Value theory

This article is about the generic concept of value. For its application in economics, see Theory of value (economics).

In ethics and the social sciences, value theory involves various approaches that examine how, why, and to what degree humans value things and whether the object or subject of valuing is a person, idea, object, or anything else. Within philosophy, it is also known as ethics or axiology.

Traditionally, philosophical investigations in value theory have sought to understand the concept of "the good". Today, some work in value theory has trended more towards empirical sciences, recording what people do value and attempting to understand why they value it in the context of psychology, sociology, and economics.

In ecological economics, value theory is separated into two types: donor-type value and receiver-type value. Ecological economists tend to believe that 'real wealth' needs an accrual-determined value as a measure of what things were needed to make an item or generate a service.

In other fields, theories posit the importance of values as an analytical independent variable (including those put forward by Max Weber, Émile Durkheim, Talcott Parsons, and Jürgen Habermas). Classical examples of sociological traditions which deny or downplay the question of values are institutionalism, historical materialism (including Marxism), behaviorism, pragmatic-oriented theories, postmodern philosophy and various Objectivist-oriented theories.

At the general level, there is a difference between moral and natural goods. Moral goods are those that have to do with the conduct of persons, usually leading to praise or blame. Natural goods, on the other hand, have to do with objects, not persons. For example, the statement "Mary is a good person" uses 'good' very differently than in the statement "That is good food".

Ethics is mainly focused on moral goods rather than natural goods, while economics has a concern in what is economically good for the society but not an individual person and is also interested in natural goods. However, both moral and natural goods are equally relevant to goodness and value theory, which is more general in scope.

Definition

Value theory is the systematic study of values. Also called axiology and theory of values, it is the branch of philosophy that examines which things are good and what it means for something to be good. It distinguishes different types of values and explores how they can be measured and compared. It also studies whether values are a fundamental aspect of reality and how they affect phenomena such as emotion, desire, decision, and action. Its topic is relevant to many human endeavors because values are guiding principles that underlie the political, economic, scientific, and personal spheres. Value theory analyzes and evaluates phenomena such as well-being, utility, beauty, human life, knowledge, wisdom, freedom, love, and justice.

The precise definition of value theory is disputed and some theorists rely on alternative characterizations. In a broad sense, value theory is a catch-all label that encompasses all philosophical disciplines studying evaluative or normative topics. According to this view, value theory is one of the main branches of philosophy and includes ethics, aesthetics, social philosophy, political philosophy, and philosophy of religion. A similar broad characterization sees value theory as a multidisciplinary area of inquiry that covers research from fields like sociology, anthropology, psychology, and economics in addition to philosophy. In a narrow sense, value theory is a subdiscipline of ethics that is particularly relevant to the school of consequentialism since it determines how to assess the value of consequences.

The word axiology has its origin in the ancient Greek terms ἄξιος (axios, meaning 'worth' or 'value') and λόγος (logos, meaning 'study' or 'theory of'). Even though the roots of value theory reach back to the ancient period, this area of thought was only conceived as a distinct discipline in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when the term axiology was coined. The terms value theory and axiology are usually used as synonyms but some philosophers distinguish between them. According to one characterization, axiology is a subfield of value theory that limits itself to theories about what things are valuable and how valuable they are. The term timology is an older and less common synonym.

Value

Main article: Value (ethics and social sciences)

Value is the worth, usefulness, or merit of something. Many evaluative terms are employed to talk about value, including good, best, great, and excellent as well as their negative counterparts, like bad and terrible. Some value terms, like good and bad, are pure evaluations in that they only express the value of something without any additional descriptive content. They are known as thin evaluative concepts. Thick evaluative concepts, like courageous and cruel, provide more information by expressing other qualities besides the evaluation, such as character traits. Values are often understood as degrees that cover positive and negative magnitudes corresponding to good and bad. The terms better and worse are used to compare degrees, but it is controversial whether this is possible in all cases.

Evaluative terms are sometimes distinguished from normative or deontic terms. Normative terms, like right, wrong, and obligation, prescribe actions or other states by expressing what ought to be done or what is required. Evaluative terms have a wider scope because they are not limited to what people can control or are responsible for. For example, involuntary events like digestion and earthquakes can have a positive or negative value even if they are not right or wrong in a strict sense. Despite the distinction, evaluative and normative concepts are closely related. For example, the value of the consequences of an action may affect whether this action is right or wrong.

Value theorists distinguish various types or categories of values. The different classifications overlap and are based on considerations like the source, beneficiary, and function of the value.

Intrinsic and instrumental

Main article: Instrumental and intrinsic value

A thing has intrinsic or final value if it is good in itself or good for its own sake. This means that it is good independent of external factors or outcomes. A thing has extrinsic or instrumental value if it is useful or leads to other good things. In other words, it is a means to bring about a desired end. For example, tools like microwaves or money have instrumental value thanks to the useful functions they perform. In some cases, the thing produced this way has itself instrumental value, like when using money to buy a microwave. This can result in a chain of instrumentally valuable things in which each link gets its value by causing the following link. Intrinsically valuable things stand at the endpoint of these chains and ground the value of all the links that come before them.

One way to distinguish between intrinsic and instrumental value relies on a thought experiment that imagines the valuable thing in isolation from everything else. In such a situation, purely instrumentally valuable things lose their value since they serve no purpose while purely intrinsically valuable things remain valuable. According to a common view, pleasure is one of the sources of intrinsic value. Other suggested sources include life, health, beauty, freedom, and knowledge.

Intrinsic and instrumental value are not exclusive categories. As a result, a thing can have both intrinsic and instrumental value if it is both good in itself while also leading to other good things. In a similar sense, a thing can have different instrumental values at the same time, both positive and negative ones. This is the case if some of its consequences are good while others are bad. The total instrumental value of a thing is the value balance of all its consequences.

Because instrumental value depends on other values, it is an open question whether it should be understood as a value in a strict sense. For example, the overall value of a chain of causes leading to an intrinsically valuable thing remains the same if instrumentally valuable links are added or removed without affecting the intrinsically valuable thing. The observation that the overall value does not change is sometimes used as an argument that the things added or removed do not have value.

Traditionally, value theorists have used the terms intrinsic value and final value interchangeably, just like the terms extrinsic value and instrumental value. This practice has been questioned in the 20th century based on the idea that they are similar but not identical concepts. According to this view, a thing has intrinsic value if the source of its value is an intrinsic property, meaning that the value does not depend on how the thing is related to other objects. Extrinsic value, by contrast, depends on external relations. This view sees instrumental value as one type of extrinsic value based on causal relations. At the same time, it allows that there are other types of non-instrumental extrinsic value. Final value is understood as what is valued for its own sake, independent of whether intrinsic or extrinsic properties are responsible.

Absolute and relative

Another distinction relies on the contrast between absolute and relative value. Absolute value, also called value simpliciter, is a form of unconditional value. A thing has relative value if its value is limited to certain considerations or viewpoints.

One form of relative value is restricted to the type of an entity, expressed in sentences like "That is a good knife" or "Jack is a good thief". This form is known as attributive goodness since the word "good" modifies the meaning of another term. To be attributively good as a certain type means to possess certain qualities characteristic of that type. For example, a good knife is sharp and a good thief has the skill of stealing without getting caught. Attributive goodness contrasts with predicative goodness. The sentence "Pleasure is good" is an example since the word good is used as a predicate to talk about the unqualified value of pleasure. Attributive and predicative goodness can accompany each other, but this is not always the case. For instance, being a good thief is not necessarily a good thing.

Another type of relative value restricts goodness to a specific person. Known as personal value, it expresses what benefits a particular person, promotes their welfare, or is in their interest. For example, a poem written by a child may have personal value for the parents even if the poem lacks value for others. Impersonal value, by contrast, is good in general without restriction to any specific person or viewpoint. Some philosophers, like G. E. Moore, reject the existence of personal values, holding that all values are impersonal. Others have proposed theories about the relation between personal and impersonal value. The agglomerative theory says that impersonal value is nothing but the sum of all personal values. Another view understands impersonal value as a specific type of personal value taken from the perspective of the universe as a whole.

Agent-relative value is sometimes contrasted with personal value as another person-specific limitation of the evaluative outlook. Agent-relative values affect moral considerations about what a person is responsible for or guilty of. For example, if Mei promises to pick Pedro up from the airport then an agent-relative value obligates Mei to drive to the airport. This obligation is in place even if it does not benefit Mei, in which case there is an agent-relative value without a personal value. In consequentialism, agent-relative values are often discussed in relation to ethical dilemmas. One dilemma revolves around the question of whether an individual should murder an innocent person if this prevents the murder of two innocent people by a different perpetrator. The agent-neutral perspective tends to affirm this idea since one murder is preferable to two. The agent-relative perspective tends to reject this conclusion, arguing that the initial murder should be avoided since it negatively impacts the agent-relative value of the individual.

Traditionally, most value theorists see absolute value as the main topic of value theory and focus their attention on this type. Nonetheless, some philosophers, like Peter Geach and Philippa Foot, have argued that the concept of absolute value by itself is meaningless and should be understood as one form of relative value.

Other distinctions

Other classifications of values have been proposed without a widely accepted main classification. Some focus on the types of entities that have value. They include distinct categories for entities like things, the environment, individuals, groups, and society. Another subdivision pays attention to the type of benefit involved and encompasses material, economic, moral, social, political, aesthetic, and religious values. Classifications by the beneficiary of the value distinguish between self- and other-oriented values.

A historically influential approach identifies three spheres of value: truth, goodness, and beauty. For example, the neo-Kantian philosopher Wilhelm Windelband characterizes them as the highest goals of consciousness, with thought aiming at truth, will aiming at goodness, and emotion aiming at beauty. A similar view, proposed by the Chinese philosopher Zhang Dainian, says that the value of truth belongs to knowledge, the value of goodness belongs to behavior, and the value of beauty belongs to art. This three-fold distinction also plays a central role in the philosophies of Franz Brentano and Jürgen Habermas. Other suggested types of values include objective, subjective, potential, actual, contingent, necessary, inherent, and constitutive values.

Schools of thought

Realism and anti-realism

Value realism is the view that values have mind-independent existence. This means that objective facts determine what has value, irrespective of subjective beliefs and preferences. According to this view, the evaluative statement "That act is bad" is as objectively true or false as the empirical statement "That act causes distress".

Realists often analyze values as properties of valuable things. For example, stating that kindness is good asserts that kindness possesses the property of goodness. Value realists disagree about what type of property is involved. Naturalists say that value is a natural property. Natural properties can be known through empirical observation and are studied by the natural sciences. This means that value is similar to other natural properties, like size and shape. Non-naturalists reject this view but agree that values are real. They say that values differ significantly from empirical properties and belong to another realm of reality. According to one view, they are known through rational or emotional intuition rather than empirical observation.

Another disagreement among realists is about whether the entity carrying the value is a concrete individual or a state of affairs. For instance, the name "Bill" refers to an individual while the sentence "Bill is pleased" refers to a state of affairs. States of affairs are complex entities that combine other entities, like the individual "Bill" and the property "is pleased". Some value theorists hold that the value is a property directly of Bill while others contend that it is a property of the fact that Bill is pleased. This distinction affects various disputes in value theory. In some cases, a value is intrinsic according to one view and extrinsic according to the other.

Value realism contrasts with anti-realism, which comes in various forms. In its strongest version, anti-realism rejects the existence of values in any form, claiming that value statements are meaningless. Between these two positions, there are various intermediary views. Some anti-realists accept that value claims have meaning but deny that they have a truth value, a position known as non-cognitivism. For example, emotivists say that value claims express emotional attitudes, similar to how exclamations like "Yay!" or "Boo!" express emotions rather than stating facts.

Cognitivists contend that value statements have a truth value. Error theorists defend anti-realism based on this view by stating that all value statements are false because there are no values. Another view accepts the existence of values but denies that they are mind-independent. According to this view, the mental states of individuals determine whether an object has value, for instance, because individuals desire it. A similar view is defended by existentialists like Jean-Paul Sartre, who argued that values are human creations that endow the world with meaning. Subjectivist theories say that values are relative to each subject, whereas more objectivist outlooks hold that values depend on mind in general rather than on the individual mind. A different position accepts that values are mind-independent but holds that they are reducible to other facts, meaning that they are not a fundamental part of reality. One form of reductionism maintains that a thing is good if it is fitting to favor this thing, regardless of whether people actually favor it. The strongest form of realism says that value is a fundamental part of reality and cannot be reduced to other aspects.

Sources of value

Various theories about the sources of value have been proposed. They aim to clarify what kinds of things are intrinsically good. The historically influential theory of hedonism states that how people feel is the only source of value. More specifically, it says that pleasure is the only intrinsic good and pain is the only intrinsic evil. According to this view, everything else only has instrumental value to the extent that it leads to pleasure or pain, including knowledge, health, and justice. Hedonists usually understand the term pleasure in a broad sense that covers all kinds of enjoyable experiences, including bodily pleasures of food and sex as well as more intellectual or abstract pleasures, like the joy of reading a book or being happy about a friend's promotion. Pleasurable experiences come in degrees, and hedonists usually associate their intensity and duration with the magnitude of value they have.

Many hedonists identify pleasure and pain as symmetric opposites, meaning that the value of pleasure balances out the disvalue of pain if they have the same intensity. However, some hedonists reject this symmetry and give more weight to avoiding pain than to experiencing pleasure. Although it is widely accepted that pleasure is valuable, the hedonist claim that it is the only source of value is controversial.

Desire theories offer a slightly different account, stating that desire satisfaction is the only source of value. This theory overlaps with hedonism because many people desire pleasure and because desire satisfaction is often accompanied by pleasure. Nonetheless, there are important differences: people desire a variety of other things as well, like knowledge, achievement, and respect; additionally, desire satisfaction may not always result in pleasure. Some desire theorists hold that value is a property of desire satisfaction itself, while others say that it is a property of the objects that satisfy a desire. One debate in desire theory concerns whether any desire is a source of value. For example, if a person has a false belief that money makes them happy, it is questionable whether the satisfaction of their desire for money is a source of value. To address this consideration, some desire theorists say that a desire can only provide value if a fully informed and rational person would have it. This view excludes faulty desires.

Perfectionism identifies the realization of human nature and the cultivation of characteristic human abilities as the source of intrinsic goodness. It covers capacities and character traits belonging to the bodily, emotional, volitional, cognitive, social, artistic, and religious fields. Perfectionists disagree about which human excellences are the most important. Many are pluralistic in recognizing a diverse array of human excellences, such as knowledge, creativity, health, beauty, free agency, and moral virtues like benevolence and courage. According to one suggestion, there are two main fields of human goods: theoretical abilities responsible for understanding the world and practical abilities responsible for interacting with it. Some perfectionists provide an ideal characterization of human nature, holding that human excellences are those aspects that promote the realization of this goal. This view is exemplified in Aristotle's focus on rationality as the nature and ideal state of human beings. Non-humanistic versions extend perfectionism to the natural world in general, arguing that excellence as a source of intrinsic value is not limited to the human realm.

Monism and pluralism

Monist theories of value assert that there is only a single source of intrinsic value. They agree that various things have value but maintain that all fundamentally good things belong to the same type. For example, hedonists hold that nothing but pleasure has intrinsic value, while desire theorists argue that desire satisfaction is the only source of fundamental goodness. Pluralists reject this view, contending that a simple single-value system is too crude to capture the complexity of the sphere of values. They say that diverse sources of value exist independently of one another, each contributing to the overall value of the world.

One motivation for value pluralism is the observation that people value diverse types of things, including happiness, friendship, success, and knowledge. This diversity becomes particularly prominent when people face difficult decisions between competing values, such as choosing between friendship and career success. Since monists accept only one source of intrinsic value, they explain this observation by holding that other items in this diversity have only instrumental value or, in some cases, no value at all.

Pluralists have proposed various accounts of how their view affects practical decisions. Rational decisions often rely on value comparisons to determine which course of action should be pursued. Some pluralists discuss a hierarchy of values reflecting the relative importance and weight of different value types to help people promote higher values when faced with difficult choices. For example, philosopher Max Scheler ranks values based on how enduring and fulfilling they are into the levels of pleasure, utility, vitality, culture, and holiness. He asserts that people should not promote lower values, like pleasure, if this comes at the expense of higher values.

Radical pluralists reject this approach, putting more emphasis on diversity by holding that different types of values are not comparable with each other. This means that each value type is unique, making it possible to determine which one is superior. Some value theorists use radical pluralism to argue that value conflicts are inevitable, that the gain of one value cannot always compensate for the loss of another, and that some ethical dilemmas are irresolvable. For example, philosopher Isaiah Berlin applied this idea to the values of liberty and equality, arguing that a gain in one cannot make up for a loss in the other. Similarly, philosopher Joseph Raz said that it is often impossible to compare the values of career paths, like when choosing between becoming a lawyer or a clarinetist. The terms incomparability and incommensurability are often used as synonyms. However, philosophers like Ruth Chang distinguish them. According to this view, incommensurability means that there is no common measure to quantify values of different types. Incommensurable values may or may not be comparable. If they are, it is possible to say that one value is better than another, but it is not possible to quantify how much better it is.

Others

Several controversies surround the question of how the intrinsic value of a whole is determined by the intrinsic values of its parts. According to the additivity principle, the intrinsic value of a whole is simply the sum of the intrinsic values of its parts. For example, if a virtuous person becomes happy then the intrinsic value of the happiness is simply added to the intrinsic value of the virtue, thereby increasing the overall value.

Various counterexamples to the additivity principle have been proposed, suggesting that the relation between parts and wholes is more complex. For example, Immanuel Kant argued that if a vicious person becomes happy, this happiness, though good in itself, does not increase the overall value. On the contrary, it makes things worse, according to Kant, since viciousness should not be rewarded with happiness. This situation is known as an organic unity, a whole whose intrinsic value differs from the sum of the intrinsic values of its parts. Another perspective, called holism about value, asserts that the intrinsic value of a thing depends on its context. Holists can argue that happiness has positive intrinsic value in the context of virtue and negative intrinsic value in the context of vice. Atomists reject this view, saying that intrinsic value is context-independent.

Theories of value aggregation provide concrete principles for calculating the overall value of an outcome based on how positively or negatively each individual is affected by it. For example, if a government implements a new policy that affects some people positively and others negatively, theories of value aggregation can be used to determine whether the overall value of the policy is positive or negative. Axiological utilitarianism accepts the additivity principle, saying that the total value is simply the sum of all individual values. Axiological egalitarians are not only interested in the sum total of value but also in how the values are distributed. They argue that an outcome with a balanced advantage distribution is better than an outcome where some benefit a lot while others benefit little, even if the two outcomes have the same sum total. Axiological prioritarians are particularly concerned with the benefits of individuals who are worse off. They say that providing advantages to people in need has more value than providing the same advantages to others.

Formal axiology is a theory of value initially developed by philosopher Robert S. Hartman. This approach treats axiology as a formal science, akin to logic and mathematics. It uses axioms to give an abstract definition of value, understanding it not as a property of things but as a property of concepts. Values measure the extent to which an entity fulfills its concept. For example, a good car has all the desirable qualities of cars, like a reliable engine and effective brakes, whereas a bad car lacks many. Formal axiology distinguishes between three fundamental value types: intrinsic values apply to people; extrinsic values apply to things, actions, and social roles; systemic values apply to conceptual constructs. Formal axiology examines how these value types form a hierarchy and how they can be measured.

Ethics and axiology

Main article: Value (ethics and social sciences)

Intuitively, theories of value must be important to ethics. A number of useful distinctions have been made by philosophers in the treatment of value.

Pragmatism and contributory goodness

Further information: Pragmatic ethics

John Dewey (1859–1952) in his book Theory of Valuation, says goodness is the outcome of ethic valuation and a continuous balancing of "ends in view". An end in view is said to be an objective potentially adopted, which may be refined or rejected based on its consistency with other objectives or as a means to objectives already held.

Dewey's empiricist approach evinces absolute intrinsic value denial; i.e. not accepting intrinsic value as an inherent or enduring property of things. Instead, Dewey sees the appearance of intrinsic value as an illusory product of our continuous valuative activity as purposive beings. In addition to denying categorically that there is anything like intrinsic value, Dewey held the same position with regard to moral values: for Dewey, moral values are also based on a learning process, and are never intrinsic or absolute.

Another contribution of pragmatism to value theory is the idea of contributory goods with a contributory conditionality. These have the same qualities as the good thing, but need some emergent property of a whole state-of-affairs in order to be good. For example, salt is food on its own, but is far better as part of a prepared meal. In other words, such goods are only "good" when certain conditions are met. This is in contrast to other goods, which may be considered "good" in a wider variety of situations.

Kant: hypothetical and categorical goods

The thinking of Immanuel Kant greatly influenced moral philosophy. He thought of moral value as a unique and universally identifiable property, as an absolute value rather than a relative value. He showed that many practical goods are good only in states-of-affairs described by a sentence containing an "if" clause, e.g., in the sentence, "Sunshine is only good if you do not live in the desert." Further, the "if" clause often described the category in which the judgment was made (art, science, etc.). Kant described these as "hypothetical goods", and tried to find a "categorical" good that would operate across all categories of judgment without depending on an "if-then" clause.

An influential result of Kant's search was the idea of a good will being the only intrinsic good. Moreover, Kant saw a good will as acting in accordance with a moral command, the categorical imperative, "Act according to those maxims that you could will to be universal law", which should not be confused with the ethic of reciprocity or Golden Rule, e.g. Matthew 7:12. Whereas the golden rule states that "One should treat others as one would like others to treat oneself", Kant asks us to analyze whether an act can be performed simultaneously by everyone without exception. For example, murder cannot be performed simultaneously by everyone, one set of people would have to live and the other die. That disparity is an exception. The act cannot be performed without exception, therefore it fails the categorical imperative. Contrast this with the golden rule which is subjective to the individual. Following the logic of the golden rule, if I wanted someone to kill me, then it would be acceptable for me to kill others, because I would be doing to others what I would want done to me. Kant's categorical imperative aims to avoid this flaw. From this, and a few other axioms, Kant developed a moral system that would apply to any "praiseworthy person".

Kantian philosophers believe that any general definition of goodness must define goods that are categorical in the sense that Kant intended.

Sociology

Main article: Value (ethics and social sciences)

In sociology, value theory is concerned with personal values which are popularly held by a community, and how those values might change under particular conditions. Different groups of people may hold or prioritize different kinds of values influencing social behavior.

Methods of study range from questionnaire surveys to participant observation. Values can be socially attributed. What the community perceives as of paramount significance to them denotes or decipher their social attributes.

Economics

Main article: Theory of value (economics)

Economic analysis emphasizes goods sought in a market and tends to use the consumer's choices as evidence (revealed preference) that various products are of economic value. In this view, religious or political struggle over what "goods" are available in the marketplace is inevitable, and consensus on some core questions about body and society and ecosystems affected by the transaction, are outside the market's goods so long as they are unowned.

However, some natural goods seem to also be moral goods. For example, those things that are owned by a person may be said to be natural goods, but over which a particular individual(s) may have moral claims. So it is necessary to make another distinction: between moral and non-moral goods. A non-moral good is something that is desirable for someone or other; despite the name to the contrary, it may include moral goods. A moral good is anything which an actor is considered to be morally obligated to strive toward.

When discussing non-moral goods, one may make a useful distinction between inherently serviced and material goods in the marketplace (or its exchange value), versus perceived intrinsic and experiential goods to the buyer. A strict service economy model takes pains to distinguish between the goods and service guarantees to the market, and that of the service and experience to the consumer.

Sometimes, moral and natural goods can conflict. The value of natural "goods" is challenged by such issues as addiction. The issue of addiction also brings up the distinction between economic and moral goods, where an economic good is whatever stimulates economic growth. For instance, some claim that cigarettes are a "good" in the economic sense, as their production can employ tobacco growers and doctors who treat lung cancer. Many people would agree that cigarette smoking is not morally "good", nor naturally "good," but still recognize that it is economically good, which means, it has exchange value, even though it may have a negative public good or even be bad for a person's body (not the same as "bad for the person" necessarily – consider the issue of suicide).

In ecological economics, value theory is separated into two types: donor-type value and receiver-type value. Ecological economists tend to believe that 'real wealth' needs a donor-determined value as a measure of what things were needed to make an item or generate a service. An example of receiver-type value is 'market value', or 'willingness to pay', the principal method of accounting used in neo-classical economics. In contrast, both Marx's labour theory of value and the emergy concept are conceived as donor-type value. Emergy theorists believe that this conception of value has relevance to all of philosophy, economics, sociology and psychology as well as environmental science.

Silvio Gesell denied value theory in economics. He thought that value theory is useless and prevents economics from becoming science and that a currency administration guided by value theory is doomed to sterility and inactivity.

See also

• Aesthetics
• Anthropological theories of value
• Axiological ethics
• Baden School
• Cultural Institutions Studies
• Graded absolutism
• Illegalism
• Intuitionism
• Labor theory of value
• Law of value
• Logic
• Morality
• Friedrich Nietzsche
• Normative science
• Practical philosophy
• Pirsig's Metaphysics of Quality
• Rationality
• Rationality and power
• Social contract
• Summum bonum
• Thick concept
• Ultimate importance
• Value-added theory
• Value engineering

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Further reading

• Nicholas Rescher. 2010. Axiogenesis: An Essay in Metaphysical Optimalism. Lexington Books.