The challenge we face in our world today is not that we are bereft of values—those we have aplenty, flowing like let blood in the repartees of our political discourse—but that we can no longer agree on the criteria that underpin them. The common language that once enabled us to weigh the merits of our most important value premises has broken down, worn to rubble by vitriol, apathy, and slapdashery.
But allow me to define my terms. “Criteria of value” is a phrase which has little, if any, usage in common vernacular. The term is reserved primarily to the context of debates—especially those in the Lincoln–Douglas debate format—which submit to a far steeper evaluative standard than everyday discourse. Such debates centre around a value premise, that is, a premise that presents an assumption concerning an objective truth or standard of morality (“Capital punishment is unjust,” for example).
Traditional values upon which a premise may be based include truth, justice, liberty, honour, equality, and duty, while more modern values include equity, identity, individualism, and progress. Although values from both sets can coexist, tension may emerge between disjunctive values, with equity pushing against equality, liberty losing ground to identity, or individualism playing tug-of-war with truth. Such tensions necessitate that a means exists by which competing values may be evaluated—and by which the values themselves may be measured. Consider for example, the value premise:
“A just society will protect the right to individual expression over the freedoms of the community.”
The temptation is to create a list of pros and cons in favour of either position upon the assmuption assume that whomever can write the longer list must hold the stronger position. The problem with this is simple: pros and cons are meaningless unless they meet a certain standard that can be used to evaluate the premise. To give a simple example, if I was to (controversially) assert, “Hawaiian pizza is good,” my proof might consist of the fact that I think Hawaiian is good, that fruits are good for you, and that the pineapples provide a good colour contrast against red marinara sauce. The trouble is that although I’ve provided three reasons for my premise, “good” has been given three different meanings (subjective, objective, and aesthetic), and we lack the means to evaluate whether any of them are true.
Thus, criteria of value. To determine the validity of the premise presented above, the nature of justice must be understood. It is not enough to merely define justice (e.g. “Justice is giving to each person his/her due.”). Rather, specific criteria must be established in order that justice may be measured. Such criteria may include:
- protecting individual expression
- reducing human suffering
- promoting social cohesion
- upholding individual liberty
- preserving human rights
- fostering community welfare
Criteria of value answer the question, “What does justice entail?” They are a yardstick that provides tangible (or more tangible) measurements for intangible values, forging a path for conversations to move beyond vague assertions of “justice” and “injustice,” and serving as invaluable tools for well-reasoned civil discourse.
Two significant problems remain, however. The first, as asserted above, is that we lack a common language to establish any criteria of value that would hold meaning in civil discourse. Words have become untethered from meaning, caught in a flux of constant social evolution, and all too often forced unwillingly into submission as a weapon in the latest swell of collective outrage. Words become mere weapons have become dull. Little undermines the value of a word so much as flippant use.
The value criterion “reduction of human suffering,” for example, is nonsensical in a social context where suffering consists of “perceived physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual harm that has caused individual discomfort” and violence is viewed as “whatever has met the low threshold of my particular individual sensitivities.” By that standard, this very post could be seen as an act of violence contributing to a collective increase in human suffering. The horror! Where language is victim to melodrama, it is impossible to establish meaningful criteria of value.
The second problem is this: we have lost our underpinning for objective morality—indeed, we have lost any shared belief in objectivity at all. Morality has survived the public death of objectivity, but only by becoming meaningless. After all, the very concept of morality is contingent upon the presumption that it is, in fact, objective. When morality becomes subjective, it ceases to be morality. It is merely personal preference in a pretty dress.
Subjective morality is perhaps the chiefest and among the oldest forms of arrogance, enabling one to declare themselves the final arbiter of right and wrong. Individualistic might makes right. But beyond being an incredible feat of hubris, the widespread social belief in subjective morality also preemptively sabotages any reasonable discourse on the questions that are of most meaning and value to a civilization.
Drawing from our discussion above, the assertion “A just society will protect the right to individual expression over the freedoms of the community” loses its meaning even as a value premise when “justice”is a term that exists in no man’s land. If the definition of “justice”is subject to my personal whims, I have already won every debate I’ve never had. And so has my opponent. Herein lies the absurdity of subjective morality. It is no longer even necessary to embrace the challenge of a robust debate. Each interlocutor, assuming their own subjective rightness, never bothers to enter into discourse at all. What, after all, would be the point?
Does this imply the slow death of truth? Hardly. Truth underpins value premises and their criteria whether or not it is acknowledged. Reality cannot be wished away quite so easily. The slow death of civil society is, however, quite another question. A society that cannot sustain reasonable discourse is a society marching blindly to its own demise. Language lies at the heart of a thriving civilization. It upholds our constitutions and our laws, gives meaning to our values and beliefs, enables us to engage in eager discourse with one another for the sake of preserving what is good and improving what is not. What do we have left if we cannot even evaluate the very criteria underpinning our shared values?
This leaves us with something of a heavy task. That is: to defend, with courage and dignity, our values, the criteria that support them, and the language without which they become meaningless. We must respond to vitriol with quiet reason, to apathy with tempered passion, and to slapdashery with thoughtful precision. And if such deeds are, as they likely will be, lost in the cacophonous tumult of mass subjectivity, we must continue to foster a robust sub-culture that values truth and reason, which can, in time, step into the void left by our post-truth culture.
This is the second essay in a series working through the All Souls one word essay prompt. Read more about that in my article “Why I’ve Chosen to Work Through the All Souls Examination Questions.”