The Subjectivity of Value

The Subjectivity of Value is a sustained attack on the claim that values are objective, in the world independent of people's attitudes. The fist section argues via examples that fundamental moral disagreements are irresolvable, that the arguments on both sides are a standoff, and that an objectivist has no plausible explanation of why one side would be mistaken. It argues further that objective value properties would be strange not in being instrinsically motivating (as J. L. Mackie claimed), but in giving rise to intransitive orderings and weird variations (from Larry Temkin). The second section considers objective list accounts of well-being. It argues that typical items on such lists, such as knowledge, are not good for all people, that properly narrowing their descriptions requires appeal to people's attitudes (prohibited to an objectivist), and that other things that are intrinsically good for only some people, such as tennis, cannot fit such lists. The section on aesthetic value argues against there being aesthetic principles that link objective properties of artworks to proper evaluative responses to them. The final section argues that experienced values vary with the times at which they are experienced, as objective values would not.