From this week’s reading, I had a better understanding of value. According to the reading “Value should be synonymous with personal evaluations and related beliefs about the ‘good’, the ‘just’, and the ‘beautiful,’ personal evaluations and beliefs that propel us to action, to a particular kind of behavior and life.” This broad definition of value makes me think about the meaning of value deeply. From my point of view, the meanings of value are various because different people have distinct understandings of value based on their own backgrounds. Therefore, there is not a specific meaning of value. Every single person could write down his or her own definition of value.
In this paragraph, I will explain my point of view using a practical and common issue, whether someone should go to a university for a couple of years. Based on the different understandings of the university, someone may think it is a waste of time to have lessons in university. They are rather to enrich their experience from working than just learn things from the textbooks. However, someone would like to spend a couple of years in school in order to strengthen himself or herself as much as possible by learning different kinds of knowledge. As we all know, there is not a absolute answer to this issue. Everyone has the rights to decide how to maximum the value he/she could get from the money and time he/she spends. As long as he/she thoughts his/her contributions pay off, he/she could say that he/she catches the value of the money and time.
In a word, from this week’s reading, I learned that it is hard to find a specific definition of value. Based on various backgrounds and distinct ways to “know” things, people can define value variously as long as the value they get from their contributions satisfy their requirements at the beginning.
Nice post Shirley! I think there is a crazy amount of value that is derived from “personal evaluations and related beliefs about the ‘good’, the ‘just’, and the ‘beautiful.” Although I didn’t agree completely with everything that Lewis said, I think that he a made a few good points. There are a few more observations that Lewis made that went back to “The most basic ways to know something”. Lewis made the four categories sense experience, deductive logic, emotion, and intuition. When we make a decision to do something Lewis states that we will more than likely come back to these first actions. I am reminding you that some values we come to insist upon might be derived from instinctual or emotional behaviors that we cant remember or realize. Lewis goes on to ask another question that I want you to think about. Even if theses modes and a couple other modes are correct and complete, “if we can establish a framework for sorting through values… will it help us in our lives?” This question makes a good point to consider. If the answer is yes, then should we create more jobs that study this subject of values? If no, then why are we studying this essay and possibly putting the things that we truly believe in harm of being changed? Thank you for the analogy about the university, it really helps understand your points.
Thank you so much since you stated such a good question for me to think about. “If we can establish a framework for sorting through values… will it help us in our lives?” From my point of view, there is not a yes or no answer to this question. Even though we could establish such a framework that could sort through values, we are not sure that everyone would agree with that framework or follow the framework to make judges on the values in his/her lives. For instance, everyone knows the laws in the society and what he/she suppose to do but not everyone follows the law 100 percent. Similarly, it may be useful to create more jobs that study the subject of values. However, the study would just give people a hint or a clue when they meet problems related to values. In a word, just like what Lewis said, “Value should be synonymous with personal evaluations and related beliefs about the ‘good’, the ‘just’, and the ‘beautiful,’ personal evaluations and beliefs that propel us to action, to a particular kind of behavior and life.” Value could be a personal issue.
Thanks for your comment again!