The most common kind of critiques I get of my theory of human intrinsic values are:
1) “But I only care about well-being (in the sense of happiness, pleasure, or lack of suffering) – that’s my ONLY intrinsic value.”
2) “People may THINK they value other things, but everything that matters bottoms out in well-being.”
Here’s my response:
First of all, I want to say that I really appreciate thoughtful criticism of my work. It helps me see the truth more clearly and improve my ideas. Thank you to those who provide it!
Before responding to these critiques, let me clarify what my actual claims are.
I claim that:
i) One thing the human brain does is assign value to states of the world (e.g., if that person loved me, it would be valuable; if they hated me, it would produce negative value).
ii) Upon careful reflection, we will see that most of these things we value we only value instrumentally – that is, we value them because they give us other things. But some of our values are “intrinsic values” – we care about them for their own sake and would value them even if they give us nothing else (see here).
iii) Intrinsic values are psychological facts about humans. No claim is being made here about what people “should” value or what is “objectively” morally valuable.
Since we’re talking about psychology (not philosophy), we can study people to discover their intrinsic values.
How can people’s intrinsic values be studied? Well, we had people go through a quiz to help make sure they understand what intrinsic values are, and then we asked them about many values and had them rate them on this scale.
What we found is that most people say they have MANY intrinsic values. Here are examples of the most common ones we found among Westerners.
Okay, so now to address the critiques, starting with the first one:
Critique 1: “But I only care about well-being (or happiness) – that’s my ONLY intrinsic value.”
Well, you may be right that you only value well-being (with no other intrinsic values). On the other hand, in our studies, it’s very rare for someone to have only one intrinsic value, so perhaps you are mistaken about your values (or using definitions in a different way than me).
Even if you do only have one intrinsic value (which you might!), that doesn’t mean that most other people only have one – in our experience, most people report having many, even when a lot of effort is made to help them understand what exactly an intrinsic value is.
Let’s take on the second critique:
Critique 2: “People may THINK they value other things, but everything that matters bottoms out in well-being.”
One way to interpret this critique is as a claim about what objectively matters – e.g., “people might think other things matter, but the objective moral truth is that only well-being matters.”
This is a very controversial philosophical position that most laypeople and most philosophers disagree with. For instance, these survey results of professional academic philosophers show that most don’t accept consequentialism, let alone theories that only value well-being (see this result from the PhilPapers Survey).
But even if the objective moral truth were that only well-being matters, that still wouldn’t mean that people’s intrinsic values all bottom out in well-being.
Remember, these are psychological facts we’re referring to here, NOT facts about the universe or philosophy. People might (psychologically) intrinsically value things that are not “objectively”/”universally” valuable.
Another (quite different) way to interpret this critique (“People may THINK they value other things, but everything that matters bottoms out in well-being”) is that all psychological values bottom out in well-being.
For instance, perhaps if people reflect deeply enough, they will realize that everything they think they value intrinsically (that doesn’t seem to be just about well-being), they actually ONLY value because of its impacts on well-being.
This strongly contradicts what people claim about their own intrinsic values.
I think there are actually a lot of situations where people intrinsically value something other than well-being.
Let’s consider some of these:
(1) Some people seem to value truth intrinsically – in fact, they’d rather know an unpleasant truth even if it made their well-being a bit lower than believe a lie. I’m not saying they value truth infinitely – just that they would sometimes be willing to sacrifice some amount of well-being for the truth. For instance, if a friend (who is now deceased) secretly hated them during the whole friendship, I think many people would want to know that, even if they predicted they would be less happy knowing than not knowing.
(2) As an extreme example, many people are horrified by the idea of spending the rest of their life in total bliss if the way it is achieved is via a machine that deludes them into thinking at every moment that they’ve just won a Nobel prize, or if it’s achieved by a drug with no side effects which makes them blissful but prevents them from ever doing anything else other than lying there and experiencing bliss. Many people are adamant that they wouldn’t choose such a life even if it makes them way happier than they would normally be, and even if their loved ones could get it too (so they wouldn’t be leaving loved ones miserable).
(3) Many people care about how people think of them after they are dead – after the point that their well-being can be impacted.
(4) Many people seem to intrinsically value human connection – while human connection (e.g., love) does tend to make people happy, people often are willing to do things that make themselves less happy for those they love – even when those things aren’t about improving the happiness of the loved one (e.g., making well-being sacrifices to satisfy the wishes of a loved one after that person has passed away).
(5) There are many things people profess a willingness to sacrifice some of their well-being for, and they actually back that willingness up with behavior (i.e., they say and act as though they believe the thing is more valuable than the marginal well-being it sacrifices). For instance, some people seem to value nature itself (I’m not talking about the suffering of animals in nature or the impact nature has on humans – I’m talking about the protection or preservation of nature itself – such as the protection of trees, ecosystems, or the survival of endangered species). Some people make some well-being sacrifices to have a more positive effect on nature.
(6) Another intrinsic value some people appear to have is not being too prideful or boastful. People do not usually care about this (I claim) because of considerations related to well-being. Similarly, many people care about worshipping god or being a good practitioner of their religion – for reasons unrelated to potential reward (though, of course, the religion might say there also can be a reward).
(7) Many people seem to value equality intrinsically. For instance, many people (in fact, most people, I think) would be willing to sacrifice a little total utility to spread the utility a bit more equally. They think a world where 10 people each have (in arbitrary units) 0.999 utility (leading to a sum of 9.99 utility) is better than one where one person has 10, and everyone else has 0, even though the former world has slightly less total utility than the latter. Equality may be a well-being-related value, but it is not the same as valuing well-being – many people are willing to give up some total well-being to get more equality.
All of that being said, many intrinsic values are, indeed, well-being-related.
But even if we just consider well-being-related intrinsic values, I think it’s a mistake to collapse them into a single intrinsic value of well-being (or happiness) since they can be very different from each other (despite all being well-being related) and can be valued in very different amounts by any one person.
As an example, most people value their own happiness to a different degree than the happiness of their family members, and they value their family members’ happiness to a different degree than that of strangers (or cows, or snakes, or ladybugs). So yes, these are all well-being-related values, but I think it’s more accurate to think of these as multiple intrinsic values because the amount they value each is not the same. Again, I’m not talking here about objective moral truth (is it right to value these different amounts?) – I’m talking about psychological facts.
Furthermore, some people even value positive states of well-being to different degrees than negative ones (e.g., they value reducing suffering more than increasing happiness). This suggests that well-being isn’t a single unified intrinsic value for these people.
There is one more interpretation of a critique like “people may THINK they value other things, but everything that matters bottoms out in well-being,” which is that all people REALLY value is their own pleasure – when they say they value something like nature itself or equality or being remembered when they’re gone, they are just getting pleasure out of the thought of that thing, and it’s that pleasure itself that they value. I think this is a very inaccurate perspective on the way human minds work, but it’s way too much to cover in this essay. Here is a whole other essay where I address that topic if you’re curious to see it.
So, do all intrinsic values boil down just to well-being? I don’t think so – intrinsic values are psychological facts about humans, and “bottoming out in well-being” just doesn’t seem to be how most human minds work. Most humans intrinsically care about lots of different things.
This piece was first written on June 5, 2024, and first appeared on my website on June 20, 2024.
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