REPORT

(Notions of Value)

SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL
FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENT FOR THE
SUBJECT - MTE 616/ GS160
(PHILIPPINE VALUES SYSTEM)

Submitted to:

DR. SOTERA C. CAGANG

PROFESSOR

Submitted by:

VEA KRYZA B. NUÑEZ

MTE-DRAFTING TECH STUDENT

NOVEMBER 9, 2019
What is VALUE?
According to Merriam Webster, value is defined as the monetary worth of
something; market price. Another definition given by the same source, value is
relative worth, utility, or importance. Furthermore, a definition given by Oxford
dictionary, value is a person's principles or standards of behavior; one's judgment.
of what is important in life.

NOTIONS OF VALUE
` The definition of notion, as stated in Merriam Webster, an opinion, view, or
belief. Thus, this report will discuss on the different notions of value from different
perspectives.
The most common experience man has of value is in terms of price. Price
indicates the amount of money one is willing to part with in exchange for
something. This is an indicator of interest or preference, of how much one desires
or want the thing.
What modern man calls value, earlier writers and many contemporaries call
the good. Good has always been understood and defines in reference to desire.
Thus, Aristotle described the good as that for which everything strives. The good
is the object of striving or the tendency in thing inanimate or bereft of
consciousness; it is the object of desire in things that are conscious.
Now, object of desire can be understood in two ways: (1) as that which is
actually desires; (2) as that which can be desired, thus, capable of being desired,
even if it is not actually desired.
Good: 1. DESIRED Corresponding, Value: 1. VALUED
2. DESIRABLE 2. VALUABLE
John Stuart Mill argued that the only test of desirability is actual desire. He
showed it through this:
desirable what can be desired
=
visible what can be seen

Now, what makes us say that X is visible or can be seen? The fact that X is
or was seen at one time or another. If at no time X was ever seen, we would have
no grounds for asserting that X can be seen; rather we would be lead to conclude
that X can not be seen, or is invisible. In the same way, there is no manner of
telling that X is desirable or can be desired but the fact that one time or another X
was actually desired.
 Mill defined desirable merely as can be desired. The whole drift of his
argument is to identify desirable with desired; and, consequently to identify the
good with what is actually desired, and value with what is actually valued. The
good, then, is that which is desirable, i.e. worthy of desire; and value is that which
is valuable, i.e. deserving of being valued.
But what is the test of desirability? What is the reason why something is
good? The answer to this question gives the reason why thing is worthy of desire.
Why is, e.g. money desirable? Because it can get me the things I need or want.
Why is food desirable? Either because it maintains and develops my body or
because it gives me pleasure. Why is science desirable? Because it develops and
perfects the mind. Why is morality desirable? Because it perfects my behavior
insofar as I am a rational being.
The time-honored division of good into ends and means in fundamental in
determining the test of desirability. The good is worthy of desire in either of two
ways: (1) for its own sake; (2) for the sake of some other good. When something
is desirable for its own sake, it is called an end (consummatory value, in axiological
parlance). When something is desirable for the sake of some other good, it is called
means (contributory or instrumental value).
The befitting good is that which develops and completes or perfects man.
There is nothing further or beyond completion or perfection. Man desires and
strives for that which is wanting or lacking in him. Once he is complete and perfect
there is nothing he can further desire. Thus completion and perfection can not be
desired for the sake of some other thing. All desire and striving must cease when
man has achieved that which completes and perfects him. Hence, the befitting
good is worthy of desire for its own sake.
Two Schools of Thought: Subjectivism and Objectivism. These two
main schools of thought, coordinating with the idealist and realist’s theories of
knowledge, treated the problem of the definition of value. A representative of the
of the objectivists, W.G. Everett, stated that the pattern and standard of worth is
found in man’s own nature, not in beings higher or lower than himself.
Most of the modern philosophers gave a subjective definition of value. Perry
stated that value is any object of interest; and that the greater the interest in an
object, the greater the value of the object. D. H. Parker, also a subjectivist, denied
Perry’s affirmation that value could be taken as the object of any interest. For him,
value is the satisfaction of any interest in any object, taken by itself. The
appeasement of any interest is a value; wherever the good exists, either as value
in the proper sense or value-experience or as the attributed value of
complementary objects of desire, there is one or another characteristic form, to the
form of a work of art.
The pragmatists, though their criteria were subjective, stated that value is
what is desirable, what makes a thing good, a principle of existentiality. Some
Economists define value in the context of a just price – the capacity of goods to
satisfy human wants, and money as the general standard of value for all goods.
Samuel L hart stated that values are generic concepts which we arrive at
by experiencing the comparing events; they are recurrent patterns of preference.
This statement was directed against the nihilistic skeptics who took values to be
more of “emotional ejaculations” and against the absolutist who held that “there
are genuine and true value-qualities which constitute an independent real of
objects”
John Dewey, who was a realist and objectivists, had a theory of value
notably different from the others. He studied judgment of value simply as judgment
of practice, with no theoretical strings attached. His aim was to fit a theory of value
into a procrustean bed.
From this analysis we see that the definition of value has undergone
alterations. At least, we can affirm that there is a minimum agreement among the
philosophers on a common ambiguous phrase, that is, that value is the object of
interest, desire or preference. Interpretation of this phrase moved between the two
opposite extremes of objective and subjective views. This break between objective
and subjective views shows that a theory of value must be seen as a part of a
whole and it has to borrow from a comprehensive philosophy in order to give an
adequate definition of value.
Value in General and Specific Values. We derive from our experience two
distinct notions of value: (1) the notion of value in general, that is, that which has
worth and makes us go out of our indifference and (2) the notion of value as the
only aspect which makes a thing or an act valuable. Value in this sense are
intentional correlatives of certain acts of conscience and can not be reduced to a
general concept.
Values are always absolute but unlike the supreme value, they vary
accordingly. The supreme value which is also value, is at the same time more than
that which is valuable. It is necessary to note this paradox of value in order to
understand fully what is value in general and specific value.
 When a person contemplates the axiological panorama and pronounces a
judgment of appreciation, he forms a value-judgment. This judgment implies the
simple concept of value “in genere.” The more complex and more varied concepts
are called specific values. Specific values embrace a homogenous groups of
values which are realized in things, in individual and collective attitudes and in
cultural good whether of art, of language, of science or of philosophy. We should
never confuse values with the concept of value. In our daily life we encounter
specific values, but the value “in genere” is given only in the mind being a concept,
not a value.
We can, therefore, say that value “in genere” is a “predicable” which
embraces all realized and realizable values in things and actions. The specific
values imply this genus, namely, value “in genere.” Specific values, therefore, have
a relation to value “in genere” similar to that of color with the idea of color.
 REFERENCE

Andres, Tomas D., Understanding Filipino Values. New Day Publishers, Quezon
City, 1981