what is the foundation of human values?

Answer 1

I will focus on moral values. The foundation of moral values is our belief in the reality of values, and the foundation of our belief in the reality of values is our belief in substantiality and dualism. Philosophically, the term 'substance' is applied to anything that survives through time as being "the thing that it is" despite various changes that happen to it. So, for philosophers, the idea of substance is not necessarily limited to just "material stuff". Most people in Western societies, for example, have a substantialist view of god and soul. The god that created the universe is the one and same god that we pray to today. The soul that we had when we were born is the one and same soul we have today. We also tend to think of mind and self in substantialist terms. I survive over time as a single self, even though all of the matter in my body gets completely replaced every several years, and although I "change my mind" frequently, I still basically "have the same mind" that I had yesterday.

This substantialist view of reality lends itself very nicely to moral dualism, which goes hand in hand with absolutism. Basically what we do is apply the idea of substantiality to our moral sentiments and in doing this come up with the ideas of "good" and "evil". Because of this, we begin to talk about good and evil as objects. Good and evil become categories that seem to apply in some substantial, objective way. Goodness simply is-what-it-is and it survives over time. We "search" for the good. We "find" goodness in things. Some things seem to lack goodness. We value things based on our subjective sense of how good they are. Our notion of "moral value" is just another way of saying, "our personal sense of how good something is" or "how much goodness it contains." This way of thinking only makes sense, however, because we believe there is some "fact of the matter" about how good something is. Moral relativists believe that goodness is only relative to a person's perspective, but most of them still accept a substantialist view of goodness, and they still believe that there is some fact of the matter as to whether something is good from some perspective. In other words, for a moral relativist, goodness is like shape. A pyramid looks like a square when seen from the bottom, and a triangle when seen from the side, but the pyramid nevertheless is-what-it-is and there are facts of the matter concerning how it looks from various perspectives. For most people (especially Westerners) goodness is like the pyramid. It survives through time and can be seen from different angles. It has an intrinsic nature. The very notion of a "foundation" implies a substantialist/objectivist view.

So the foundations of values are substantialism and dualism, but you might still wonder how and why our values grew up from this foundation. We value something because we see ourselves as substantial beings and we believe that we can grasp goodness or a good thing and hold on to it for at least some period of time. But what makes it "good"? This appears to be a biological function rooted in organic evolution. Our bodies respond to some things in a positive way, and other things in a negative way. The positive ways feel good and the negative ways feel bad. Since we envision ourselves surviving into the future, we want hold on to the good feelings, and get rid of the bad feelings. We've grown accustomed to the metaphors of seeking to find good things and holding on to the good moments; avoiding the bad things or letting go of them as quickly as we can, like a hot potato. They don't seem like metaphors anymore; they seem like basic reality and truth. These metaphors have become our "reality" by means of our forgetting that they originated as metaphors. Our values, as we know them today, grew out of our metaphors – the metaphors that brought us substantialism, objectivism, and dualism.

But metaphors are linguistic. So "ultimately" the real answer to your question is this: the foundation of our values is language and the conceptual thoughts based on language. Language evolved (keep in mind this is a process of change through random mutations) metaphors, and these metaphors became the reality though which we now view the world. This is the reality we have created for ourselves (or that the evolution of language has created for us), and it happens to include the notion of substantive/objective values.

And finally, on last note: Keep in mind that although our values evolved via a random process of natural selection, it does not necessarily mean that these values are not, in some ultimate sense, "right". That is a different issue - an epistemological question of whether there are any "ultimate" facts at all, and if so, can we know what they are.

Answer 2

My values are literally no longer classic, yet my be particular's values are particularly classic. My mom worked outside the residing house after having 4 toddlers, because of the particular shown truth that we've been broke. both moms and dads mandatory me to marry and performance toddlers, yet first, get an practise, so i'd favor to assist myself and kinfolk, if needed. I did marry, did now no longer have toddlers, did get the academic, and do help myself. i'm a feminist, and characteristic faith both adult females and men would have the skill to artwork interior and out of doors the residing house, and both would have possibilities of even if to have toddlers or now no longer. the numerous significant wide distinction between my moms and dads and myself, is that I felt I had a call about having toddlers, they did now no longer. Edit: On non secular and political matters, i'm agnostic and liberal, my moms and dads are deeply non secular conservative Christians and conservative politically.

Answer 3

Human nature: we do not value what is alien, irrelevant, or harmful to us, but rather, what is beneficial. If you meant in particular moral values ...

"There are two rules whereby we are to walk one towards another: Justice and Mercy."

"A Model of Christian Charity" by Governor John Winthrop
(1630 on board the Arbella)

Mercy makes a willful act out of sympathy or "brotherly love."
Sympathy is personal and by its name involves a communion of feeling with another. Justice is cold and abstract and permits you to do right by someone unknown (and perhaps quite distant) to you that you have no feeling for.

Answer 4

Love

Answer 5

Religious values and respect for all life.