On Values-A Reply on the Subjective Nature

I thought I would reply to your comment, and clarify my ideas about the topic a little. There is much ambiguity in language-while in philosophy one tries to reduce that and develop meaning and expression concurrently.

Of course that is rather ambitious, for language is designed with analogy and association of terms of approximation of meaning quite as much as with application of labels directly to objects.

Anyway, I felt that values and value theories are designed by intelligent beings who assign whatever values they have when it is useful. Human beings as part of the Universe too, cohere within whatever primordial value the Universe has for itself. If they represent portions or forms of it as of more value than other aspects of it, so it is.

It is not certain that values are accurately assigned either. Monty Hall's TV show 'Let's Make a Deal' had contestants giving a value more to one curtain rather than another two to choose from fundamentally for no reason. One may be wrong in valuing select political candidate during an election over others, and one may be wrong in valuing fossil fuels very highly-enough to buy stock in Exxon, if in the near future an inventor discovers how to make some sort of environmentally benign room temperature liquid hydrogen fuel or some such concoction to replace petroleum fuel.

If there is any intrinsic value to anything I am not sure that humanity can best rely upon their own judgment for determining what the absolute good is. Of course I mean that as a Christian believer, in that none would perhaps be cognizant of God or of the need for salvation without an element of donated grace from God.

If there is any intrinsic worth to nature I guess it might be in the functional context in that it supports life, and in the more basic context in that God made it, therefore it is good.

Of course many unbelievers would not agree with that point, yet I shall allow them do develop their own points regarding the fundamental worthlessness of everything that exists unless it has some immediate utilitarian function, or even hedonistic application.

One might find a primordial good in virtually everything-yes, even in Arizona or in Petersburg Alaska when one cannot find a job. Sunsets and sunrises, birds flying through raindrops glistening with sunshine streaking through clouds in powerful rays; these are valuable things for-themselves even though the car dealer devalues them as causing mud to be splattered on 2011 vehicles waiting for sale. Values are not simultaneously appreciated by all people with equal weight, and thus the supply and demand functions of Smith's capitalism bring changes as volatile as human nature to a market, while the long-term construction of the concentration of wealth continues as long as the construction of the state and market equally build, refine and direct investment to the basic parameter; the national interest.