VALUE-2 in Argument
In the field of argumentation studies, the word value can refer to:
- In logic, the truth value of a proposition, see proposition.
- The cogency of an argument, see evaluation; force.
- Value as a founding concept of the New Rhetoric, see value-1.
- Conductive argument
- The place of values in argument: this entry.
1. The Bipolar Scale of Values and Anti-Values
The concept of value refers to questions of subjectivity, emotion, and the orientation (or bias) of words and statements.
Values are the structuring axes of desire and basic components of emotion production.
In common language, a value term is an indicator of preferences, a reference that serves to explain and legitimize choices.
From the lexical point of view, value terms go through pairs of anti-oriented terms {value, counter-value}.
A (positive) value term is the positive pole of a bipolar scale, the negative pole being a negative value term expressing the corresponding negative value (counter-value, anti-value).
| truth/untruth, falsehood knowledge/ignorance good/bad beauty/ugliness honor / shame, humiliation rich/poor, destitute |
pleasure/pain, misery, virtue/vice harmony/chaos love/hate justice/injustice freedom/oppression. |
The multiplicity of negative term is an index of the plurivocity of the positive term.
The relation value / countervalue can be reversed:
aesthetics of ugliness/beauty,
baroque aesthetics of instability/ classical constancy.
Without specification, the cover term moral value is equivalent o virtue, quality or gift. Its antonyms correspond to the counter-values of defect – sin – lack.
2. Stasis of Evaluation : Value/Counter-Value, praise and blame
Among the basic value systems, the triad of ascetic disinterested moral values, the true, the good, the beautiful certainly comes first [1]. These values are publicly presented as good reasons for an action and invoked in epidictic discourse to praise a behavior
He dedicated his life to the common good
His sense of justice was deeply wounded
His testimony was a tribute to truth
Material values, as opposed to ascetic values, are firmly rooted in the human condition, as human material desires, namely:
power, fame, recognition, celebrity
sensual desires, lust and fast living;
money which can buy all the other kinds of pleasures.
As the devil’s advocate, the accuser blames a behavior by substituting glorious motives with more selfish, hidden and blameworthy motives. Contrast:
The pursuit of beauty is the meaning of my life
The pursuit of fame, power, lust, money, is the meaning of my live
Material values are used to counter the appeal to ascetic and disinterested values:
You did it to secure your nomination, you got a comfortable sinecure for it!
You were shocked because the facts resisted your ideology.
Your search for beauty brought you a very nice income.
Moral values are something positive, qualities that one must « have », and the official standard rules, guidelines, norms for practical action
I’m cooperative, patient, tolerant, honest as long as I have no good reasons not to be so
I agree, this is not a cooperative, patient, tolerant, honest move, but it is for the needs of the cause, for a good purpose.
3. Value judgment
A value judgment about a being, an event, a situation… B is a judgment that places B on the specific scale of evaluation attached to a value / anti-value system, such as:
Restricting circulation rights is oriented towards {+oppression, -freedom}
Extending circulation rights is oriented towards {+freedom, -oppression}
This scale functions as the cold / hot scale, see argument scale – law of discourse.
Value judgments assign a value to a particular being, as any predication assigns a property to a being, respecting the semantic and syntactic constraints of that composition.
Judgments assign predicates (a property) to objects, be they abstract (like judgment) or concrete (apple), non-existent (the blue unicorn) or existent (the actual PM) . In practice, this mean that these entities can be talked about, described and defined regardless of their ontological status.
The key point is that even the more evanescent values can be at least broadly defined, have an air de famille with other values, they have an origin and a history, prototypical occurrences and preferred collocations. All of this is sufficient to apply to them the routine argumentative procedures see analogy; scale; definition; categorization, precedent, etc.
4. Justification of Value Judgments
Value judgments are accountable, as any other judgments
In virtue of their self-certifying power, an interjection or an exclamation can be a sufficient justification, for a value judgment, positive oh! wonderful! wuper! or negative ugh!or blegh! disgusting! [1]
The value judgment can be justified on a variety of good, –and sometimes strange – good reasons:
X is (+) because:
– there are many / few
– it is round/square it is heavy/light, it is blue/mustard colored,
– it has a nice shape/no shape
– I like it
– it is available right now, etc.
The story goes that a wealthy old widow was once asked to sell one of her rustic estates that had been uninhabited and abandoned for many generations. The discussion was long and arduous, and, when the buyer ran out of arguments, he pointed out that unless urgent repairs were made, the estate would fall into ruin. To which the widow would have soberly replied: « I like ruins« , an undeniable justification.
Things can be much more complicated. The political value of national sovereignty is part of the founding declaration of the Syldavian republic. An evaluation question can arise, asking for example, that an international treaty be assessed in relation to that value. For this purpose, reference can be made to the axiomatic definition of sovereignty, as enshrined in its legal implementation; by experience drawn from analogous situations in the past; by a case by case argument showing that the treaty respects or not the specialized principles of the component of global sovereignty, military, financial, energy, etc.
Once attached to objects by a justified value judgment, values enter into routine argumentation exploiting oriented terms. The role of such valuations is clear in arguments through the absurd or through positive or negative consequences.
From a linguistic argumentative point of view, the structure of a deliberation about X or a justification of « X is (+) » is no different from « X is flammable« :
It’s flammable, because it’s very dry, and they put products in it.
He’s a reliable guy because he’s got an excellent education and he brought me back my wallet.
This position should be coherent the positions expressed or exploited in the entries of the value-1 and conductive reasoning.
[]Christian Plantin, 2019 Informal Logic, Vol. 39, No. 4 (2019), pp. 347–371
[2] Guerrini Jean-Claude, 2019, Les Valeurs dans l’argumentation [Values in argumentation]. Paris, Classiques Garnier
– –,Conflits de valeurs et corrida. Étude argumentative de la controverse. L’Harmattan. 2022.