Values may be, hypothetically speaking, subjective, relative or objective, meaning that they can apply to particular individuals, people within particular situations or contexts, or to everybody everywhere. It is my contention that absolute objectivity in value is in contradiction with any naturalistic worldview, for there is no such thing as intrinsic value, but only relational, or even self-relational value. The purpose of this post will be to illustrate how the philosophical movements of logical positivism and existentialism both lead to a rejection of objective value. It will also be argued, however, that the subjectivism which each movement concludes with is almost, if not just as implausible.
Using John Searle’s distinctions between ontological/epistemic objectivity/subjectivity we can more easily illustrate the path by which logical positivism (LP) and existentialism (EX) reach their different forms of ethical subjectivism. LP took science to the quintessence of knowledge, going so far as to suggest that anything which was not science, at least in principle, was mere metaphysics, and accordingly not worth all that much. Thus, in their zeal to limit themselves to epistemic objectivity with regards to ontologically objective entities, they found moral claims to be literally meaningless, having no truth conditions or values in the world.
This can be seen explicitly in the philosophies of both Bertrand Russell and A. J. Ayer. According to both men, since science says nothing at all about value, value claims are nothing but the expression of preference. In other words, since the epistemic objectivity which is necessary to make truth claims could only be achieved by defining them in terms of ontologically objective facts, and since ontologically objective facts tell or entail nothing with regards to value, we are left with subjectivism as the only option. Thus, value claims are epistemically subjective judgments which can be neither true nor false of ontologically objective states of affairs. Accordingly, moral judgments are utterly incorrigible even in principle, for while we can express our preferences about other people’s preferences, there is no normativity which transcends the individual subject in such expressions.
EX took a very different path to truth and value which led them to the same conclusion. While LP denied that the epistemically objective description of ontologically objective reality could ever tell us anything about value, EX denied that when it comes to human nature there is no ontological objectivity. Instead, each person makes their own nature by way of the choices which they freely make in life, for “existence precedes essence.” At this point, natural law, which is certainly the most promising source of objectivity in value among mankind, actually tends toward epistemic subjectivity. In this we see Kierkegaard’s notion of “subjective truth,” which maintains that when it comes to value, the most we can say is that some value is “true for me.”
Thus on the one hand we see that while LP held that there was such a thing as a universal human nature which we can, in principle, have epistemic objectivity about, they denied that epistemic objectivity could be had in the case of values since even a complete description of what our human nature “is” would not entail a single “ought.” On the other hand, however, EX denied that epistemic objectivity could be had of an ontologically objective human nature for the simple reason that there was no such thing as a universal, ontologically objective human nature. We create ourselves and well as the values which we hold, thus building a bridge from “is” to “ought” by sacrificing ontological objectivity, as well as any chance at epistemic objectivity, altogether. (This, of course, seems to be a very different notion of “is” from that of LP, as Heidegger points out.)
Thus we see that LP’s concern for epistemic objectivity in claims regarding ontologically objective facts led them to see value judgments as epistemically subjective judgment of ontologically objective states of affairs, human nature in particular. On the other hand, EX’s emphasis upon the ontological subjectivity of human nature entailed that value judgments regarding each individual and their relation to the world be epistemically subjective in nature. The former denies that human nature can tell us anything about value, whereas the latter denies that there is such a thing as human nature at all.
In the end, however, I think that both of these lines of thought are fundamentally flawed. First of all, I agree with the LP’s in that no amount of knowledge from the natural sciences can ever entail any amount or set of values. Thus, I see moral realism as being in direct contradiction with a naturalistic worldview. Furthermore, I see no way in which a universal set of values could ever be established without the ontological objectivity of values in the universe. I do not, however, see this as conclusion which merits fear or distaste, as will be defended in a later post.
I strongly disagree, however, that any account of ontologically objective facts can provide us with anything but the most barren account of what human nature is. (See here) In this, I side with the EX’s, however I think that they take the way in which human nature is constructed to be far too individualistic. It’s true that our biological inheritance does not fully determine human nature, but it does constrain it. Furthermore, many of the non-biological factor which do constrain (or even determine!) human nature, such as language and culture, are external to the individual. Accordingly, there seems to be no reason why the inter-subjective values which arise from the non-subjective interaction between culture and biology cannot serve not only as a tether to personal value, but also act as a corrective to it.
Thus, I reject the accounts of value of both the LP’s as well as the EX’s which hold such judgments to be utterly subjective, epistemically speaking, with regards to facts which are ontologically objective or subjective, respectively. Rather I see values as being inter-subjective or rather relative judgments which are social constructed and constrained by a common biological nature and physical/cultural environment. I see a shared common nature, as properly understood, as being a powerful source of quasi-objectivity in value. The problem, of course, is that the type of human nature which I am now working with is not uniform across different cultures.
