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We are responsible to determine our values, yes? A value is discovered, not an arbitrary creation of free will, correct? A value is an incentive to action. You have free will to act but not to create your incentive. You can pursue a false value but that is an error in judgement, an error in misidentifying an existant to be a value that really isn't. Correct? For example, we don't chose food as a value. It is required for life. The incentive is innate. So, where do you draw the line between innate needs and arbitrary values subject to free will? Is there a line? Are we faced with the task of choosing our values or are we faced with the task of identifying our values? Are subjective value judgments themselves objective cognitive existents? This is important to understand. People say "he found himself" and "he found his calling." If happiness is to achieve your values and if values are innate, then the pursuit of happiness is a two-fold exercise in reason: 1. using reason to correctly identify those existents as your values and the respective standards (a willful cognitive action) and 2. using reason to correctly take the necessary physical action to achieve that material end (a willful motor action). Followed by emotional consequence - your correct values result in long term happiness. Emotions serving as a barometer on how well you are handling the task of living. The child's toy of putting various block shapes ( star, square, circle, etc.) into their respective slots can be viewed as a rudimentary exercise in the meaning of life. You are free to focus your mind and take action but you are not free to make the rules or change the specifics of your standards (i.e. you cannot lower your standards). The baby can put the block in the slot but the baby cannot change all the shapes to circles, put a square peg in a round hole, etc. Can this be an analogy for values and the pursuit of them? You like what you like; you don't like what you don't like; it is what it is; you are only free to think and act. If you change your mind and decide something is not a value to you isn't it always because you discovered an existent that better met your standards? It wasn't a change in mind, it was the acquisition of new information - becoming aware of already existing existents. This would explain the appeal of mysticism. A pivotal moment occurs when man is faced with the struggle of having to solve a problem - to achieve his value by his standard - he doesn't know how, he may take the position of defeatism - but he cannot be unhappy - a choice can be made to deny the validity of material values and focus his mind on so called spiritual values. It is an attempt to cheat or circumvent the block-in-the-slot. The moral/practical dichotomy arises by the existence of innate values and standards conflicting with false values, spiritual or otherwise. Does this make sense? |
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Values are not innate. They are chosen. The term "value" has two distinct senses which should not be confused. One sense is simply "that which one acts to gain and/or keep." This kind of value is just something someone has chosen to pursue, regardless of whether that thing is objectively valuable. In this sense, crack cocaine is a value to an addict. And, in this sense, we all choose what we value. The other sense regards the evaluation of things by a rational standard of value. In this second sense, crack cocaine is not a value, even to someone who seeks to gain and or keep it. In this sense, values are facts independent of personal preference. But that doesn't mean they are innate. The first kind of values are chosen. The second kind must be discovered. Note, though that the act of discovering values is a choice. So, all values are, in effect, chosen. Some are chosen arbitrarily, and some are chosen objectively. But all are chosen. What we cannot choose is the metaphysical result of pursuing any particular value. The world is full of things we might value. And if we want to live well, we must choose our values carefully (rationally). There are no innate incentives (unless we consider sleep to be an "incentive" to a tired person, but I think that would be misusing the word). Even food is not an automatic value. We, as humans, feel hunger. We must learn how to make the hunger go away. Perhaps there's an innate desire to put things in our mouth when we are hungry, but we still must learn what to put into our mouths. Food is not an automatic value. We discover what is food -- what stops hunger. We have no choice about the need for food. But we do choose whether to simply sit and cry when we are hungry, or to explore our environment for things which might stop hunger. Objective values must be discovered, and such discovery is a choice. Everyone chooses how much they go about learning in life. Generally, the more they learn, the more objective their choice of values will be. Less complete knowledge will cause a person to choose values which don't serve his existence as well as more objective ones would. Extensive knowledge (especially of how values should be chosen) generally results in the better choice of one's values. Some people, however, choose values in direct opposition to the acquisition of knowledge. Such people get a kick from choosing against reality, because they hate the limits reality places on them. For these people, the more they learn about what they should do, the more they want to do something else. Values are chosen. They aren't a direct and necessary result of knowledge. What makes a value a value and what makes a false value a false value is not up to us. We are only free to act. If you could somehow force your false value to be your true value and if that false value was easier to obtain/keep then life would be too easy, or even fail. Learning to make hunger go away is an action. The fact that it is hunger that we must face is not up to us. It is the incentive. It is given. Free will only handles action, not the incentive to action. Don't confuse value/incentive with its necessary actions. There is a distinction. Just think about it. An "incentive" is a motivating influence or stimulus. This is different thing from a value. For example, money is a value, but it is only a wider context of the knowledge that one makes money by working that makes money an incentive to work. "Value" is the fundamental concept. "Incentive" is higher-level. Biological needs are not incentives outside the context of knowing how to meet them. A need does not tell you what you need, nor how to get it. Human beings do not automatically pursue values . They do not automatically identify values either. I'll make an exception: oxygen. We automatically seek oxygen when we are deprived of it. We gasp for air. Such gasping is an innate reaction to a lack of oxygen. But this doesn't mean we know how to get oxygen. We just gasp. And it would be wrong to call the need of oxygen an incentive to gasp. Incentives are consciously dealt with. The vast majority of human values are volitionally identified and pursued. For example, there's nothing automatic about the development of SCUBA for breathing underwater. I agree. I identifying values and pursuing them are subject to free will. You have to decide to pursue a value. But the identity of the values are not subject to arbitrary change. Do you see? There is no choice. You can be wrong about your values. That would be a case of selecting a false value. But there is no free will to swap the concretes of value and false value with their respective identities. There's no changing the rules that you need oxygen, proper nutrition (what proper nutrition is) etc. because there are unavoidable innate consequences. You are free to select the value to pursue but you can make a mistake and select a false value. What makes the value false is not subject to free will. What makes a value legitimate and why acting to obtain/keep the value results in happiness is not up to us. Only the action. Why/how it works the way it does is innate. Consequences go with their respective actions independently of free will. This is congruent with A is A. Reality is what it is. People have tried to avoid their values. It doesn't work. If you could be happy just laying in bed all day staring at the ceiling then you would because its easy and the hypothetical is stating that you're satisfied. But that won't do and notice that the closest anyone as been able to come to that is with substance abuse - which comes with deterring consequences. Hey, I don't make the rules. To say you can chose your values and standards (you can chose to lower you standards), and any attempt would merely be and abdication from the pursuit of happiness. Defeatism. Yes, A is A. Man is of a specific nature, and so has specific metaphysical needs which are not open to debate or choice. That said, people do not always act to meet their metaphysical needs. They therefore they do hold values which are not objectively valuable. People can, metaphysically, be mistaken about values. Also, each man has objective values which pertain not just to his identity as a man, but to his identity as himself. A carpenter objectively values a hammer more than a painter does. Such a value is objective, but not inborn. Pursuit of values (when talking about humans) implies awareness of values, so to say that values are innate implies some form of innate awareness, which humans do not have. It's wrong to say that Man innately values anything except perhaps air to breathe. The vast majority of (life-promoting) human preferences are acquired in a man's lifetime. On the whole, human preferences (values) are acquired, not innate. You're saying that humans have no form of innate awareness. Aren't many actions of newborn babies automatic? There must be some rudimentary mechanism in place in our biology that helps to ensure evolution. For example, and in response to what you said earlier about man needing to volitionally learn that he must value food and how to eat - is that an accurate description of reality? Did any of us have to teach ourselves how to eat? No! We have guardians. Oh, but with out them we would die because babies can't take care of themselves. Do you see? There must be innate processes in place. Its almost like the chicken and the egg question. Humans rely on rational faculty to live but what kind of rational faculty does a baby have? What came first, the baby or the faculty of reason? There has to be values innately positioned. Or else how do you think it happened? One day a human learned to feed itself and that was that: the end of absolute individual self-reliance died that day and every generation after him learned to eat from their parent? You don't have to chose EVERYTHING. You're making life sound harder than it is. My guess is the faculty of reason itself had to evolve Humans have no innate conceptual awareness. We don't know, on birth, what things are. We quickly learn things, but such knowledge is not inborn. "Did any of us have to teach ourselves how to eat? No! We have guardians." Just because you have a teacher doesn't mean you don't have to go through a process of learning. A hungry baby just cries. He must learn that tasty milk comes out of a breast. Once he does, he seeks breasts. The solution to your chicken/egg problem is evolution. Man has evolved to what he is now. Lower animals have more innate behavior. Man has very little. "One day a human learned to feed itself and that was that: the end of absolute individual self-reliance died that day and every generation after him learned to eat from their parent? Ridiculous." This is an irrelevant straw-man argument. If you can give me a known example of a human that went down the path of living while never managing to form a concept than I will accept your statement that there is no innate conceptual awareness. What other alternative is there? You're not an objectivist on day one. You don't pop out of the vagina immediately saddled with choices to consider. There has to be automation. You're saying we quickly learn things and I agree that knowledge is not inborn. But the process of obtaining it is. The process that nudges volition into initial action has to be sparked automatically. Concept formation is not complete until there's a grasp of the word for that concept. Are you going to tell me that children had to choose to learn to speak? Do you know of a child who chose not to learn to speak? How old are we when we say "Dada" again? You think there's a lot of free will involved there? There has to be an automatic process that helps to ensure that a baby will at least reach that stage. You're saying a baby learns tasty milk comes from breast and that he must learn yadda yadda. That's not automatic? The mom has to initiate. How is the choice to not learn possible? Volition is needed when you're faced with alternative actions. Where in the above examples are there alternatives? A baby is not going to taste breast milk and think to itself... "mmmm, no thanks. lets try something else." There is no alternative choice for the baby to make. It is up to the guardian to make those choices for it. You know what I mean? As babies we just barely meet the qualifications of what it means to be human. We can't think/act for ourselves as one-week-olds. Everyone knows that! This argument is off-track. The following must be established and agreed upon before it can continue:
This last means that babies, on first encountering a breast, might push it away. Of course any loving mother will push the breast on the kid, and squirt some milk on his mouth, to show him the value. Once a child reaches this point, he will not resist eating. This phenomenon happens over and over, throughout life. People sometimes ignorantly resist what is best for them. Then, somehow they realize they've been resisting something good. For adults, the process is conceptual. For babies, it is not. I'm not a pediatrician, and I can't speak about babies any more regarding this topic. But I don't see the need to claim that everything babies do is automatic until a certain age. As I see it, babies exert a lot of effort to get what they want. And effort means choice.
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Your final paragraphs lose me.