Curtis on Nostr: I’ve had a lot of different conversations about whether or not value is subjective. ...

I’ve had a lot of different conversations about whether or not value is subjective.

My main thesis is that individual valuations are subjective, but value itself is not.

Why?

Because I want to preserve the notion that valuations can be incorrect, without directly restricting what people ought to value or imposing my own set of values on others.


I believe I have good reasons to want to preserve the former without doing the latter:
1. If we don’t preserve the notion that valuations can be incorrect, then we have no foundation for morality, and we have no business promoting that which we find valuable.
2. Without differences in values between individuals, there would be no specialization, no art, no culture, no experimentation, and we would collectively become maladaptive.


So, imagine a set of individuals. Now imagine that each of them is presented with the same binary decision, but each of these individuals is constituted differently and has a different background or “context.”

Because each individual is constituted differently and exists in a different context, the right decision could vary person to person, as even if they all made the same choice, their outcomes could vary.

So let’s imagine that there’s a correct choice for each individual, but no one person is omniscient enough to know what all the others ought to do. This “correct” choice can vary person to person, and because the decision is binary, it could be that what is correct for one person is the exact opposite of what is correct for another.

Now, just because there is a correct decision for each individual, and these correct answers can be different from one another, this does not guarantee that each person will make the correct decision. They could still choose the wrong course of action.

So there’s a set of correct decisions, and there’s a set of actual decisions. Both of these sets contain variation, and when an individual’s actual decision differs from that person’s correct decision, they have valued the wrong thing.

This DOES NOT mean that any one person can know what everyone else should do. Nor does it mean that people have complete freedom to do what they please without concern about being right. That being said, we can come up with reasons and make arguments for and against certain actions, taking individual context into consideration while maintaining humility with respect to other’s perspectives.

Now imagine this exact scenario for every decision anyone makes.