If the 'ends' are what determines values and there is more then one value that can create the end, what is the most productive value to reach that end?
That I don't think is a fitting phrasing. I take all healthy humans to be of the same nature---we all have the same end as surely as when eating we want to swallow and when fucking we want to cum. Rather, I think our individual differences in biology or neurology or however you want to regard genetic discrepancies between individuals, their propensities and the like, and their psychological differences, as from the way they are raised, what they learn, what they spend a lot of time doing, their whole interaction with the world, such things as these predispose individuals toward different 'values', as values are subject-relative---diamonds may make one woman happy, while being less impressive than a stain-glass window for a pastor, and less entertaining than glass shards to me. These values dependent on the individual determine what means we'll create in order to reach our ends.
But yea, I think it's rather obvious that some values are better than others, when you look at cases like 'comfort food' eaten 'ad obesity', or even just people using violence to solve their problems because they lack the ability to control their emotions, or lack the intellect to employ other means---valuing violence as useful to get what you want can be reduced by the introduction of a superior method. This to me is really what virtue involves.
Generally I think values come in a few different ways. The first and most changeable is Authoritarian values such as religion and laws. These are set by others and are intended to be followed.
in the interest of any earlier statements of mine making sense, I just want to note that social values like legal and religious laws aren't what I'd call values we have. They are values 'of other people' (presuming anyone alive actually supports this or that law), but for subjective experience they're not 'values' but merely things identifiable as motives for which actions are promoted by the people whose values those are. Their values only have any relevance insofar as we ourselves already have values to which their response to the tresspass of their values conflicts---if you're homeless and jail would be a free meal and shelter, the social values established in law about burglary don't contradict your values at all, it's a win whether you get caught or not, it's only for a person who doesn't want to have happen to them what happens to those who breach the social values, i.e., he who has existing values, of which 'punishment' intentionally targets, who is dissauded from doing so. These values set by others need by no means be considered values held by the people who 'follow' them; like I said earlier, you don't actually need to respect something if the pretense of respect will achieve the same results---your gross behavior looks like it conforms to their values, but it's not necessarily because those are subjectively values agreed upon.
I think values are really tested in the most extreme situations where the common everyday events do not apply. Such as cannibalism to survive when the plane crashes in a mountain.
I'm not so sure about that. instrumental values seem to be tentative things---you stop valuing food as a particular means when it has no nutrition, or when you can no longer taste it, or when you can't keep food down. It's not like we need have any real value concerning cannibalism day-to-day. When we are starving to death surrounded by corpses, then we might acknowledge we value 'living' more than 'dying as a vegetarian', but this is talking about much more direct values (as Blowtus might want to consider ends in themselves, as people often say of truth, beauty, etc. - which, for the record, I disagree with), as opposed to solely instrumental values.
I'm though inclined to talk about life as a transparent value, a means indeed, though the rationality behind this a lengthy explanation (why live and try to become a millionaire instead of just dying...).
Things we value for themselves--as ends or transparent goods--may be revealed by the crisis situations, but all other values are just means to these, and if we kill someone so we don't starve to death, that's not to negate our past valuing of human life for example, merely that its means value there is not found here, or is of inferior value--it is a means to something we deem less important (e.g., die laughing with a mate, vs. possibly live another 30 years). Our values per se never changed, only what is or isn't perceived to be a means to the values that remain did. This is all to say that what we value as a means it may be unproductive to refer to at this level as 'a value' rather than 'a means', unless we do go on to prefix them, which nonetheless is dismissing the idea of 'testing our values', like some sort of deep discovery of who we really are. It comes back to the problem of altruism---someone wants to say 'she values her babies life more than her own, this traffic crisis where she died saving her baby proves it'. By now you know my reply: if the babies life would have no estimated negative impact on her own she'd not have done it, because it wouldn't have been a means to her own values being preserved or fulfilled.
I'm finding that values that tend to go towards a more naturalistic sense(survival, happiness of yourself and loved ones) are the more valid ones.
I'm not sure about 'valid' so much as 'fundamental'.
Perhaps you have to kill your child because you're trapped together and have only enough water for one of you too survive, and the child is too young to survive if you killed yourself. it's not like your valuing of the child wasn't real, no more than your valuing of a toaster isn't real... but it's not the naive "you value that thing for it's own sake" blabber of the past, but merely a means value. If you don't kill the child there could be any number of psychological reasons for that, quite apart from 'the child deserves to live for it's own sake, I have no right to kill it', as in this instance it is stipulated that the child will die irrespective of our actions, so our inaction is merely a human emotional weakness which will have negative consequences for ourselves. I think this sort of thing is where a lot of the problems come from in assessing such things.
what good are having values that get you killed?
Islamic martyrs may well live and die happier than, say, agoraphobes. What good are their values?---they work, they meet the individual's end. The absurdity of human life (and a reason I love The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius) is the intellectual idea that 'it's better to live two more months eating the same ice-cream every day, than just one more month doing so'. As I hinted at above, shit gets complicated and evolutionary in explaining this, but that people actually take this sort of thing onboard as a value, rather than merely feeling it emotionally but rejecting it intellectually (as one does for pain when exercising, or boredom at work, or tiredness in the morning--overcoming the natural for the value better reasoned to be valid), it's kinda sad. It's really the same problem when people 'want to make a difference', 'leave a legacy', 'be remembered', 'save the world', 'live a meaningful life', etc.--these people want to take life to be something more than living, and take their inclination to survive as a reasonable goal (one of the things I despise most about Ayn Rand), rather than just an inclination to be overcoming if and when we have the reasoned motive for doing so.
I know for many people it is hard to change values because they are hard wired in your brain from when you are a child by your parents and other forms of authority and being able to step outside of your own values and ends to see how and what they are determined from is very useful in doing some in-mind housekeeping of junk values that are baseless, ignorant, and possibly harmful in one way or another.
no doubt.
One thing I essentially never talk about is self-help, self-improvement... actually fixing this bullshit, rather than just appreciating it for what it is (I'm not a doctor, I just know sickness when I see it). I'm one of the least virtuous people I know... one more reason it would be great for moral nonsense to be put aside would be that we would invest so much more into what methods actually produce a change in people. This is actually one of the reasons we suffer Christianity. Was it Aquinas?--someone said that the problem is that I know what is right and wrong but I have nothing to make me do what I know is right--this idea of helplessness before our lack of virtue, the inability to improve the population, is whence the whole Christian delusion of big-brother comes in handy, as a last ditch hope to controlling people.
Sorry for the rant, I'm sure I just said nothing new.
this intellectually impoverished world is no place to apologise for having thoughts.
