As a noun, has several definitions:
1. That which is considered desirable or worthy of esteem for its own sake; thing or quality having intrinsic worth (e.g. “Honesty is of my values.”)
2. The degree of desirability or worthiness of a thing (e.g. “Truth has a great deal of value.”)
Values are extremely important in shaping human behavior, which in turn plays a major role in shaping the future of the human community. Thus, to construct an accurate set of predictions, it is necessary to have a certain level of understanding of human values.
Occasionally, there is some confusion when discussing values. At least part of this seems to be due to the fact that the word “value” can mean several things. It is used variously as a noun to mean “something desirable”, or as an adjective to mean “worthiness”, or as a verb to mean “to attach worth to.” I will make every effort to use context to indicate which definition I am using.
A human being can directly value only one thing: pleasurable emotions. They are what lies at the end of every chain of human behavior. I am going to refer to things that are valued directly as primary values. They are a function of human nature (i.e. physiology). Although there is some variation among the pleasurable emotions, it is relatively small.
A secondary value is something that is a direct cause of the primary value of pleasurable emotion. Thus, things like food, shelter, companionship, clothing, etc. are all secondary values.
A tertiary value is something that is a direct cause of one or more of the secondary values. An example of a tertiary value is a hoe. You can’t eat it, you can’t wear it, and you can’t live in it. But you can use it to help you grow the food (secondary value), which you can then eat to experience the pleasures of savoring a meal and diminishing your hunger (primary values).
You can continue like this for as far as you like, to quaternary values, quintenary values, septenary values, ad absurdum, to lower order values. The “order” of a value is a relative attribute, based on the value’s proximity to a primary value. Thus, a primary value is a higher order value than a secondary value, a secondary value is of a higher order than a tertiary value, and so on. To extend the hoe example, a quaternary value would be the technology of iron forging, as this would allow you to make a stronger and more durable hoe.
It is important to remember that only the primary values are intrinsically valuable. All the rest have their value assigned to them by human beings, on the basis of human beliefs about how the thing will affect their progress towards experiencing the primary values. Thus, there is a clear connection between beliefs and values. The more accurate your beliefs, the more accurately you can assess the value of a particular thing.
Occasionally, the phrase “value system” is used. I’m going to take this to mean the following: the respective values that an individual assigns to objects, including processes. Every object in the world has some potential value placed on it, and no two individual’s value systems are identical. What one person may value very highly, another may assign absolutely no worth to at all.
Value systems can get very complicated. There are many reasons for this. One is that the same object may occur in more than one chain of events leading to pleasurable emotions, but it may occupy different positions in the various chains. In one chain, it may be a high order event, in another, it may be a low order event.
Another reason is that the value assigned to a given object may vary over time, either increasing or decreasing. The most common cause for an object’s increasing in value is that a way is discovered by which the object can contribute to a pleasurable emotion. Consider uranium. For millennia, this element went unnoticed and unappreciated. But with the advent of nuclear power reactors, it quickly had a very high value assigned to it.
There is another way for an object to increase in value. If the object already occupies a position in a chain of events leading to a pleasurable emotion, the individual who realizes this will immediately recognize the importance of the object to his emotional state. This, in turn, often evokes pleasurable emotions. In this way, an object that was originally valued only because it contributed indirectly to some pleasurable emotion itself becomes capable of eliciting pleasurable emotion. There are numerous examples of this. Consider an anthropologist who has found a primate skeleton whose teeth exhibit human characteristics, but a pelvis that indicates non-upright posture. He is instantly aware that he’s made a find of major importance, and is therefore ecstatic. But ecstasy is a primary value, and an object that elicits it must, by definition, be a secondary value. Thus, all valued objects tend to become secondary values.
Sometimes changes will occur in an etiological (cause and effect) chain. For some reason, one event in the chain loses its ability to cause the effect it used to, and the chain leading to pleasurable emotion is broken. Thus, every object that is “downstream” from the now-ineffectual object (i.e. every object that contributed to its occurrence) ought to lose its value, provided these objects do not occur in any other joy-directed etiological chains. But this is not always what happens. Because, as noted earlier, over time and habituation, the objects have acquired a value of their own, independent of their contribution to the higher order values. Even this is not necessarily a bad thing, provided the individual realizes that the lower order object is no longer attached to the higher order objects to which they were originally bound, and provided that the effort being expended to acquire the lower order objects is not impeding the individual’s progress toward other higher order values. Of course, it often happens that the detachment is not realized by the individual, and when he eventually discovers that his labor has been for naught, there is a marked decrease in happiness.
Sometimes you get value displacement (goal displacement). A human has decided that a particular thing will help him to experience a primary value, and he therefore assigns value to the thing. This is a secondary value. But the secondary object cannot be gotten instantly. It requires that a tertiary object be acquired. So this tertiary object becomes a tertiary value. This is all well and good, provided the higher order objects retain their value. But occasionally a higher order object will lose its value, but the individual will continue working to obtain the lower order objects.