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Full Idea
It has been proposed (by Dorothea Debus 2015) that it is sufficient for a person's activity to have value that they give full attention to it.
Gist of Idea
A person's activities have value when they receive full attention
Source
Tom Cochrane (The Aesthetic Value of the World [2021], 4.6)
Book Ref
Cochrane,Tom: 'The Aesthetic Value of the World' [OUP 2021], p.86
A Reaction
Rather narrow, but interesting. An expert might do something very valuable while being bored and inattentive. Cochrane observes that torturing someone needs full attention. But we think life is going well if we are fully absorbed in our activities.
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24165 | Pleasure has an intrinsic (independent) value, but that is not a final (for its own sake) value [Cochrane] |
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24167 | Love is a mutual reciprocation, not just a desire for something [Cochrane] |
24168 | Aesthetic value appreciates a thing objectively, as a good in its own right [Cochrane] |
24171 | Morality is not a final value; it concerns how we distribute the things we actually finally value [Cochrane] |
24169 | We can treat value as a verb; we value something when we positively engage with it [Cochrane] |
24173 | We can only understand form if we grasp the whole of which things are parts [Cochrane] |
24174 | Beauty is fittingness, of details uniting within a pattern [Cochrane] |
24175 | Accounts of sublimity differ over whether we learn something good about ourselves [Cochrane] |
24176 | A person's activities have value when they receive full attention [Cochrane] |