The emotional
value of things
Emotions are a key subject in philosophy, and how
philosophers have accounted for emotions reflects the sort of thinking and mind
sets at a given time or period in history. What has not changed about emotions
is that they are motivators for actions.
“Things”, to distinguish from people, are a class of objects
that we can direct our emotions and a cause for our emotions-based actions. To make
our subject more manageable I shall only discuss the topic within the context
of material things or objects. Even though ideology and beliefs affect us more
emotionally and we attach more emotions to them than chattels and trinkets.
The class of material things is also wide and large. We have
things that we inherit from those dear to us, presents and gifts, things we
find in the streets, souvenirs, things we collected over the years, things we
buy, and so on. The most important aspect of the emotions we link with these
things is that the emotional value is not measured in terms of money even
though the thing itself might have a monetary valuable. And the second thing
about the emotional value we place on a thing is a subjective value. How I feel
about some object is not a feeling others are expected to have or suppose to
have.
More importantly, how I feel about something does not have
to conform to some rational or reasonable criteria. And this is a problem when
considering some theory of value which is an important issue in economics. In a
way, an emotional value of a thing is a twofold criterion. The first is that we
attach subjective criteria which in all probability others cannot have the same
experience. How we react to the loss (or gain) of something is purely
subjective even if two people demonstrate the same behaviour towards a thing. The
other subjective criteria are the reasons and psychological process for
attaching some emotional value to a thing.
The consequence of this is that it is difficult to attach an
objective monetary value to an object and secondly any attempt to give a
monetary value to an object with an emotional value attached to it is bound to
fail. Consider a case of two car thefts except one car is a company car and the
second car was a gift from a parent before the parent died. Surely we expect
that a person who lost the gift would attach more emotional value to the car
than they would to the company car.
Indeed, a loss of a thing we attach some emotional value has
more than just a mourning value of a loss, more importantly we feel violated
especially if it is something that was stolen from us.
This has two consequences in real life. The first is that
emotions can be manipulated to attach a false emotion to a product as part of a
marketing ploy. In such cases companies use a range of tool to evoke the right
emotions, images, language and music. The objective is to emphasise the
emotional content they want consumers to attach to a product hoping that they
will buy the product. The emotional language can include such concepts as
status symbol, exclusive, intelligence, health, simple, easy, cheap,
excellence, German engineering, choice, children, family, and, in some cases, a
very high price might itself be used to evoke emotions of status and
exclusivity. This wouldn’t be so bad if what we are talking about are cars,
perfume and dresses.
However, this is the very technique some companies use and
have used to push cigarettes, drinks with high levels of sugar, unhealthy
additives in fast foods and high level of salts in snacks. This suggests that our
emotions are also vulnerable to external manipulation; the irony is that it
seems that our vulnerability is due to the limits of our rational reasoning.
The very same problem philosopher and other have complained about emotions all
these centuries.
The second consequence is that, as I have argued, when we
attach an emotional value to an object we give it a “property” this it is
difficult for others to quantify. In the case of the stolen gift car we cannot
say that we received full restitution even if the insurance pays us the full
value of a new car and the offender jailed by the authorities. It seems that
when we endow an emotional value to an object we are giving it a value on a par
with what economists call an “intrinsic value” but a value enjoyed by one
person i.e. us. An intrinsic value is a value of the object itself, a gold ring
would have an intrinsic value of the gold. And in a way justice is also denied
to us because once the object has been violated there is no restitution of the
full “value” of the object. The courts can restore a monetary value but how can
they restore an emotional value?
Our issue, therefore, is first and foremost how do we attach
an emotional value to some things or objects but not others? The second issue
is how can we restore an emotional value to an object when that value is purely
subjective and exclusive to us?
Best Lawrence
tel: 606081813
philomadrid@gmail.com
Blog: http://philomadrid.blogspot.com.es/ OR
PhiloMadrid.com
MeetUp https://www.meetup.com/PhiloMadrid-philosophy-group/
Gran Clavel
(Café-Bar): Gran vía 11, esquina C/ Clavel, 28013—Madrid
From Lawrence, Sunday PhiloMadrid meeting at 6:30pm: The emotional
value of things
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