Topic: On "intrinsic value" and why it actually means "subjective value" (Read 6129 times)

I think that means his argument (and your example) is a Non sequitur and is thus illogical and meaningless regardless of the truth or falsehood of it's individual components.

As for the Sun, it has intrinsic properties that giving off light that heats the earth.  Our valuation of a bright and warm Earth are subjective even when they don't have a bearing on our continued survival.

I never claimed it was. That was Holliday.

Strangely enough, your argument is sound because your premise is false and your conclusion is true 1) FALSE: "the sun's intrinsic value is based on a human's need for it to survive" 2) TRUE (more or less): "the sun's value to a particular human is dependent on that human's valuation of his own life".

Your argument is valid only because every false premise logically implies every true conclusion. For example: If the sky is pink with green poke-a-dots, then dogs are mammals.


Yes, the sun's value is subjective. But its value is not intrinsic.

If the sun's intrinsic value is based on a human's need for it to survive, then the sun's value to a particular human is dependent on that human's valuation of his own life, yes?

It's clear that different people value their lives different amounts. Therefore, each person values the sun different amounts. The sun's value is subjective.

Their exist only intrinsic Properties and extrinsic valuations.  Intrinsic properties like for example the caloric content of a sandwich or the inability of element 79 to oxidate exist independent of human minds. 

Valuations are all by definition extrinsic because a value is a mental ordering process occurring in a human mind in which it creates a hierarchy of worth to it's own mental constructs of the outside world.  All things can be assigned valuation in the mind (even meta concepts like justice, love, or even the act of valuation itself) but only relative to other things making all valuations extrinsic to the objects in question.

Now it is quite common for the intrinsic properties of objects when know can form the basis of valuations that while extrinsic are rational.  The sandwich contains calories which will sustain life and thus further the very commonly high valued 'self-preservation' imperative our minds seem to be hard-wired with.  This is called use value because the mind has assigned a high worth to it's own utilization of the object.

When one mind knows the value other minds have placed on something and being rational knows that exchange allows it to obtain objects that it assigns high use value too, then it will rationally assign a high value to an item independent of its own use valuation.  This is exchange value and it is doubly extrinsic because it is an external valuations resting on another external valuation.  This type of valuation is more likely to be faulty and to be irrational because other minds are vastly harder to understand then are the intrinsic properties of an object.

This is the source of a great deal of the confusion, while all valuations are extrinsic because they are in the mind.  Some valuations are derived from rational consideration of concrete properties.  Other are built on the valuations of others.  Sloppy language omits one level of 'extrinsic' from each types and call the first type of valuation 'intrinsic-value'.  On top of that some individuals make the further error of confusing their irrational exchange valuation with a rational property based valuation.  Element 79 see's this a great deal.

So long as the group valuation remains somewhat anchored to the use value all is good.  But when exchange valuations begin to form a closed loop and detach completely from rational use valuations that bubbles become inevitable.

Agreed, but I can't believe this discussion has gone on for so long. Nothing has INTRINSIC value. It's ridiculous. As shown above, "intrinsic" refers to the inherent or immutable properties of a thing that are in its very nature - regardless of who or what is or isn't in relationship with that thing. Things like mass and temperature are intrinsic properties. The fact that people grow old and die is an intrinsic property of being human. I like chocolate more than strawberry not because of some intrinsic chocolate-superiorty property of the ice cream. Little Veronica may be pretty, but she is not intrinsically pretty. Value, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.

To the people on the other side of this argument, saying that something has intrinsic value to someone, is a self-contradictory statement. You're basically saying that the value of a thing is both immutable and unchanging regardless of observer AND also has some variable and relative relationship with the observer depending on who that someone is. You can't have it both ways. But, of course, the sentence makes perfect sense if by "intrinsic" you mean "widely agreed upon" (which is what I think you mean). Intrinsic has a very narrow and precise meaning. It's tough enough discussing complex topics, but being hampered by disagreements about the basic definition of words is a serious waste of time.

Using Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs to help illustrate my opinion, I believe that gold, silver, Bitcoin, and money in general has intrinsic value to those who have fulfilled all of their inferior needs to exist.

Regardless of quality of life, keep in mind that nonphysical needs can often times be so strong, that people will kill themselves in lack of it.

So I would say that value is always subjective, and that intrinsic value is a subjective term.

To help us understand certain theories and make conclusions about the future, we can derive a consensus of what "most" people believe to be valuable (and thus what has intrinsic value for a majority), but that definition is not constant, always changes, and excludes many. Thus, it is useless in any discussion involving time-sensitive terms (of which there are few).

Intrinsic value is just someone's marginal value. People should know this if they studied any course in microeconomics.

One's intrinsic value can change over time, depending on his or her situation. It is very subjective not only to personal tastes but to external factors (income, culture, etc).

A bar of pure gold might be what you fancy in day to day life.

But if you're lost in the Sahara, you'd give up that bar of gold for a jug of water in a heartbeat.

We do appreciate your patience. These discussions can be tough to get through.


That's perfect. It's simple, and explains what it means. Let's use the above.

A is required for B to continue to exist.

or

A has intrinsic value to B

The purpose of language is to communicate meaning. Which sentence does a better job of that? In my opinion, the first sentence does a better job. Not only that, the second sentence could be interpreted to be forcing a value onto B that B may not even have.

Returning to the topic of bitcoin versus other monies, using the above definition provided by Holliday.

The argument is that bitcoin lack intrinsic value. Given Holliday's definition, this is true. Humans do not require bitcoin to live. Humans also do not require gold or silver to live. Thus, neither gold or silver would have intrinsic value. So, the argument used by those that would suggest that gold and silver do have intrinsic value and because of that, they are better alternatives to bitcoin is flawed.

If a thing has the capacity to lose intrinsic value, how can it be said to have intrinsic value in the first place?

If all value is based on relationships, wouldn't that mean all value is therefore circumstantial and thus subjective?

That's the purpose of the word "because."

I value the sun because I prefer to live.

I value my car because I prefer not to have to carry 100lbs of groceries home from the store.

I value watching tv show XYZ because the guy with the gun to my head says that if i don't like it, he'll kill me, and because I value my life I therefore value this tv show.

You are suggesting that the word intrinsic modifies the world value in such a way to render the first sentence more accurate (than the second sentence) as it provides additional factual information. Exactly what that factual information is you have yet to disclose. What you have said is that it provides "the type of value." My example also provides the "type of value," which is "nog d'fubared." There's no information being conveyed here that isn't evident from the syntax of the language. Words can modify other words, I understand this. I'm not concerned about the factual information contained within the medium of the message (syntax) but rather contained within the content of the message.

Back to the original two sentences:

intrinsic must have a definition. Therefore, we can replace this word with its definition, and the sentence will continue to have the same meaning.

Can you share with me what this sentence would look like?

So it conveys that the type of value is intrinsic. That is tautological.

You haven't explained what additional factual information is being provided by the first sentence that makes it more accurate than the second one.

The sun has nog d'fubared value to those humans who wish to continue living.

The sentence above conveys even more factual information that the first sentence. What factual formation? The type of value! Nog d'fubared value > intrinsic value, self-evidently.

What factual information does the first sentence provide that is not conveyed by the second sentence?

Can you explain the difference between the following two statements?

The sun has intrinsic value to those humans who wish to continue living.

The sun has value to those humans who wish to continue living.

The absence of the word intrinsic from your post here is interesting. Was that intentional?

Do you continue to believe that the sun, as a consequence of being required for human life, possesses intrinsic value?

A property of human life is that it requires the sun. This is a property of human life, not a property of the sun.

If the subjective theory of value is valid, then there cannot be anything which possesses non-subjective value. Value requires an observer. In the absence of any observers, there's no value.

But you're wrong. There is no such thing as intrinsic value. You need an economic actor to be involved. And everyone assesses value differently. But yet you still seem to dimly understand that value is subjective: "It [the sun] has intrinsic value to us". You simply assume that everyone values the sun equally (due to some property of the sun called "value"). Not true. A suicidal person - seconds before putting a bullet into his own head - does not value the sun at all. To him, the sun has no value. So, if even one person thinks the sun has no value, and someone else thinks the sun is very valuable, then logically the sun can have no intrinsic value.

Economically speaking, there is nothing special about survival. The desire for, manner of, and value of one's survival is subjective, and so too is the value we subjectively assign to those things that facilitate that survival. As an aside, our differing assessments of value is what makes economic trade possible. In economics it's called "double coincidence of wants".

For example, if I want a cancer drug to cure my cancer, and you have a bottle of it you are willing to sell to me, then I need to value my money less than your cancer drug and you need to value my money more than the cancer medicine that you possess. We must value each others possessions more than we value our own. Only then can trade occur.

This was Aristotle's mistake. He (and all the ancients) believed that trade occurred when two people recognized the equality of the intrinsic value of each others possessions. But this failed to explain commerce satisfactorily and also led to the classic paradox of value (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_value) also known as the diamond-water paradox (since water is essential to life, and diamonds are not, why are diamonds considered more valuable than water?). Carl Menger solved problem. The answer is here specifically: http://mises.org/Community/blogs/lilburne/archive/2009/07/12/231498.aspx, and here generally: http://mises.org/Community/blogs/lilburne/pages/224503.aspx.

I don't think you can pin down a definition for abstract concepts that will stick for every context because people use their own meanings, though I admire this as a well thought-out clarification of the language.

The sad truth is that most people aren't intellectually equipped to think about abstract language in this amount of detail, and many smart people don't bother thinking about it either; so you're going to run in to trouble and disagreement whenever you say something like "x means y by ever law of nature and sanity, therefore when people say x they are implying y whether they think so or not"- people usually stick to the definition they like to use, or whatever one is working well for them at the time.

So shit has intrinsic value because it has weight or energy?

If you want to argue that numbers aren't real, fine. But even numbers have intrinsic properties. The number 2 has an intrinsic property that it is the sum of 1+1. You can't separate the two, just like you can't separate the atoms of a gold bar from the gold bar.


This is getting ridiculous because no medium of exchange can be compared to the sun, but let's go for it. What about all these large and micro-organisms that live without the sun, at all. Do they see the sun as having intrinsic value?

Now you'll say, "no, only for all the other organisms" and then I'll say, "see, that's subjective."

.

There's a step missing from this logic. You appear to presume that surviving is the default; an inalienable position, but it's not. It's a fundamental preference. The sun only has value to those that actually wish to live.

And so, the word intrinsic continues to have zero value to me.