Quote:
Originally Posted by Oberon
I think I get the general idea, but the context-value area is a bit confusing, because of its similarity to what I put forward in terms of values being different in contexts. These contexts being era, nation and upbringing/personal experience.
For example, the 'killing may be necessary to do in war' can quite easily be transmorphed into 'killing may be necessary to do to Blacks' or 'killing may be necessary to do to Islamists', particularly if one declares one to be in a war against the aforementioned subjects.
It's a slippery slope.  |
Transmorphing. Well, what kind of value assessment does that deserve? And the context-value you described, "killing-Blacks-positive" is right that, the combination of finding it positive to kill Blacks. The moral conclusion on that I think must not be further specified: murder Blacks just because they are Black, with Black being the primary reason to kill them, is murder due to racism.
Maybe I failed in explaining illustrative enough what I mean by "context-value". It pretty much rules out what you call transmorphing.
Context-values as I mean them, however are absolute only within the context that they include. Outside that, they are pretty much invalid, and useless, since outside the context of a situation the context of that situation does not exist.
In other words: they are not really absolute, but specific. They do not fit into the role of a general blueprint by which all acts (of killing in the above example) could be described. They are not generalistic, but highly specific.
Common phrase to describe this maybe is: to judge every case individually. By which I do not mean that
identical cases one time may be seen this way, and on another day differently.
Also, there can be hierarchies of different absolute values and context-values, and people can end up in situations that are complex enough that they must sort mutually contradicting values to work it out which values to follow when there are also conflicting ones. You then have to set priorities, you attribute different levels of importance to them.
My thought experiment with this "context-values" is trying to break up "meta-values" (context-unsensitive values that are not absolute) who else would be needed to be arbitrarily interpreted differently in each varying situation, and always new. "You should not kill", for example. True in peace, untrue in a situation of racism, and sometimes true and sometimes untrue in war (depending on the nature of the person that is about to get killed,. and the situational context). Thus I break all that up, and make the context integral part of the value. Hope that makes it clearer?!
Anyhow. All that bis abstract and academic, and does not bother me when living my real life and have to make decisions: I do not decide everyday issues by using pocket calculators.
The quote by Rand I recommend to take with a less abstract and stronger pragmatic sense for realism. I doubt she had all this abstract philosophizing on mind with that sentence. It stands as it is, and I think its pretty good and strong and valuable.