A Question of Values Response
While doing this reading many thoughts went through my head about my own values, and how I come to “know” something. This was one of the parts that I found most interesting, because it is what really defines a person and can have a huge impact on how a person acts and how a person develops their values will have a huge effect on what kind of person they will become. While looking at the four basic and two synthetic values I looked back at them to see which ones are most instilled in me when it comes to knowing something. The values that I feel I most align with are sense experience and deductive logic, as well as the synthetic value of science. I feel like these all go well together, and describe how I look at things. I am very detail and fact oriented, and have a hard time just going with my gut, or how I am feeling. When something if proven in front of me I am most likely to be able to believe it, and can then work on comprehending however ridiculous it might be. I think this might be part of the reason I am so fascinated with magic tricks, because I am missing the way the trick works, and it astounds me and I can barely believe the trick has happened.
The portion of this article that was most interesting to me was the part asking if values are chosen, ” But do values, in the sense of freely chosen values, truly exist?” (Lewis, 7). This topic looks back at both scientific data, and personal experiences, which makes it exceptionally confusing topic. The article talks about that fact that we are born with the genetic coding to do two very specific things, live and to reproduce. These two traits have been seen through all of humanity as some of the most apparent traits, but there have been times that humans have had the exact opposite behaviors. It talks about Japanese ritual suicide, as well as Tibet’s celibacy. These two instances show that values can be changed against human nature, and that values may not be the driving forces in human beings. This was my favorite part of the article, because it showed me that in a sense you can do anything, and go against the thousands of years of evolutionary values and do whatever you want. These deep rooted instincts can be ignored if someone has values that allow someone to look past our most primal urges, and in a way that is somewhat scary. At what point do our values become strongly enough ingrained that they are our driving factor on how we live?
In response to your last question about values being ingrained, I think that some people already have their values ingrained in their lives. For some individuals, especially when it comes to religion, values are the driving force in their lives. Also, somewhat related to faith, family is such an important force in a person’s life. In the article, the author discusses Star Wars saying, “[…] telling Luke to trust and follow his emotions- in the first instance, an emotional love of humanity and hope for its betterment” (Lewis 14). Luke struggled with his emotions and some way his values, which are so closely related. It is hard to completely surrender your life to your values, but eventually it becomes such a huge facet of decision-making. Nevertheless, I believe that for some people values dictate their lives. Especially in today’s age, since traditional values have become more modernized to fit the mold of larger groups of people, I believe it is more likely for values to be a stronger influence.
This critical reading is towards the article “A question of values response” written by Gains Mountain. The author’s thesis is about how he understood value as both a free choice and a biological heritage. What is intriguing about this response is the emotional reactions by the author when he read about how value could be evolutional and even against human nature. The author mentioned that values “may not be the driving forces in human beings’ and could ‘go against the thousand years of evolutionary values and do whatever you want’ and that is ‘kind of scary’. The passage started with a personal experience with the perception of value, then went to analyze the article’s definition and doubts about value. Further, the author quoted the essay’s instances about value as non intrinsic features and raised a question in the end: “At what point do our values become strongly enough ingrained that they are our driving factor on how we live.” The author has a clear understanding of the article he is responding to and I believe that the author has a critical reading of the essay. However, as a responsive essay, the author failed to challenge the ideas in the article and the structuring of the essay should be smoother in terms of transitioning.
In my blog post I was trying to stay focused on one topic for the most part, and for that reason I did not challenge the ideas of the article. Instead was agreeing, and using trying to understand what else the author may have wanted the reader to see. This allowed me to dive deeper into the article itself, as well as let me talk about some of the thoughts that the article provoked in me. Although I did only choose to talk about that focus of the article I still had a hard time transitioning from talking about the article to my thoughts, leading to some clunky and unclear trains of thought.
One part of the article that I thought was very poorly done, was the part about Star Wars, “When Sir Alec Guinness, playing the heroic old Obi Wan Kenobie in the film Star Wars, repeats to his young protege Luke Skywalker….”,(Lewis 13). I thought the fact that the author was trying to use a fictional story to convey his point was very counter intuitive. The author goes from science and facts to quoting a movie, and how that had a role in values, and for that reason the article lost some of its credibility to me.