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Single Idea 24176

[filed under theme 22. Metaethics / B. Value / 1. Nature of Value / d. Subjective value ]

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.


The 11 ideas from 'The Aesthetic Value of the World'

Even non-theists can wonder what, if anything, makes the universe good [Cochrane]
Pleasure has an intrinsic (independent) value, but that is not a final (for its own sake) value [Cochrane]
Pleasure serves to maintain our relationship with its source [Cochrane]
Love is a mutual reciprocation, not just a desire for something [Cochrane]
We can treat value as a verb; we value something when we positively engage with it [Cochrane]
Aesthetic value appreciates a thing objectively, as a good in its own right [Cochrane]
Morality is not a final value; it concerns how we distribute the things we actually finally value [Cochrane]
We can only understand form if we grasp the whole of which things are parts [Cochrane]
Beauty is fittingness, of details uniting within a pattern [Cochrane]
Accounts of sublimity differ over whether we learn something good about ourselves [Cochrane]
A person's activities have value when they receive full attention [Cochrane]