Yesterday I read a post about intrinsic values on Bongo Twisty, a great blog I found looking through Blaugust participants. It got me thinking about my own intrinsic values. I even took a test evaluating my intrinsic values here.
Be warned: that test will ask for personal questions at the end and an email to send the full result to. I stopped short of giving my email.
Anyway, as I started reading about how the test I took defined intrinsic values, I came to the conclusion that all values lead back to pleasure in some way. I’m certain that’s not the point I was meant to come away with. Either way, I’m stuck on the idea that the things we value will always be pleasurable. This is essentially hedonism, though there’s way more that goes into the term.
There are plenty of reasons to still talk about and understand intrinsic values. My point is, we may be denying some part of the truth to say we can value something for its own sake, with no gain. To me, it seems obvious that we would not value or do things that have no pleasurable advantage. We may make sacrificial choices that appear—on the surface—to displease us, but if we feel we have done the right thing, surely we will be pleased. We may also experience pain for doing the right thing, but we do the right thing because that pain is more bearable than what it feels like to not do the right thing.
What I’ve described in this post is clearly a reductionist view. On its own it seems circular, and possibly unhelpful, but I believe it’s an important thing to keep in mind when considering our values.
I’m not done exploring this idea. My gut tells me that it’s best to look at both intrinsic values and hedonism to have a good understanding of what we value and why, and that some combination will give us the more helpful answer. After all, most things we value have positive and negative effects when we take action to uphold those values.
Do you think pleasure is the driving force for all our values and actions?