Currently, axiology seems confusing to me in that it seems to mean many different things at different times. I haven’t looked into it enough to be confident calling it rather than me confused, but I certainly wouldn’t throw that hypothesis out yet either.
But I’m also a bit confused as to why you think analysis of the concept of value would be orthogonal to morality, prudence, and other normative matters?
It seems to me like maybe one analogy (which is spit-balling and goes outside of my wheelhouse) to illustrate my way of viewing this could be that an agent’s moral theory, if we subtracted the axiology from it, gives the agent a utility function, but one containing references/pointers to other things, not yet specified. Like it could say “maximise value”, but not what value is. And then the axiology specifies what that is. So to the extent to which axiology (under a given definition) helps clarify what is valuable, it feeds into morality, rather than running perpendicular to it. Or do you view it differently?
Perhaps what you meant by “boils down to conceptual analysis of the concept of ‘value’” was more like metaethics-style reasoning about things like the “nature of” value, which might not directly help answer what specifically is valuable?
Currently, axiology seems confusing to me in that it seems to mean many different things at different times. I haven’t looked into it enough to be confident calling it rather than me confused, but I certainly wouldn’t throw that hypothesis out yet either.
But I’m also a bit confused as to why you think analysis of the concept of value would be orthogonal to morality, prudence, and other normative matters?
It seems to me like maybe one analogy (which is spit-balling and goes outside of my wheelhouse) to illustrate my way of viewing this could be that an agent’s moral theory, if we subtracted the axiology from it, gives the agent a utility function, but one containing references/pointers to other things, not yet specified. Like it could say “maximise value”, but not what value is. And then the axiology specifies what that is. So to the extent to which axiology (under a given definition) helps clarify what is valuable, it feeds into morality, rather than running perpendicular to it. Or do you view it differently?
Perhaps what you meant by “boils down to conceptual analysis of the concept of ‘value’” was more like metaethics-style reasoning about things like the “nature of” value, which might not directly help answer what specifically is valuable?