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human subjective endeavour, occurring in the same way as the valuing of an object.
Perry (1954) uses the example of peace to demonstrate; the valuableness of peace being
the characteristic conferred by the interest which is taken in it, for what it is, or for any
of its attributes, effects or implications.
What is a value?
A survey of attempts to define values confirms human preference as central to
most theories and definitions of value.
Traditionally, all attempts to develop an exact formal theory of
evaluation have concentrated on the concept of preference.
Rescher, 1982, p. 73
A value is a belief upon which a man acts by preference. (Allport, 1961, p. 454)
A value is a conception of something which is personally or socially preferable.
(Rokeach, 1973, p. 10)
The term values has been used variously to refer to interests, pleasures, likes,
preferences, duties, moral obligations, desires, wants, goals, needs, aversions and
attractions, and many other kinds of selective orientations. To avoid such
excessive looseness, we have insisted that the core phenomenon is the presence of
criteria or standards of preference. (Rokeach, 1979, p. 16)
A value is a human preference for a thing, state or a process. A value judgement is
a decision based upon one or more values. (Seedhouse, 2005, p. xxiii)
A man's "values" may refer to all his attitudes for-or-against anything. His values
include his preferences and avoidances, his desire-objects and aversion-objects,
his pleasure and pain tendencies, his goals, ideals, interests and disinterests, what
he takes to be right and wrong, good and evil, beautiful and ugly, useful and
useless, his approvals and disapprovals, his criteria of taste and standards of
judgement. (Edel, 1953, p. 198)
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