Elizabeth Anderson, in her 1993 book, “Value in Ethics and Economics,” gives her account of what is good and what is deficient with existing theories of value and proposes a new theory that would better serve the world by more accurately giving value to what human beings actually value. Anderson starts off by asking “Why not put everything up for sale?” this is a question that was often answered with: yes, that would be good because then efficiency and income distribution would be optimized. “Although [efficiency and income distribution] are important issues, I do not believe that they exhaust the concerns we should have about the ethical limitations of the market. We should also care about what sorts of people and communities we make of ourselves when we treat women as commercial baby factories, public spaces of social interaction as places either to shop or to avoid, and the natural environment as just another economically exploitable resource. In this book I attempt to articulate and justify these other sorts of concerns.”
It is possible to challenge and critique the market with the existing theories of value but it is hard due to two prejudices or impoverishments pervasive in existing theory. “One is a socially impoverished conception of the individual….This individualistic picture of a rational person, as self-sufficient and independent of others, supports a consumerist ideology that represents the individual as most free and rational in his market choices…[two is a] psychologically impoverished conception of an individual’s concerns. The prevailing theories of value and rationality suppose that when people value or care about something, they are engaging only one basic attitude or response—desire, perhaps, or pleasure—which can vary quantitatively but not qualitatively. And this view, in turn, leads to a drastically reductionistic or monistic view of value.”
This monistic notion that value is singular and differs only in degree is the core of Anderson’s objections to the prevailing theories. She recognizes the simplicity and benefit that having a common measure of value has given the world in the past (it allows for all sorts of trade in commodities and makes more goods available to more people – as long as value can be commensurate by some common standard) but in our world today, as more and more things are commoditized (many of which are un-commensurate), one standard of value has become a hindrance to valuing more richly in a richer world. “My theory emphasizes the richness and diversity of our concerns and finds a place for the full range of our responses to what we value. We don’t respond to what we value merely with desire or pleasure, but with love, admiration, honor, respect, affection, and awe as well. This allows us to see how goods can be plural, how they can differ in kind or quality: they differ not only in how much we should value them, but in how we should value them. In trying to make sense of the different ways we have of valuing things, we arrive at a socially integrated conception of the rational person.” In short we can do this by developing a new rationality that is not based on one value and is not based solely on formal logic but that is ruled by shared norms in all facets of life (not just the market norms).
In her first chapter, “A Pluralist Theory of Value,” Anderson reflects that in common judgments and valuations we all use a pluralist theory of value. Consider the huge number of adjectives (with good and bad connotations) we use to describe people and things. When we say a sports car looks sleek that is a positive valuation; when we say someone is kind that is also a positive valuation. For most of these human judgments and valuations it does not make sense to compare them in terms of one value criterion such as money. For example it is ridiculous to say one person is kind and a second person is intelligent and therefore the second person is worth $100000 more. It is only when we leave the common life experience and we use “pure” economic calculus that this kind of comparison makes sense; this is why intelligent people are often paid more than kind people in the labour force. This makes sense in economics because there is only one value that is measured and valued; all other values are “made” commensurate through the medium of money as the value. The first task then is to formally articulate what is happening when we judge or value in the real world so it can be applied practically in sciences like economics.
“In identifying what is good with the proper objects of positive valuation, my theory follows Franz Brentano’s …[:] an object is good if and only if it is correct to love it, and bad if and only if it is correct to hate it. My theory adds two main points …First, it views the concept of ‘correctness’ as a rationality concept, tied to the quest for rational self-understanding….Second, there is not just one way to love or have a ‘pro-attitude’ toward things….The variety of ways of caring about things is the source of pluralism in my theory of value.”
Anderson starts with a whole set of definitions. She defines evaluation as “…people determin[ing] how far something meets the particular standards they set for it.” And defines valuing as “people meet[ing] certain standards for caring about it.” “Evaluation is a means by which people come to rational self-understanding and self-governance of their own valuations.” Ideals are self-conceptions, “the grounds of a person’s reflectively held values…of what kind of person she ought to be, what kinds of character, attitudes, concerns, and commitments she should have….Ideals are objects not merely of desire, but of aspiration.” “We care about things and people in different ways, which express what I call different modes of valuation, such as love, respect, and admiration. Ideals give us perspectives from which to articulate and scrutinize the way we value things.” “The core of an ideal consists in a conception of qualities of character, or characteristics of the community, which the holders regard as excellent and as central to their identities.” Ideals “draw boundaries between different classes of goods, setting them into circulation within distinct networks of social relations governed by distinct norms. This differentiation of ways of valuing things, socially embodied in different social spheres, provides the key to understanding how goods differ in kind.”
Goods differ in kind in two different ways: 1) through different modes of valuation and 2) through social relations of realization. In the first case, the modes of valuation are as varied as the people in the world. They are internal and individualistic dependent on the person. But in the second case, they also follow patterns of norms set out externally to the individual, in a culture and in a shared language. From the individual’s perspective, “to value or care about something in a particular way involves a complex of standards for perception, emotion, deliberation, desire, and conduct that express and thereby communicate one’s regard for the object’s importance.” But from the social perspective, “I am capable of valuing something in a particular way only in a social setting that upholds norms for that mode of valuation….To care about something in a distinctive way, one must participate in a social practice of valuation governed by norms for its sensible expression.”
“So far I have just sketched the outlines of a map of the world of goods taking ordinary practices and commonsense judgments as my guide. Most theories of value acknowledge a pluralism of goods, such as friendship, knowledge, and pleasure. My map reveals a proliferation of pluralism beyond this. First, it recognizes a plurality of evaluative attitudes such as love, admiration, and appreciation. Second, it recognizes a plurality of values or standards such as beauty, convenience, and loyalty, by which we evaluate different goods and adjust our attitudes toward them. Third, it recognizes a plurality of different kinds of goods, distinguished by the complexes of attitudes it makes sense to take up toward them and the distinct social relations and practices that embody and express these attitudes. Finally, it recognizes a plurality of contestable ideals, by which we try to govern the development of our attitudes, character, values, and aspirations.”