Book Description

The Pursuit of Value This book re-examines the big questions of life through the auspices of value and consciousness, and through their roles in human activities such as ethics, religion, romance, and purpose. A meaningful life, for example, is ostensibly one that is worthwhile or valuable, and ethical principles are values that guide 'right' conduct. But both value and consciousness are beset by theoretical problems as well as holding out promises of explanation and resolution. Thinkers from Nietzsche to Ronald Dworkin agree that values are amongst the most crucial aspects of life, lying at the heart of politics, religion, morality and social order. But they are also amongst the least understood. Basic questions remain unanswered such as: what are values, how can apparently subjective values be objective, and perhaps more importantly, how does value enter into our experience of the quality and meaning of our lives? The phenomenon of consciousness offers solutions as well as additional problems. The classic 'mind-body' issue continues to reveal uncertainty over the status of mind as either an aspect of the physical world or as some other species of 'being'. Less widely discussed, an error theory of consciousness-comparable to Mackie's error theory of value-is presented here to explain both the neglect or obfuscation of personal existence, and the 'mysteriousness' of that existence, seemingly evoked by a non-referential form of perception to which every self-conscious individual is subjected. Further questions of free-will, personal identity, and the development of cognitive faculties are also illuminated by a consideration of consciousness, or rather a graduated conception of consciousness attributable with different levels or degrees. It's almost a truism that self-consciousness is a precondition of free-will, personal identity, and certain cognitive faculties, that typically pre-reflective 'animal' consciousness doesn't enjoy. Questions of value also call upon theory of mind, or in our case, a structural conception of consciousness, once favoured in phenomenology. Harking back to Sartrean relations between value, selection and choice, structural features such as graduation, divisibility and 'intentionality' can further explain the origins of value as well as how it can both propel itself and be constrained by its own choices for value. Thrust into the world of reason, intentional objects and the unavoidability of choice, additional constraints bear upon value, and thereby upon our experience of the world. The problematic 'fact-value' and 'is-ought' distinctions in human action and ethics are also offered resolution in a structural account where value isn't just a product of consciousness, but provides a foundation for further value and values. In a structural perspective, the phenomenon of 'choice', for instance, can be understood as both an integral property of consciousness and a final arbiter of moral decision. A resolution of the seeming contradiction between a choice that is both 'free' and 'objectively moral' comes within reach with explanations of value in terms of structures of consciousness that provide both a graduated notion of free-will and a 'relative objectivity' with normative features. Further explanations of value with reference to its quality, resilience and sufficiency, in relation to supporting cognitive objects, sets us on a certain trajectory, on route to a value 'preference', and on a path towards an experience of a 'good' and meaningful life, that we outline here.