Social Value: A Study in Economic Theory, Critical and ConstructiveAnderson, Benjamin M. (Benjamin McAlester)
General
Social Value: A Study in Economic Theory, Critical and Constructive
Anderson, Benjamin M. (Benjamin McAlester)
Value
I see no means by which such a comparison [between the
motives of one man and those of another] can be
accomplished. The susceptibility of one mind may, for
what we know, be a thousand times greater than that of
another. But, provided that the susceptibility was
different in a like ratio in all directions, we should
never be able to discover the difference. Every mind is
thus inscrutable to every other mind, and no common
denominator of feelings seems to be possible.... But
the motive in one mind is weighed only against other
motives in the same mind, never against the motives in
other minds. Each person is to other persons a portion
of the outside world--the _non-ego_ as the
metaphysicians call it. Thus the motives in the mind of
A may give rise to phenomena which may be represented
by motives in the mind of B; but between A and B there
is a gulf. Hence the weighing of motives must always be
confined to the bosom of the individual.
This question as to the homogeneity and communicability of emotional states
in different men is one fundamental to any value theory which starts with
individual feelings or desires as elements--and, indeed, from a somewhat
different viewpoint, is fundamental to all value theory. Value, as a
concrete quantity of desire or feeling, embodied in a given good at a given
time, regardless of who is purchaser and who is seller, can exist only if
feelings and desires are homogeneous and can interact--even in Wieser's
ideal society, where the complication of differences in wealth does not
obtain. And value must have some very different meaning unless this
assumption be held. In illustration of this, I wish to quote further from
Jevons. Jevons finds for value[50] three distinct meanings, for each of
which he employs both a "popular" and a "scientific" name: (1) value in use
("popular" name) = total utility ("scientific" name); (2) esteem, or
urgency of desire ("popular" name) = final degree of utility ("scientific"
name); (3) purchasing power ("popular" name) = ratio of exchange
("scientific" name). Now the first two of these are purely subjective,
individual facts, varying as to their quantities for each individual. The
only one that can have social meaning is the third, and that, as Jevons
explicitly states, is a numerical ratio, an abstract number.[51] This is
brought out very clearly when he discusses the question of the concrete
dimensions of these three quantities. Total utility has dimensions, and so
has final utility, but ratio of exchange, which he considers the precise
scientific equivalent for the popular term, purchasing power, has no
dimension at all. Its dimension is zero. Finding these ambiguities in the
word value, Jevons proposes to abandon it altogether, and to use instead
either of the three expressions discussed, depending on which sense of the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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