In addition to its prominent place in popular culture and political discussion, the concept of value(s) is a major concept in several academic disciplines. I am going to define values in a roundabout way. First, I will describe and define the concept as used in those disciplines, such as mathematics, which are not the subject of this series of articles. Then I will make a set of tentative definitions of values as used in popular culture, politics, and the social sciences. I say, tentative, because it is likely, as a result of this exploration, that I will end up proposing a different definition of values as more useful than current definitions. We should try to understand how the concept of values, as used by people, can be alive and real to them, if it is, rather than trying to explain values away as an illusion or trivializing them in these person's lives.
In mathematics, the concept of value(s) is related to the concepts of function and variable. A value is any possible numerical quantity in a range of quantities that can be assigned to a variable. In the formula for distance travelled by a moving object, d=v*t, where d is distance, v is velocity, and t is time (as expressed in appropriate units of measurement), d, v, and t are variables. The value of d depends on the values of v and t, which can be any real numbers determined by experiment.
In art, value refers to the lightness or darkness (i.e., luminosity) of a color, relative to other colors. In music, value is the duration of a musical note.
Value is an important concept in free market economics. We shall not be making a major discussion of the economic concept of value, even though economics is a social science and its concept was important in the historical origination of the concept. Economic value is the monetary worth of an object as determined by exchange in a market. If I buy a car for $20,000 from a car dealer, then the value of the car is $20,000. Economic value is sometimes called exchange value.
These concepts of value share an important characteristic, when compared to the concept of value in philosophy and the social sciences. Value is an objective property of the world. The value of a mathematical variable, of a color, of a musical note, and of an economic object do not depend upon what we think of them. Also, some of these concepts of value are absolute; whereas, others are relative. In the mathematical example, d is relative to the values of v and t, whereas the values of v and t are independent and depend only on what experiment determines them to be. The duration of a single musical note does not depend upon the duration of any other musical notes; it is not relative, but independent. The value of an automobile is relative to the exchange in which the worth is established; it has no independent worth.
In the social sciences and Western philosophy today, by contrast, as we shall discuss in later articles, values are considered to be subjective; that is, they are properties of our state of mind or of our emotions. Also, social science values are relative; their characteristics are determined by persons of specified states of mind, or are relative to groups of shared mentality in which persons participate, such as a local culture. It is important to remember that in other disciplines, some concepts of value are not subjective and relative, even though they are analogous to social science concepts of value; for it is the dogma of contemporary social science, that values can only be subjective and relative, not simply as a matter of definition, but as a matter of how the natural and social worlds are constituted.
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