FlashDangerpants wrote: To put it bluntly, you are presenting a circular argument and it must therefore be wrong.
You said:
“value” is a function of properties
You are therefore trying to establish a blunt quantitative basis for all ethics based on a Value which is derived by nothing but a count of properties.
You don't get to choose which properties count for more than other properties because that is a value judgment and you cannot have any of those at the start of your argument, it can only be allowed at the conclusion.
Greetings, Flash
You raise a serious question that merits a serious response.
It is not I who chooses the properties. It is the one who makes the value judgment. The valuer names the concept being valued. That concept has a definition and/or a description. Those descriptive attributes are the property-names to which I alluded when I wrote: "the richer in properties, the more value." If you are speaking about, let us say, a wristwatch, and comparing a complex Swiss watch with a watch that only tells time by the rotation of its two hands, which one will retail for a higher price? The first watch, the Swiss one, has '21 jewels', is waterproof, lights up in the dark, gives an optional digita- readout, functions as a speedometer, times a footrace, has a calendar, and a built-in global-positioning-system, etc. The second just tells time.
(Personally, I prefer the simpler one if it would only have that lights-up in the dark feature to make for easier reading; and I always prefer a timepiece with a large LED digital readout -- but it's not about me.)
The retailer will likely claim that the Swiss watch is the greater value. More precision went into making it; its time is preset in synchronization with the metric standard in a physics laboratory, so it invariably keeps accurate time; and it is encased in a stainless, scratch-resistant setting. For all those reasons, a higher value is put on it by the jeweler.
That is what was meant by the claim that what is richer in properties is the higher value. The Axiom of Value states: x is a
valuable C to Judge J at time t if and only if:
(I) x is a C. [That is, x is a member of, or instance of, class-concept C.]
(II) C's have properties a,b,c, d, f, h, m ...etc.
and (III) this x has a, has b, has c, etc. or some subset of the set mentioned in (II).
x must at least have the definitional features or it wouldn't even be x.
Many more details are to be found in the early pages of the College Course booklet.
http://wadeharvey.myqol.com/wadeharvey/ ... Course.pdf
The main point to note here is that it is Judge J who pictures the attributes in his mind; and those are associated by the tongue spoken with the name J puts on the thing or the situation. If the concept is a singular, then J would tend to put a proper name on it. "Bertie is a good philosopher" means: Bertie has the qualities that a philosopher is supposed to have in J's conception of a "philosopher", whatever that might be for him (or her)
I hope this is helpful, and clears up some of the misunderstanding of Hartman's Axom of Value.
