and put 4 billion people on a trolley track, it still wouldn't mean much from a purely objective standpoint. We've done just fine in the past with far less people than that, and it's not even close to the brink of extinction, so objectively, the trolley problem doesn't matter, and neither does death in general.

The reason that death and the trolley problem are important is because of the subjective feelings of the loved ones left behind by the people who got run over. They're not your loved ones, but the problem expects you to empathetically consider the people who would be affected emotionally.

Similarly, if a street cleaner were to find your finger painting, they would have a moral obligation to use empathy, recognize that a kid's finger painting may hold sentimental value to someone, and do what they can to return the finger painting to that someone. If they are incapable of returning it, that's that, they did what they could. But it would be immoral to throw it out immediately with no second thought.

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timbgray t1_izuevot wrote

Even if that is literally the definition of their job?

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xRafafa00 t1_izuin6p wrote

Their job is to remove clutter from the streets. Returning the finger painting to its owner removes it from the streets, therefore it isn't mutually exclusive from doing their job.

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Bozobot t1_izt0wkh wrote

Oxygen isn’t valuable in itself. It’s the living that we value. OP is talking about things that we value for their own sake.

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PaxNova t1_iztprrj wrote

Just the opposite. He's saying that if we accept that our sentimental things hold value, we should respect that others' sentimental objects hold similar value to them.

Because I don't want to throw away my macaroni picture, I should not force others to throw away theirs.

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Bozobot t1_iztqatl wrote

You aren’t disagreeing with me. We value sentiments for their own sake. The macaroni picture isn’t what he really values, it’s the feelings that the picture elicits.

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PaxNova t1_izttosl wrote

Right, but he's suggesting that it holds true. Through experience, I can guarantee that my macaroni picture is worth absolutely nothing to a random stranger. They may recognize that it holds value to another, but they are not that other and will trash it.

Nobody puts up "found macaroni art" posters.

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Bozobot t1_iztu65b wrote

You aren’t understanding. The sentiments that the macaroni picture elicit are the valuable thing that we can recognize in another. It’s not about the value of the picture, it’s about recognizing the value of sentimental feelings.

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contractualist OP t1_izt1njz wrote

I take the values of reason and freedom as a given. I don't question those values, only recognize that they are implied in the skeptic's question. Morality derives as a consequence of those values. So if someone said they valued reason and X, then they must value X generally. Otherwise they'd run afoul of valuing reason.

What value we choose to impose on something is always subjective, it comes internally. There is no "value" within the material of a thing. There's only our imposition of value.

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iiioiia t1_izy5qh3 wrote

> The value of something is based on the consequence of having one unit more or one unit less, and this will vary according to circumstances.

Perhaps, but that observation may not be comprehensive, there may be other variables involved in other (than your) implementations of ValueAmount(Object something).

> Which ties back to my finger painting. If I lost it on the street and it was found by a street cleaner, or anyone for that matter, how much value would they attribute to the actual finger painting. I think you conflate the value attributed to the physical object vs the value that some others might, or might not, attribute to my subjective sense of loss.

I think you might be conflating your opinion of how things are with how they really are?

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