“Values are the core beliefs, ideals, and guiding principles that dictate how you treat others, make decisions, and determine what is fundamentally important in life. According to the Cambridge Dictionary (VALUES | English meaning - Cambridge Dictionary),” - those are phenomenal descriptions, but what about the ‘genetics’ of values? In my opinion, they are based on internal chemical balance as a sum of components felt as satisfaction. Basic body functions like consuming food are a common value. What is interesting for me is that the value spectrum can be divided into 2 groups: 1. Socially induced values, like cultural specifics, current community needs, rules, which often override, and 2. True individual values. Even if grown in one culture, people choose different ways of individual activity, listening to their internal signals. Individuals specialize their attention. I think this might be a specific design of brain circuitry that leads to selective attention and, as a result, the generation of a corresponding humoral response that triggers action.
There are a number of questions here
How are desires generated ( are they purely physical manifestations of brain function(
Why do we desire somethings and not others
Why do we sometimes appear to desire things that are not obviously in our immediate interest but benefit others
So what are you asking?
If we are opposing values to facts, then we might do worse than to suppose that facts are how things are, while values are how we would have them be.
We might well find our desire to be so because of some bit of physiology, but it is not obvious that this serves to reduce the desire to that bit of physiology.
Rather the physiology seems to be describing the desire in a slightly different way.
What are values? Your opinion, please.
My opinion is that the values are a number of intended actions based on the current state of the world model built via the available sensory system, fused with individually specific internal (genetically coded) humoral response, defining what we like or dislike and prompting action. Benefiting others is a value, processed in a wider context (finally benefiting ourselves).
Can you say more on this? I don’t think I follow the ideas presented. Are you saying that at some point a person acquires a set of values that are unique to them, unshaped by contingent factors?
Interesting, but I don’t know what that means. Sounds like you are saying values are basically tendencies shaped by how we perceive and model the world, together with innate biological responses, which determine what we like, dislike, and do? So a value is a tendency?
For me values are more like habits of evaluation and response, shaped by shared practices.
Isn’t it bodily desire? A common value for consumption of food as satisfaction doesn’t quite ring a bell.
Having a value on something means that one chooses over the valued objects or idea over other options. Hence it involves objects or ideas and situation, available options and action for the choice from the options.
Isn’t there a water-diamond paradox?
No different than what you’ve already provided in your OP. That’s why I asked you, what exactly are you asking?
So you completely agree with what I provided in the OP? And we can proceed to the next topic?
"Isn’t it a bodily desire? " Are you aware of different sources of desires?
First question: Yes, I observe 2 groups of values. One is individually immutable, and the second is environmentally induced (contingent factors are in this group). Second question: Yes, an individual’s values are a tendency and immutable.
I do not see any paradoxes here. If diamonds were abundant to the same degree as water, we would build houses out of them.
I agree. Physiology describes desire as a phenomenon; I am trying to dive deeper. See what it says: " Wanting (Desire): Driven by dopamine. It is active before you get what you want. It triggers locomotion, effort, and tension." They describe the process, not the cause.
“what exactly are you asking?” Interesting question. This could be a next topic. It is deeply philosophical.
Food consumption is one of many basic bodily desires in human. It doesn’t seem to belong to value unless viewed or expressed in certain context implying value. What could the context be?
We still could survive without diamonds. Diamonds would become worthless, but water …
That’s the point though.
Didn’t you find the linked post interesting?
P. S. Is there something wrong with the Cambridge dictionary def (reproduced below)?
the beliefs people have, especially about what is right and wrong and what is most important in life, that control their behavior
My hunch is the OP is contrasting reductionism with axiology, viewed holistically I suppose.
Value’s vs Virtues…is the better question..
Values describe what I claim is worth pursuing. Virtues reveal what repeated sacrifice has made me capable of becoming. Values are declared. Virtues are embodied. Values can exist in speech alone. Virtues exist only as incarnated habits ordered toward a telos.