So, as when addressing all other questions of great potential import, I turned to wikipedia. Sure enough, someone had indeed made a menu, and you could even select individual values, or combo meals, which pleased me to no end, as I think it is best to get good value for your values.
What follows is a list of "Life stances and other views," and their "Main intrinsic values"
Nihilism - None
Humanism - human flourishing
Hedonism - pleasure
Eudaemonism - happiness
Utilitarianism - utility (although this is often synonymous with pleasure or happiness)
Rational Deontologism - virtue or duty
Rational Eudæmonism, or tempered Deontologism - both virtue and happiness combined
Emptiness - nothing possesses essential, enduring identity
Situational Ethics - love
Buddhism - Enlightenment
So how you like them apples? A chart from which to choose, and a few considerations upon which to deliberate, and I ought to have my own fast-food-philosophy ready to hand out the drive-thru window in no time.
Considerations: Shall we have one single value around which we center our philosophy, or multiple? Obviously the advantage of having a singular focus is that it would be easier to keep one’s eye on the target, and easier to argue other things around. However, having multiple inherent values allows us the balance them against each other, (which could be a lot of fun,) and just sounds more reasonable.
Casting my eyes back over that last sentence, I realize that I just held up “fun” and “reasonable” as two inherent values. Which, given that “fun” and “reasonable” are two rather different things, pretty much settles the question in favor of multiple values.
What follows are my thoughts on these . . . values . . .
Nihilism - None - “That must be exhausting.”
Humanism - human flourishing - That sounds like a good thing. I mean, it would correlate with conditions which would be more pleasant to live in, right? More dental care and less blowflies?
Hedonism - pleasure - I think the preceding rationale for humanism appealed to pleasure, didn’t it? (Or at least a lack of unpleasantness.) So have to go with Yes.
Eudaemonism - happiness - Uhm – as far as absence of pain, and presence of contentment/satisfaction/fulfillment, (ie, happiness,) go, I think those are the things by which we distinguish what is evil from what is good, right?
Utilitarianism - utility (often synonymous with pleasure or happiness)
I agree with the parenthetical bit – sounds like an argument for happiness; albeit for the greatest number, of course.
Rational Deontologism - virtue or duty - Ok – but duty TO WHAT? To the state? To one’s family? Sounds like a moving target, to me. Are virtue and duty the same? Couldn’t we have virtue which IS duty in service of good, which can be equated to happiness? In which case, duty itself would NOT be an inherent value, otherwise faithful Nazis would be virtuous.
Rational Eudæmonism, or tempered Deontologism - both virtue and happiness combined - Ok, this sounds like what I lit upon above – virtue is duty in service of promoting the general weal, which is defined as absence of pain and misery.
Emptiness - nothing possesses essential, enduring identity - I think physical pain does have an enduring identity, and is an unquestionable bad, except insofar as it serves as an investment toward a later reduction of pain and misery, the end result of which is a net loss of misery in the system. Which means that bad (pain) may be inflicted or accepted as a good, when it is a means to an end which is a good, which must by definition be the net reduction of pain. And accepting pain for these reasons would qualify as virtue.
Situational Ethics - love - UNCLEAR
Buddhism - Enlightenment - Does “enlightenment” have to be defined only in Buddhist terms? As in, liberating oneself from suffering by liberating oneself from desire? Which, honestly, I would at least half-buy into. I mean – to the degree that suffering (pain/misery) is caused by excessive desire, (which it certainly can be) then reduction of desire would be a very smart adaptation to avoid causing oneself suffering. So – yeah – I’m not sure I buy into it as an INTRINSIC value, but it certainly does have value.
I notice that nowhere here is “Knowledge” or “Wisdom” mentioned. Could knowledge be an intrinsic value? Is wisdom simply the knowledge of how to align oneself with the universe so as to minimize friction (pain and unpleasantness,) and maximize harmony, (KY Jelly and full belly?)
Just ran across this line in Wikipedia:
Nicholas Maxwell, a contemporary philosopher, advocates that academia ought to alter its focus from the acquisition of knowledge to seeking and promoting wisdom, which he defines as the capacity to realize what is of value in life, for oneself and others.”
Which pretty much sums up what I am doing at this very moment – attempting to identify what is of value in life.
Oooh, and check this out: “Researchers in the field of positive psychology have defined wisdom as the coordination of "knowledge and experience" and "its deliberate use to improve well being."
This echoes what I said, in that the knowledge is used as means to improve well being.
How interesting that for all our society’s nattering on about the importance of freedom, it isn’t listed (on this menu, at least,) as an inherent value.
So let’s begin, shall we? I value “human flourishing,” (but not too much, please!) pleasure and happiness and therefore utilitarianism, duty or virtue only when it is in service of reduction of pain and increasing of happiness, enlightenment insofar as it supports a rational choice to amend one’s worldview to decrease suffering, and the acquisition of Wisdom and Knowledge for those ends, or for their own sakes.
Thus I am left with this: I support as intrinsic values the absence of pain, and promotion of happiness.
The acquisition of knowledge and wisdom, utilitarianism, duty and virtue, enlightenment, humanism, and freedom are secondary strategies which derive their value from the degree to which they promote or have the potential to promote, the first and primary, instrinsic values.
Knowledge and Wisdom contribute to being able to align oneself with the greater forces at work in reality, so as to promote comfort and preclude pain, much as a wind-vane aligns itself with the wind, to reduce friction. From Wikipedia: “A wise person does actions that are unpleasant to do but give good results, and doesn’t do actions that are pleasant to do but give bad results"
Enlightenment is the ability to consciously choose to reduce one’s own suffering, (or that of others,) by diminishing unreasonable desire, and thus consists of a sub-category of wisdom.
Utilitarianism contributes to being able to calculate a balance between what promotes pleasure for one group, by necessitating discomfort to another.
Duty consists of the degree of personal pain, inconvenience or discomfort that is our personal lot, by the undertaking of which we would make our contribution toward minimizing the overall amount of pain in the system. Again: “A wise person does actions that are unpleasant to do but give good results, and doesn’t do actions that are pleasant to do but give bad results “
Virtue consists of willingly accepting your assigned portion, or even voluntarily taking on a greater amount of pain, inconvenience or discomfort, thus contributing toward a reduction in overall misery experienced by others.
“Humanism” seems to me a problematic concept, as it seems to imply at least 3 distinct meanings.
1. That human well-being is the core good which defines the others
2. Human well-being is to be favored over the well-being of other organisms, or even ecosystems.
3. Human well-being is the true measure of good, as opposed to the adherence to a code of religiously-based precepts.
I have delineated those above so that I could better address them.
First, I do believe that both one and two are correct, insofar as I would typically favor the needs of a human being over the needs of another organism. I am leery of this position, however, in that we should be somewhat suspicious of our beliefs, methods and motives anytime we find ourselves to be too conveniently served by the outcome.
Secondly, it is in the nature of humans, and of the world, that many if not most actions taken seem to contain within themselves the seed of their own eventual reversal, so it is that if human well-being is favored over that of ecosystems, or large numbers of organisms, soon human well-being itself is threatened by the direct results of the very actions that were taken in favor of this same human well-being.
As such, though I do, in every way except the practical, agree that human needs should be prioritized over those of other species, at a practical level this could be disastrous, as the human need to consume and reproduce in order to experience a sense of well-being may result in an overall degradation of the very systems upon which humans are dependent for their sense of well-being.
As regards number three, I fear that human well-being, difficult though it may be, is so many orders of magnitude easier to either achieve or quantify than it would be to judge between the possibly contradictory demands of competing supernatural beings, that I am afraid religiously-based precepts can only be justifiably adhered to on any level wider than that of the private individual insofar as these precepts serve to promote human well-being.
Thus, I can only be said to favor humanism insomuch as it identifies itself as secular, and maintains a forward-looking, anticipatory view toward possibly counter-productive results of the human-favoring stances it adopts.
Finally Freedom is valuable in that it allows each of us to determine for ourselves what will most serve to promote human happiness and alleviate misery, which operates on the assumption that an aggregate of individuals will better (ie, more accurately and more effectively) give voice to their collective concerns than any point of perception or vocalization emerging from or based in a singular entity.
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