Van Huyssteen J.W. (editor) Encyclopedia of Science and Religion

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VALUE,SCIENTIFIC

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for manipulating the natural order would doubtless

be more fundamental historically and psychologi-

cally. Even deeper would be a lively curiosity

about the way things work that leads some people

to probe and tinker. And behind the enterprise as

a whole loom human needs that might be met if

only answers could be found and events con-

trolled. Social goals, such as fame and prestige, or

the hope to be first at solving a problem or devel-

oping a technique, also figure into the rich mixture

of motivating values.

Techniques carry with them their own set of

values. A technique is a generalized way of doing

something. It presents a norm for approximation.

A skill is the disciplined capacity to carry out a

technique, requiring attentiveness and muscular

control coordinated to deal with particular circum-

stances. At a minimum, scientific practices inher-

ently call for the technical values of accuracy and

precision, and of approximating, as well as possi-

ble, the norm represented by the technique. They

demand that the practitioner acquire and maintain

personal skills capable of providing regular, re-

peatable outcomes. Replicability, therefore,

emerges from practice as a primary scientific value.

And with replication comes counting. Quantifiabil-

ity, to whatever extent circumstances allow, is a

value rooted in the practice even of a lone scien-

tific investigator.

The social character of modern scientific prac-

tice underscores and amplifies the importance of

these values of accuracy, replicability, and quan-

tification. Others who have acquired the necessary

skills must to be able to achieve similar results.

They must come up with similar numbers. Further,

the practice of scientific publication reinforces the

built-in need for such values as precise experi-

mentation and record-keeping, accurate reporting,

accountability to colleagues, readiness to submit to

community standards, and (in principle at least)

even the willingness to welcome the possibility

of falsification in the larger interests of scientific

reliability.

Where truth-telling, cooperation, and commu-

nity responsibility are involved, technical values

implicit in scientific practices lead inexorably to

ethical ones. But not all ethical values relevant to

scientific practices are internal to the requirements

of technique alone. Scientific values do not gener-

ate compassion. Independently acquired moral

standards of scientists are needed to forbid some

kinds of practices—where humans might be sub-

jected to torture or vivisection, for example—de-

spite the possibility of making interesting discover-

ies. Such external restraints involve still larger

normative conceptions. What is it to be a human

person? What sorts of practices are compatible

with a person’s moral status? Different ages and

cultures give different answers, which may ulti-

mately root in religious commitments or meta-

physical convictions. The science of anatomy was

dependent at one time on systematic grave rob-

bery, since autopsy was forbidden on theological

grounds. The practice of vivisection on dogs and

cats was supported by the followers of René

Descartes (1596–1650), who held that animals,

lacking speech and rationality, had no souls and

therefore were incapable of feeling pain.

Values and scientific theories

Values motivating the construction of scientific the-

ories certainly include the same curiosity noted in

connection with scientific practices, but now the

quest is not simply for how things work, but why.

What is going on behind the scenes? What makes

things happen as they do? Part of what is valued

here is enhanced ability to control outcomes by

grasping hidden processes. But for many there is

also a deep thirst for understanding simply for its

own sake.

If understanding offers intrinsic as well as in-

strumental value, there are other important values

prerequisite to achieving this end. These are the in-

tellectual values that make intelligible theory pos-

sible, beginning with logical consistency (since in-

consistency cancels meaning and makes any

account of things impossible), including systematic

coherence (since the elements of an account need

to hang together if they are to tell a unified story),

and—in the case of all empirical sciences—resting

on evidential adequacy and comprehensiveness

(since if a theory is to be about something, it must

take account of as much data about that something

as possible). There are potential conflicts among

these values, since coherence is more easily

achieved if evidence can be limited to exclude in-

convenient facts; contrarily, adequacy can have

freer run if it ignores norms of consistency and co-

herence. Still, the job of theorizing must operate

within these tensions.

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Working within such human limitations, addi-

tional values are often important to the construc-

tion and later acceptability of theories. Theorists

may be inspired in their constructive quests by the

aesthetic values, for example, of simplicity and

symmetry. Community acceptance may be influ-

enced, as well, since an elegant theory is more to

be admired, and may be easier for minds to grasp,

than a ramshackle construction. However, since

there are many different ways of approaching sim-

plicity and other aesthetic values, as well as multi-

ple interpretations of coherence, and arguably

clashing estimates of relevance, it is clear that

human judgments of better or worse continue to

be indispensable and pervasive in the theoretical

sciences.

Undergirding all such judgments are funda-

mental ethical and religious values. Moral integrity

is required in acknowledging available evidence,

perhaps despite personal preferences, and follow-

ing the logic of argument where it leads. Further,

acceptance of the value of knowledge as a funda-

mental good, commitment to the norms of hon-

esty, and reverence for the pursuit of truth, even in

limited domains, may lead to (or flow from) un-

limited, or ultimate, expressions of value so intense

and comprehensive as to be functionally religious.

Values and scientific culture

Cultures shaped by scientific practices and theories

reap huge economic values, as technologies de-

veloped by unprecedented understanding of how

things work provide unprecedented means of con-

trol and exploitation of the Earth’s wealth. Unfor-

tunately, equally huge economic and environmen-

tal disvalues, too, haunt scientific cultures whose

grasp of physics and chemistry outstrips under-

standing in ecology, sociology, and the humanities.

Intellectually, scientific theories offer scientific

cultures unprecedentedly adequate and coherent

accounts of how things are, as well as how they

work. In particular, the grand narrative woven

from scientific cosmology, physics, astronomy, ge-

ology, evolutionary biology, paleontology, and ar-

chaeology provides a new framework for inter-

preting the universe. Since the powerful hunger

for such frameworks has long been fed by older,

nonscientific narratives, there is inevitable conflict

with comprehensive prescientific alternatives in

which maximally intense values have long been

invested. Efforts to oppose or nullify evolutionary

theory, for example, can be seen as counter-attacks

against scientific thinking by disaffected members

of scientific culture whose primary religious values

are threatened.

The primary scientific values, in contrast, are

found in loyalty to a public method—in experi-

mental practices as in theorizing—in which all ev-

idence is honored in principle and conclusions are

proportioned to fact and norms of logic. Such val-

ues advocate a rational culture, in which all dis-

putes are resolved by dialogue. As noted above,

however, unsupplemented scientific values em-

phasize quantitative over qualitative considerations

and are notably lacking in compassion. In the

much needed dialogue between science and its

culture, scientists are not the only ones who de-

serve a hearing.

See also VALUE, VALUE THEORY

Bibliography

Barbour, Ian G. Myths, Models and Paradigms: A Compar-

ative Study in Science and Religion. New York:

Harper, 1974.

Bronowski, Jacob. Science and Human Values, Rev. edi-

tion. New York: Harper, 1965.

Burtt, Edwin Arthur. The Metaphysical Foundations of

Modern Physical Science, Rev. edition, Garden City,

N.Y.: Doubleday, 1954.

Eisley, Loren. Darwin’s Century: Evolution and the Men

Who Discovered It. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday,

1958.

Ferré, Frederick. Knowing and Value: Toward A Construc-

tive Postmodern Epistemology. Albany: State Univer-

sity of New York Press, 1998.

Kaplan, Abraham. The Conduct of Inquiry: Methodology

for Behavioral Science. San Francisco: Chandler, 1964.

Kuhn, Thomas S. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions,

2nd edition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press,

1970.

Medawar, Peter. The Limits of Science. New York: Oxford

University Press, 1988.

Monod, Jacques. Chance and Necessity: An Essay on the

Natural Philosophy of Modern Biology, trans. Austryn

Wainhouse. New York: Vintage, 1972.

Scheffler, Israel. Science and Subjectivity. Indianapolis,

Ind.: Bobbs-Merrill, 1967.

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Toulmin, Stephen. Foresight and Understanding: An En-

quiry into the Aims of Science. Bloomington: Indiana

University Press, 1961.

Whitehead, Alfred North. Science and the Modern World.

New York: Free Press, 1925.

FREDERICK FERRÉ

VALUES,ORIGINS OF

See RELIGION AND VALUES, ORIGINS OF

VALUE,VALUE THEORY

A value theory indicates the characteristics com-

mon to values of all kinds, classifies them, and

clarifies the meaning of value-propositions. The

kinds or “realms” of value are always said to in-

clude moral and aesthetic values, but other kinds

are usually mentioned also. For instance, Paul Tay-

lor (1925– ) lists six others: intellectual, religious,

economic, political, legal, and customary realms of

value. All value theorists claim that even though

there are striking or important differences among

kinds of value, their similarities are more funda-

mental. As Ralph Barton Perry (1876–1957) puts it,

value theory pulls concerns “dispersed among the

several philosophical and social sciences” into a

single “comprehensive inquiry” in which these var-

ious pursuits are “unified and distinguished,” so as

“to bring to light the underlying principles com-

mon to these sciences, and then to employ this

principle for the purpose of arbitrating between

them” (p. 9).

Value theory is a nineteenth-century develop-

ment in Western philosophy. Its initiator is usually

said to be the German philosopher Rudolf Her-

mann Lotze (1817–1881) who sharply distin-

guished fact and value, arguing that fact was the

province of the natural sciences, whereas the hu-

manities concerned themselves with value. Value

theorists after Lotze can be grouped into two

strands: those who claim that values are discovered

or created solely by minds, and those who claim

that values are empirical features of things or ac-

tions. Contemporary analytic philosophers belong

to both strands, differing from their predecessors

by limiting their investigations to the language

used in asserting or recommending a value. Some

metaphysicians reject this limitation and offer

grounds for thinking that values are ontologically

fundamental.

Strand one: conceptual

Franz Brentano (1838–1917) argues that values are

rooted in human emotions, in the contrast between

favorable (love) and unfavorable (hate) intentional

attitudes toward objects and events. His student

Alexius Meinong (1853–1920) elaborates this notion

by identifying four aspects of any value experience:

a value subject who experiences, a value feeling or

emotion, a value object toward which this feeling is

directed, and an existence judgment that ascribes

the feeling’s cause to the object. For example, a

person watching a sunset has a positive emotional

feeling, which the person claims is because of the

sunset. Meinong argues that a value emotion is nei-

ther independent of publicly verifiable (scientific)

fact, as Lotze claims, nor reducible to fact: It is a

subjective feeling that can be judged to be reason-

able or not by reference to the relevant facts.

J. N. Findlay (1903–1987) offers a mid-twentieth

century version of the Brentano-Meinong view.

Consciousness, he argues, has an “intentional”

structure: It is always of an object. Belief is uncon-

ditional assent to the reality of the object of an in-

tention; action is an endeavor to bring an intended

object into existence. For an action to be sustained

over the time needed to achieve this goal, the feel-

ings of assent and endeavor that accompany it need

to persist. A person’s values are those feelings that

function as “the relatively fixed points of the com-

pass” by means of which one’s “choices are

guided” (p. 204). The “firmament” of the values by

which a person is guided is “rationalized” by ab-

stracting from the particularities of the several val-

ues and framing general integrative guiding princi-

ples that are detached from the urgency of

particular pragmatic interests. The apotheosis of

this generalization process is the formulation of

“absolute values,” norms governing both individual

and collective endeavors.

Religious values, Findlay argues, are absolute

values extended beyond those associated with

human beliefs and efforts, having to do with in-

tentional structures that are holy—in the sense of

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strange and numinous—because radically inclu-

sive. They are radically impersonal, however, ex-

pressing “the pattern of a detached, suprapersonal,

norm-setting mind” (p. 399). The genius of Ju-

daism, Christianity, and Islam is that they recognize

the need people have for this impersonal absolute

to be embodied in a supreme religious object that

has some direct connection with common every-

day realities; the absolute value must be incarnate

in history, in specific acts or persons.

Strand two: empirical

Feelings or intentions are unobservable mental

states. Those who want value theory to be a scien-

tific enterprise therefore turn from feelings to “in-

terests,” from intentions to “behaviors,” from intro-

spection to “motor-affective responses.” C. I. Lewis

(1883–1964), for instance, insists that evaluations

are a form of empirical knowledge. Their truth or

falsity, is determined in exactly the same way as the

truth or falsity of nay other kind of empirical

knowledge is justified. Directly experienced satis-

factions have “intrinsic” value, but no object can

have intrinsic value because its value consists not in

what it is in itself but rather in the possibility of its

leading to some realization of directly experienced

value. The object need not in fact lead to such ex-

periences, but only have the potentiality for doing

so: A Paleozoic sunset had objective value even if

no human being was actually there to enjoy it.

Where an intrinsic value experience is afforded by

the presentation of an object, that object has inher-

ent extrinsic value. Where one object is a means by

which to come into the presence of another object

that has inherent value, the first object has “instru-

mental” and possibly “contributory” extrinsic value.

Ralph Barton Perry makes this notion of intrin-

sic value central. Any object acquires value by be-

coming the target of some interest: “that which is

an object of an interest is eo ipso invested with

value” (p. 115)—“x is valuable = interest is taken in

x” (p. 116). Perry distinguishes between a “value

preference” (a subject has more interest in x than

in y) from a “judgment of comparative value” (a

subject asserts that x is better than y). The latter in-

volves standards of measurement and so, unlike a

value preference, is open to correction. Love is a

favorable interest in the satisfaction of a second in-

terest, that of another person. So the highest pos-

sible value is that of an all-loving will. Such love

could not be the interest of a single person, how-

ever. Perry’s alternative to Lewis’s religious ab-

solute is a “federation,” a multiplicity of independ-

ent equally valued persons, united by their

devotion to the same value ideal, expressed

through reciprocal acts of love.

John Dewey (1859–1952) rejects the distinction

between value judgments and factual judgments.

Valuation takes place whenever a problematic sit-

uation exists, whenever an expected enjoyment is

blocked. Some inquiry needs to be undertaken in

order to resolve the problem, to reshape things in

the light of an ideal about how things might be

such that the desired enjoyment might be experi-

enced. A value is not an enjoyment but an interest

in attaining one, and hence involves a proposal for

how to do so. Values can therefore be appraised—

critiqued, ranked, and revised—with respect both

to how effective they are as guides for attaining the

enjoyment sought and to how satisfying that result

is. Values are an important aspect of the natural

sciences, since hypothesis formation in scientific

inquiry is an instance of valuation and its critique.

Dewey argues that progress in the improvement of

the human condition is impeded by the traditional

insistence that actions guided by aesthetic, moral,

political, and religious values are timeless ab-

solutes grasped emotionally, matters of tradition or

feeling or faith—values isolated from scientific val-

ues, and hence from “intelligent” meliorative ra-

tional control.

The language of valuation

Twentieth-century Western philosophy has been

dominated by linguistic concerns, and so value the-

ory for many thinkers has been limited to a consid-

eration of value-propositions: What the nature of

assertions of value is and whether or how values

are justified. These approaches can be grouped into

the same two strands as earlier value theories: those

primarily conceptual and those primarily empirical.

One kind of mind-centered approach claims

that value-propositions make no reference to facts

and so are neither true nor false. Charles Stevenson

(1908–1979) calls such propositions “emotive.” A

person who asserts that “this is a beautiful sculp-

ture” says nothing about the sculpture. He only ex-

presses his positive feelings toward it: “this sculp-

ture, wow!”

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A quite different approach, with G. H. von

Wright (1916– ) as a key figure, is to explicate a

“logic of preference,” to assess value-assertions in

terms of a logical system governed by syntactic

and semantic rules. For instance, “possible worlds”

might be ranked by means of an “index of merit.”

Next a proposition could be assigned a “generic

value,” understood as the average of the merit

rankings of the worlds in which its value is mean-

ingful. Then proposition x would be “rationally

preferable” to proposition y if its generic value is

higher than y’s. Game theory and decision theory

are two related developments of this logico-

mathematical approach to valuation.

Those analysts of the language of values who

stand in an empiricist tradition draw from informal

rather than formal logic, with the later writings of

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) often key. Paul

Taylor’s work is illustrative. He distinguishes nor-

mative discourse from scientific discourse, arguing

that they are governed by differing “canons of rea-

soning.” Taylor is particularly concerned with the

way in which value judgments, the “first-order”

content of normative discourse, can be justified.

To “verify” a value judgment is to appeal to estab-

lished standards or rules of evaluation. If these are

questioned, one must “validate” them by appealing

to higher-order standards or rules, and ultimately

by appealing to those principles that determine a

“value system.” To take a “point of view” is to com-

mit oneself to following a certain set of rules of rel-

evance in deciding which value system to accept

as governing one’s value judgments. There are as

many points of view as there are kinds of value

systems: for instance, a moral point of view and an

aesthetic point of view. A “way of life” is the set of

value systems expressing all one’s points of view,

arranged in some integrative hierarchical manner.

If a person’s value system is questioned, it is “vin-

dicated” by appeal to one’s way of life. When a

way of life is questioned, the only justifying appeal

is to “rational choice”: showing that one’s value

commitment has been arrived at by a deliberative

process that is free, enlightened, and impartial.

Metaphysical value theories

Dewey argues that value theory is a response to

the expulsion of teleology from nature: the claim

of modern science that facts are adequately expli-

cated in terms of efficient causes, without recourse

to final causes or purposes. Value theories of al-

most any sort can be challenged by attacking the

metaphysical presuppositions of modern science,

arguing that the natural order is in some sense

purposive, that ends and ideals are features of all

natural processes, and that to exist is to have and

to be making value.

A contemporary example of such a value-based

metaphysics is found is the work of Frederick Ferré

(1933– ). He argues that “the process of an entity’s

coming to be something definite” involves “the

generation of intrinsic value for the entity con-

cerned” (1996, p. 357). The basic factual entities of

the universe are self-fashioning processes involving

the integration of diverse elements into a definite

unity, a harmony. To achieve any sort of harmony

is to generate beauty, so for Ferré a cosmos com-

posed of beauty-fashioning entities is “inherently

kalogenic.” Given such a universe, an ethic obvi-

ously follows in which not only persons but other

organisms, indeed entities of every sort, should be

treasured for the value achieved in their existing

and for their relevance to possibilities for future

value realization.

William Desmond (1951– ) takes a different ap-

proach, recognizing the diversity of value-creators

but insisting that their power to create value and

their aspiration to do so depends on recognizing

the origin of what-is in a transcendent power. Hu-

mans live in the metaxu, between Being and noth-

ing at all—astonished that they exist, affirming that

it is good they and others exist, dwelling together.

Insofar as humans are “mindful” of these won-

drous facts, they will be aware that there is an ori-

gin of their existing, that their lives are a gift, a

good that need not have been but nonetheless has

been freely given them. Desmond calls this over-

flowing good of the originative power “agapeic”—

a good given for the other’s good, a freedom that

frees others rather than subordinating them, a

power that empowers others to express their pow-

ers in a giving such that the good of others and the

common good are enhanced. Desmond therefore

argues that the ideal of human moral development

is “agapeic service”—practicing a self-surpassing

ethics of generosity in response to God’s freely

given infinitely valuable gift of life.

See also AESTHETICS; BEAUTY; VALUE; VALUE,

ELIGIOUS; VALUE, SCIENTIFIC

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Bibliography

Brentano, Franz. The Origin of Our Knowledge of Right

and Wrong (1889), trans. Roderick M. Chisholm and

Elizabeth H. Schneewind. London: Routledge and

Kegan Paul, 1968.

Desmond, William. Being and the Between. Albany: State

University of New York Press, 1995.

Desmond, William. Ethics and the Between. Albany: State

University of New York Press, 2001.

Dewey, John. Theory of Valuation: International Encyclo-

pedia of Unified Sciences. Chicago: University of

Chicago Press, 1939. Reprinted in John Dewey: The

Later Works, 1925–1953, Vol. 16: John Dewey: The

Later Works: 1934–1952, ed. Jo Ann Boydston. Car-

bondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois Univer-

sity Press, 1988.

Ferré, Frederick. Being and Value: Toward a Constructive

Postmodern Metaphysics. Albany: State University of

New York Press, 1996.

Ferré, Frederick. Knowing and Value: Toward a Construc-

tive Postmodern Epistemology. Albany: State Univer-

sity of New York Press, 1998.

Ferré, Frederick. Living and Value: Toward a Constructive

Postmodern Ethics. Albany: State University of New

York Press, 2001.

Findlay, J. N. Values and Intentions: A Study in Value-

Theory and Philosophy of Mind. New York: Macmil-

lan, 1961.

Lewis, Clarence Irving. An Analysis of Knowledge and Val-

uation. La Salle, Ill.: Open Court, 1946.

Lotze, Hermann. Microcosmus: An Essay Concerning Man

and His Relation to the World (1857–1864), trans. Eliz-

abeth Hamilton and E. E. Constance Jones. Edin-

burgh, UK: T&T Clark, 1885. Reprinted, Freeport

N.Y.: Books for Libraries Press, 1971.

Meinong, Alexius. Psychologisch-ethische Untersuchungen

zur Werttheorie. Graz, Austria: Leuschner u. Luben-

sky, 1894.

Perry, Ralph Barton. General Theory of Value: Its Meaning

and Basic Principles Construed in Terms of Interest.

New York: Longmans Green, 1926. Reprinted, Cam-

bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1950.

Rescher, Nicholas. Introduction to Value Theory. Engle-

wood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1969.

Stevenson, Charles L. Ethics and Language. New Haven,

N.J.: Yale University Press, 1944.

Taylor, Paul W. Normative Discourse. Englewood Cliffs,

N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1961.

von Wright, G. H. The Logic of Preference: An Essay. Edin-

burgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press, 1963.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Philosophical Investigations. New

York: Macmillan, 1953.

GEORGE ALLAN

VIRTUAL REALITY

Virtual reality is that part of human experience that

does not happen in a physical space. Reading a

book creates virtual reality, as does participating in

an online chat or a telephone conference. These

experiences are called “virtual” because the people

involved are not actually in the story of the book

or in a conference room with other people but

physically separated; nonetheless, they participate

in the community through thought and imagina-

tion and, in some cases, through their eyes, via the

monitors, and fingers, via the keyboards.

The term virtual reality came into wide use

during the 1990s with the increasing popularity of

the Internet, and the concept of virtual reality led

to many of the metaphors used to describe Internet

interactions. A chat room, for example, is not a

room, and it does not even have a physical loca-

tion; it consists entirely of the people who are

“meeting” there and interact. They do not meet, of

course, but happen to be at their personal com-

puters at the same moment in time. They also do

not chat or talk but write messages that appear on

others peoples’ screens. Keyed graphics called

smileys, such as :-) and ;-}, convey emotional con-

tent. Sometimes people wander off into separate

“rooms” to be more “intimate” with a few others

instead of sharing their thoughts in “public.” These

and many other metaphors are used for two rea-

sons. First, humans are physical entities, and, from

an evolutionary perspective, everything they did

in the past happened in physical time and space.

Language arising from this background is naturally

physical in its description of human interaction.

But once these metaphors are used they also be-

come a selling point for virtual reality because they

suggest that virtual reality allows for complete per-

sonal interactions.

Despite their obvious popularity, chat rooms

and other virtual reality entities raise serious ques-

tions. One of the most obvious is the fact that

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among virtual reality communities there are several

churches and prayer groups. The question is, can

such spiritual virtual reality communities actu-

ally replace mortar and brick churches? Cyber-

communities lack the physical space that bodies,

together in liturgy and practice, create. Gender,

race, and age have no defined roles. In virtual re-

ality, people can lie about themselves and con-

struct different identities. In addition, virtual reality

communities give people the freedom to project all

their wishes and desires about a “real” community

onto the cyber-community because there is no way

to know who is there and if the people are actually

likeable. But is this community? And where does

this wish for clean and perfect relationships come

from when everyone knows that real-world rela-

tionships are flawed, stressful, full of ambiguities,

yet so much fun. Because there is no physical

commitment or connection in cyberspace, web

communities may be ultimately indifferent and

meaningless to the people involved.

The understanding of humankind in recent

years has changed from a dualistic, cognition-

oriented understanding toward an embodied and

social one. The intelligence of humans is not the

main characteristic of the species—it is much more

the human capacity to connect and to survive in

any given environment. Virtual reality, however, is

a direct result of the assumption that embodiment

and shared physical space are not important for

community building because the body is not part

of what turns a human into an individual. But if

cognitive science theories are correct, then virtual

reality spaces lack the required physicality, and re-

lationships in them are incomplete.