Types of Value

Abstract Our values possess a previously unrecognized distinctive kind of underlying unity. Discussion here begins with moral values, and it is argued that recent approaches like Scanlon’s and Parfit’s run together moral and rational values in an unintuitive way. A defense is then briefly given of a more intuitively plausible moral approach that focuses on empathy, and it is argued further that empathy itself can be theoretically grounded in updated versions of yin 陰 and yang 陽, with yin understood as receptivity and yang as directed purpose. The discussion then takes up notions like practical rationality, well-being, the (impersonally) Good, moral approval/disapproval, and nonethical value concepts like “good knife” and “beautiful face.” It is argued that in every one of these spheres of evaluation positive value judgments imply attraction and negative value judgments repulsion but that in all cases these implications can be canceled in a Gricean way. And it also turns out that we can use yin / yang to better understand not only the positive and negative implications of value judgments but also the ways those implications can be contextually canceled.