The Origin of Values

Reprint Edition: Sociology and Philosophy of Beliefs

Raymond Boudon

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781351477963
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Values have always been a central topic in both philosophy and the social sciences. Statements about what is good or bad, fair or unfair, legitimate or illegitimate, express clear beliefs about human existence. The fact that values differ from culture to culture and century to century opens many questions. In The Origin of Values, Raymond Boudon offers empirical, data-based analysis of existing theories about values, while developing his own perspective as to why people accept or reject value statements.

Boudon classifies the main theories of value, including those based on firm belief, social or biological factors, and rational or utilitarian attitudes. He discusses the popular and widely influential Rational Choice Model and critiques the postmodernist approach. Boudon investigates why relativism has become so powerful and contrasts it with the naturalism represented by the work of James Q. Wilson on moral sensibility. He follows with a constructive attempt to develop a new theory, beginning with Weber's idea of non-instrumental rationality as the basis for a more complex idea of rationality.

Applying Boudon's own and existing theories of value to political issues and social ideas—the end of apartheid, the death penalty, multiculturalism, communitarianism—The Origin of Values is a significant work. Boudon fulfills a major task of social science: explanation of collective belief. His book will be of interest to sociologists, philosophers, psychologists, and political scientists.

1
Explaining Values and Valuation: A Question That Has Inspired Many Theories

1.1 The Diversity and Empirical Inefficiency of Value Theories

We spend a great part of our time formulating value statements: “X is good, bad, legitimate, illegitimate, etc.” In most cases, we express these statements because we endorse them. Why? Why do we believe in value statements? This is a difficult question as soon as we recognize that the validity of values cannot be checked as easily as the reality of facts. Value statements are more problematic than factual statements.

This question is so important that all human sciences, psychology as well as sociology and, before them, philosophy, have raised it. What are their answers? How can they be classified? Are some of them more acceptable, more valid, than others? Can they be unified? Here are some of the points on which I would like to present some reflections.

My interest in these questions was originally stimulated by the fact that the answers proposed by human sciences to the question as to where values come from are extraordinarily diverse. “X-for instance, a given distribution of good—is fair (or unfair)” states a majority of respondents in a sociological inquiry. Do the respondents plainly observe that the distribution is effectively fair (or unfair)? If so, in what sense is it fair or unfair, what are the criteria leading to one of the opposite conclusions? Is the answer rather the effect of the individual or collective interests of the respondents? Does it result from the application by the respondents of principles they would hold as intuitively valid? Or from the application of arbitrary principles they would have endorsed? Of principles the respondents would simply have been socialized to? Or is the answer strategic? Is it the effect of passions, such as envy? Of resentment? These questions have occupied a good part of the work of several classical and modern philosophers (Nietzsche, but also Max Scheler or John Rawls for instance) and several classical and modern sociologists (Simmel, Durkheim, Piaget, functionalists, rational choice theorists, etc.) Are all these theories equally valid? Is one of them better? Are they all valid but in diverse circumstances?

Another observation has attracted my attention for a long time: as soon as one considers certain subjects, like the feelings of justice, on which empirical investigations by sociologists, social psychologists, and psychologists have been particularly numerous, one gets the impression that no theory is able to explain in a satisfactory fashion the reactions of people as they are empirically observed. Hence, the impression that empirical research and theory are unable to converge. Thus, in some observations, people seem to have sentiments of justice congruent with Rawls’s theory, while in others they appear as non–Rawlsians. Roughly, they want that inequalities are minimum in the sense where they should not be higher than the level required to optimize the production of goods, while in other situations people seem not to care on this point. How are these contradictions to be explained?

1.2 Münchhausen’s Trilemma

A primary reason for this complexity possibly has something to do with a basic theorem formulated, after others, by the German philosopher and sociologist Hans Albert, a theorem which he has proposed to label “Münchhausen’s trilemma.” It is as follows: “Any given theory (a moral as well as an astronomical or physical theory, etc.) is grounded on principles: either these principles are treated as true though they are ungrounded, or they are grounded on other principles and these other principles still on other principles ad infinitum, or they are treated as grounded on their consequences, in a circular fashion.” In other words, moral or scientific certainty evokes the story of Münchhausen, the legendary baron who succeeded in extracting himself from the pond where he had fallen by drawing his own hairs.

What conclusions should be drawn from this theorem? That certainty-moral as well as scientific—is an illusion? That one cannot legitimately assume the knowledge-moral as well as scientific—is grounded on absolute principles? That moral certainties are purely subjective matter? That they derive from an ungrounded decision? This question was raised repeatedly by the human sciences. One can even maintain that it represents one of their most crucial questions. One of the reasons why Marx, Nietzsche, Freud or Pareto claimed that what subjects perceive as truths are really illusions, is that they had the impression that no knowledge can be considered as grounded on undefeatable principles.

1.3 Münchhausen’s Trilemma and Scientific Knowledge

Before I consider the conclusions to be derived from Münchhausen’s trilemma regarding the question, namely why we endorse values, I will consider the consequences to be drawn from this theorem regarding scientific theories.

If we choose the first of the three solutions proposed by the trilemma, we get what I would call a fideist theory of knowledge: in that case, I recognize that any given scientific theory rests upon undemonstrated and undemonstrable principles, but I consider these principles solid and valid. I hold the consequences drawn from theses principles as true, as valid, because I believe in the principles on which they are grounded.

But we can also of course draw from Münchhausen’s trilemma a skeptical theory of scientific knowledge: as any theory rests upon ungrounded principles, nothing is sure.¹

This skeptical theory appears at first view as the most credible. It is true that any theory, even of the most familiar type, rests upon ungrounded principles. Thus, a statement of the form “X is cause of Y” (as “this fertilizer is effective”) rests upon the assumption that the notion of “cause” is clear, while it is not, since many philosophers or scientists, as Bertrand Russell, have proposed to get rid of it.²

But on the other hand, we normally have the feeling that the two conclusions I have just evoked, the fideist and the skeptical, make us deeply uncomfortable. We can easily accept neither the view that scientific theories are grounded on principles which we would accept by an ungrounded act of faith, nor the view that they would be ultimately ungrounded. We can easily accept neither the Cartesian view that there are ultimate self-evident principles on which scientific theories would be grounded, nor the conventionalist view, according to which they would be grounded on principles on which we would agree, but which would be neither evident nor grounded. We have some trouble accepting the idea, supported by modern conventionalists, as the German philosopher Hübner (1985), that myths would be representations of the world that we should consider as valid as scientific theories. We have, on the contrary, the impression that science produces more reliable representations than myths and we are reluctant toward the idea that this impression would be a mere illusion.

The Good Solution

More generally, the fideist and skeptical conclusions that are often derived from Münchhausen’s trilemma makes it difficult to understand that certain scientific statements are considered as definitely true, or that magical practices are less efficient than scientific ones. In other words, the two possible, most acceptable conclusions that can be derived from Münchhausen’s trilemma appear as contradictory with evidence.

To get out from beneath these difficulties and contradictions, we must accept the idea that scientific knowledge is gained by a dynamic move going from principles to consequences and, in turn, from the consequences to the principles. A scientific theory is normally grounded on undemonstrated principles. If the theory appears wrong and if it seems difficult to reconcile it with data, after a while, a normal step will be to put the principles into question and possibly to replace them by other principles. If, by contrast, some principles appear as capable of being indefinitely maintained because a flow of adequate scientific theories can be produced, then scientists will accept them and not put them into question any more, provided no difficulties appear which would cause scientists again to question their principles. What I have presented here in a few words is the core of Popperian theory of knowledge: principles are conjectures. They can become truths when it does not appear relevant to put them into question. But they can always be in principle criticized and put into question. We can summarize this philosophy by saying that it endorses the third solution of Münchhausen’s trilemma: knowledge is “circular” in the sense that it rests on a basic procedure whereby principles give birth to theories and explanations, the latter giving birth to consequences that can be accepted or not; if not, this can lead to a revision of the principles. Of course, the word “circular” should be put in quotes, because it is not circular in the strict logical sense.

This theory of knowledge, to me the most acceptable, was defended before Popper (1976), by Simmel (1892). It is rejected, though, by those who do not want knowledge to be circular and either endorse a fideist or a skeptical vision (Albert, 1990). Incidentally, as I have shown elsewhere, accepting the idea that knowledge consists of conjectures and refutations does not lead to accepting Popper’s falsification theory (Boudon, 1994b).

Example: The Theory of Turmoils

I am referring here to a famous discussion among Middle Ages physicists. They started from the principle that any move must have a cause. This is typically a statement that does not derive directly from observation, but that is confirmed though by an indefinite number of observations. This leaf of paper moves because I make it move. Otherwise, it would stay at rest. But the principle led to questions which appeared as difficult to answer. If any move has a cause, which cause keeps the boat moving when the wind has suddenly completely fallen? Which cause keeps the arrow moving once it has left the bow? Physicists of the Middle Ages started from the principle that any move has a cause. They devised answers that appear to us now easily ridiculous: the boat would provoke an invisible turmoil that would push it and keep it moving after the wind has fallen. If so, said a physicist, if such a turmoil does actually operate, a heap of corn should fly in different directions depending on whether it is located in the front or at the back of the boat’s deck. Progressively, the theory of turmoils appeared on the whole to create more questions than it solved. But again, how can it be explained that the boat or the arrow keep moving? The solution to this puzzle was found once the weakness of the principle “every move has a cause” was discovered, and once it was understood that it should be completed and reformulated: “no object at rest will move without a cause making it move, and no object in move will come to rest without a cause bringing it to rest.” From this new principle, the revolutionary consequence could be drawn that no cause makes the boat or the arrow move. This new principle, the Newtonian principle of inertia, was from that moment definitely accepted. It seems unlikely that it would be put into question.

This example of the principle of inertia is probably one of the most spectacular the history of science provides of the back-and-forth process between principles and consequences characterizing the production of knowledge. Many others of course could be offered. To mention just another equally instructive one, the Greeks drew from the fact that the ratio S/D of the side S of a square of length one to its diagonal D should be both even and odd the conclusion that S/D was not a “number” but a “growth” (“grandeur”). In other words, they postulated the existence of two types of quantities. It took centuries before it was realized that the notion of number should not be restricted to natural and relative numbers (that is, of type A/B where A and Β are integers) but should include “ir-ratio-nal” numbers as well, in other words, numbers which cannot be expressed as the ratio of two integers. The principle, here the definition as to what numbers are, was reformed because by so doing, it was possible to eliminate the obscure notion of a “growth,” which would not be possible to measure by a number.

Finally, we believe in a scientific truth; we believe that “X is true,” because X appears to us as grounded on a system of reasons, which appear to us as strong, given the state of the discussion at a given time. Before the principle of inertia was elaborated, the physicists had reasons to believe in the theory of turmoils: they could perceive it as strong. Once the principle of inertia was formulated, the reasons supporting the earlier theory of turmoils were weakened. So, we believe in a theory when it appears to us as supported by stronger reasons than any alternative theories. We believe the theory that “the earth is round rather than flat,” because it is grounded on stronger reasons than the theory “the earth is flat.” Our belief is grounded on the fact that we see that all the arguments supporting the theory “the earth is flat” would be definitely weaker.

1.4 Münchhausen’s Trilemma and the Explanation of Norms and Values

This “circular” or “back and forth” theory of knowledge makes clear why Münchhausen’s trilemma never convinced anyone that scientific theories would be ungrounded. Although, as the Sokal’s affair shows, the so-called “postmodernist’’ sociologists of science have tried to develop a skeptical and “constructivist” view of science, according to which scientific theories would not be more objective than mythical representations of the world. However, using Münchhausen’s trilemma implicitly as the basis of their argument, they were unable to succeed in convincing people, because the skeptical interpretation of Münchhausen’s trilemma is only one among many. Another theory is that, in essence, knowledge is obtained by a back and forth procedure.

By contrast, Münchhausen’s trilemma seems to have been taken more literally by theoreticians of norms and values. Even if they do not refer explicitly to it, many theoreticians of norms and values draw from it the conclusion that axiological beliefs can rest exclusively either on faith or on sand. Other writers, starting from the idea that axiological beliefs cannot be grounded, attempt to find the causes which would be responsible for them, while still others attempt to show that they are grounded on ultimate principles, the truth of which would be intuitive.

This classification can be refined. A first class of theories of normative beliefs would include the fideist theories, those that attempt to show that axiological beliefs are grounded on principles of absolute value. A second class of theories would include the skeptical theories, for which axiological beliefs cannot be grounded. Those who endorse this skeptical view can, in turn, be sorted into two categories. Decisionist theories start from the viewpoint that axiological beliefs are based on principles freely endorsed by the subjects. Causalist theories start from the viewpoint that they are implanted in the minds of people under the effect of psychic, social, or biological mechanisms operating without the subjects being aware of them, but which can be inferred with the help of scientific procedures. The latter can be included in the skeptical category, for they start from the principle that normative beliefs cannot be treated as grounded: to them, they should be considered as states of mind resulting from the action of causes, not as conclusions deriving from reasons.³

Finally, a number of theories can be called rational. They cannot be included into the skeptical nor the fideist theories. But it may be noted that they respect Münchhausen’s trilemma in their own way, since, in most cases, they attempt to derive moral convictions from procedures to which they grant an absolute value, as in the cases of Kant or today, J. Rawls. In that sense, they can be qualified not only as rational but as absolutist.

On the whole, it is not exaggerated to say that a good part of the theories of norms and values appear as dominated by the objective of solving Münchhausen’s trilemma, as though the theorists of norms and values had more or less clearly seen this theorem, and as though they had picked up the various interpretations given to it.

I will not attempt to present exhaustively these theories, nor to criticize them. My objective is rather, on the one hand, to support the conjecture according to which Münchhausen’s trilemma has oriented the construction of value theories by evoking some influential theories of axiological beliefs, and, on the other hand, to show that Münchhausen’s trilemma can be solved by a better theory than the fideist, the skeptical theory (either in its decisionist or in its causalist form), or the absolutist rational theory.

1.5 “Fideist” Theories

“Fideist” theories start from the assumption that norms and values can be grounded on principles of absolute validity, in other words, on principles the validity of which need not be demonstrated.

The phenomenological theory of values developed by Max Scheler belongs to this category. It is certainly one of its most interesting illustrations (Scheler, 1954 [1916]).⁴ According to Scheler, we become aware of values thanks to a sense of values that would be comparable to our sense of color...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half title
• title
• copy
• Contents
• Introduction: Explaining Values and Valuation
• 1 Explaining Values and Valuation: A Question That Has Inspired Many Theories
• 2 Rational Theories: Limits of the “Rational Choice Model”
• 3 Relativistic vs. Naturalistic Theories: Their Interest and Limits
• 4 A Seminal and Difficult Notion: “Axiological Rationality”
• 5 Generalizing the “Rational Choice Model” into a Cognitivist Model
• 6 The Cognitivist Model Applied to the Analysis of the Feelings of Justice
• 7 The Cognitivist Model Applied to the Analysis of Public Opinion
• References
• Index