Subjectivism in Value Theory

  • FRITZSON, FRITZ-ANTON (PI)

Project: Dissertation

Project Details

Popular science description

What is the relationship between values and attitudes? According to value subjectivists an object's value is grounded on the attitudes that we as subjects have towards the object in question. How this idea is to be understood and its implications are examined in this thesis project.

It is commonly thought that what differentiates subjectivists from objectivists about value is that, while subjectivists take value to be related to (pro- and con-) attitudes (such as desires or preferences), objectivists deny such a relation. But that values and attitudes are in some way related, even necessarily so, is not something that objectivists need to deny. Perhaps we could say instead that, on subjectivist views, value depends on attitudes, and that it is this dependence that is denied by objectivists? But this would be even less accurate since there is an important sense in which subjectivists deny that value necessarily depends on attitudes, and some objectivists affirm a necessary dependence of values on attitudes. What it is for value to “depend” on attitudes is open to radically different interpretations--not all of which are best seen as subjectivistic. Thus depicted, the situation could easily lead us to give up altogether on the quest of finding a clear demarcation line between subjectivism and objectivism in value theory, and conclude instead that this classification is not so interesting after all. But this, I believe, would be a mistake. In my doctoral dissertation I hope to show that subjectivism and objectivism really are distinct positions--that there is something that is characteristic of subjectivist views that all objectivists deny--and that this something does concern the distinctive role that attitudes play in a subjectivist theory of value.
StatusFinished
Effective start/end date2009/09/012014/12/31