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Definition of Value

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 February 2009

H. Osborne
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Extract

Any attempt to construct a philosophy of Value must presuppose some general understanding of what Value is. And so it might seem natural to begin with a precise definition of the concept we are about to investigate. What, we might ask ourselves, is the characteristic peculiar to all those situations in the description of which we are accustomed to use the word “value” or its cognate terms, and distinguishing them as a class from all those situations to which we do not apply the word? Proceeding empirically in this way, from an inspection of the “field of application” of the word “value” we might reasonably hope to discover a “highest common factor” of all the data, which would be the required definition of the concept “Value.” But we should be met at the outset by radical differences of opinion about the scope of the relevant data.

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Articles
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Philosophy , Volume 6 , Issue 24 , October 1931, pp. 433 - 445
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1931

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References

page 434 note 1 General Theory of Value.

page 434 note 2 Zur Grundlegung der allgemeinen Werttheorie, 1923.

page 434 note 3 Untersuchungen zur Psychologie der Wertung (Archiv für die gesamte Psychologie, 1913); cf. W. Gruehne, Neuere Untersuchungen zum Wertproblem.

page 435 note 1 The phrase is used by W. Strich, Das Wertproblem in der Philosophie der Gegenwart.

page 436 note 1 Sorley, , “The Philosophical Attitude” (Int. Journ. Eth., vol. xx, p. 159, 1910).Google Scholar “General theory of value might, perhaps, by stretching the meaning of an old term, be called Ethics; or a new term, Axiology, might be used for it.” Bosanquet, , Some Suggestions in Ethics, p. 46.Google Scholar “Value, worth, and goodness seem all to be names for the same character of objects.”

page 436 note 2 Mackenzie, J. S., Ultimate Values, pp. 15, 93.Google Scholar

page 436 note 3 Montague, W. P., Ways of Knowing, p. 25.Google Scholar “Theory of value is concerned with.the nature of ideals and with the way they may be made actual.” Smuts, J. C., Holism and Evolution, p. 107.Google Scholar

page 438 note 1 Five Types of Ethical Theory, p. 257.

page 438 note 2 Review of the above in Mind.

page 439 note 1 Valuation, Its Nature and its Laws.

page 439 note 2 Moral Values and the Idea of God.

page 440 note 1 Seeinfra.

page 439 note 1 Broad, , op. cit., p. 238.Google Scholar

page 439 note 2 The Nature of Existence, vol. ii, p. 398.Google Scholar

page 442 note 1 Logic for Use.

page 443 note 1 In his essay “The Conception of Intrinsic Value” (in Philosophical Studies).