The Place of Value in a World of Facts

Abstract

This chapter demonstrates the methods of connective, contrastive, and contextual analysis apply fruitfully to the domain of axiology (the analysis of value) and to that of morality. It shows that the commonly held separation of ethical and meta-ethical reflection is for the most part untenable. The concept of goodness, Finnish philosopher Georg-Henrik von Wright argued, is a variety concept . Among the varieties von Wright investigated are instrumental goodness of tools and ways of doing things, technical goodness of skills, the goodness of the useful, medical goodness of organs and faculties, hedonic goodness , the good of a being , and moral goodness . The chapter suggests that the most fundamental principle to guide one in one's investigations into the roots of value and the place of value in the world is that value is a phenomenon of life .