The Humanist Value Theory

The implicit value theory of humanism has two core values:

• Hedonism: Pain is intrinsically bad for the experiencer, pleasure is intrinsically good for the experiencer, and nothing else is intrinsically bad or good.
• Altruism: You should help others and avoid harming others, even at some cost to yourself.

Hedonism defines personal good and bad for the individual. Altruism defines moral good and bad, which depend on personal good and bad.

In this context, “pain” is a general term for negative emotional experience, and “pleasure” is a general term for positive emotional experience. In other words, pain is “feeling bad”, and pleasure is “feeling good”. In ordinary discourse, “pain” is often used in a narrower sense to mean sensations of injury or illness that are localized to specific parts of the body, as in “aches and pains”. As I use the term, “pain” refers to any negative emotional experience, such as those associated with injury, illness, hunger, thirst, extremes of temperature, fear, sadness, lust, loneliness, fatigue, boredom, etc. Likewise, “pleasure” refers to any positive emotional experience.

The optimistic version of hedonism is “the pursuit of happiness”. The pessimistic version is “the avoidance of suffering”. Those are both dubious metaphors. Happiness and suffering are qualities of experience, not objects or outcomes that we can pursue or avoid.

See The Homunculus Fallacy and its Inverse.

The hedonist views the feelings of pain and pleasure as having negative and positive value, respectively, to the experiencer. Hedonism defines what is good or bad for the individual. Altruism then adds a moral dimension. Note that altruism requires a definition of what is good or bad for the individual.

Altruism also requires a beneficiary or class of beneficiaries. To whom should we be nice? Our friends and family? The members of our ethnic group or society? All of humanity? All sentient beings?

There is also a question of how nice we should be. To what extent should you focus on your own problems, rather than the problems of others?

Those questions are not answered explicitly, and few people ever consider them.

Both hedonism and altruism are tacit assumptions. Most people have never thought about value philosophically. They have unexamined value intuitions, which cannot be derived from hedonism and altruism rationally. But people implicitly appeal to those assumptions when they try to justify their value judgments and choices.

If you ask someone “Why do you drink coffee?”, they might say “Because I like coffee”. The appeal to hedonism is treated as a terminal justification. If you ask someone “Why should we provide charity to the poor?”, they might say “Because they need our help”. The appeal to altruism is treated as a terminal justification. Questioning values reveals an implicit value theory. The assumptions of hedonism and altruism are presupposed by ordinary discourse.

Some moral intuitions don’t fit the humanist value theory very well, such as the different treatment of pigs and dogs. Value intuitions are ad hoc. Most people are not bothered by the ad hoc nature of their intuitions, because they never think philosophically about value. They take their intuitions for granted, and assume that they have a sound basis for their value judgments.

A few people try to define an explicit theory of value and live by it. In most cases, they still have unexamined assumptions, but they have made those assumptions explicit (to some extent) and try to live by them. This could involve significant lifestyle changes, such as becoming vegan.

Almost no one does a full philosophical inquiry into values, which would involve questioning both their value intuitions and their implicit value theory.

In his book The Moral Landscape, Sam Harris defines a moral framework in which “the well-being of conscious creatures” is the measure of moral value. He assumes that we have an imperative to maximize this measure. The notion of “well-being” is defined hedonically as more pleasure and less pain, essentially. The moral landscape refers to the net hedonic utility of all sentient beings. This landscape is visualized as a topography, in which we ought to seek the highest ground.

Essentially, his view is hedonic utilitarianism.

I should point out that defining goodness as “well-being” involves a circularity, because “well” is just another word for good, so the term simply means “good-being” or “goodness”. People often beg the question when they try to justify their core assumptions.

Harris never makes an argument for hedonism or altruism. He never explains why emotional experiences should be considered value, or why we have an imperative to maximize the hedonic utility of the universe. Those are his tacit assumptions. He just takes them for granted.

The humanist value theory plays an important role in many ideologies/worldviews. It is not only foundational to humanism, it is also foundational to sentientism, efilism, eulavism and other belief systems. Arguably, most theistic worldviews share those assumptions to some degree.

I reject the humanist value theory. In other essays, I will explain some of the problems with it, and why I reject it.