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Hume and Intrinsic Value

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

D. A. Lloyd Thomas
D. A. Lloyd Thomas
Affiliation:
King's College London
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Extract

In this essay an ‘objective’ account of intrinsic value is proposed and partly defended. It is claimed that a kind of value exists which is, or may reasonably be supposed to be, a property of certain objects. The presence of such value is not to be wholly accounted for as the ‘projection’ of certain human feelings elicited by the object thought to be of value, nor by the object's meeting certain operative human conventions prescribing what is to be admired, nor by its being conformable, in some way, to human needs or desires. Hume, of course, would have none of this. It is hoped to show that if one adopts Hume's account, then his attempt to show (in his essay ‘Of The Standard Of Taste’) that there nevertheless will be convergence in the long run as to what is of aesthetic value is forced and unsuccessful. By contrast, on the ‘objective’ account (and given certain assumptions) convergence is to be expected. This, of course, only shows the superiority of the ‘objective’ account so long as there is an expectation of long-term convergence. This is not an expectation of most contemporary value ‘subjectivists’, and therefore the argument will not be directly relevant to their positions.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy , Volume 65 , Issue 254 , October 1990 , pp. 419 - 437
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1990

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References

1 This implication of my position was pointed out to me by Professor G. A. Cohen. An instance of where I believe things are objectively instrumentally good in this way is the liberal rights and liberties which are instrumentally necessary for having more reasonable views about what is worthwhile in itself; and that, in turn, presumably makes it more likely that there will be things of intrinsic value. (See my In Defence of Liberalism, Oxford: Blackwell, 1988, Chapter 3.)Google Scholar

2 Hume, David, An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, Appendix I, Selby-Bigge, L. A. (ed.) (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1936) 291–292.Google Scholar

3 Enquiry, Section IX, Part 1, 272.Google Scholar

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16 See, for example, A Treatise of Human Nature, III, I, 1, Selby-Bigge, L. A. (ed.) (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1955), 468–469.Google Scholar

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28 My thanks are due to the participants in the University College London seminar on Hume, for which this paper was originally prepared; to Professor G. A. Cohen, for detailed comments and discussion; and to Mr. Anthony Savile, for allowing me to see his instructive unpublished essay ‘Of the Standard of Taste’.