tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6717717.post1280051576319084203..comments2023-04-01T08:36:48.921-07:00Comments on De Nihilo Nihil: On questions of valueTyler Howerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14582328854031848627noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6717717.post-10546198204682517722011-01-13T09:01:07.685-08:002011-01-13T09:01:07.685-08:00You're surely right that nothing could intrins...You're surely right that nothing could intrinsically have a subjective value, but I think that is almost a definitional matter. If the value were intrinsic and really rested in the thing itself, then it would seem to have to be independent of anything so contingent as whether people actually value it, that is, it would have to be objective. <br />As for your second point, you are actually agreeing that it has to be valuable to yourself, because you talk about how the fact that your life is valuable to others or to God to be comforting, but that is just talking in terms of what the value of such a life is to you. It can't be enough that a life is valuable to others or else lives lived in slavery would be valuable lives—it's important here to distinguish between the questions of whether the people have a right to life and whether their lives are valuable—and surely some lives of slavery no matter how valuable they may have been to those who used the slaves were not valuable to the slaves and so failed as valuable LIVES.Tyler Howerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14582328854031848627noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6717717.post-42114533838713894702011-01-13T08:47:05.285-08:002011-01-13T08:47:05.285-08:00I don't think there could be anything that has...I don't think there could be anything that has intrinsic value. Something is valuable only so much as somebody else values it. Even things that are more essential to human life are still only valuable because we need it. The value is just less abstract and more immediate. I don't think anything can intrinsically have a subjective quality.<br /><br />Oddly, I find the concept that my life has no value beyond its value to others or to God comforting, rather than pessimistic. I find the desire to be a valuable entity onto oneself the darker of the two concepts.Jeffreyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07801102652292564104noreply@blogger.com