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227-697: Desires can be grouped into various types according to a few basic distinctions. Intrinsic desires concern what the subject wants for its own sake while instrumental desires are about what the subject wants for the sake of something else. Occurrent desires are either conscious or otherwise causally active, in contrast to standing desires , which exist somewhere in the back of one's mind. Propositional desires are directed at possible states of affairs while object-desires are directly about objects. Various authors distinguish between higher desires associated with spiritual or religious goals and lower desires, which are concerned with bodily or sensory pleasures. Desires play

454-410: A clarinetist . The terms incomparability and incommensurability are often used as synonyms. However, philosophers like Ruth Chang distinguish them. According to this view, incommensurability means that there is no common measure to quantify values of different types. Incommensurable values may or may not be comparable. If they are, it is possible to say that one value is better than another, but it

681-659: A formal science , akin to logic and mathematics . It uses axioms to give an abstract definition of value, understanding it not as a property of things but as a property of concepts. Values measure the extent to which an entity fulfills its concept. For example, a good car has all the desirable qualities of cars, like a reliable engine and effective brakes, whereas a bad car lacks many. Formal axiology distinguishes between three fundamental value types: intrinsic values apply to people; extrinsic values apply to things, actions, and social roles; systemic values apply to conceptual constructs. Formal axiology examines how these value types form

908-426: A positive reinforcer , such as palatable food , an attractive mate, or an addictive drug ) is called " incentive salience " and research has demonstrated that incentive salience, the sensation of pleasure , and positive reinforcement are all derived from neuronal activity within the reward system . Studies have shown that dopamine signaling in the nucleus accumbens shell and endogenous opioid signaling in

1135-527: A thought experiment that imagines the valuable thing in isolation from everything else. In such a situation, purely instrumentally valuable things lose their value since they serve no purpose while purely intrinsically valuable things remain valuable. According to a common view, pleasure is one of the sources of intrinsic value. Other suggested sources include desire satisfaction, virtue , life , health , beauty , freedom , and knowledge . Intrinsic and instrumental value are not exclusive categories. As

1362-451: A truth value , a position known as non-cognitivism . For example, emotivists say that value claims express emotional attitudes, similar to how exclamations like "Yay!" or "Boo!" express emotions rather than stating facts. Cognitivists contend that value statements have a truth value. Error theorists defend anti-realism based on this view by stating that all value statements are false because there are no values. Another view accepts

1589-407: A "mirror phase" of a baby's development, when the baby sees an image of wholeness in a mirror which gives them a desire for that being. As a person matures, Lacan claims that they still feel separated from themselves by language, which is incomplete, and so a person continually strives to become whole. He uses the term " jouissance " to refer to the lost object or feeling of absence (see manque ) which

1816-450: A "missed shock" is detected as a stimulus, and can act as a reinforcer. Cognitive theories of avoidance take this idea a step farther. For example, a rat comes to "expect" shock if it fails to press a lever and to "expect no shock" if it presses it, and avoidance behavior is strengthened if these expectancies are confirmed. Operant hoarding refers to the observation that rats reinforced in a certain way may allow food pellets to accumulate in

2043-426: A Kantian perspective, it should be performed out of a desire to do one's duty. These issues are often discussed in contemporary philosophy under the terms of moral praiseworthiness and blameworthiness . One important position in this field is that the praiseworthiness of an action depends on the desire motivating this action. It is common in axiology to define value in relation to desire. Such approaches fall under

2270-441: A bad idea. A closely related theory is due to T. M. Scanlon , who holds that desires are judgments of what we have reasons to do. Critics have pointed out that value-based theories have difficulties explaining how animals, like cats or dogs, can have desires, since they arguably cannot represent things as being good in the relevant sense. A great variety of other theories of desires have been proposed. Attention-based theories take

2497-485: A broader horizon of values, including those beyond anyone's control. Some perspectives contrast ethics and value theory, asserting that the normative concepts examined by ethics are distinct from the evaluative concepts examined by value theory. Axiological ethics is a subfield of ethics examining the nature and role of values from a moral perspective, with particular interest in determining which ends are worth pursuing. The ethical theory of consequentialism combines

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2724-407: A commodity provides—and exchange value —the proportion at which one commodity can be exchanged with another. It focuses on exchange value, which it says is determined by the amount of labor required to produce the commodity . In its simplest form, it directly correlates exchange value to labor time. For example, if the time needed to hunt a deer is twice the time needed to hunt a beaver then one deer

2951-545: A conditioned stimulus, or after a primary reward if no conditioned stimulus exists. These neurons are equally active for positive and negative reinforcers, and have been shown to be related to neuroplasticity in many cortical regions. Evidence also exists that dopamine is activated at similar times. There is considerable evidence that dopamine participates in both reinforcement and aversive learning. Dopamine pathways project much more densely onto frontal cortex regions. Cholinergic projections, in contrast, are dense even in

3178-525: A contrasting view allows that at least some desires are directed not at propositions or possible states of affairs but directly at objects. This difference is also reflected on a linguistic level. Object-desires can be expressed through a direct object, for example, Louis desires an omelet . Propositional desires, on the other hand, are usually expressed through a that-clause, for example, Arielle desires that she has an omelet for breakfast . Propositionalist theories hold that direct-object-expressions are just

3405-415: A craving for the associated drug may reappear. For example, anti-drug agencies previously used posters with images of drug paraphernalia as an attempt to show the dangers of drug use. However, such posters are no longer used because of the effects of incentive salience in causing relapse upon sight of the stimuli illustrated in the posters. In drug dependent individuals, negative reinforcement occurs when

3632-400: A decorating buff entering their favorite furniture store. The role of the salespeople in these cases is simply to guide the customer towards making a choice; they do not have to try to "sell" the general idea of making a purchase, because the customer already wants the products. In other cases, the potential buyer does not have a desire for the product or service, and so the company has to create

3859-410: A degree or intensity. Given this assumption, a preference can be defined as a comparison of two desires. That Nadia prefers tea over coffee, for example, just means that her desire for tea is stronger than her desire for coffee. One argument for this approach is due to considerations of parsimony: a great number of preferences can be derived from a very small number of desires. One objection to this theory

4086-475: A desire can only provide value if a fully informed and rational person would have it. This view excludes faulty desires. Perfectionism identifies the realization of human nature and the cultivation of characteristic human abilities as the source of intrinsic goodness. It covers capacities and character traits belonging to the bodily, emotional, volitional, cognitive, social, artistic, and religious fields. Perfectionists disagree about which human excellences are

4313-578: A desire is satisfied. Arielle's desire is satisfied if the that-clause expressing her desire has been realized, i.e. she is having an omelet for breakfast. But Louis's desire is not satisfied by the mere existence of omelets nor by his coming into possession of an omelet at some indeterminate point in his life. So it seems that, when pressed for the details, object-desire-theorists have to resort to propositional expressions to articulate what exactly these desires entail. This threatens to collapse object-desires into propositional desires. In religion and philosophy,

4540-470: A disposition to have a certain attitude is not automatically an attitude itself. Desires can be occurrent even if they do not influence our behavior. This is the case, for example, if the agent has a conscious desire to do something but successfully resists it. This desire is occurrent because it plays some role in the agents mental life, even if it is not action-guiding. The dominant view is that all desires are to be understood as propositional attitudes . But

4767-462: A distinction is sometimes made between higher and lower desires. Higher desires are commonly associated with spiritual or religious goals in contrast to lower desires, sometimes termed passions, which are concerned with bodily or sensory pleasures. This difference is closely related to John Stuart Mill 's distinction between the higher pleasures of the mind and the lower pleasures of the body. In some religions, all desires are outright rejected as

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4994-468: A drug is self-administered in order to alleviate or "escape" the symptoms of physical dependence (e.g., tremors and sweating) and/or psychological dependence (e.g., anhedonia , restlessness, irritability, and anxiety) that arise during the state of drug withdrawal . Animal trainers and pet owners were applying the principles and practices of operant conditioning long before these ideas were named and studied, and animal training still provides one of

5221-638: A factor underlying gambling addiction. Human beings have an innate resistance to killing and are reluctant to act in a direct, aggressive way towards members of their own species, even to save life. This resistance to killing has caused infantry to be remarkably inefficient throughout the history of military warfare. This phenomenon was not understood until S.L.A. Marshall (Brigadier General and military historian) undertook interview studies of WWII infantry immediately following combat engagement. Marshall's well-known and controversial book, Men Against Fire, revealed that only 15% of soldiers fired their rifles with

5448-412: A favorable light, as something that appears to be good . Besides causing actions and pleasures, desires also have various effects on the mental life. One of these effects is to frequently move the subject's attention to the object of desire , specifically to its positive features. Another effect of special interest to psychology is the tendency of desires to promote reward-based learning , for example, in

5675-432: A food tray instead of retrieving those pellets. In this procedure, retrieval of the pellets always instituted a one-minute period of extinction during which no additional food pellets were available but those that had been accumulated earlier could be consumed. This finding appears to contradict the usual finding that rats behave impulsively in situations in which there is a choice between a smaller food object right away and

5902-473: A fundamental aspect of reality and how they affect phenomena such as emotion , desire , decision, and action . Its topic is relevant to many human endeavors because values are guiding principles that underlie the political, economic, scientific, and personal spheres. Value theory analyzes and evaluates phenomena such as well-being , utility , beauty , human life, knowledge , wisdom , freedom , love , and justice . The precise definition of value theory

6129-415: A global reinforcement signal to postsynaptic neurons ." This allows recently activated synapses to increase their sensitivity to efferent (conducting outward) signals, thus increasing the probability of occurrence for the recent responses that preceded the reinforcement. These responses are, statistically, the most likely to have been the behavior responsible for successfully achieving reinforcement. But when

6356-433: A great many applications of operant principles have been suggested and implemented. The following are some examples. Positive and negative reinforcement play central roles in the development and maintenance of addiction and drug dependence . An addictive drug is intrinsically rewarding ; that is, it functions as a primary positive reinforcer of drug use. The brain's reward system assigns it incentive salience (i.e., it

6583-633: A hierarchy and how they can be measured. Value theorists employ various methods to conduct their inquiry, justify theories, and measure values. Intuitionists rely on intuitions to assess evaluative claims. In this context, an intuition is an immediate apprehension or understanding of a self-evident claim, meaning that its truth can be assessed without inferring it from another observation. Value theorists often rely on thought experiments to gain this type of understanding. Thought experiments are imagined scenarios that exemplify philosophical problems. Philosophers use counterfactual reasoning to evaluate

6810-422: A hierarchy of values reflecting the relative importance and weight of different value types to help people promote higher values when faced with difficult choices. For example, philosopher Max Scheler ranks values based on how enduring and fulfilling they are into the levels of pleasure, utility, vitality, culture, and holiness. He asserts that people should not promote lower values, like pleasure, if this comes at

7037-403: A larger food object after some delay. See schedules of reinforcement . The first scientific studies identifying neurons that responded in ways that suggested they encode for conditioned stimuli came from work by Mahlon deLong and by R.T. Richardson. They showed that nucleus basalis neurons, which release acetylcholine broadly throughout the cerebral cortex , are activated shortly after

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7264-470: A long aching feeling to an unstoppable torrent, include Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert ; Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez ; Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov ; Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë, and Dracula by Bram Stoker . Brontë's characterization of Jane Eyre depicts her as torn by an inner conflict between reason and desire, because "customs" and "conventionalities" stand in

7491-435: A lot while others benefit little, even if the two outcomes have the same sum total. Axiological prioritarians are particularly concerned with the benefits of individuals who are worse off. They say that providing advantages to people in need has more value than providing the same advantages to others. Formal axiology is a theory of value initially developed by philosopher Robert S. Hartman . This approach treats axiology as

7718-552: A multidisciplinary area of inquiry that covers research from fields like sociology , anthropology , psychology , and economics in addition to philosophy . In a narrow sense, value theory is a subdiscipline of ethics that is particularly relevant to the school of consequentialism since it determines how to assess the value of consequences. The word axiology has its origin in the ancient Greek terms ἄξιος (axios, meaning ' worth ' or ' value ' ) and λόγος (logos, meaning ' study ' or ' theory of ' ). Even though

7945-669: A negative influence on our well-being . The second Noble Truth in Buddhism , for example, states that desiring is the cause of all suffering. A related doctrine is also found in the Hindu tradition of karma yoga , which recommends that we act without a desire for the fruits of our actions, referred to as " Nishkam Karma ". But other strands in Hinduism explicitly distinguish lower or bad desires for worldly things from higher or good desires for closeness or oneness with God . This distinction

8172-437: A neutral CS (conditioned stimulus) is paired with the aversive US (unconditioned stimulus); this idea underlies the two-factor theory of avoidance learning described below. In free-operant avoidance a subject periodically receives an aversive stimulus (often an electric shock) unless an operant response is made; the response delays the onset of the shock. In this situation, unlike discriminated avoidance, no prior stimulus signals

8399-425: A new mobile phone, for example, can only result in the action of ordering one online if paired with the belief that ordering it would contribute to the desire being fulfilled. The fulfillment of desires is normally experienced as pleasurable in contrast to the negative experience of failing to do so. But independently of whether the desire is fulfilled or not, there is a sense in which the desire presents its object in

8626-457: A paralyzed person can still have desires. But they also come with new problems of their own. One is that it is usually assumed that there is a causal relation between desires and pleasure: the satisfaction of desires is seen as the cause of the resulting pleasure. But this is only possible if cause and effect are two distinct things, not if they are identical. Apart from this, there may also be bad or misleading desires whose fulfillment does not bring

8853-406: A person believes to be unobtainable. Gilles Deleuze rejects the idea, defended by Lacan and other psychoanalysts, that desire is a form of lack related to incompleteness or a lost object. Instead, he holds that it should be understood as a positive reality in the form of an affirmative vital force. In the field of marketing , desire is the human appetite for a given object of attention. Desire for

9080-442: A person has a desire he does not want to have. A recovering addict, for example, may have both a first-order desire to take drugs and a second-order desire of not following this first-order desire. Or a religious ascetic may still have sexual desires while at the same time wanting to be free of these desires. According to Frankfurt, having second-order volitions , i.e. second-order desires about which first-order desires are followed,

9307-455: A person has to do with having certain mental abilities and is connected to having a certain moral and legal status. An influential theory of persons is due to Harry Frankfurt . He defines persons in terms of higher-order desires. Many of the desires we have, like the desire to have ice cream or to take a vacation, are first-order desires. Higher-order desires, on the other hand, are desires about other desires. They are most prominent in cases where

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9534-435: A person is responsible for or guilty of. For example, if Mei promises to pick Pedro up from the airport then an agent-relative value obligates Mei to drive to the airport. This obligation is in place even if it does not benefit Mei, in which case there is an agent-relative value without a personal value. In consequentialism , agent-relative values are often discussed in relation to ethical dilemmas . One dilemma revolves around

9761-410: A person's well-being is determined by whether that person's desires are satisfied. It has been suggested that to prefer one thing to another is just to have a stronger desire for the former thing. An influential theory of personhood holds that only entities with higher-order desires can be persons. Desires play a central role in actions as what motivates them. It is usually held that a desire by itself

9988-441: A pleasurable object, we have to learn, through a hedonic experience of this object for example, that it is pleasurable. But it is also conceivable that reason by itself generates intrinsic desires. On this view, reasoning to the conclusion that it would be rational to have a certain intrinsic desire causes the subject to have this desire. It has also been proposed that instrumental desires may be transformed into intrinsic desires under

10215-415: A positive or negative value even if they are not right or wrong in a strict sense. Despite the distinction, evaluative and normative concepts are closely related. For example, the value of the consequences of an action may affect whether this action is right or wrong. Value theorists distinguish various types or categories of values. The different classifications overlap and are based on considerations like

10442-403: A predicate to talk about the unqualified value of pleasure. Attributive and predicative goodness can accompany each other, but this is not always the case. For instance, being a good thief is not necessarily a good thing. Another type of relative value restricts goodness to a specific person. Known as personal value , it expresses what benefits a particular person, promotes their welfare , or

10669-454: A product is stimulated by advertising, which attempts to give buyers a sense of lack or wanting. In store retailing, merchants attempt to increase the desire of the buyer by showcasing the product attractively, in the case of clothes or jewellery, or, for food stores, by offering samples. With print, TV, and radio advertising, desire is created by giving the potential buyer a sense of lacking ("Are you still driving that old car?") or by associating

10896-427: A prominent dispute between naturalists and non-naturalists hinges on the conceptual analysis of the term good , in particular, whether its meaning can be analyzed through natural terms, like pleasure . In the social sciences , value theorists face the challenge of measuring the evaluative outlook of individuals and groups. Specifically, they aim to determine personal value hierarchies, for example, whether

11123-470: A result of consequences as satisfying or discomforting. In the 20th century, operant conditioning was studied by behavioral psychologists , who believed that much of mind and behaviour is explained through environmental conditioning. Reinforcements are environmental stimuli that increase behaviors, whereas punishments are stimuli that decrease behaviors. Both kinds of stimuli can be further categorised into positive and negative stimuli, which respectively involve

11350-473: A result, a thing can have both intrinsic and instrumental value if it is both good in itself while also leading to other good things. In a similar sense, a thing can have different instrumental values at the same time, both positive and negative ones. This is the case if some of its consequences are good while others are bad. The total instrumental value of a thing is the value balance of all its consequences. Because instrumental value depends on other values, it

11577-415: A role in many different fields. There is disagreement whether desires should be understood as practical reasons or whether we can have practical reasons without having a desire to follow them. According to fitting-attitude theories of value , an object is valuable if it is fitting to desire this object or if we ought to desire it. Desire-satisfaction theories of well-being state that a person's well-being

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11804-411: A schedule of reinforcement. Noncontingent reinforcement is the delivery of reinforcing stimuli regardless of the organism's behavior. Noncontingent reinforcement may be used in an attempt to reduce an undesired target behavior by reinforcing multiple alternative responses while extinguishing the target response. As no measured behavior is identified as being strengthened, there is controversy surrounding

12031-442: A short form for that-clause-expressions while object-desire-theorists contend that they correspond to a different form of desire. One argument in favor of the latter position is that talk of object-desire is very common and natural in everyday language. But one important objection to this view is that object-desires lack proper conditions of satisfaction necessary for desires. Conditions of satisfaction determine under which situations

12258-413: A significant portion of their income to charities. Such an obligation would constitute a practical reason to act accordingly even for people who feel no desire to do so. A closely related issue in morality asks not what reasons we have but for what reasons we act. This idea goes back to Immanuel Kant , who holds that doing the right thing is not sufficient from the moral perspective. Instead, we have to do

12485-447: A similar effect, like the tics associated with Tourette syndrome . On the other hand, there are desires that do not incline us toward action. These include desires for things we cannot change, for example, a mathematician's desire that the number Pi be a rational number. In some extreme cases, such desires may be very common, for example, a totally paralyzed person may have all kinds of regular desires but lacks any disposition to act due to

12712-572: A soldier's behavior. Other improvements to military training methods have included the timed firing course; more realistic training; high repetitions; praise from superiors; marksmanship rewards; and group recognition. Negative reinforcement includes peer accountability or the requirement to retake courses. Modern military training conditions mid-brain response to combat pressure by closely simulating actual combat, using mainly Pavlovian classical conditioning and Skinnerian operant conditioning (both forms of behaviorism ). Modern marksmanship training

12939-453: A subgenre of the drama film . Like drama, a melodrama depends mostly on in-depth character development, interaction, and highly emotional themes. Melodramatic films tend to use plots that appeal to the heightened emotions of the audience. Melodramatic plots often deal with "crises of human emotion, failed romance or friendship, strained familial situations, tragedy, illness, neuroses, or emotional and physical hardship." Film critics sometimes use

13166-577: A subject gives more weight to truth than to moral goodness or beauty. They distinguish between direct and indirect measurement methods. Direct methods involve asking people straightforward questions about what things they value and which value priorities they have. This approach assumes that people are aware of their evaluative outlook and able to articulate it accurately. Indirect methods do not share this assumption, asserting instead that values guide behavior and choices on an unconscious level. Consequently, they observe how people decide and act, seeking to infer

13393-455: A total of four consequences: Schedules of reinforcement are rules that control the delivery of reinforcement. The rules specify either the time that reinforcement is to be made available, or the number of responses to be made, or both. Many rules are possible, but the following are the most basic and commonly used The effectiveness of reinforcement and punishment can be changed. Most of these factors serve biological functions. For example,

13620-402: A variable ratio schedule yields reinforcement after the emission of an unpredictable number of responses. This schedule typically generates rapid, persistent responding. Slot machines pay off on a variable ratio schedule, and they produce just this sort of persistent lever-pulling behavior in gamblers. The variable ratio payoff from slot machines and other forms of gambling has often been cited as

13847-924: A variety of socially significant behaviors and issues. In many cases, practitioners use operant techniques to develop constructive, socially acceptable behaviors to replace aberrant behaviors. The techniques of ABA have been effectively applied in to such things as early intensive behavioral interventions for children with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) research on the principles influencing criminal behavior , HIV prevention, conservation of natural resources, education, gerontology , health and exercise , industrial safety , language acquisition , littering, medical procedures , parenting, psychotherapy , seatbelt use, severe mental disorders , sports, substance abuse , phobias , pediatric feeding disorders, and zoo management and care of animals . Some of these applications are among those described below. Providing positive reinforcement for appropriate child behaviors

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14074-402: A widely accepted main classification. Some focus on the types of entities that have value. They include distinct categories for entities like things, the environment, individuals, groups, and society. Another subdivision pays attention to the type of benefit involved and encompasses material, economic, moral, social, political, aesthetic, and religious values. Classifications by the beneficiary of

14301-471: Is "capable only of devising means to ends set by [bodily] desire". Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) called any action based on desires a hypothetical imperative , which means they are a command of reason, applying only if one desires the goal in question. Kant also established a relation between the beautiful and pleasure in Critique of Judgment . Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel claimed that " self-consciousness

14528-529: Is "wanted" or "desired"), so as an addiction develops, deprivation of the drug leads to craving. In addition, stimuli associated with drug use – e.g., the sight of a syringe, and the location of use – become associated with the intense reinforcement induced by the drug. These previously neutral stimuli acquire several properties: their appearance can induce craving, and they can become conditioned positive reinforcers of continued use. Thus, if an addicted individual encounters one of these drug cues,

14755-557: Is a closely related field focusing primarily on normative concepts about which behavior is right, whereas value theory explores evaluative concepts about what is good. In economics, theories of value are frameworks to assess and explain the economic value of commodities . Sociology and anthropology examine values as aspects of societies and cultures, reflecting their dominant preferences and beliefs. Psychologists tend to understand values as abstract motivational goals that shape an individual's personality . The roots of value theory lie in

14982-407: Is a major focus of parent management training. Typically, parents learn to reward appropriate behavior through social rewards (such as praise, smiles, and hugs) as well as concrete rewards (such as stickers or points towards a larger reward as part of an incentive system created collaboratively with the child). In addition, parents learn to select simple behaviors as an initial focus and reward each of

15209-427: Is a property of desire satisfaction itself, while others say that it is a property of the objects that satisfy a desire. One debate in desire theory concerns whether any desire is a source of value. For example, if a person has a false belief that money makes them happy, it is questionable whether the satisfaction of their desire for money is a source of value. To address this consideration, some desire theorists say that

15436-563: Is a property of the fact that Bill is pleased. This distinction affects various disputes in value theory. In some cases, a value is intrinsic according to one view and extrinsic according to the other. Value realism contrasts with anti-realism , which comes in various forms. In its strongest version, anti-realism rejects the existence of values in any form, claiming that value statements are meaningless. Between these two positions, there are various intermediary views. Some anti-realists accept that value claims have meaning but deny that they have

15663-436: Is a quite fundamental concept. As such, it is relevant for many different fields. Various definitions and theories of other concepts have been expressed in terms of desires. Actions depend on desires and moral praiseworthiness is sometimes defined in terms of being motivated by the right desire. A popular contemporary approach defines value as that which it is fitting to desire. Desire-satisfaction theories of well-being state that

15890-447: Is about whether the entity carrying the value is a concrete individual or a state of affairs . For instance, the name "Bill" refers to an individual while the sentence "Bill is pleased" refers to a state of affairs. States of affairs are complex entities that combine other entities, like the individual "Bill" and the property "is pleased". Some value theorists hold that the value is a property directly of Bill while others contend that it

16117-428: Is addressed by several theories of avoidance (see below). Two kinds of experimental settings are commonly used: discriminated and free-operant avoidance learning. A discriminated avoidance experiment involves a series of trials in which a neutral stimulus such as a light is followed by an aversive stimulus such as a shock. After the neutral stimulus appears an operant response such as a lever press prevents or terminate

16344-599: Is an older and less common synonym. Value is the worth, usefulness, or merit of something. Many evaluative terms are employed to talk about value, including good , best , great , and excellent as well as their negative counterparts, like bad and terrible . Some value terms, like good and bad , are pure evaluations in that they only express the value of something without any additional descriptive content. They are known as thin evaluative concepts . Thick evaluative concepts , like courageous and cruel , provide more information by expressing other qualities besides

16571-483: Is an open question whether it should be understood as a value in a strict sense. For example, the overall value of a chain of causes leading to an intrinsically valuable thing remains the same if instrumentally valuable links are added or removed without affecting the intrinsically valuable thing. The observation that the overall value does not change is sometimes used as an argument that the things added or removed do not have value. Traditionally, value theorists have used

16798-624: Is at the core of romance novels, which often create drama by showing cases where human desire is impeded by social conventions , class , or cultural barriers. Melodrama films use plots that appeal to the heightened emotions of the audience by showing "crises of human emotion, failed romance or friendship", in which desire is thwarted or unrequited. Theories of desire aim to define desires in terms of their essential features. A great variety of features are ascribed to desires, like that they are propositional attitudes, that they lead to actions, that their fulfillment tends to bring pleasure, etc. Across

17025-434: Is between intrinsic desires , i.e. what the subject wants for its own sake, and instrumental desires , i.e. what the subject wants for the sake of something else. Instrumental desires depend for their formation and existence on other desires. For example, Aisha has a desire to find a charging station at the airport. This desire is instrumental because it is based on another desire: to keep her mobile phone from dying. Without

17252-467: Is called "the price elasticity of demand." Certain commodities are more elastic than others; for example, a change in price of certain foods may have a large effect on the amount bought, while gasoline and other everyday consumables may be less affected by price changes. In terms of operant analysis, such effects may be interpreted in terms of motivations of consumers and the relative value of the commodities as reinforcers. As stated earlier in this article,

17479-406: Is central to many issues concerning desires. Something is desired intrinsically if the subject desires it for its own sake . Pleasure is a common object of intrinsic desires. According to psychological hedonism , it is the only thing desired intrinsically. Intrinsic desires have a special status in that they do not depend on other desires. They contrast with instrumental desires, in which something

17706-401: Is context-independent. Theories of value aggregation provide concrete principles for calculating the overall value of an outcome based on how positively or negatively each individual is affected by it. For example, if a government implements a new policy that affects some people positively and others negatively, theories of value aggregation can be used to determine whether the overall value of

17933-417: Is desire". Because desire can cause humans to become obsessed and embittered, it has been called one of the causes of woe for mankind. In Buddhism , craving (see taṇhā ) is thought to be the cause of all suffering that one experiences in human existence. The eradication of craving leads one to ultimate happiness, or Nirvana . However, desire for wholesome things is seen as liberating and enhancing. While

18160-439: Is desired for the sake of something else . For example, Haruto enjoys movies, which is why he has an intrinsic desire to watch them. But in order to watch them, he has to step into his car, navigate through the traffic to the nearby cinema, wait in line, pay for the ticket, etc. He desires to do all these things as well, but only in an instrumental manner. He would not do all these things were it not for his intrinsic desire to watch

18387-414: Is determined by whether that person's desires are satisfied. Marketing and advertising companies have used psychological research on how desire is stimulated to find more effective ways to induce consumers into buying a given product or service. Techniques include creating a sense of lack in the viewer or associating the product with desirable attributes. Desire plays a key role in art. The theme of desire

18614-457: Is disputed and some theorists rely on alternative characterizations. In a broad sense, value theory is a catch-all label that encompasses all philosophical disciplines studying evaluative or normative topics. According to this view, value theory is one of the main branches of philosophy and includes ethics , aesthetics , social philosophy , political philosophy , and philosophy of religion . A similar broad characterization sees value theory as

18841-520: Is entirely possible that no one intentionally sat down to use operant conditioning or behavior modification techniques to train soldiers in this area…But from the standpoint of a psychologist who is also a historian and a career soldier, it has become increasingly obvious to me that this is exactly what has been achieved. Nudge theory (or nudge) is a concept in behavioural science , political theory and economics which argues that indirect suggestions to try to achieve non-forced compliance can influence

19068-428: Is expanded through the idea of behavioral chains, which are sequences of responses bound together by the three-term contingencies defined above. Chaining is based on the fact, experimentally demonstrated, that a discriminative stimulus not only sets the occasion for subsequent behavior, but it can also reinforce a behavior that precedes it. That is, a discriminative stimulus is also a "conditioned reinforcer". For example,

19295-515: Is found, for example, in the Bhagavad Gita or in the tradition of bhakti yoga . A similar line of thought is present in the teachings of Christianity . In the doctrine of the seven deadly sins , for example, various vices are listed, which have been defined as perverse or corrupt versions of love. Explicit reference to bad forms of desiring is found, for example, in the sins of lust , gluttony and greed . The seven sins are contrasted with

19522-697: Is good asserts that kindness possesses the property of goodness. Value realists disagree about what type of property is involved. Naturalists say that value is a natural property. Natural properties can be known through empirical observation and are studied by the natural sciences. This means that value is similar to other natural properties, like size and shape. Non-naturalists reject this view but agree that values are real. They say that values differ significantly from empirical properties and belong to another realm of reality. According to one view, they are known through rational or emotional intuition rather than empirical observation. Another disagreement among realists

19749-405: Is in their interest. For example, a poem written by a child may have personal value for the parents even if the poem lacks value for others. Impersonal value, by contrast, is good in general without restriction to any specific person or viewpoint. Some philosophers, like G. E. Moore , reject the existence of personal values, holding that all values are impersonal. Others have proposed theories about

19976-610: Is interested in marginal utility , the additional satisfaction gained from consuming one more unit of the commodity. Marginal utility often diminishes if many units have already been consumed, leading to a decrease in the exchange value of commodities that are abundantly available. Both the labor theory and the marginal theory were later challenged by the Sraffian theory of value . Sociology studies social behavior, relationships, institutions, and society at large. In their analyses and explanations of these phenomena, some sociologists use

20203-434: Is known as an organic unity , a whole whose intrinsic value differs from the sum of the intrinsic values of its parts. Another perspective, called holism about value , asserts that the intrinsic value of a thing depends on its context. Holists can argue that happiness has positive intrinsic value in the context of virtue and negative intrinsic value in the context of vice. Atomists reject this view, saying that intrinsic value

20430-449: Is made more likely to occur by contingently praising said behavior. Hundreds of studies have demonstrated the effectiveness of praise in promoting positive behaviors, notably in the study of teacher and parent use of praise on child in promoting improved behavior and academic performance, but also in the study of work performance. Praise has also been demonstrated to reinforce positive behaviors in non-praised adjacent individuals (such as

20657-430: Is modified. These terms are defined by their effect on behavior. "Positive" and "negative" refer to whether a stimulus was added or removed, respectively. Similarly, "reinforcement" and "punishment" refer to the future frequency of the behavior. Reinforcement describes a consequence that makes a behavior occur more often in the future, whereas punishment is a consequence that makes a behavior occur less often. There are

20884-424: Is not necessary to maintain avoidance behavior. Some theorists suggest that avoidance behavior may simply be a special case of operant behavior maintained by its consequences. In this view the idea of "consequences" is expanded to include sensitivity to a pattern of events. Thus, in avoidance, the consequence of a response is a reduction in the rate of aversive stimulation. Indeed, experimental evidence suggests that

21111-405: Is not possible to quantify how much better it is. Several controversies surround the question of how the intrinsic value of a whole is determined by the intrinsic values of its parts. According to the additivity principle, the intrinsic value of a whole is simply the sum of the intrinsic values of its parts. For example, if a virtuous person becomes happy then the intrinsic value of the happiness

21338-426: Is not sufficient: it has to be combined with a belief that the action in question would contribute to the fulfillment of the desire. The notion of practical reasons is closely related to motivation and desire. Some philosophers, often from a Humean tradition , simply identify an agent's desires with the practical reasons he has. A closely related view holds that desires are not reasons themselves but present reasons to

21565-431: Is occurrent. But many of her other desires, like to sell her old car or to talk with her boss about a promotion, are merely standing during this conversation. Standing desires remain part of the mind even while the subject is sound asleep. It has been questioned whether standing desires should be considered desires at all in a strict sense. One motivation for raising this doubt is that desires are attitudes toward contents but

21792-459: Is realized. This would mean that an agent cannot desire to have something if he believes that he already has it. One objection to the death-of-desire thesis comes from the fact that our preferences usually do not change upon desire-satisfaction. So if Samuel prefers to wear dry clothes rather than wet clothes, he would continue to hold this preference even after having come home from a rainy day and having changed his clothes. This would indicate against

22019-605: Is referred to as the Father of operant conditioning, and his work is frequently cited in connection with this topic. His 1938 book "The Behavior of Organisms: An Experimental Analysis", initiated his lifelong study of operant conditioning and its application to human and animal behavior. Following the ideas of Ernst Mach , Skinner rejected Thorndike's reference to unobservable mental states such as satisfaction, building his analysis on observable behavior and its equally observable consequences. Skinner believed that classical conditioning

22246-405: Is rejected by anti-realists , some of whom argue that values are subjective human creations, whereas others claim that value statements are meaningless. Several sources of value have been proposed, such as hedonism , which says that only pleasure has intrinsic value, and desire theories, which identify desires as the ultimate source of value. Perfectionism , another prominent theory, emphasizes

22473-469: Is repeatedly followed by reinforcement, and in consequence the animal begins to respond to the stimulus. For example, a response key is lighted and then food is presented. When this is repeated a few times a pigeon subject begins to peck the key even though food comes whether the bird pecks or not. Similarly, rats begin to handle small objects, such as a lever, when food is presented nearby. Strikingly, pigeons and rats persist in this behavior even when pecking

22700-520: Is simply added to the intrinsic value of the virtue, thereby increasing the overall value. Various counterexamples to the additivity principle have been proposed, suggesting that the relation between parts and wholes is more complex. For example, Immanuel Kant argued that if a vicious person becomes happy, this happiness, though good in itself, does not increase the overall value. On the contrary, it makes things worse, according to Kant, since viciousness should not be rewarded with happiness. This situation

22927-480: Is spent. In Cathy Cupitt's article on "Desire and Vision in Blade Runner", she argues that film, as a "visual narrative form, plays with the voyeuristic desires of its audience". Focusing on the dystopian 1980s science fiction film Blade Runner , she calls the film an "Object of Visual Desire", in which it plays to an "expectation of an audience's delight in visual texture, with the 'retro-fitted' spectacle of

23154-549: Is such an excellent example of behaviorism that it has been used for years in the introductory psychology course taught to all cadets at the US Military Academy at West Point as a classic example of operant conditioning. In the 1980s, during a visit to West Point, B.F. Skinner identified modern military marksmanship training as a near-perfect application of operant conditioning. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman states about operant conditioning and US Military training that: It

23381-484: Is that our introspective access is much more immediate in cases of preferences than in cases of desires. So it is usually much easier for us to know which of two options we prefer than to know the degree with which we desire a particular object. This consideration has been used to suggest that maybe preference, and not desire, is the more fundamental notion. Personhood is what persons have. There are various theories about what constitutes personhood. Most agree that being

23608-399: Is the wrong kind of reason problem , which is based on the consideration that facts independent of the value of an object may affect whether this object ought to be desired. In one thought experiment, an evil demon threatens the agent to kill her family unless she desires him. In such a situation, it is fitting for the agent to desire the demon in order to save her family, despite the fact that

23835-561: Is the assessment or measurement of value, often employed to compare the benefits of different options to find the most advantageous choice. Evaluative terms are sometimes distinguished from normative or deontic terms. Normative terms, like right , wrong , and obligation , prescribe actions or other states by expressing what ought to be done or what is required. Evaluative terms have a wider scope because they are not limited to what people can control or are responsible for. For example, involuntary events like digestion and earthquakes can have

24062-443: Is the mark of personhood. It is a form of caring about oneself, of being concerned with who one is and what one does. Not all entities with a mind have higher-order volitions. Frankfurt terms them "wantons" in contrast to "persons". On his view, animals and maybe also some human beings are wantons . Both psychology and philosophy are interested in where desires come from or how they form. An important distinction for this investigation

24289-411: Is the only source of value. This theory overlaps with hedonism because many people desire pleasure and because desire satisfaction is often accompanied by pleasure. Nonetheless, there are important differences: people desire a variety of other things as well, like knowledge, achievement, and respect; additionally, desire satisfaction may not always result in pleasure. Some desire theorists hold that value

24516-430: Is the view that values have mind-independent existence. This means that objective facts determine what has value, irrespective of subjective beliefs and preferences. According to this view, the evaluative statement "That act is bad" is as objectively true or false as the empirical statement "That act causes distress". Realists often analyze values as properties of valuable things. For example, stating that kindness

24743-448: Is the worth of something, usually understood as a degree that covers both positive and negative magnitudes corresponding to the terms good and bad . Values influence many human endeavors related to emotion , decision-making , and action . Value theorists distinguish between intrinsic and instrumental value . An entity has intrinsic value if it is good in itself, independent of external factors. An entity has instrumental value if it

24970-495: Is to be disposed to bring it about that P, assuming one's beliefs are true". Despite their popularity and their usefulness for empirical investigations, action-based theories face various criticisms. These criticisms can roughly be divided into two groups. On the one hand, there are inclinations to act that are not based on desires. Evaluative beliefs about what we should do, for example, incline us toward doing it, even if we do not want to do it. There are also mental disorders that have

25197-441: Is true that sexual confusion can be aberrative in a few cases, there is no credible evidence to suggest that it is a universal scenario. While Freud was correct in labeling the various symptoms behind most compulsions, phobias and disorders, he was largely incorrect in his theories regarding the etiology of what he identified. French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist Jacques Lacan (1901–1981) argues that desire first occurs during

25424-448: Is useful as a means leading to other good things. Some classifications focus on the type of benefit, including economic, moral, political, aesthetic, and religious values. Other categorizations, based on the meaning and function of evaluative terms, discuss attributive, predicative, personal, impersonal, and agent-relative values. Value realists state that values have mind-independent existence as objective features of reality. This view

25651-453: Is usually held that desires come in varying strengths: some things are desired more strongly than other things. We desire things in regard to some features they have but usually not in regard to all of their features. Desires are also closely related to agency : we normally try to realize our desires when acting. It is usually held that desires by themselves are not sufficient for actions: they have to be combined with beliefs. The desire to own

25878-562: Is what dissatisfies us". In "The Rose for the World", he admires her beauty, but feels pain because he cannot be with her. In the poem "No Second Troy", Yeats overflows with anger and bitterness because of their unrequited love. Poet T. S. Eliot dealt with the themes of desire and homoeroticism in his poetry, prose and drama. Other poems on the theme of desire include John Donne 's poem "To His Mistress Going to Bed", Carol Ann Duffy 's longings in "Warming Her Pearls"; Ted Hughes ' "Lovesong" about

26105-434: Is worth two beavers. The philosopher Karl Marx extended the labor theory of value in various ways. He introduced the concept of surplus value , which goes beyond the time and resources invested to explain how capitalists can profit from the labor of their employees. The marginal theory of value focuses on consumption rather than production. It says that the utility a commodity is the source of its value. Specifically, it

26332-505: The Chinese philosopher Zhang Dainian, says that the value of truth belongs to knowledge, the value of goodness belongs to behavior, and the value of beauty belongs to art. This three-fold distinction also plays a central role in the philosophies of Franz Brentano and Jürgen Habermas . Other suggested types of values include objective, subjective, potential, actual, contingent, necessary, inherent, and constitutive values. Value realism

26559-434: The ancient period in the form of reflections on the highest good that humans should pursue. Value theory, also known as axiology and theory of values , is the systematic study of values . As the branch of philosophy examining which things are good and what it means for something to be good, it distinguishes different types of values and explores how they can be measured and compared. It also studies whether values are

26786-522: The early Buddhist scriptures , the Buddha stated that monks should "generate desire" for the sake of fostering skillful qualities and abandoning unskillful ones. Within Christianity, desire is seen as something that can either lead a person towards God or away from him. Desire is not considered to be a bad thing in and of itself; rather, it is a powerful force within the human that, once submitted to

27013-443: The seven virtues , which include the corresponding positive counterparts. A desire for God is explicitly encouraged in various doctrines. Existentialists sometimes distinguish between authentic and inauthentic desires. Authentic desires express what the agent truly wants from deep within. An agent wants something inauthentically, on the other hand, if the agent is not fully identified with this desire, despite having it. Desire

27240-430: The ventral pallidum are at least partially responsible for mediating an individual's desire (i.e., incentive salience) for a rewarding stimulus and the subjective perception of pleasure derived from experiencing or "consuming" a rewarding stimulus (e.g., pleasure derived from eating palatable food, sexual pleasure from intercourse with an attractive mate, or euphoria from using an addictive drug ). Research also shows that

27467-423: The (aversive) stimulation of bright light in one's eyes. (This is an example of negative reinforcement, defined above.) Behavior that is maintained by preventing a stimulus is called "avoidance," as, for example, putting on sun glasses before going outdoors. Avoidance behavior raises the so-called "avoidance paradox", for, it may be asked, how can the non-occurrence of a stimulus serve as a reinforcer? This question

27694-558: The CS and the US through classical conditioning and, because of the aversive nature of the US, the CS comes to elicit a conditioned emotional reaction (CER) – "fear." b) Reinforcement of the operant response by fear-reduction. As a result of the first process, the CS now signals fear; this unpleasant emotional reaction serves to motivate operant responses, and responses that terminate the CS are reinforced by fear termination. The theory does not say that

27921-600: The Lordship of Christ, can become a tool for good, for advancement, and for abundant living. In Hinduism , the Rig Veda's creation myth Nasadiya Sukta states regarding the one (ekam) spirit: "In the beginning there was Desire (kama) that was first seed of mind. Poets found the bond of being in non-being in their heart's thought". While desires are often classified as emotions by laypersons, psychologists often describe desires as ur-emotions, or feelings that do not quite fit

28148-474: The Wind , in which "desire is the driving force for both Scarlett and the hero, Rhett". Scarlett desires love, money, the attention of men, and the vision of being a virtuous "true lady". Rhett Butler desires to be with Scarlett, which builds to a burning longing that is ultimately his undoing, because Scarlett keeps refusing his advances; when she finally confesses her secret desire, Rhett is worn out and his longing

28375-404: The addition or removal of environmental stimuli. Operant conditioning differs from classical conditioning , which is a process where stimuli are paired with biologically significant events to produce involuntary and reflexive behaviors. In contrast, operant conditioning is voluntary and depends on the consequences of a behavior. The study of animal learning in the 20th century was dominated by

28602-602: The aforementioned features in their definition of desires. Desires can be grouped into various types according to a few basic distinctions. Something is desired intrinsically if the subject desires it for its own sake . Otherwise, the desire is instrumental or extrinsic . Occurrent desires are causally active while standing desires exist somewhere in the back of one's mind. Propositional desires are directed at possible states of affairs, in contrast to object-desires, which are directly about objects. The distinction between intrinsic and instrumental or extrinsic desires

28829-412: The agent. A strength of these positions is that they can give a straightforward explanation of how practical reasons can act as motivation. But an important objection is that we may have reasons to do things without a desire to do them. This is especially relevant in the field of morality . Peter Singer , for example, suggests that most people living in developed countries have a moral obligation to donate

29056-478: The analysis of these two sorts of learning, and they are still at the core of behavior analysis. They have also been applied to the study of social psychology , helping to clarify certain phenomena such as the false consensus effect . Operant conditioning, sometimes called instrumental learning , was first extensively studied by Edward L. Thorndike (1874–1949), who observed the behavior of cats trying to escape from home-made puzzle boxes. A cat could escape from

29283-402: The application of reinforcement is either less immediate or less contingent (less consistent), the ability of dopamine to act upon the appropriate synapses is reduced. A number of observations seem to show that operant behavior can be established without reinforcement in the sense defined above. Most cited is the phenomenon of autoshaping (sometimes called "sign tracking"), in which a stimulus

29510-405: The autoshaping procedure has, in fact, become one of the most common ways to measure classical conditioning. In this view, many behaviors can be influenced by both classical contingencies (stimulus-response) and operant contingencies (response-reinforcement), and the experimenter's task is to work out how these interact. Reinforcement and punishment are ubiquitous in human social interactions, and

29737-416: The aversive stimulus. In early trials, the subject does not make the response until the aversive stimulus has come on, so these early trials are called "escape" trials. As learning progresses, the subject begins to respond during the neutral stimulus and thus prevents the aversive stimulus from occurring. Such trials are called "avoidance trials." This experiment is said to involve classical conditioning because

29964-480: The basic findings from which Skinner developed his account of operant conditioning. He also drew on many less formal observations of human and animal behavior. Many of Skinner's writings are devoted to the application of operant conditioning to human behavior. In 1948 he published Walden Two , a fictional account of a peaceful, happy, productive community organized around his conditioning principles. In 1957, Skinner published Verbal Behavior , which extended

30191-676: The box by a simple response such as pulling a cord or pushing a pole, but when first constrained, the cats took a long time to get out. With repeated trials ineffective responses occurred less frequently and successful responses occurred more frequently, so the cats escaped more and more quickly. Thorndike generalized this finding in his law of effect , which states that behaviors followed by satisfying consequences tend to be repeated and those that produce unpleasant consequences are less likely to be repeated. In short, some consequences strengthen behavior and some consequences weaken behavior. By plotting escape time against trial number Thorndike produced

30418-584: The category of fitting-attitude theories . According to them, an object is valuable if it is fitting to desire this object or if we ought to desire it. This is sometimes expressed by saying that the object is desirable , appropriately desired or worthy of desire . Two important aspects of this type of position are that it reduces values to deontic notions , or what we ought to feel, and that it makes values dependent on human responses and attitudes . Despite their popularity, fitting-attitude theories of value face various theoretical objections. An often-cited one

30645-520: The category of basic emotions. For psychologists, desires arise from bodily structures and functions (e.g., the stomach needing food and the blood needing oxygen). On the other hand, emotions arise from a person's mental state. A 2008 study by the University of Michigan indicated that, while humans experience desire and fear as psychological opposites, they share the same brain circuit. A 2008 study entitled "The Neural Correlates of Desire" showed that

30872-433: The children's upkeep?". Marketing theorists call desire the third stage in the hierarchy of effects, which occurs when the buyer develops a sense that if they felt the need for the type of product in question, the advertised product is what would quench their desire. The theme of desire is at the core of the written fictions , especially romance novels. Novels which are based around the theme of desire, which can range from

31099-412: The clearest and most convincing examples of operant control. Of the concepts and procedures described in this article, a few of the most salient are the following: (a) availability of primary reinforcement (e.g. a bag of dog yummies); (b) the use of secondary reinforcement, (e.g. sounding a clicker immediately after a desired response, then giving yummy); (c) contingency, assuring that reinforcement (e.g.

31326-449: The clicker) follows the desired behavior and not something else; (d) shaping, as in gradually getting a dog to jump higher and higher; (e) intermittent reinforcement, as in gradually reducing the frequency of reinforcement to induce persistent behavior without satiation; (f) chaining, where a complex behavior is gradually constructed from smaller units. Applied behavior analysis is the discipline initiated by B. F. Skinner that applies

31553-476: The concept of values to understand issues like social cohesion and conflict , the norms and practices people follow, and collective action . They usually understand values as subjective attitudes possessed by individuals and shared in social groups. According to this view, values are beliefs or priorities about goals worth pursuing that guide people to act in certain ways. This subjective conception of values as aspects of individuals and social groups contrasts with

31780-425: The contrast between absolute and relative value. Absolute value, also called value simpliciter , is a form of unconditional value. A thing has relative value if its value is limited to certain considerations or viewpoints. One form of relative value is restricted to the type of an entity, expressed in sentences like "That is a good knife" or "Jack is a good thief". This form is known as attributive goodness since

32007-411: The cultivation of characteristic human abilities. Value pluralism holds that there are diverse sources of intrinsic value, raising the issue of whether values belonging to different types are comparable. Value theorists employ various methods of inquiry , ranging from reliance on intuitions and thought experiments to the description of first-person experience and the analysis of language. Ethics

32234-426: The death-of-desire thesis that no change on the level of the agent's conative states takes place. In philosophy, desire has been identified as a philosophical problem since Antiquity. In The Republic , Plato argues that individual desires must be postponed in the name of the higher ideal. In De Anima , Aristotle claims that desire is implicated in animal interactions and the propensity of animals to motion; at

32461-407: The demon does not possess positive value. Well-being is usually considered a special type of value: the well-being of a person is what is ultimately good for this person. Desire-satisfaction theories are among the major theories of well-being. They state that a person's well-being is determined by whether that person's desires are satisfied: the higher the number of satisfied desires, the higher

32688-400: The desired final (or "target") behavior. Next, the trainer chooses a behavior that the animal or person already emits with some probability. The form of this behavior is then gradually changed across successive trials by reinforcing behaviors that approximate the target behavior more and more closely. When the target behavior is finally emitted, it may be strengthened and maintained by the use of

32915-496: The different theories of desires, there is a broad agreement about what these features are. Their disagreement concerns which of these features belong to the essence of desires and which ones are merely accidental or contingent. Traditionally, the two most important theories define desires in terms of dispositions to cause actions or concerning their tendency to bring pleasure upon being fulfilled. An important alternative of more recent origin holds that desiring something means seeing

33142-429: The difficulty of explaining how we can have beliefs about what we should do despite not wanting to do it. A more promising approach identifies desires not with value-beliefs but with value-seemings. On this view, to desire to have one more drink is the same as it seeming good to the subject to have one more drink. But such a seeming is compatible with the subject having the opposite belief that having one more drink would be

33369-418: The evaluation, such as character traits . Values are often understood as degrees that cover positive and negative magnitudes corresponding to good and bad. The term value is sometimes restricted to positive degrees to contrast with the term disvalue for the negative degrees. The terms better and worse are used to compare degrees, but it is controversial whether this is possible in all cases. Evaluation

33596-524: The existence of values but denies that they are mind-independent. According to this view, the mental states of individuals determine whether an object has value, for instance, because individuals desire it. A similar view is defended by existentialists like Jean-Paul Sartre , who argued that values are human creations that endow the world with meaning. Subjectivist theories say that values are relative to each subject, whereas more objectivist outlooks hold that values depend on mind in general rather than on

33823-434: The expense of higher values. Radical pluralists reject this approach, putting more emphasis on diversity by holding that different types of values are not comparable with each other. This means that each value type is unique, making it impossible to determine which one is superior. Some value theorists use radical pluralism to argue that value conflicts are inevitable, that the gain of one value cannot always compensate for

34050-529: The first known animal learning curves through this procedure. Humans appear to learn many simple behaviors through the sort of process studied by Thorndike, now called operant conditioning. That is, responses are retained when they lead to a successful outcome and discarded when they do not, or when they produce aversive effects. This usually happens without being planned by any "teacher", but operant conditioning has been used by parents in teaching their children for thousands of years. B.F. Skinner (1904–1990)

34277-489: The form of operant conditioning . Action-based or motivational theories have traditionally been dominant. They can take different forms but they all have in common that they define desires as structures that incline us toward actions. This is especially relevant when ascribing desires, not from a first-person perspective, but from a third-person perspective. Action-based theories usually include some reference to beliefs in their definition, for example, that "to desire that P

34504-481: The graveyard as a mixture of fear and blissful emotion. Poet W. B. Yeats depicts the positive and negative aspects of desire in his poems such as "The Rose for the World", "Adam's Curse", "No Second Troy", "All Things can Tempt me", and "Meditations in Time of Civil War". Some poems depict desire as a poison for the soul; Yeats worked through his desire for his beloved, Maud Gonne, and realized that "Our longing, our craving, our thirsting for something other than Reality

34731-423: The human brain categorizes stimuli according to its desirability by activating three different brain areas: the superior orbitofrontal cortex , the mid- cingulate cortex , and the anterior cingulate cortex . In affective neuroscience , "desire" and "wanting" are operationally defined as motivational salience ; the form of "desire" or "wanting" associated with a rewarding stimulus (i.e., a stimulus which acts as

34958-479: The individual mind. A different position accepts that values are mind-independent but holds that they are reducible to other facts, meaning that they are not a fundamental part of reality. One form of reductionism maintains that a thing is good if it is fitting to favor this thing, regardless of whether people actually favor it. The strongest form of realism says that value is a fundamental part of reality and cannot be reduced to other aspects. Various theories about

35185-409: The individual. Traditionally, most value theorists see absolute value as the main topic of value theory and focus their attention on this type. Nonetheless, some philosophers, like Peter Geach and Philippa Foot , have argued that the concept of absolute value by itself is meaningless and should be understood as one form of relative value. Other classifications of values have been proposed without

35412-603: The instrumental desire remains. Such cases are sometimes termed "motivational inertia". Something like this might be the case when the agent finds himself with a desire to go to the kitchen, only to realize upon arriving that he does not know what he wants there. Intrinsic desires , on the other hand, do not depend on other desires. Some authors hold that all or at least some intrinsic desires are inborn or innate, for example, desires for pleasure or for nutrition. But other authors suggest that even these relatively basic desires may depend to some extent on experience: before we can desire

35639-433: The key or pressing the lever leads to less food (omission training). Another apparent operant behavior that appears without reinforcement is contrafreeloading . These observations and others appear to contradict the law of effect , and they have prompted some researchers to propose new conceptualizations of operant reinforcement (e.g. ) A more general view is that autoshaping is an instance of classical conditioning ;

35866-448: The latter desire, the former would not have come into existence. As an additional requirement, a possibly unconscious belief or judgment is necessary to the effect that the fulfillment of the instrumental desire would somehow contribute to the fulfillment of the desire it is based on. Instrumental desires usually pass away after the desires they are based on cease to exist. But defective cases are possible where, often due to absentmindedness,

36093-399: The light that sets the occasion for lever pressing may be used to reinforce "turning around" in the presence of a noise. This results in the sequence "noise – turn-around – light – press lever – food". Much longer chains can be built by adding more stimuli and responses. In escape learning, a behavior terminates an (aversive) stimulus. For example, shielding one's eyes from sunlight terminates

36320-399: The loss of another, and that some ethical dilemmas are irresolvable. For example, philosopher Isaiah Berlin applied this idea to the values of liberty and equality , arguing that a gain in one cannot make up for a loss in the other. Similarly, philosopher Joseph Raz said that it is often impossible to compare the values of career paths, like when choosing between becoming a lawyer or

36547-429: The money people are willing to pay for it. Economic theories of value are frameworks to explain how economic value arises and which factors influence it. Prominent frameworks include the classical labor theory of value and the neo-classical marginal theory of value . The labor theory, initially developed by the economists Adam Smith and David Ricardo , distinguishes between use value —the utility or satisfaction

36774-530: The most important. Many are pluralistic in recognizing a diverse array of human excellences, such as knowledge, creativity, health, beauty, free agency, and moral virtues like benevolence and courage. According to one suggestion, there are two main fields of human goods: theoretical abilities responsible for understanding the world and practical abilities responsible for interacting with it. Some perfectionists provide an ideal characterization of human nature, holding that human excellences are those aspects that promote

37001-491: The mother creates neuroses in their sons. Freud used the Greek myth of Oedipus to argue that people desire incest and must repress that desire. He claimed that children pass through several stages, including a stage in which they fixate on the mother as a sexual object. That this "complex" is universal has long since been disputed. Even if it were true, that would not explain those neuroses in daughters, but only in sons. While it

37228-410: The motives, incentives and decision making of groups and individuals, at least as effectively – if not more effectively – than direct instruction, legislation, or enforcement. The concept of praise as a means of behavioral reinforcement is rooted in B.F. Skinner's model of operant conditioning. Through this lens, praise has been viewed as a means of positive reinforcement, wherein an observed behavior

37455-499: The movie there. But there are also constitutive means besides causal means . Constitutive means are not causes but ways of doing something. Watching the movie while sitting in seat 13F, for example, is one way of watching the movie, but not an antecedent cause . Desires corresponding to constitutive means are sometimes termed "realizer desires". Occurrent desires are desires that are currently active. They are either conscious or at least have unconscious effects, for example, on

37682-410: The movie. It is possible to desire the same thing both intrinsically and instrumentally at the same time. So if Haruto was a driving enthusiast, he might have both an intrinsic and an instrumental desire to drive to the cinema. Instrumental desires are usually about causal means to bring the object of another desire about. Driving to the cinema, for example, is one of the causal requirements for watching

37909-451: The nature, sources, and types of values in general. Some philosophers understand value theory as a subdiscipline of ethics. This is based on the idea that what people should do is affected by value considerations but not necessarily limited to them. Another view sees ethics as a subdiscipline of value theory. This outlook follows the idea that ethics is concerned with moral values affecting what people can control, whereas value theory examines

38136-439: The object of desire as valuable . A great variety of features is ascribed to desires. They are usually seen as attitudes toward conceivable states of affairs , often referred to as propositional attitudes . They differ from beliefs , which are also commonly seen as propositional attitudes, by their direction of fit . Both beliefs and desires are representations of the world. But while beliefs aim at truth, i.e. to represent how

38363-600: The objective conceptions of values more prominent in economics, which understands values as aspects of commodities. Operant conditioning Operant conditioning , also called instrumental conditioning , is a learning process where voluntary behaviors are modified by association with the addition (or removal) of reward or aversive stimuli. The frequency or duration of the behavior may increase through reinforcement or decrease through punishment or extinction . Operant conditioning originated with Edward Thorndike , whose law of effect theorised that behaviors arise as

38590-485: The occasion for responses that produce reward or punishment. Example: a rat may be trained to press a lever only when a light comes on; a dog rushes to the kitchen when it hears the rattle of his/her food bag; a child reaches for candy when s/he sees it on a table. Most behavior is under stimulus control. Several aspects of this may be distinguished: Most behavior cannot easily be described in terms of individual responses reinforced one by one. The scope of operant analysis

38817-428: The opposite to be the case, positive reinforcement proving to be the more effective form of learning when dopamine activity is high. A neurochemical process involving dopamine has been suggested to underlie reinforcement. When an organism experiences a reinforcing stimulus, dopamine pathways in the brain are activated. This network of pathways "releases a short pulse of dopamine onto many dendrites , thus broadcasting

39044-487: The orbitofrontal cortex has connections to both the opioid and dopamine systems, and stimulating this cortex is associated with subjective reports of pleasure. Austrian psychiatrist Sigmund Freud , who is best known for his theories of the unconscious mind and the defense mechanism of repression and for creating the clinical practice of psychoanalysis, proposed the notion of the Oedipus complex , which argues that desire for

39271-542: The organism "avoids" the US in the sense of anticipating it, but rather that the organism "escapes" an aversive internal state that is caused by the CS. Several experimental findings seem to run counter to two-factor theory. For example, avoidance behavior often extinguishes very slowly even when the initial CS-US pairing never occurs again, so the fear response might be expected to extinguish (see Classical conditioning ). Further, animals that have learned to avoid often show little evidence of fear, suggesting that escape from fear

39498-776: The overall value of the world. One motivation for value pluralism is the observation that people value diverse types of things, including happiness, friendship, success, and knowledge. This diversity becomes particularly prominent when people face difficult decisions between competing values, such as choosing between friendship and career success. Since monists accept only one source of intrinsic value, they explain this observation by holding that other items in this diversity have only instrumental value or, in some cases, no value at all. Pluralists have proposed various accounts of how their view affects practical decisions. Rational decisions often rely on value comparisons to determine which course of action should be pursued. Some pluralists discuss

39725-516: The paralysis. It is one important feature of desires that their fulfillment is pleasurable. Pleasure-based or hedonic theories use this feature as part of their definition of desires. According to one version, "to desire p is ... to be disposed to take pleasure in it seeming that p and displeasure in it seeming that not-p". Hedonic theories avoid many of the problems faced by action-based theories: they allow that other things besides desires incline us to actions and they have no problems explaining how

39952-764: The participants' lives, aiming to understand the relative importance assigned to each of them. The Schwartz theory of basic human values is a modification of the Rokeach Value Survey that seeks to provide a more cross-cultural and universal assessment. It arranges the values in a circular manner to reflect that neighboring values are compatible with each other, such as tradition and security, while values on opposing sides may conflict with each other, such as tradition and self-direction. Ethics and value theory are overlapping fields of inquiry. Ethics studies moral phenomena, focusing on how people should act or which behaviors are morally right. Value theory investigates

40179-425: The perspective of individual agents and societal systems. Economists view evaluations as a driving force underlying economic activity. They use the notion of economic value and related evaluative concepts to understand decision-making processes, resource allocation, and the impact of policies. The economic value or benefit of a commodity is the advantage it provides to an economic agent , often measured in terms of

40406-511: The perspectives of ethics and value theory, asserting that the rightness of an action depends on the value of its consequences. Consequentialists compare possible courses of action, saying that people should follow the one leading to the best overall consequences. The overall consequences of an action are the totality of its effects, or how it impacts the world by starting a causal chain of events that would not have occurred otherwise. Distinct versions of consequentialism rely on different theories of

40633-457: The phenomenological method is to suspend preconceived ideas and judgments to understand the essence of experiences as they present themselves to consciousness. The analysis of concepts and ordinary language is another method of inquiry. By examining terms and sentences used to talk about values, value theorists aim to clarify their meanings, uncover crucial distinctions, and formulate arguments for and against axiological theories. For example,

40860-404: The pleasure they originally seemed to promise. Value-based theories are of more recent origin than action-based theories and hedonic theories . They identify desires with attitudes toward values. Cognitivist versions , sometimes referred to as desire-as-belief theses, equate desires with beliefs that something is good, thereby categorizing desires as one type of belief. But such versions face

41087-403: The policy is positive or negative. Axiological utilitarianism accepts the additivity principle, saying that the total value is simply the sum of all individual values. Axiological egalitarians are not only interested in the sum total of value but also in how the values are distributed. They argue that an outcome with a balanced advantage distribution is better than an outcome where some benefit

41314-420: The possible consequences and gain insight into the underlying problem. For example, philosopher Robert Nozick imagines an experience machine that can virtually simulate an ideal life. Based on his observation that people would not want to spend the rest of their lives in this pleasurable simulation, Nozick argues against the hedonist claim that pleasure is the only source of intrinsic value. According to him,

41541-510: The post-modern city to ogle" and with the use of the "motif of the 'eye'". In the film, "desire is a key motivating influence on the narrative of the film, both in the 'real world', and within the text." Axiology Value theory is the systematic study of values . Also called axiology , it examines the nature, sources, and types of values. As a branch of philosophy , it has interdisciplinary applications in fields such as economics , sociology , anthropology , and psychology . Value

41768-423: The posterior cortical regions like the primary visual cortex . A study of patients with Parkinson's disease , a condition attributed to the insufficient action of dopamine, further illustrates the role of dopamine in positive reinforcement. It showed that while off their medication, patients learned more readily with aversive consequences than with positive reinforcement. Patients who were on their medication showed

41995-443: The principles of conditioning to the modification of socially significant human behavior. It uses the basic concepts of conditioning theory, including conditioned stimulus (S ), discriminative stimulus (S ), response (R), and reinforcing stimulus (S or S for reinforcers, sometimes S for aversive stimuli). Practitioners of applied behavior analysis (ABA) bring these procedures, and many variations and developments of them, to bear on

42222-399: The principles of operant conditioning to language, a form of human behavior that had previously been analyzed quite differently by linguists and others. Skinner defined new functional relationships such as "mands" and "tacts" to capture some essentials of language, but he introduced no new principles, treating verbal behavior like any other behavior controlled by its consequences, which included

42449-540: The process of satiation helps the organism maintain a stable internal environment ( homeostasis ). When an organism has been deprived of sugar, for example, the taste of sugar is an effective reinforcer. When the organism's blood sugar reaches or exceeds an optimum level the taste of sugar becomes less effective or even aversive. Shaping is a conditioning method often used in animal training and in teaching nonverbal humans. It depends on operant variability and reinforcement, as described above. The trainer starts by identifying

42676-409: The product with desirable attributes, either by showing a celebrity using or wearing the product, or by giving the product a " halo effect " by showing attractive models with the product. Nike's "Just Do It" ads for sports shoes are appealing to consumers' desires for self-betterment. In some cases, the potential buyer already has the desire for the product before they enter the store, as in the case of

42903-857: The purpose of killing in combat. Following acceptance of Marshall's research by the US Army in 1946, the Human Resources Research Office of the US Army began implementing new training protocols which resemble operant conditioning methods. Subsequent applications of such methods increased the percentage of soldiers able to kill to around 50% in Korea and over 90% in Vietnam. Revolutions in training included replacing traditional pop-up firing ranges with three-dimensional, man-shaped, pop-up targets which collapsed when hit. This provided immediate feedback and acted as positive reinforcement for

43130-414: The question of whether an individual should murder an innocent person if this prevents the murder of two innocent people by a different perpetrator. The agent-neutral perspective tends to affirm this idea since one murder is preferable to two. The agent-relative perspective tends to reject this conclusion, arguing that the initial murder should be avoided since it negatively impacts the agent-relative value of

43357-437: The reactions of the speaker's audience. Operant behavior is said to be "emitted"; that is, initially it is not elicited by any particular stimulus. Thus one may ask why it happens in the first place. The answer to this question is like Darwin's answer to the question of the origin of a "new" bodily structure, namely, variation and selection. Similarly, the behavior of an individual varies from moment to moment, in such aspects as

43584-558: The realization of this goal. This view is exemplified in Aristotle 's focus on rationality as the nature and ideal state of human beings. Non-humanistic versions extend perfectionism to the natural world in general, arguing that excellence as a source of intrinsic value is not limited to the human realm. Monist theories of value assert that there is only a single source of intrinsic value. They agree that various things have value but maintain that all fundamentally good things belong to

43811-478: The relation between personal and impersonal value. The agglomerative theory says that impersonal value is nothing but the sum of all personal values. Another view understands impersonal value as a specific type of personal value taken from the perspective of the universe as a whole. Agent-relative value is sometimes contrasted with personal value as another person-specific limitation of the evaluative outlook. Agent-relative values affect moral considerations about what

44038-502: The right conditions. This could be possible through processes of reward-based learning . The idea is that whatever reliably predicts the fulfillment of intrinsic desires may itself become the object of an intrinsic desire. So a baby may initially only instrumentally desire its mother because of the warmth, hugs and milk she provides. But over time, this instrumental desire may become an intrinsic desire. The death-of-desire thesis holds that desires cannot continue to exist once their object

44265-465: The right thing for the right reason. He refers to this distinction as the difference between legality ( Legalität ), i.e. acting in accordance with outer norms, and morality ( Moralität ), i.e. being motivated by the right inward attitude. On this view, donating a significant portion of one's income to charities is not a moral action if the motivating desire is to improve one's reputation by convincing other people of one's wealth and generosity. Instead, from

44492-508: The roots of value theory reach back to the ancient period , this area of thought was only conceived as a distinct discipline in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when the term axiology was coined. The terms value theory and axiology are usually used as synonyms but some philosophers distinguish between them. According to one characterization, axiology is a subfield of value theory that limits itself to theories about what things are valuable and how valuable they are. The term timology

44719-566: The same time, he acknowledges that reasoning also interacts with desire. Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) proposed the concept of psychological hedonism , which asserts that the "fundamental motivation of all human action is the desire for pleasure." Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) had a view which contrasted with Hobbes, in that "he saw natural desires as a form of bondage" that are not chosen by a person of their own free will . David Hume (1711–1776) claimed that desires and passions are non-cognitive, automatic bodily responses, and he argued that reasoning

44946-423: The same type. For example, hedonists hold that nothing but pleasure has intrinsic value, while desire theorists argue that desire satisfaction is the only source of fundamental goodness. Pluralists reject this view, contending that a simple single-value system is too crude to capture the complexity of the sphere of values. They say that diverse sources of value exist independently of one another, each contributing to

45173-401: The savage intensity of desire; and Wendy Cope 's humorous poem "Song". Philippe Borgeaud's novels analyse how emotions such as erotic desire and seduction are connected to fear and wrath by examining cases where people are worried about issues of impurity, sin, and shame. Just as desire is central to the written fiction genre of romance, it is the central theme of melodrama films, which are

45400-402: The sense of desire. An example of this situation is for life insurance. Most young adults are not thinking about dying, so they are not naturally thinking about how they need to have accidental death insurance. Life insurance companies, though, are attempting to create a desire for life insurance with advertising that shows pictures of children and asks "If anything happens to you, who will pay for

45627-550: The shock. Two crucial time intervals determine the rate of avoidance learning. This first is the S-S (shock-shock) interval. This is time between successive shocks in the absence of a response. The second interval is the R-S (response-shock) interval. This specifies the time by which an operant response delays the onset of the next shock. Each time the subject performs the operant response, the R-S interval without shock begins anew. This theory

45854-445: The small steps that their child achieves towards reaching a larger goal (this concept is called "successive approximations"). Both psychologists and economists have become interested in applying operant concepts and findings to the behavior of humans in the marketplace. An example is the analysis of consumer demand, as indexed by the amount of a commodity that is purchased. In economics, the degree to which price influences consumption

46081-442: The source, beneficiary, and function of the value. A thing has intrinsic or final value if it is good in itself or good for its own sake. This means that it is good independent of external factors or outcomes. A thing has extrinsic or instrumental value if it is useful or leads to other good things. In other words, it is a means to bring about a desired end. For example, tools like microwaves or money have instrumental value thanks to

46308-512: The sources of value have been proposed. They aim to clarify what kinds of things are intrinsically good. The historically influential theory of hedonism states that how people feel is the only source of value. More specifically, it says that pleasure is the only intrinsic good and pain is the only intrinsic evil. According to this view, everything else only has instrumental value to the extent that it leads to pleasure or pain, including knowledge, health, and justice. Hedonists usually understand

46535-438: The sources of value. Classical utilitarianism , a prominent form of consequentialism, says that moral actions produce the greatest amount of pleasure for the greatest number of people. It combines a consequentialist outlook on right action with a hedonist outlook on pleasure as the only source of intrinsic value. Economics is a social science studying how goods and services are produced, distributed, and consumed, both from

46762-402: The specific motions involved, the amount of force applied, or the timing of the response. Variations that lead to reinforcement are strengthened, and if reinforcement is consistent, the behavior tends to remain stable. However, behavioral variability can itself be altered through the manipulation of certain variables. Reinforcement and punishment are the core tools through which operant behavior

46989-510: The stream of desire for sense-pleasures must be cut eventually, a practitioner on the path to liberation is encouraged by the Buddha to "generate desire" for the fostering of skillful qualities and the abandoning of unskillful ones. For an individual to effect his or her liberation, the flow of sense-desire must be cut completely; however, while training, he or she must work with motivational processes based on skillfully applied desire. According to

47216-594: The subject to make one or two simple, repeatable responses, and the rate of such responses became Skinner's primary behavioral measure. Another invention, the cumulative recorder, produced a graphical record from which these response rates could be estimated. These records were the primary data that Skinner and his colleagues used to explore the effects on response rate of various reinforcement schedules. A reinforcement schedule may be defined as "any procedure that delivers reinforcement to an organism according to some well-defined rule". The effects of schedules became, in turn,

47443-497: The subject's reasoning or behavior. Desires we engage in and try to realize are occurrent. But we have many desires that are not relevant to our present situation and do not influence us currently. Such desires are called standing or dispositional . They exist somewhere in the back of our minds and are different from not desiring at all despite lacking causal effects at the moment. If Dhanvi is busy convincing her friend to go hiking this weekend, for example, then her desire to go hiking

47670-513: The tendency of attention to keep returning to the desired object as the defining feature of desires. Learning-based theories define desires in terms of their tendency to promote reward-based learning , for example, in the form of operant conditioning . Functionalist theories define desires in terms of the causal roles played by internal states while interpretationist theories ascribe desires to persons or animals based on what would best explain their behavior. Holistic theories combine various of

47897-476: The term pleasure in a broad sense that covers all kinds of enjoyable experiences, including bodily pleasures of food and sex as well as more intellectual or abstract pleasures, like the joy of reading a book or being happy about a friend's promotion. Pleasurable experiences come in degrees, and hedonists usually associate their intensity and duration with the magnitude of value they have. Many hedonists identify pleasure and pain as symmetric opposites, meaning that

48124-456: The term "pejoratively to connote an unrealistic, bathos-filled, campy tale of romance or domestic situations with stereotypical characters (often including a central female character) that would directly appeal to feminine audiences." Also called "women's movies", "weepies", tearjerkers, or "chick flicks". "Melodrama… is Hollywood's fairly consistent way of treating desire and subject identity", as can be seen in well-known films such as Gone with

48351-401: The terms intrinsic value and final value interchangeably, just like the terms extrinsic value and instrumental value . This practice has been questioned in the 20th century based on the idea that they are similar but not identical concepts. According to this view, a thing has intrinsic value if the source of its value is an intrinsic property , meaning that the value does not depend on how

48578-455: The thing is related to other objects. Extrinsic value, by contrast, depends on external relations . This view sees instrumental value as one type of extrinsic value based on causal relations. At the same time, it allows that there are other types of non-instrumental extrinsic value. Final value is understood as what is valued for its own sake, independent of whether intrinsic or extrinsic properties are responsible. Another distinction relies on

48805-471: The thought experiment shows that the value of an authentic connection to reality is not reducible to pleasure. Phenomenologists provide a detailed first-person description of the experience of values. They closely examine emotional experiences, ranging from desire, interest, and preference to feelings in the form of love and hate. However, they do not limit their inquiry to these phenomena, asserting that values permeate experience at large. A key aspect of

49032-430: The two is that desires are directed at one object while preferences concern a comparison between two alternatives, of which one is preferred to the other. The focus on preferences instead of desires is very common in the field of decision theory . It has been argued that desire is the more fundamental notion and that preferences are to be defined in terms of desires. For this to work, desire has to be understood as involving

49259-464: The underlying value attitudes responsible for picking one course of action rather than another. Various catalogs or scales of values have been proposed to measure value priorities. The Rokeach Value Survey considers a total of 36 values divided into two groups: instrumental values, like honesty and capability, which serve as means to promote terminal values, such as freedom and family security. It asks participants to rank them based on their impact on

49486-413: The use of the term noncontingent "reinforcement". Though initially operant behavior is emitted without an identified reference to a particular stimulus, during operant conditioning operants come under the control of stimuli that are present when behavior is reinforced. Such stimuli are called "discriminative stimuli." A so-called " three-term contingency " is the result. That is, discriminative stimuli set

49713-491: The useful functions they perform. In some cases, the thing produced this way has itself instrumental value, like when using money to buy a microwave. This can result in a chain of instrumentally valuable things in which each link gets its value by causing the following link. Intrinsically valuable things stand at the endpoint of these chains and ground the value of all the links that come before them. One suggestion to distinguish between intrinsic and instrumental value relies on

49940-411: The value distinguish between self- and other-oriented values. A historically influential approach identifies three spheres of value: truth , goodness, and beauty. For example, the neo-Kantian philosopher Wilhelm Windelband characterizes them as the highest goals of consciousness , with thought aiming at truth, will aiming at goodness, and emotion aiming at beauty. A similar view, proposed by

50167-422: The value of pleasure balances out the disvalue of pain if they have the same intensity. However, some hedonists reject this symmetry and give more weight to avoiding pain than to experiencing pleasure. Although it is widely accepted that pleasure is valuable, the hedonist claim that it is the only source of value is controversial. Desire theories offer a slightly different account, stating that desire satisfaction

50394-516: The way of her romantic desires. E.M. Forster 's novels use homoerotic codes to describe same-sex desire and longing. Close male friendships with subtle homoerotic undercurrents occur in every novel, which subverts the conventional, heterosexual plot of the novels. In the Gothic-themed Dracula , Stoker depicts the theme of desire which is coupled with fear. When the character Lucy is seduced by Dracula, she describes her sensations in

50621-475: The well-being. One problem for some versions of desire theory is that not all desires are good: some desires may even have terrible consequences for the agent. Desire theorists have tried to avoid this objection by holding that what matters are not actual desires but the desires the agent would have if she was fully informed. Desires and preferences are two closely related notions: they are both conative states that determine our behavior. The difference between

50848-400: The word "good" modifies the meaning of another term. To be attributively good as a certain type means to possess certain qualities characteristic of that type. For example, a good knife is sharp and a good thief has the skill of stealing without getting caught. Attributive goodness contrasts with predicative goodness. The sentence "Pleasure is good" is an example since the word good is used as

51075-404: The world actually is, desires aim to change the world by representing how the world should be. These two modes of representation have been termed mind-to-world and world-to-mind direction of fit respectively. Desires can be either positive, in the sense that the subject wants a desirable state to be the case, or negative, in the sense that the subject wants an undesirable state not to be the case. It

51302-485: Was originally proposed in order to explain discriminated avoidance learning, in which an organism learns to avoid an aversive stimulus by escaping from a signal for that stimulus. Two processes are involved: classical conditioning of the signal followed by operant conditioning of the escape response: a) Classical conditioning of fear. Initially the organism experiences the pairing of a CS with an aversive US. The theory assumes that this pairing creates an association between

51529-489: Was too simplistic to be used to describe something as complex as human behavior. Operant conditioning, in his opinion, better described human behavior as it examined causes and effects of intentional behavior. To implement his empirical approach, Skinner invented the operant conditioning chamber , or " Skinner Box ", in which subjects such as pigeons and rats were isolated and could be exposed to carefully controlled stimuli. Unlike Thorndike's puzzle box, this arrangement allowed

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