from Lawrence, SUNDAY PhiloMadrid meeting at 6:30pm: What do we mean by values?

Dear friends,

This Sunday we are talking about: What do we mean by values?

There is a problem with values: they might help us decide what to do or
what to follow or believe in, but they don't tell us what is absolutely
good and what is absolutely evil or bad. And because of this dichotomy
even the vilest of doctrines and ideologies function on values.

This suggests, or at the very least hints at, the belief that values
cannot be objectively validated. Let us take an example that is
regularly reported in the news. Some societies hold that if a woman is
raped, the rapist is not punished but the woman (it is always a woman)
is punished for having sex outside marriage.

In other societies, even a hint of unconsented sex, let alone rape, the
accuser is protected to the point of being anonymous and the accused is
put behind bars before even the start of a trial.

Hence, values cannot have any inherent objectivity since here we have a
value, rape is bad/evil, but one group punish the victim of rape and the
other punishes the accused prior to the end of a fair trial.

From our perspective: how should we now deal with values given that
values by themselves cannot guide us to what is objectively good or
objectively bad?

One test we can employ is the harm caused by a give value. This means
will our values, when we act on them, cause harm to others? But this
means that we accept the value that doing harm to others is
unacceptable. Indeed even the vilest of ideologies accept that doing
harm to others in unacceptable, but the way they circumvent this
imperative is by designating some people as not being human. And hence
they cannot possible do harm to non human beings.

Does this mean that we sort of need a value of values, a sort of Golden
standard that everyone has no choice but to accept? And what will that
value of values be? For me it will always be a human being.

Best Lawrence



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from Lawrence, SUNDAY PhiloMadrid meeting at 6:30pm: What do we mean by
values?