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Full Idea
A purely objective view has no way of knowing whether anything has any value, but actually its data include the appearance of value to individuals with particular perspectives, including oneself.
Gist of Idea
Total objectivity can't see value, but it sees many people with values
Source
Thomas Nagel (The View from Nowhere [1986], VIII.2)
Book Ref
Nagel,Thomas: 'The View from Nowhere' [OUP 1989], p.147
A Reaction
I would have thought that a very objective assessment of someone's health is an obvious revelation of value, irrespective of anyone's particular perspective.
| 6227 | Keeping promises and contracts is an obligation of natural justice [Cudworth] |
| 24085 | For absolute morality a goal for mankind is needed [Nietzsche] |
| 18676 | We should ask what we would judge to be good if it existed in absolute isolation [Moore,GE] |
| 5918 | The thing is intrinsically good if it would be good when nothing else existed [Ross] |
| 5930 | All things being equal, we all prefer the virtuous to be happy, not the vicious [Ross] |
| 2942 | The sense of the world must lie outside the world [Wittgenstein] |
| 22447 | Saying something 'just is' right or wrong creates an illusion of fact and objectivity [Foot] |
| 3257 | Total objectivity can't see value, but it sees many people with values [Nagel] |
| 18672 | Values from reasons has the 'wrong kind of reason' problem - admiration arising from fear [Orsi] |